Some one said it was to avoid commanding a battalion, some that it was to escape scandal or a writ, others that it was merely “just like old Fryern!” In the course of a year he had become notorious for prolonging officers’ convalescence with illicit drink, and the King, it was said, had insisted on his taking a commission. Too eccentric to be put in a responsible position, and insisting on not remaining in England, he had drifted about Divisional, and then Corps Head-quarters until this heaven-sent opportunity housed him in a suitable nook. A man of unexpected resource, no sooner had he understood what was required of him than he began to gather at the Spanish Farm the most miscellaneous collection of objects ever seen together since Rabelais compiled his immortal lists of omnium gatherum. A field-gun, a motor-car, other people’s servants, several animals, French school books, Bosch pamphlets, sewing machines, plows and tinned food; nothing came amiss to him. What good he did, no one could say. Little of the stuff was reissued and served the purpose of economy, but when Dignitaries from British Great Head-quarters came down to see Corps Head-quarters and said to its old friends: “I say, Charles, you were awfully slack about the Salvage Order, you know!” the old friends were able to answer: “Well, we aren’t now; you come and see old Fryern’s dump after lunch--say about three!” “What, old ‘Chops’ Fryern?” “No other, I assure you!” and so on. * * * * * It happened, only a week or so after Sir Montague’s arrival at the farm, that a lorry stopped in the yard. There was nothing unusual in that. They did so at all hours of the day and most of the night. The English, so wits said, fought on rubber tyres. Old Jerome, leaning on his hoe, type of primitive man drudging with his primitive implement to wring a subsistence from inscrutable Nature, often stood to watch these powerful, docile servants of a younger age, that could do the work of ten men and four horses in half an hour. He was doing so now, and Madeleine, if she thought about it at all, thought like this: “Poor old father, he’s making old bones; it’s the boys he misses,” when she saw Jerome drop his hoe and run to the lorry to help out a woman with a shawl over her head. In another moment Madeleine had no doubt. It was her sister Marie from Laventie. In a moment she was out. The men on the lorry, with the queer, dumb, unexpected kindliness of the poorer Englishman, were handing down Emilienne, Marie’s little girl, in a sort of frozen stupor of cold and fright. Madeleine ran to take the child, while her father helped Marie, who seemed dazed, into the house. Round the kitchen stove, quickly stoked until the top shone red, Madeleine plied them with the inevitable coffee, and presently with slabs of staunch farm bread. Jerome stood by, the mere helpless male in the face of calamity. It was he who said first: “What is it, my girl?”