Her nod was all the answer he asked. Once again he spoke: “You know Marcel is dead?” Again she nodded. Again it was only his way of saying, “Come what may, you will see me through, we shall not be worse off for the cruelties of Fate!” She understood and acquiesced. Nothing else passed until with “Good night, father,” and “Good night, my girl,” they parted. Of her life during the past twelve months and all it had contained, not a word. _PART III_ LA GALETTE _PART III_ _La Galette_ The late summer of 1917, the summer of Haig’s offensive from Ypres, was one of the wettest of the war, but the days following Madeleine’s return opened fine. She was up betimes, and soon made herself apparent in the life of the farm. Harvest must begin the moment things were dry enough, and before they became too dry, so that the cut grain would neither sprout as it lay, nor spill itself as it fell. Besides herself and her father, they had Berthe, and the family of Belgian refugees, two boys too young for service, and eight women of all ages. A thoughtful government had added two Territorial soldiers of the very oldest class, who could easily be spared from such military duty as they were fit for; and to this, a still more thoughtful Madeleine mentally added some amount of help that could be extracted, by one means or another, from English troops resting in the area. At the moment of her return there were no troops, but artillery came on the following day. There also came a platelayer’s family from Hazebrouck, whose house was too near the big shells that had fallen. Madeleine drove a hard bargain with them, work in the fields as the price of a loft in the outhouses, until the latter should be required for potatoes. But these matters were not her first concern. She made a long and careful scrutiny of the billeting money that had been paid during her absence. Marie was too accustomed to the rough methods of those who live on the edge of the trenches, and knew little of the fine art of making the English pay. Madeleine went to see Monsieur Blanquart in the morning recess of the school, and found him perceptibly grayer and more harassed, almost snowed under by the immense weight of paper, by which a government, in sore straits, discharged its expedients upon its humbler representatives. In addition to the correspondence and registration necessitated by general mobilization, and by the occupation of an allied army, there were now circulars and returns concerning food production, waste prevention, aircraft precautions, counterespionage, and the surveillance of prices. In such circumstances, Blanquart probably wished her back in Paris, but she insisted. After bitter argument, he suddenly surveyed her with a gleam of interest. “There, you aren’t greatly changed; but what induced you to leave a good job in the Ministry?”