The officers who hired the front rooms, the men and animals billeted in the farm buildings, the N.C.O.’s, orderlies, what-not, might be dispirited, jumpy, no longer the easy-going confident English of other years, but they still bought what she had to sell, and paid for what they had--more rather than less, as the conscripted civilian, craving the comforts from which he had been torn, replaced the regular soldier or early volunteer, who had never known or had disdained them. She got a good deal of help with the harvest. The English had all sorts of stores, appliances, above all, plenty of willing arms, that she wanted. The troops “in rest” were glad enough for the most part, when off duty, to do any small job to take their minds off the world-wide calamity that enveloped them, or that gave the momentary illusion of peace-time ease and freedom. Owing to the submarine campaign they were rather encouraged than otherwise. The harvest, though not magnificent, was fair, and the ever-rising scale of officially fixed prices left always a larger margin of profit. Thus “One does what one can!” was Madeleine’s appropriate comment, when asked. Very little escaped her, as that murderous sodden autumn closed in. * * * * * It was about Christmas time that the bombardment of all the back areas, especially Hazebrouck, recommenced in earnest. It was the period at which the Germans regained the initiative. Madeleine noticed a fact like that. She noticed also the extraordinary thinning out of the troops. They either went forward into the line or far back, into rest, beyond St. Omer. But the headlines of the papers, the rumors her father brought home from the estaminet, moved her not one whit. The Russian revolution, the advent of America, the British and French man-power questions, Roumanian or Syrian affairs, all left her cold. She read of them in French and English impartially, with all the distrust of her sort for the printed word. It was not until she heard the Baron descant upon the situation, during a visit he paid her father, that she began to take any serious account of the way the war was trending. The Baron had been severely shaken by the death of his son. A view of life, which seldom went beyond personal comfort, had been vitally disconcerted by the final dispersal of one of its cherished comforts, the idea of a son to succeed to and prolong the enjoyment of life. He had the gloomiest forebodings, blamed Russians, Roumanians, English, Americans, Portuguese, Turks, Germans, in turn for the dark days certainly ahead. Madeleine listened with the tolerant submission proper from a chief tenant’s daughter toward the master. When the Baron spoke of “my son,” her just appreciation was never misled into thinking that he meant her lover. The two were distinct. She had her own bitter memories, black moods, tears even. That was her affair. The Baron’s loss of his son was his, a different matter. She sympathized demurely.