The question was on everybody’s lips: “Do you suppose they really _will_ sign the armistice?” “It don’t sound much like peace this morning!” would come the dubious reply. We have heard rumours just since yesterday, but in rumours we have so long ceased to put any faith! As the morning wore on our skepticism grew. The almost unbroken reverberation frayed the nerves. As eleven o’clock drew near the tension became torture. Would the guns cease? Could they? It seemed as if they must go on forever. The clock in the old grey church tower began to strike the hour. I flung open the kitchen door. We all stood breathless, frozen, listening. Ding-dong, ding-dong; through the notes of the bell we could still hear the throbbing of the great guns. Eleven times the slow bell chimed, there was a heavy boom, one more, and then absolute silence. We stared at each other blankly incredulous. “They’ve signed,” said a boy. I walked down the little lane that leads to the ammunition dump and picked a bunch of orange-scarlet berries. I wanted to be alone, to listen. It was a day all pearl and lavender, a violet mist hung over the brown hill-sides. No one passed on the road, there was not a sound of any sort that reached me, the world seemed to be asleep. The stillness was terrifying. I waited, tense, not able to believe, expecting every moment to have the silence broken by the resumption of the cannonade. Then as the minutes passed and still my strained ears could not catch so much as a whisper, I turned back and entered the little roadside Chapel in the Bush. There in its dim blue and silver solitude I knelt down before the little statue of Jeanne d’Arc and prayed. At noon someone started the old church bell to ringing, it jangled frantically for hours. I think we are all a little dazed. I for one have a curious feeling as if I had come up suddenly against a blank wall. Mauvages, November 12. Last night we celebrated. The whole ordnance camp got out and set off flares and signal rockets from the dump, while two of the boys put over a barrage with the machine-gun on the hill. And there was much champagne. This morning the street is hung with flags,—I never knew before how thrilling the tricolor could be until I saw it like this, against the stone-grey of the old houses. A company of French cavalry is just passing through town. They are very beautiful to look at, with their bright blue uniforms, their bright bay horses, and the long slim lances which they carry in one hand, each with a tiny pennant at the end. As each one comes into view down the street I think; “Thank God, for one more Frenchman left alive.” The boys have already begun to argue about the date on which they will reach home. But though the fighting may be over, there are long months still ahead of us here I am sure. And now with the strain and the excitement gone, France is bound to look greyer and muddier and more whats-the-use to the boys than ever before. May Heaven help us all!