In the light of such incidents as this, who can blame the French people for regarding the American as a sort of gift from God beneficently allowed them at the time of their greatest national impoverishment, for the replenishing of their depleted pocketbooks? Verdun, February 20. The little narrow-gauge train pulled us in here from Bar-le-Duc at ten o’clock last night, a thirty mile run and six hours to make it! When I asked for a first class fare at the station I noticed an odd expression on the ticket-seller’s face. “They’re all the same,” he said; “all second class.” Arrived at the train I understood. The coaches were filthy and furnished with straight-backed wooden benches; a heap of rubbish surrounded the rickety stove in the centre. Shortly after we crawled out of Bar-le-Duc it began to rain. Half the windows were innocent of glass. The rain beat in through the empty sashes. Presently it grew dark. Several of the passengers, American, reached in their pockets and brought out a few grimy candle-ends. We made little grease-spots on the benches and stuck the candles there, but the gusts of wind from the empty windows kept blowing them out, so half the time we jogged along in darkness. Among the passengers was a little old Frenchman with one arm. He was returning to his native village in the devastated area the other side of Verdun, after an absence of four years. With him was his young son, an immature lad of seventeen. “_J’ai tine passion_,” declared the old man with startling fervour; “_j’ai une passion véritable de revoir le village de ma naissance!_” In all probability he was returning to nothing but a crumbled heap of stones. “You are very brave,” I told him. Ah but it was for them, the old, to set an example for the young! It was they who should lead the way! It was they who should rebuild France! His frail old body fairly shook with the strength of his emotion. What a strange, thrilling, tragic pilgrimage! Verdun resembled nothing but a ruin mercifully wrapped in darkness as we passed through the gate and made our way up the hill. We had found, luckily, a guide who had a lantern; nowhere else in all the city was so much as a gleam of light to be seen. In places, as we passed, the shells of houses still stood, staring down with empty eyes at us, in other places there were nothing but rubble mounds with here and there a narrow jagged bit of wall or a naked chimney standing out like a lonely monolith.