As the cloud darkened over the country her anxiety for news grew keener and keener. It seemed as though her sub-conscious self was aware that the tide of invasion was drawing nearer and nearer to the fair fields and orchards of Normandy, and that one morning she would wake up to find Martagny, Gournay, and Les Andelys in the hands of the Boches. So every day, in those early weeks of the war, she was up betimes and, having carefully done up her grey tresses and put on a newly-ironed blue apron, set forth to one or other of the neighbouring villages, where she would be able to read the latest "communiqué" and pick up any stray item of news that might filter through from Paris. About eight o'clock on the morning of September 16th, 1914, Octavie Delacourt set out in this way, her destination on this occasion being Gournay and the house of an old friend of her husband, a small landowner named Rismude. It is a good distance by road from Martagny to Gournay, so she decided to take a short cut through the Forêt de Lyons. Setting her best foot foremost, she struck off through the trees with the swinging stride of a hardy countrywoman, and soon picked up a little pathway amidst the undergrowth which she knew would lead her in the right direction. After walking for some ten minutes at full speed, she came to a part of the forest known as "La Molière," the site of a disused chalk quarry, the gasping white mouth of which is partly hidden by dense foliage. It was here that her eye--long experienced in woodcraft--noticed something unusual near the path she was following: a number of green branches, freshly cut from the trees, which someone--apparently in vain--had been trying to make into a fire. Stopping in front of the charred remains, she could not suppress the utterance of the reflection which sprang to her mind:-- "How stupid to cut green branches for a fire!" Hardly had the words passed her lips than Octavie felt a heavy hand descended on her shoulder. With thumping heart and suddenly blanched face she spun half round and beheld her aggressor--a heavy-featured man in a strange dress who, with a cynical smile on his thick lips and a hard look in his little grey eyes, had noiselessly appeared from behind a tree. "How you frightened me!" exclaimed Octavie, retaining her self-possession, in spite of her fright, and endeavouring to shake off the leaden fingers which weighed on her slender frame.