"That's why they continue to come. The place is part of their life. But I don't know what they'll do now. Monsieur Paillard, their landlord, hasn't been heard of since the Germans bombarded and burnt Wiltz-la-Vallée. Whether poor Paillard got knocked on the head by a rifle-butt or a 41-centimetre shell, or whether he was lined up against some garden wall with the other poor devils when the Prussian firing-squads sickened and they had to turn the machine-guns on the prisoners, nobody seems to know. "Wiltz-la-Vallée is nothing but an ill-smelling heap of rubbish. The whole country is in a horrible condition. You know a rotting cabbage or beet or turnip field emits a bad enough smell. Add to that the stench from an entire dead and decomposing community of three thousand people! Oh yes, they dug offal trenches, but they weren't deep enough. And besides there was enough else lying dead under the blackened bricks and rafters to poison the atmosphere of a whole country. It's a ghastly thing what they've done to Belgium!" Guild went to his modern bathroom to bathe, but left the door open. "Go on, Harry," he said. "Well, that's about all," continued Darrel. "The Germans left death and filth behind them. Not only what the hands of man erected is in ruins, but the very face of the earth itself is mangled out of all recognition. They tore Nature herself to pieces, stamped her features out, obliterated her very body! You ought to see some of the country! I don't mean where towns or solitary farms were. I mean the _land_, the _landscape_!--all full of slimy pits from their shells, cut in every direction by their noisome trenches, miles and miles of roadside trees shot to splinters, woodlands burnt to ashes, forests torn to slivers--one vast, distorted and abominable desolation." Guild had reappeared, and was dressing. "They didn't ransack the Grand Duchy," continued Darrel, "although I heard that the Grand Duchess blocked their road with her own automobile and faced the invaders until they pushed her aside with scant ceremony. If she did that she's as plucky as she is pretty. That's the story, anyway." "Have the Germans bothered you here?" asked Guild, buttoning a fresh collar. "Not any to speak of. Of course they don't care anything about the frontier; they'd violate it in a minute. And I've been rather worried because a lot of these Luxembourg peasants, particularly the woodsmen and forest dwellers, are Belgians, or are in full sympathy with them. And I'm afraid they'll do something that will bring the Germans to Lesse Forest." "You mean some sort of franc-tireur business?" "Yes, I mean just that." "The Germans shoot franc-tireurs without court-martial." "I know it. And there has been sniping across the border, everywhere, even since the destruction of Wiltz-la-Vallée. I expect there'll be mischief here sooner or later."