Next morning we resumed our march, and pushed on briskly, for we now heard, from two Ambulance couriers who came against us, that fighting was going on about Orleans, and that our services were much needed in that town. As the day advanced, we could distinctly hear the ceaseless booming of cannon many miles ahead. Towards evening, when we had passed by Artenay, we found the road and the plain on both sides covered with the débris of a battle. Numbers of torn uniforms, knapsacks, arms, accoutrements, dead horses, and newly-made graves,--all were tokens that the neighbourhood had lately seen severe fighting. An unexploded shell lay beside the road, but we avoided touching it. Many of the trees were severed midway up their trunks, and nearly all had small branches broken here and there, showing that the fighting was not confined to artillery. Some of the tree trunks were grooved in a most curious manner, evidently by shell or shot. During the whole of this day, 18th October, we pushed on as fast as we could, arriving late at the village of Chevilly. We heard from the Mayor, who kindly gave us quarters for the night, that a fierce and bloody battle had been fought both in and around the village during the previous week. His little flower-garden had been the scene of an infantry charge; and I marked by the trampled and uprooted plants, and the scattered earth, the very spot where several deadly struggles had taken place. The ground was furrowed, and the branches of the trees broken by bombshells. Our hostess, who had retreated with her husband into a cellar during the fighting, gave me a vivid description of the affair. The whole village was a heap of ruins. But I shall remember the poor lady and her kind husband, who gave us so hospitable a welcome, despite the agitation which their late experience and the spoiling of their dwelling place had caused them. It was a problem what would become of the inhabitants in these country districts, where the Prussians (as my host and hostess informed me) had eaten up their meat, bread, and vegetables, had carried off their cattle, their hay, straw and corn, and in many instances had finished up, when they thought the people had balked them of supplies, by burning the houses over the heads of the Frenchmen. Such things, we were assured, had come to pass round Orleans. On several occasions since leaving Longumeau, we had encountered waggon-loads of women and children, who told us piteous tales how their houses had been destroyed, and themselves obliged to fly; and, perhaps, the saddest part of their story was, that when we asked whither they were going, they seemed, in some instances, not to have the faintest idea. They were wanderers on the face of the earth, and dazed by the calamities which had fallen on them so unexpectedly.