These grand old houses, which have witnessed so many stirring scenes of war in the past, were awakened from many years of slumber by the arrival of our army in the North of France. The little stumpy bridges across their moats, which had re-echoed under the hoofs of horsemen in the armies of _le Roi Soleil_; the tall, pointed turrets which had seen in succession the cocked hats of _le grand Marlbrook’s_ infantry; the ragged bonnets of the Revolution; the beplumed busbies of Wellington’s cavalry, filing along the white roads threading the distant plain, were once again the silent witnesses of the bustle of an army in the field. A slender pennant was affixed to the lichen-covered gate-post; sentries in khaki, stolid, slow-moving, rifle with fixed bayonet at the “Order arms,” materialized apparently out of nowhere; motor-cars came whirring up, discharging lean, athletic-looking officers in caps of red and gold; while motor-lorries unloaded themselves of stacks of papers and maps and stores and sleeping-valises and kit-bags. A party of extraordinarily energetic people took possession of stables or an outhouse, or some building conveniently adjacent to the château, and decorated roof and walls with telegraph and telephone wires, and set up a pole flying a blue and white flag over against a fair fretwork sign, “R.E. SIGNALLERS.” To the Signallers’ station presently began to arrive the motor-cyclist despatch orderlies in a frantic fuss of noise and a cloud of dust. The old châteaux hardly knew themselves again in all this activity. Northern France is so eminently industrial that one had forgotten that it had its relics of the old nobility of France as well, though many of the ancient châteaux had passed into other hands, and some were seldom if ever inhabited at all save by the caretakers and a few old servants.