Immediately after passing the ruined and deserted village of Montignies St. Christophe, we came at dusk to a place where a company of German infantrymen were in camp about a big graystone farmhouse.  They were cooking supper over big trench fires and, as usual, they were singing.  The light shone up into the faces of the cooks, bringing out in ruddy relief their florid skins and yellow beards.  A yearling bull calf was tied to a supply-wagon wheel, bellowing his indignation.  I imagine he quit bellowing shortly thereafter.

An officer came to the edge of the road and, peering sharply at us over a broken hedge, made as if to stop us; then changed his mind and permitted us to go unchallenged.  Entering the town, we proceeded, winding our way among pack trains and stalled motor trucks, to the town square.  Our little cavalcade halted to the accompaniment of good-natured titterings from many officers in front of the town house of the Prince de Caraman-Chimay.

By a few Americans the prince is remembered as having been the cousin of one of the husbands of the much-married Clara Ward, of Detroit; but at this moment, though absent, he had particularly endeared himself to the Germans through the circumstance of his having left behind, in his wine cellars, twenty thousand bottles of rare vintages.  Wine, I believe, is contraband of war.  Certainly in this instance it was.  As we speedily discovered, it was a very unlucky common soldier who did not have a swig of rare Burgundy or ancient claret to wash down his black bread and sausage that night at supper.

Unwittingly we had bumped into the headquarters of the whole army—­not of a single corps, but of an army.  In the thickening twilight on the little square gorgeous staff officers came and went, afoot, on horseback and in automobiles; and through an open window we caught a glimpse of a splendid-looking general, sitting booted and sword-belted at a table in the Prince de Caraman-Chimay’s library, with hunting trophies—­skin and horn and claw—­looking down at him from the high-paneled oak wainscotings, and spick-and-span aides waiting to take his orders and discharge his commissions.

It dawned on us that, having accidentally slipped through a hole in the German rear guard, we had reached a point close to the front of operations.  We felt uncomfortable.

It was not at all likely that a Herr Over-Commander would expedite us with the graciousness that had marked his underlings back along the line of communication.  We remarked as much to one another; and it was a true prophecy.  A staff officer—­a colonel who spoke good English—­received us at the door of the villa and examined our papers in the light which streamed over his shoulder from a fine big hallway behind him.  In everything, both then and thereafter, he was most polite.

“I do not understand how you came here, you gentlemen,” he said at length.  “We have no correspondents with our army.”