“You want to come back?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied.

“You can,” he answered, “if you take a train about four o’clock.  That may be the last.”

I very nearly said, “Jiminy-cricket!”

The train ran into the station on time, but you never saw such a sight.  It was packed as the Brookline street-cars used to be on the days of a baseball game.  Men were absolutely hanging on the roof; women were packed on the steps that led up to the imperials to the third-class coaches.  It was a perilous-looking sight.  I opened a dozen coaches—­all packed, standing room as well as seats, which is ordinarily against the law.  I was about to give it up when a man said to me, “Madame, there are some coaches at the rear that look as if they were empty.”

I made a dash down the long platform, yanked open a door, and was about to ask if I might get in, when I saw that the coach was full of wounded soldiers in khaki, lying about on the floor as well as the seats.  I was so shocked that if the station master, who had run after me, had not caught me I should have fallen backward.

“Sh! madame,” he whispered, “I’ll find you a place”; and in another moment I found myself, with Amelie, in a compartment where there were already eight women, a young man, two children, and heaps of hand-luggage—­bundles in sheets, twine bags just bulging, paper parcels, and valises.  Almost as soon as we were in, the train pulled slowly out of the station.

I learned from the women that Meaux was being evacuated.  No one was remaining but the soldiers in the barracks and the archbishop.  They had been ordered out by the army the night before, and the railroad was taking them free.  They were escaping with what they could carry in bundles, as they could take no baggage.  Their calm was remarkable-not a complaint from any one.  They were of all classes, but the barriers were down.

The young man had come from farther up the line-a newspaper chap, who had given me his seat, and was sitting on a bundle.  I asked him if he knew where the Germans were, and he replied that on this wing they were at Compiegne, that the center was advancing on Coulommier, but he did not know where the Crown Prince’s division was.

I was glad I had made the effort to get to town, for this began to look as if they might succeed in arriving before the circle of steel that surrounds Paris, and God knows what good that seventy-five miles of fortifications will be against the long-range cannon that battered down Liege.  I had only one wish—­to get back to my hut on the hill; I did not seem to want anything else.

Just before the train ran into Lagny—­our first stop—­I was surprised to see British soldiers washing their horses in the river, so I was not surprised to find the station full of men in khaki.  They were sleeping on the benches along the wall, and standing about, in groups.  As to many of the French on the train this was their first sight of the men in khaki, and as there were Scotch there in their kilts, there was a good deal of excitement.