I don’t know that I ever told you that all the hill is honeycombed with those old subterranean passages, like the one we saw at Provins.  They say that they go as far as Crecy-en-Brie, and used to connect the royal palace there with one on this hill.

Naturally I gave a decided refusal to any move of that sort, so far as I was concerned.  My books and portraits are the only things I should be eternally hurt to survive.  To her argument that the books could be put there,—­there was room enough,—­I refused to listen.  I had no idea of putting my books underground to be mildewed.  Besides, if it had been possible I would not have attempted it—­and it distinctly was impossible.  I felt a good deal like the Belgian refugies I had seen,—­all so well dressed; if my house was going up, it was going up in its best clothes.  I had just been uprooted once—­a horrid operation—­and I did not propose to do it again so soon.  To that my mind was made up.

Luckily for me—­for Amelie was as set as I was—­the argument was cut short by a knock at the front door.  I opened it to find standing there a pretty French girl whom I had been seeing every day, as, morning and evening, she passed my gate to and from the railway station.  Sooner or later I should have told you about her if all this excitement had not put it out of my mind and my letters.  I did not know her name.  I had never got to asking Amelie who she was, though I was a bit surprised to find any one of her type here where I had supposed there were only farmers and peasants.

She apologized for presenting herself so informally:  said she had come, “de la parte de maman,” to ask me what I proposed to do.  I replied at once, “I am staying.”

She looked a little surprised:  said her mother wished to do the same, but that her only brother was with the colors; that he had confided his young wife and two babies to her, and that the Germans were so brutal to children that she did not dare risk it.

“Of course, you know,” she added, “that every one has left Couilly; all the shops are closed, and nearly every one has gone from Voisins and Quincy.  The mayor’s wife left last night.  Before going she came to us and advised us to escape at once, and even found us a horse and cart—­the trains are not running.  So mother thought that, as you were a foreigner, and all alone, we ought not to go without at least offering you a place in the wagon—­the chance to go with us.”

I was really touched, and told her so, but explained that I should stay.  She was rather insistent—­said her mother would be so distressed at leaving me alone with only a little group of women and children about me, who might, at the last moment, be panic-stricken.