During the afternoon the booming off at the east became more distinct.  It surely was cannon.  I went out to the gate where the corporal of the guard was standing, and asked him, “Do I hear cannon?” “Sure,” he replied.  “Do you know where it is?” I asked.  He said he hadn’t an idea—­about twenty-five or thirty miles away.  And on he marched, up and down the road, perfectly indifferent to it.

When Amelie came to help get tea at the gate, she said that a man from Voisins, who had started with the crowd that left here Wednesday, had returned.  He had brought back the news that the sight on the road was simply horrible.  The refugies had got so blocked in their hurry that they could move in neither direction; cattle and horses were so tired that they fell by the way; it would take a general to disentangle them.  My! wasn’t I glad that I had not been tempted to get into that mess!

Just after the boys had finished their tea, Captain Edwards came down the road, swinging my empty basket on his arm, to say “Thanks” for his breakfast.  He looked at the table at the gate.

“So the men have been having tea—­lucky men—­and bottled water!  What extravagance!”

“Come in and have some, too,” I said.

“Love to,” he answered, and in he came.

While I was making the tea he walked about the house, looked at the pictures, examined the books.  Just as the table was ready there was a tremendous explosion.  He went to the door, looked off, and remarked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, “Another division across.  That should be the last.”

“Are all the bridges down?” I asked.

“All, I think, except the big railroad bridge behind you—­Chalifert.  That will not go until the last minute.”

I wanted to ask, “When will it be the ’last minute’—­and what does the ‘last minute’ mean?”—­but where was the good?  So we went into the dining-room.  As he threw his hat on to a chair and sat down with a sigh, he said, “You see before you a very humiliated man.  About half an hour ago eight of the Uhlans we are looking for rode right into the street below you, in Voisins.  We saw them, but they got away.  It is absolutely our own stupidity.”

“Well,” I explained to him, “I fancy I can tell you where they are hiding.  I told Captain Simpson so last night.”  And I explained to him that horses had been heard in the woods at the foot of the hill since Tuesday; that there was a cart road, rough and winding, running in toward Conde for over two miles; that it was absolutely screened by trees, had plenty of water, and not a house in it,—­a shelter for a regiment of cavalry.  And I had the impertinence to suggest that if the picket had been extended to the road below it would have been impossible for the Germans to have got into Voisins.

“Not enough of us,” he replied.  “We are guarding a wide territory, and cannot put our pickets out of sight of one another.”  Then he explained that, as far as he knew from his aeroplane men, the detachment had broken up since it was first discovered on this side of the Marne.  It was reported that there were only about twenty-four in this vicinity; that they were believed to be without ammunition; and then he dropped the subject, and I did not bother him with questions that were bristling in my mind.