He dragged his trophies into the forest, and lay in hiding there for two days until the enemy had passed.

Afterwards I saw the lance—­it reached from the floor to the ceiling of his cottage—­and for years to come in the village of Rouville it will be the centre-piece of a thrilling tale.

Other peasants joined my friendly gravedigger, and one of them—­the giant of his village—­told me of his own escape from death.  He was acting as the guide of four British officers through a part of the forest.  Presently they stopped to study their maps; and it was only the guide who saw at the other end of the glade a patrol of German cavalry.  Before he could call out a warning they had unslung their carbines and fired.  The British officers fell dead without a cry, and the peasant fell like a dead man also, rolling into a ditch, unwounded but paralysed with fear.  They did not bother about him—­that little German patrol.  They rode off laughing, as though amused with this jest of death.

There have been many jests like that—­though I see no mirth in them—­ and I could fill this chapter with the stories I have heard of this kind of death coming quite quickly in woods and fields where peasants raised their heads for a moment to find that the enemy was near.  It is these isolated episodes among the homesteads of France, and in quiet villages girdled by silent woods, which seemed to reveal the spirit of war more even than the ceaseless fighting on the battle front with its long lists of casualties.

On that Sunday I saw the trail of this great spirit of evil down many roads.

I walked not only among the dead, but, what affected me with a more curious emotion, through villages where a few living people wrung their hands amidst the ruins of their homes.

Even in Crepy-en-Valois, which had suffered less than other towns through which the enemy had passed, I saw a wilful, wanton, stupid destruction of men—­no worse I think than other men, but with their passions let loose and unrestrained.  They had entered all the abandoned houses, and had found some evil pleasure in smashing chairs and tables and lampshades and babies’ perambulators, and the cheap but precious ornaments of little homes.  They had made a pigsty of many a neat little cottage, and it seemed as though an earthquake had heaped everything together into a shapeless, senseless litter.  They entered a musical instrument shop, and diverted themselves, naturally enough, with gramophones and mouth-organs and trumpets and violins.  But, unnaturally, with just a devilish mirth, they had then smashed all these things into twisted metal and broken strings.  In one cottage an old man and woman, among the few inhabitants who remained, told me their story.