Then, set like sign-posts of desolation in this loveliness, came the ravaged villages.  We were on the soil where in the first month of the war the Germans had trod as conquerors, and where, step by step, the French had driven them back.  We passed Cormizy, burnt to the ground to celebrate its taking; Le Remy, where the heroic mayor had died, transfixed by twenty bayonets; Bar-Villers, a group of ruined houses about a mourning, shattered church.  It was the region where the Hun triumph had spoken aloud, unbridled.  Miss Falconer sat white and silent as we drove through it; my hands tightened on the wheel.

We had lunched at Tolbiac, late and abominably.  Then, leaving the highway, we had taken a country road.  Two punctures befell us; once our carburetor betrayed the trust we placed in it.  By the time these deficiencies were remedied I had collected dust and grease enough to look my part.

It had been, by and large, a singularly speechless day, which my spasmodic efforts at entertainment had failed to cheer.  The girl tried to respond, but her eyes were strained, eager, shadowed; her answers came at random.  My talk, I suppose, teased her ears like the troublesome buzzing of a fly.

“She is thinking,” I decided at last, “about those papers.  Lord, if she doesn’t find them she is going to take it hard!”

I left her in peace after that and drove the faster.  Luck was with us!  At the end of our journey everything would be all right.

As evening settled down on us the road grew increasingly lonely.  Woods of oak-trees were about us, their trunks mossy, their branches lacing; on our left was a narrow river thick with rushes and smooth green stones.  So rutty was the earth that our wheels sank into it and our engine labored.  There was a charming sylvan look about the scenery; we seemed to be alone in the universe:  I could not recall when we had last seen a peasant or passed a hut.

Suddenly I realized that there was a sound in the distance, not continuous, but steadily recurrent, a faint booming, I thought.

“What’s that noise off yonder?” I asked, with one ear cocked toward the east.

Miss Falconer roused herself.

“It is the cannonading,” she answered.  “We have come a long way, Mr. Bayne.  In two hours—­in less than that—­we could drive to the Front.  And see!”

The dark was coming fast; a crimson sunset was reddening the river.  A little below us on the opposite bank, I saw what had been a village once upon a time.  But some agency of destruction had done its work there; blackened spaces and heaped stones and the shells of dwellings rose tier on tier among trees that seemed trying to hide them; only on the crest of the bank, overlooking the wreck like a gloomy sentinel, one building loomed intact, a dark, scarred, frowning castle with medieval walls and towers.  I stared at the scene of desolation.

“The Germans again!” I said.