This, then, was a street!
Yes, bit by bit, he could see the outlines of a tiny village. It could not have held more than a dozen houses, but not a wall, not a fence was standing. Here the Germans must have made a stand and the ground was leveled flat for their pains. Over a horrid pile, a trellis-work of roses had fallen. It made the boy think of the gardener's reply to a recruiting sergeant, when he joined the colors:
"The only plants that France is interested in growing now are—laurels."
Few villages were as wholly devastated as this, though in many of them the houses were piles of brick and plaster, with walls standing here and there. Everywhere were graves, bearing thin wooden crosses, with the soldier's kepi or a few faded flowers hanging on them. A village of formerly a hundred houses had but one left habitable. Like most of the places in the march of the retreating army, it had been deliberately set on fire for revenge.
A sudden whistle made the boy duck his head.
A bullet?
No, a blackbird singing.
"In spite of all, he knows it is French soil again!" said Horace, half aloud, and laughed at his own thought.
On through a little town where, two nights before, a squadron of Chasseurs d'Afrique and a regiment of Zouaves in motor-cars and taxis had surprised the Germans at dead of night and where—never mind why!—the captured German officer had been quietly but expeditiously shot. On through a farm-yard, marked by a shell-hole in which some ducks were dabbling. Swift must have been the pursuit that did not linger to seize them for the cooking-pot!
On through an almost deserted country, with scarcely any people to be seen save little groups here and there. All these groups were engaged in the same occupation—digging graves. It was one of these aged villagers, who, when a German officer asked him why he troubled to dig graves instead of burning the bodies, answered fiercely.