Rain came with the light. That gentle pattering on the sod, after the tumult of the night, was the sweetest sound I ever heard. It was just as if Nature had put out Her mother's hand over the earth to soothe its troubled breast. Was she pleading for that mercy which drops as Her own gentle tears from Heaven?

During the morning the road in front of the chÂteau was filled with Belgian troops, bedraggled with mud, trying to regain order. And there they halted for hours and hours in the rain—an absolute picture of dejection. Even the horses imbibed the general despair as they stood there, heads drooping, their manes stirring in the wind. That must be the hard part of it—waiting for orders; but they did it well, no impatience nor fretting, just obeying the command, their very immobility carving them a niche in the landscape. These men had been fighting for several days and, bowed down as they were with the wet and misery of it all, made a shocking contrast to fresh troops of cavalry which passed at the same time, brandishing long, dramatic looking lances. And Felix, the second gardener, who is one of these "lanciers," came to say good-bye in the elegant uniform of his regiment and looking very smart in white trousers and short blue jacket—in fact, a man transformed.

I had always seen him in wooden sabots and blue apron coaxing this flower and that into bloom, but he had never been a great success at it. When his elder brother died, he had wished, so much, to replace him as head-gardener, so his master let him try for a little and he had failed, indifferently. But here was a soldier-man, stout heart and valiant sword, eager to serve his King. This time he will not fail but will meet his opportunity more than half way.[1] All day Red Cross ambulances and every kind of vehicle were hurrying by, bringing the wounded from the battlefield. Madame X.'s family physician stopped in on one of his trips for a moment's respite from the awfulness up there—his description of those scenes is too terrible to write about. The carnage was awful—pieces of bodies scattered about everywhere, the wounded writhing in their death agony and the dead standing up straight against masses of dead.

In the evening, indistinct sounds of a far off battle could be heard as the struggle moved on to another quarter. Nearer, we heard the trailing of heavy artillery down the mountain and against our will the thought formulated itself, "Will that wave of terror roll back to us?" Our ears have developed an abnormal acuteness, so that almost a pin falling will make taut nerves scream, though in reality nobody moves—a glance is enough to both ask and answer a question. A marvelous new self-possession seems to have come to everybody which bridges over a natural despair and forms, at least, a skeleton framework by which we keep each other up.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Not heard of again.