We were prisoners, together—twenty-seven peasants and three of us that had been too curious of the enemy's camp. We were huddled in the dirt of a field, with four sentries over us, and three thousand soldiers round about us. Just across the country road, twenty-six little yellow-brick houses were blazing, the homes of the peasants of Melle. Each house was a separate torch, for they had been carefully primed with oil. The light of them, and almost the heat, was on our faces. It was a clear, warm evening. The fires of the cottages burned high. A full moon rose blood-red on the horizon, climbed to the dome and went across the sky to the south-west. Two dogs, chained in the yard of a burning house, howled all night. The peasant lying next us watched his home burn to pieces. It was straight across from us. A soldier came to tell him that his wife was wounded but not dead. He lay through the night, motionless, and not once did he turn his eyes away from the blaze of his home. Petrol burns slowly and thoroughly.

In the early morning, soldiers with stretchers came marching down the road. They turned in at the smouldering cottages. From the ruins of the little house which the peasant had watched so intently, three bodies were carried. He broke into a long, slow sobbing.