a bright idea! We were to go back to the picket lines, get the horses, and put them into barns. We were in no frame of mind that night to want to do it for the horses' sake; but done it must be, so done it was.

Alas! Easter morning gushed forth with no more pity than the preceding day. Wet straps were buckled and deeply sunken park-wagons urged by main strength on to the road again. We did get a sidelong glimpse at the sun during the morning and in the early afternoon after passing through Colombe we parked the carriages outside Allain, favored by a straggling, belated sunbeam. That night we were decently billeted in comfortable hay lofts. A refreshing and much needed sleep, coupled with a moderately respectable show of sunlight on the following morning, made it possible to pursue our duties in a much more cheerful frame of mind. The exhausted horses were cared for and given their ration of grain together with a few mouthfuls of forage. We waited in anxious suspense the whole morning through for orders to move, each man (and I dare say each horse) praying madly for another night's rest.

The army doesn't work that way. At noon it appeared that our orders to move had simply been delayed, and so instead of traveling the morning and afternoon and getting to our destination in the late afternoon, we would travel afternoon and night and arrive in the gray of dawn. This cheerful thought was applauded by Father Neptune with his usual mode of expression, a deluge. He seems to find some unholy gratification in manifesting his powers to unhappy spirits in France.

CONTENTS
INDEX