it was a bitter sight for georges, burning to defend his country. what was the french army good for, anyway, if it couldn’t protect this pretty, innocent little town, so charmingly scattered over the wooded heights of the meuse? but mouzon was doomed. already the sappers with wires and sticks of melinite were blowing up the picturesque old stone bridge.

all next day georges’s regiment, hidden in the woods, watched the shelling of the town; all next night, hungry, soaked with rain, enraged, they saw it burn, house by house, till at last the flames licked up the belfry of the church. that was the way they defended mouzon.

another day; another night of drenching rain in those wretched sopping woods, while the german guns boomed all about them.47 georges and two other boys succeeded in building a dirty little shelter of branches covered with wet straw, and they crawled underneath. water-soaked, the clumsy thing collapsed on top of them in the middle of the night; but, heavy with soldiers’ sleep, it took more than that to wake them. in the morning, however, a shell bursting only a few yards away did succeed in bringing them stumbling out from under the soggy mass—to find to their amazement that their regiment had already departed!