Women with blanched faces, carrying children in their arms, trudged
along the dusty highway, and it was clear that these people were
afraid of something behind them--something in the direction of
Beauvais. There were not many of them, and when they had passed
the countryside was strangely and uncannily quiet. There was only
the sound of singing birds above the fields which were flooded with
the golden light of the setting sun.
Then I came into the town. An intense silence brooded there, among
the narrow little streets below the old Norman church--a white jewel
on the rising ground beyond. Almost every house was shuttered, with
blind eyes, but here and there I looked through an open window into
deserted rooms. No human face returned my gaze. It was an
abandoned town, emptied of all its people, who had fled with fear in
their eyes like those peasants along the roadway.
But presently I saw a human form. It was the figure of a French
dragoon, with his carbine slung behind his back. He was standing by
the side of a number of gunpowder bags. A little further away were
groups of soldiers at work by two bridges--one over a stream and one
over a road. They were working very calmly, and I could see what
they were doing.
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