At seven o’clock on a misty March morning Etienne Castener brought his horse out of the stable and harnessed him to the big blue cart. The two women were busy in Manon’s cottage, and a little yellow dog, bought by Manon the night before, and tied by a piece of string to a leg of the table, kept running round and round until he had wound himself so close to the table leg that any further circumlocutions did not seem worth while. A wooden packing-case, two yellow trunks, a table, an arm-chair, a cupboard, the frame of a wooden bed, a mattress, a hamper of vegetables, and a basket of food had been placed outside the cottage to be loaded to the cart. Manon had been able to save a little furniture before the Germans had entered Beaucourt, and it had been stored in Marie Castener’s grenier.
The
