The open mouth of the well we could see was choked with foul debris; but a shell had struck squarely among the pillars and they fell inward like wigwam poles, forming a crazy apex.

I remember distinctly two other things: a picture of an elderly man with whiskers--one of those smudged atrocities that are called in the States crayon portraits--hanging undamaged on the naked wall of what had been an upper bedroom; and a wayside shrine of the sort so common in the Catholic countries of Europe.

A shell had hit it a glancing blow, so that the little china figure of the Blessed Virgin lay in bits behind the small barred opening of the shrine.
Of living creatures there was none.

Heretofore, in all the blasted towns I had visited, there was some human life stirring.

One could count on seeing one of the old women who are so numerous in these Belgian hamlets--more numerous, I think, than anywhere else on earth.
In my mind I had learned to associate such a sight with at least one old woman--an incredibly old woman, with a back bent like a measuring worm's, and a cap on her scanty hair, and a face crosshatched with a million wrinkles--who would be pottering about at the back of some half- ruined house or maybe squatting in a desolated doorway staring at us with her rheumy, puckered eyes.