"La route, est-belle bonne ?" he asked.
The child nodded enthusiastically, while the others broke out laughing at Thatchy's queer French, and poured a verbal torrent at him by way of explaining that the road to the South would take him through Vertus and Montmirail, while the one to the north led to Epernay.
"I'll bump my nose into the salient if I take that one," he said more to himself than to them, but one little fellow, catching the word _salient_ took a chance on _nose_ and jumped up and down in joyous abandon, calling, "Bump le nez--le _salient_!" apparently in keen appreciation of the absurdity of the rider's phrase.
He rode away with a clamoring chorus behind him and he heard one brazen youngster boldly mimicking his manner of asking if the roads were good.
These children lived in tumble-down houses which were all but ruins, and played in shell holes as if these cruel, ragged gaps in the earth had been made by the kind Boche for their especial entertainment.
A mile or two west of Chalons the rider crossed the historic Marne on a makeshift bridge built from the materials of a ruined house and the remnants of the former span.
On he sped, along the quiet, moonlit road, through the little village of Thibie, past many a quaint old heavily-roofed brick cottage, over the stream at Chaintrix and into Vertus, and along the straight, even stretch of road for Montmirail.

Not so long ago he might have gone from Chalons in a bee-line from Montdidier, but the big, ugly salient stuck out like a huge snout now, as if it were sniffing in longing anticipation at that tempting morsel, Paris; so he must circle around it and then turn almost straight north.
At La Ferte, among the hills, he paused at a crossroads and, alighting from his machine, stood watching as a long, silent procession of wagons passed by in the quiet night, moving southward.

He knew now what it meant to go into the West.

One after another they passed in deathlike stillness, the Red Cross upon the side of each plainly visible in the moonlight.

As he paused, the rider could hear the thunder of great guns in the north.