We were prisoners, together--twenty-seven peasants and three
of us that had been too curious of the enemy's camp. We were
huddled in the dirt of a field, with four sentries over us,
and three thousand soldiers round about us. Just across the
country road, twenty-six little yellow-brick houses were
blazing, the homes of the peasants of Melle. Each house was
a separate torch, for they had been carefully primed with
oil. The light of them, and almost the heat, was on our
faces. It was a clear, warm evening. The fires of the
cottages burned high. A full moon rose blood-red on the
horizon, climbed to the dome and went across the sky to the
south-west. Two dogs, chained in the yard of a burning
house, howled all night. The peasant lying next us watched
his home burn to pieces. It was straight across from us. A
soldier came to tell him that his wife was wounded but not
dead. He lay through the night, motionless, and not once did
he turn his eyes away from the blaze of his home. Petrol
burns slowly and thoroughly.
In the early morning, soldiers with stretchers came marching
down the road. They turned in at the smouldering cottages.
From the ruins of the little house which the peasant had
watched so intently, three bodies were carried. He broke
into a long, slow sobbing.