A farmer stood watching a battalion of infantry filing into his pasture. A queerer mixture of humanity could not have been imagined. The farmer wore a Dutch cap, spoke Flemish by preference, but could only write French. His farm was called Ferme l’Espagnole--The Spanish Farm--and stood on French soil. The soldiers were the usual English mixture--semi-skilled townsmen, a number of agricultural and other laborers, fewer still of seafaring and waterside folk, and a sprinkling of miners and shepherds, with one or two regulars. The farmer, Mr. Vanderlynden, Jerome, described in the Communal records as a Cultivator, sixty-five years of age, watching his rich grass being tramped to liquid mud unde…
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