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The narrow road, which was the only link between the farmhouses sheltered by the crags at the head of the valley and those far-away regions of town and civilisation suggested by the smoke wreaths of Whinborough on the southern horizon, was lined with masses of the white heckberry or bird-cherry, and ran, an arrowy line of white, through the greenness of the sloping pastures.
Though Martha was truly sorry for Black Thompson's family, she felt her importance as one of the chief witnesses against him; especially as the cinder-hill cabin was visited, not only by the gossips of Botfield, but by more distinguished persons from all the farmhouses around; and her thrilling narrative of her hazardous journey through Botfield along the high road was listened to with greedy interest.
Already they heard the barking of watchdogs at the farmhouses along the river road, and the tramp of many feet. They listened and discovered that the enemy outnumbered them. What of that! The night was dark. They knew their ground. Their scouts would soon bring other tribes to help them. Every Indian was out of sight; every gun was loaded. The tramp of feet drew nearer.
The widely-separated farmhouses then became typical lunch stations for the burghers, and the women willingly were the proprietresses. Boers journeying from one commando to another, or scouts and patrols on active duty, stopped at the farmhouses for food for themselves and their horses, and the women gladly prepared the finest feasts their larder afforded.
Now the great object is meat, then it was corn. But at the time when most of the farmhouses were erected, the system of agriculture pursued was a judicious mixture of the dairy and the cornfield, so that very few old farmhouses exist which have not some form of dairy attached.
The men went to the farmhouses by the roadside to look for food but they did not even find bread, for the suspicious peasants had hidden away their reserve of provisions for fear of being pillaged by the soldiers who, having nothing to eat, were taking forcibly what they discovered. Toward one o'clock in the afternoon Loiseau announced that positively he felt a big hollow in his stomach.
Although it was Sunday, I could not but notice that Baddeck was a clean-looking village of white wooden houses, of perhaps seven or eight hundred inhabitants; that it stretched along the bay for a mile or more, straggling off into farmhouses at each end, lying for the most part on the sloping curve of the bay.
Nothing was done towards commencing the work of rebuilding the farmhouses, for it was evident that the castle might at any moment be again beleaguered. Two months passed quietly. Sir Eustace busied himself in seeing that the tenants were comfortably re-established in their temporary homes.
Farmhouses and cottages were up to their middle in the yellow liquidity; haystacks looked like dull little islands; windows and doors gaped open, without faces; and interruption and flight were represented in the scene. It was brought home to me that the populations rurales have many different ways of suffering, and my heart glowed with a grateful sense of cockneyism.
They took possession of the eastern point of the Bois de la Cusse on the left, and on the right seized the farmhouses of L'Envie and Chantrenne, forcing their way into the Bois des Genivaux. Thus the line of battle of the 18th Division gained a front of 4,000 paces.
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