To say it quickly, my young Vagabond came back and earned his ten silver pieces by informing me that the heavy ox-carts carrying the cargo from the chalands were being driven east, out of France and into Lorraine, circumventing Toul and Nancy on forest tracks, and then continuing east to Alsace, which is France again (the Duchy of Lorraine being flanked by France to both east and west). My Vagabond had been forced, for lack of time, to turn round and come back before he could follow the carts all the way to their destination, but it is obvious enough that they are bound towards the Rhine. He heard from a wanderer he met on the road that such carts were converging from more than one direction on the fortress of Haguenau, which lately had been a loud and smoky place. This man had fled the area because the troops had been press-ganging any idlers they could find, putting them to work chopping down trees – little ones for firewood and big ones for lumber. Even the shacks of the Vagabonds were being chopped up and burnt.