Drizzle slid down out of a leaden sky. He pulled his hat lower over his face-dark heavy eyebrows, swarthy skin, deep-set brown eyes, a goodly nose above a mouth that was almost a rosebud, dimpled chin in need of shaving- and wished he'd put on oilskins like the sailors wore. His shrug might have come from Paris. Not even a farmer could guess right about the weather all the time. Not even a saint can do that, he thought.

He couldn't see far through the rain. He didn't need to see far, though. He knew where he was-a couple of miles outside Riviere-du-Loup on the St. Lawrence River. The countryside was the same here as everywhere else in the neighborhood-farmland with wooden houses painted white, with the beams of the red-painted roofs projecting forward to create a veranda. Because of the drizzle, he couldn't see the tin spires of the churches in St.-Modeste and St.-Antonin, but he knew they were there. To look at things, all was as it might have been 250 years before.

And then, as he drew nearer to Riviere-du-Loup, things changed. The land grew pocked with shells, and the neat farmhouses and outbuildings were neat no more, but many of them charred ruins. The Canadians and British had made a stand, trying to keep the damned Americans from reaching the St. Lawrence. They'd failed.

"It is a terrible thing, war," Galtier told his horse. He and his ancestors hadn't seen the thing close up in a century and a half, not since the days when the British took Quebec away from France. It was here now, though. His nostrils twitched. Even through the rain, he could smell the sickly sweet odor of dead horses-and maybe dead men, too.

His horse also knew the odor for what it was, and made a nervous, snuffling noise. "Go on," Lucien told it. "Go on, my old. It cannot be helped and must be endured." How many times had his father said that to him and his brothers and sisters? How many times had he said it to his two sons and four daughters?

Boom! With a snort of fright, the horse stopped dead. Galtier wondered if he'd have to use the whip after all. Boom! Boom! Having reached the St. Lawrence, the Americans had put a battery of field guns with their wheels right on the edge of the bank. Now they were shooting at merchant ships on their way down to Montreal, ships whose captains hadn't got the word that the southern bank was in enemy hands. Boom! Boom!

Just when Lucien was reaching for the whip, the horse let out a human-sounding sigh and went on. Before long, the church spires of Riviere-du-Loup loomed out of the mist ahead. The town, which sat on a spur of rock that projected out into the St. Lawrence, was bigger than St.-Modeste and St.-Antonin put together, big enough to boast several churches, not just one. When Father Pascal had had perhaps a glass of wine too many, he talked about Riviere-du-Loup's being a bishopric one day. Like everyone else, Lucien listened and smiled and nodded and didn't hold his breath.

Boom! Boom! Now the sound of the artillery mingled with the plashing roar of the waterfall that plunged off the rock of Riviere-du-Loup and down ninety feet into the great river below. Boom! Like every other man his age, Galtier had done his time in the Army. He'd been an infantryman, like most conscripts, but he knew a little something about artillery. He wondered how the devil the fool of an American could find a target, let alone hit it, in this wretched weather.

Houses grew closer together as he came into town. Artillery had wrecked some of them. Once, a whole block was nothing but burnt-out wreckage. The stench of death lingered here, too. Some of the telegraph poles that had connected Riviere-du-Loup to the outside world were down, some leaning drunkenly, some standing but with the wires tangled at their bases.

Posters, now turning soggy in the drizzle, had been nailed or pasted to a lot of the telegraph poles, FREE AT LAST FROM BRITISH TYRANNY, some of them said in French, and showed Quebec 's fleur-de-lis banner side by side with the Stars and Stripes. "I, for one, did not feel myself tyrannized," Lucien Galtier said-softly, for he was not alone on the road now. He leaned forward and asked his horse, "Did you feel yourself tyrannized?" The horse did not answer, which he took for agreement.

The poles that did not have the FREE AT LAST poster mostly bore another, this one printed in red and in both French and English: CURFEW: 8 P.M. TO 6 A.M. VIOLATORS WILL BE SHOT ON SIGHT. "Ah, this is what freedom means," Galtier murmured. "I am so glad the Americans educate us in it."

A newsboy stood on a corner with a box of papers covered by a paint-smeared chunk of canvas tarpaulin. "Read Ce-Soir he called to Lucien." Hear of the great victories of the Americans over the Confederates and of Germany over Russia and the English."

"No, thank you," Galtier answered, and rode on toward the market. Ce-Soir had experienced a remarkable change in content since the Americans came to Riviere-du-Loup. Before then, it had trumpeted of Confederate, Russian, and French triumphs against the USA, Austria, and Germany.

It all depends on how you look at things, Galtier thought. To hear the newspaper talk now, you would never know that Germany had invaded France, or that the Englishmen there were defending their ally from the Boches. That wasn't bad propaganda, but it would have been better had the townsfolk not enjoyed the memories God gave to normal, intelligent human beings.

FREE AT LAST, another poster shouted. Several American soldiers, bayonets fixed on their Springfields, stood on a street corner keeping an eye on people. They were almost invisible in the mist till Lucien got right up close to them. Their green-gray was even better than khaki at blending into the background here.

But Lucien had known they were there long before he saw them. The harsh sounds of English filled his ears. He'd learned some of the language in the Army, but not used it much since: some fishermen who came into town from the Maritimes spoke it, but he had little to do with them beyond passing the time of day in a tavern. Now, like the Americans, it had invaded Riviere-du-Loup. And they spoke of freeing the area from British tyranny! English-speaking Canadians for the most part had had the courtesy to stay away.

The hens in the back of the wagon clucked. That drew the American soldiers' eyes to Lucien Galtier. "Hey, buddy!" one of them called. "You want to sell me one of them birds?"

"Hell with that, Pete," another soldier said. "Just take one-take a couple- from the damn Frenchy, and if he don't like it, give him some. 30 caliber persuading." The fellow laughed, showing bad teeth.

Galtier licked his lips. If they wanted to rob him, they could. What would he do afterwards? Complain to their officer? He did not think he would get far. He hadn't heard that the Americans were looting. Had he heard that, he would have stayed on his farm instead of venturing into town.

But the soldier who'd spoken first-Pete-shook his head. "Can't get away with that kind of stuff here in town- too many people watching. We'd wind up in Dutch, and I got some money in my pocket." He turned to Lucien. "How much for a chicken, hey? Combien?"

That he'd tried a word of French made Galtier dislike him a little less. He answered with a high price, as he would have in the marketplace, haggling with a housewife. "Fifty cent', monsieur." He knew how rusty his English was, and hoped the American soldier would understand.

To his amazement, the American, instead of offering half that or less, reached into his pocket, pulled out a silver coin, and tossed it to him. It was a half-dollar: a U.S. half-dollar, of course, with President Reed's plump profile on one side and the American eagle in front of crossed swords on the other. But fifty cents was fifty cents; Canada, the USA, and the CSA all coined to the same standard. Carefully keeping his face blank, Galtier stuck the coin in his own trouser pocket and pulled a chicken out of the latticework traveling coop for Pete.