with her rheumy, puckered eyes. Or else there would be a hunchback--
crooked spines being almost as common in parts of Belgium as goiters are
in parts of Switzerland. But Battice had become an empty tomb, and was
as lonely and as silent as a tomb. Its people--those who survived--had
fled from it as from an abomination.

Beyond Battice stood another village, called Herve; and Herve was
Battice all over again, with variations. At this place, during the
first few hours of actual hostilities between the little country and the
big one, the Belgians had tried to stem the inpouring German flood, as
was proved by wrecks of barricades in the high street. One barricade
had been built of wagon bodies and the big iron hods of road-scrapers;
the wrecks of these were still piled at the road's edge. Yet there
remained tangible proof of the German claim that they did not harry and
burn indiscriminately, except in cases where the attack on them was by
general concert.

Here and there, on the principal street, in a row of ruins, stood a
single house that was intact and undamaged. It was plain enough to be
seen that pains had been taken to spare it from the common fate of its
neighbors. Also, I glimpsed one short side street that had come out of
the fiery visitation whole and unscathed, proving, if it proved
anything, that even in their red heat the Germans had picked and chosen
the fruit for the wine press of their vengeance.

After Herve we encountered no more destruction by wholesale, but only
destruction by piecemeal, until, nearing Liege, we passed what remained
of the most northerly of the ring of fortresses that formed the city's
defenses. The conquerors had dismantled it and thrown down the guns, so
that of the fort proper there was nothing except a low earthen wall,