depart therefrom, presumably on the assumption that the fewer
individuals there are in the place when the conqueror does come the
fewer the problems of caring for the resident population will be. But
we did not know this mighty significant fact; and, suspecting nothing,
the four innocents drove blithely on until the city lay behind us and
the country lay before us, brooding in the bright sunlight and all empty
and peaceful, except for thin scattering detachments of gaily clad
Belgian infantrymen through which we passed.

Once or twice tired, dirty stragglers, lying at the roadside, raised a
cheer as they recognized the small American flag that fluttered from our
taxi's door; and once we gave a lift to a Belgian bicycle courier, who
had grown too leg-weary to pedal his machine another inch. He was the
color of the dust through which he had ridden, and his face under its
dirt mask was thin and drawn with fatigue; but his racial enthusiasm
endured, and when we dropped him he insisted on shaking hands with all
of us, and offering us a drink out of a very warm and very grimy bottle
of something or other.

All of a sudden, rounding a bend, we came on a little valley with one of
the infrequent Belgian brooks bisecting it; and this whole valley was
full of soldiers. There must have been ten thousand of them--cavalry,
foot, artillery, baggage trains, and all. Quite near us was ranged a
battery of small rapid-fire guns; and the big rawboned dogs that had
hauled them there were lying under the wicked-looking little pieces. We
had heard a lot about the dog-drawn guns of the Belgians, but these were
the first of them we had seen.

Lines of cavalrymen were skirting crosswise over the low hill at the
other side of the valley, and against the sky line the figures of horses