squinted eyes. Now again we would halt to listen to some native's story
of battle or reprisal on ahead. And always there was the everlasting
dim reverberation of the distant guns to draw us forward. And always,
too, there was the difficulty of securing means of transportation.

It was on Sunday afternoon, August twenty-third, when we left Brussels,
intending to ride to Waterloo. There were six of us, in two ancient
open carriages designed like gravy boats and hauled by gaunt livery
horses. Though the Germans had held Brussels for four days now, life in
the suburbs went on exactly as it goes on in the suburbs of a Belgian
city in ordinary times. There was nothing to suggest war or a captured
city in the family parties sitting at small tables before the outlying
cafes or strolling decorously under the trees that shaded every road.
Even the Red Cross flags hanging from the windows of many of the larger
houses seemed for once in keeping with the peaceful picture. Of Germans
during the afternoon we saw almost none. Thick enough in the center of
the town, the gray backs showed themselves hardly at all in the
environs.

At the city line a small guard lounged on benches before a wine shop.
They stood up as we drew near, but changed their minds and squatted down
without challenging us to produce the safe-conduct papers that Herr
General Major Thaddeus von Jarotzky, sitting in due state in the ancient
Hotel de Ville, had bestowed on us an hour before.

Just before we reached Waterloo we saw in a field on the right, near the
road, a small camp of German cavalry. The big, round-topped yellow
tents, sheltering twenty men each and looking like huge tortoises, stood
in a line. From the cook-wagons, modeled on the design of those carried
by an American circus, came the heavy, meaty smells of stews boiling in