out came its Flemish proprietor, all gesticulations and exclamations, to
tell us that since morning he had heard firing on ahead.

"Ah, sirs," he said, "it was inconceivable--that sound of the guns. It
went on for hours. The whole world must be at war down the road!"

The day before he had seen, flitting across the cabbage patches and
dodging among the elm trees, a skirmish party, mounted, which he took to
be English; and for two days, so he said, the Germans had been passing
the tavern in numbers uncountable.

We hurried on then, but as we met many peasants, all coming the other
way afoot and all with excited stories of a supposed battle ahead, and
as we ourselves now began to catch the faint reverberations of cannon
fire, our drivers manifested a strange reluctance about proceeding
farther. And when, just at dusk, we clattered into the curious little
convent-church town of Nivelles, and found the tiny square before the
Black Eagle Inn full of refugees who had trudged in from towns beyond,
the liverymen, after taking off their varnished high hats to scratch
their preplexed heads, announced that Brussels was where they belonged
and to Brussels they would return that night, though their spent horses
dropped in the traces on the way.

We supped that night at the Black Eagle--slept there too--and it was at
supper we had as guests Raymond Putzeys, aged twelve, and Alfred, his
father. Except crumbs of chocolate and pieces of dry bread, neither of
them had eaten for two days.

The boy, who was a round-faced, handsome, dirty, polite little chap,
said not a word except "Merci!" He was too busy clearing his plate clean