sharp-eyed special commissioner of police.

"After all," said he, when we had put our case, "you want to get as near
the front as possible."

True, I answered, we did.

"Well," he said, with a gesture at once final and wholly French, "you
are already farther than that. You are inside the lines." He crossed
out the safe-conduct and on the laissez-passer wrote: "Good for
immediate return to Paris," and carefully set down the date. Half an
hour later we were well on the road to Crepy, with the thunder which had
drawn us hither rolling fainter and fainter in the north.




Chapter IV

The Fall Of Antwerp



The storm which was to burst over Antwerp the following night was
gathering fast when we arrived on Tuesday morning. Army motor-trucks
loaded with dismantled aeroplanes, and the less essential impedimenta
screamed through the streets bound away from, not toward, the front. The
Queen, that afternoon, was seen in the Hotel St. Antoine receiving the
good-bys of various friends. Consuls suddenly locked their doors and
fled. And the cannon rumbling along the eastern horizon as they had