their hands all that was left to them, all that they could stuff into a
pillow-case or flour-sack. The tears rolled down their brown, tanned
faces. To the people of Brussels who crowded around them they
spoke in hushed, broken phrases. The terror of what they had
escaped or of what they had seen was upon them. They had
harnessed the plough-horse to the dray or market-wagon and to the
invaders had left everything. What, they asked, would befall the live
stock they had abandoned, the ducks on the pond, the cattle in the
field? Who would feed them and give them water? At the question the
tears would break out afresh. Heart-broken, weary, hungry, they
passed in an unending caravan. With them, all fleeing from the same
foe, all moving in one direction, were family carriages, the servants on
the box in disordered livery, as they had served dinner, or coatless,
but still in the striped waistcoats and silver buttons of grooms or
footmen, and bicyclers with bundles strapped to their shoulders, and
men and women stumbling on foot, carrying their children. Above it all
rose the breathless scream of the racing-cars, as they rocked and
skidded, with brakes grinding and mufflers open; with their own terror
creating and spreading terror.

Though eager in sympathy, the people of Brussels themselves were
undisturbed. Many still sat at the little iron tables and smiled pityingly
upon the strange figures of the peasants. They had had their trouble
for nothing, they said. It was a false alarm. There were no Germans
nearer than Liege. And, besides, should the Germans come, the civil
guard would meet them.

But, better informed than they, that morning the American minister,
Brand Whitlock, and the Marquis Villalobar, the Spanish minister, had
called upon the burgomaster and advised him not to defend the city.