The sky above was gray; the northern sea was gray; the southern
fields were hazy gray over green; the smoke of shells bursting
in the air was gray. Gray was the skeleton of the ruined city in
the distance; gray were the shattered spires and walls of a dozen
hamlets on the horizon; gray, the eyes of the young man who walked
in faded blue uniform, in the remnant of Belgium. But there was an
indomitable light in his eyes, by which I knew that he was a King.

"Sir," I said, "I am sure that you are his Majesty, the King of
Belgium."

He bowed, and a pleasant smile relaxed his tired face.

"Pardon, monsieur," he answered, "but you make the usual mistake in
my title. If I were only 'the King of Belgium,' you see, I should
have but a poor kingdom now--only this narrow strip of earth, perhaps
four hundred square miles of debris, just a _'pou sto,'_ a
place to stand, enough to fight on, and if need be to die in."

His hand swept around the half-circle of dull landscape visible
southward from the top of the loftiest dune, the _Hooge Blikker._
It was a land of slow-winding streams and straight canals and flat
fields, with here and there a clump of woods or a slight rise of
ground, but for the most part level and monotonous, a checker-board
landscape--stretching away until the eyes rested on the low hills
beyond Ypres. Now all the placid charm of Flemish fertility as gone
from the land--it was scarred and marred and pitted. The shells
and mines had torn holes in it; the trenches and barbed-wire
entanglements spread over it like a network of scars and welts; the