elf pleasant to Mrs. Liebert, Mr.
Hegner took Mr. Liebert aside.

"I have just learnt," he said, in a quick whisper, "that the military
gentlemen here _are_ expecting marching orders to the Continent--I
presume to Belgium."

"That is bad," muttered the other.

But Mr. Hegner smiled. "No, no," he said, "not bad! It might have been
disagreeable if they could have been got there last week. But by the
time the fifty thousand, even the hundred thousand, English soldiers are
in Belgium, there will be a million of our fellows there to meet them."

"What are you going to say at this meeting?" asked the other curiously;
he used the English word, though they still spoke German.

Mr. Hegner shrugged his shoulders. "This is not going to be a meeting,"
he said laughingly. "It's going to be a Kaffeeklatch! Those people to
whom I have to say a word I shall see by myself, in our little parlour.
I trust to you, friend Max, to make everything go well and lively. As to
measures, it is far too early to think of any measures. So far all goes
very well with me. I have had many tokens of sympathy and of friendship
this morning. Just two or three, perhaps, would have liked to be
disagreeable, but they did not dare."

He hurried away, for his guests were arriving thick and fast.

* * * * *

It was a strange and, or so Mrs. Otway would have thought, a rather
pathetic little company of men and women, who gathered together at
Manfred Hegner's Stores at nine o'clock on that fine August night. The
blinds had been drawn down, and behind the blinds the shutters had been
put up.

As to the people there, they all looked prosperous and respectable, but
each one wore a slight air of apprehension and discomfort. Strange to
say, not one of the Germans present really liked or trusted their host,
and that was odd, for Manfred Hegner, apart from certain outstanding
exceptions, had managed to make himself quite popular among the English
inhabitants of Witanbury.

The men and the women had instinctively parted into two companies, but
Mrs. Hegner went to and fro among both sets, pressing hospitably on all
her guests the coffee, the creamy milk, and the many cakes, to say
nothing of the large sandwiches she had been ordered to make that
afternoon.

She felt oppressed and rather bewildered, for the people about her were
all talking German, and she had never taken the trouble to learn even
half a dozen words of her husban