outside smoking a rank cigar and looking on gloomily.

We exchanged remarks with him in German for a few minutes, I limping
along behind the more fluent Pousette and Bulle. Then I said something
in an aside to Blount, and the officer broke into the conversation in
perfectly good English. He turned out to be a volunteer officer from
Hamburg, who had spent some thirty years in England and was completely
at home in the language.

We then accomplished the formal introductions which are so necessary to
Germans even at a time like this, and when we came to Bulle the officer
burst into a rapid fire of questions, which ended in his proclaiming in
rapture:

"Why, I knew your father in Hamburg and went to school with your Uncle
So-and-so!"

Reminiscence went on as though we were about a dining table at home;
minute inquiry was made into the welfare and activities of the Bulle
family from the cradle to the grave. On the strength of the
respectability of Bulle's relatives we were then taken under the
officer's wing and piloted by him through the rest of our visit.

From where we stood we could see down the street through the smoke, as
far as the Hotel de Ville. It was still standing, but the Cathedral
across the street was badly damaged and smoke was rising in clouds from
its roof. The business houses beyond were not to be seen; the smoke was
too dense to tell how many of them were gone.

Machine guns were at work near by, and occasionally there was a loud
explosion when the destructive work was helped with dynamite.

A number of the men about us were drunk and evidently had been in that
state for some time. Our officer complained that they had had very
little to eat for several days, but added glumly that there was plenty
to drink.

A cart, heaped high with loot, driven by a fat Landsturmer and pulled by
a tiny donkey, came creaking past us. One of our party pulled his kodak
from his pocket and inquired of our guardian in English: "May I take a
picture?"

His intent evidently escaped the German, who answered cordially:

"Certainly; go ahead. You will find some beautiful things over there on
the corner in the house they are getting ready to burn."

We kept our faces under control, and he was too much occupied with his
other troubles to notice that we did not avail of his kind permission
to join in the pillage.

He was rabid against the Belgians and had an endless series of stories
of atrocities they had committed--t