id so "at our own risk." Then Bulle put everybody in
good humour by inquiring innocently if there was any danger. Everybody
burst into peals of laughter, and we were escorted to our car by the
same slow-moving officer, who insisted on exchanging cards with us and
expressing the hope that we should meet again, which we could not
honestly reciprocate. Then, after an hour and a half in the station, we
got away amid a great waving of hands.

The boulevards were deserted save for the troops coming back into the
town. New houses were burning that had been intact in the afternoon.
After passing the Porte de Tirlemont, we began to see people
again--little groups that had come out into the streets through a
craving for company, and stood huddled together listening to the
fighting in the lower part of the town.

In harmony with the policy of terrorising the population, the Germans
have trained them to throw up their hands as soon as any one comes in
sight, in order to prove that they are unarmed and defenseless. And the
way they do it, the abject fear that is evident, shows that failure to
comply with the rule is not lightly punished.

Our worst experience of this was when in coming around a corner we came
upon a little girl of about seven, carrying a canary in a cage. As soon
as she saw us, she threw up her hands and cried out something we did not
understand. Thinking that she wanted to stop us with a warning of some
sort, we put on the brakes and drew up beside her. Then she burst out
crying with fear, and we saw that she was in terror of her life. We
called out to reassure her, but she turned and ran like a hunted animal.

It was hard to see the fear of others--townspeople, peasants, priests,
and feeble old nuns who dropped their bundles and threw up their hands,
their eyes starting with fear. The whole thing was a nightmare.

We were dreadfully depressed, and rode along in silence until Bulle
turned around from the front seat and inquired in a matter-of-fact
voice:

"What sort of wine was that we drank at the station?"

We told him, and then he shook his head and said as though to himself:

"I drank a big glass of it, but I was so frightened that I didn't taste
it at all."

That broke the edge of the strain we were under, and we had a good laugh
in which Bulle joined.

And so back to the Legation without further mishap, to find everybody
worrying about us, and the Minister putting his foot down and announcing
that