if it really came, we saw no choice between going down with the
house into the cellar and having the house come down on top of us, so we
turned in and got a night's rest, which, I am free to confess, was
rather fitful.

All night long motors were snorting away, and all night long the guns
kept pounding, although they did not seem to get any nearer. With the
intelligence that one has when half awake, I carefully arranged a pillow
between me and the window, as a protection against shells!

We got up early and went out into the streets to watch the movement. The
few remaining troops were being poured out on the road to Ghent. On
foot, in motors, on trains, on bicycles, and on horseback, they
streamed. The civil population was also getting away, and all the trams
in the direction of the Dutch frontier were loaded with people carrying
their little bundles--all they could hope to take away with them. The
hospitals were being emptied of the wounded and they were getting away
as best they could, those whose legs were all right helping those who
had trouble in walking. It was a depressing sight, and above all, the
sound of the big guns which we had heard steadily since the morning
before.

We got under way about half-past eight, after a wretched and sketchy
breakfast, and after saying good-bye to one of our friends of the
British Legation.

First, we went to the north gate, only to find that it had been closed
to vehicles a few minutes before, and that barbed-wire entanglements had
been stretched across the road. Argument was vain, so we worked our way
back through the traffic and reached the Porte de Tournhout, only to be
turned back again. For nearly an hour we wandered about in the stream
of refugees, in vehicles and on foot, before we finally succeeded in
making our way through a side door of the Porte de Tournhout, and
starting that way. We were not at all sure that we should be able to
reach the Dutch frontier through Tournhout, as the Germans were supposed
to be that far north, but we did make it after a long series of stops,
to be examined by all sorts of Belgian outposts who kept cropping up out
of fields to stop us and look through our papers. From some little
distance out of town, we could see the shells bursting over the southern
part of the town, or possibly over the villages to the south of the town
proper.

We plowed along through Holland, being stopped all afternoon by Civil
Guards, and reached Maestricht a