s a chance that the night
might pass without incident. Vise itself was certainly quiet save for
the unceasing stream of troops making for the pontoon bridge. The
fighting seemed to have shifted to the west and south-west, and Joos put
an unerring finger on the situation when he said pithily, "Liege is
making a deuce of a row after being taken."

"How many forts are there around the city?" inquired Dalroy.

"Twelve, big and little. Pontisse and Barchon cover the Meuse on this
side, and Fleron and Evegnee bar the direct road from Aix. Unless I am
greatly in error, monsieur, the German wolf is breaking his teeth on
some of them at this minute."

Liege itself was ten miles distant; Pontisse, the nearest fort, though
on the left bank of the river, barely six. The evening was still, there
being only a slight breeze from the south-west, which brought the loud
thunder of the guns and the crackle of rifle-fire. It was the voice of
Belgium proclaiming to the high gods that she was worthy of life.

The Bavarians came with their "joint," a noble piece of beef hacked off
a whole side looted from a butcher's shop. Madame Joos cut off an ample
quantity, some ten pounds, and put it in the oven. The girls peeled
potatoes and prepared cabbages. In half-an-hour the kitchen had an
appetising smell of food being cooked, the men were smoking, and a
casual visitor would never have resolved the gathering into its
constituent elements of irreconcilable national hatreds.

The corporal even tried to make amends for having damaged the
door. He examined the broken latch. "It's a small matter," he said
apologetically. "You can repair it for a trifle; and, in any case,
you will sleep all the better that we are here."

Though somewhat maudlin with liquor, he was very much afraid of the
"girl from Berlin." He could not sum her up, but meant to behave
himself; while his men, of course, followed his lead unquestioningly.

Dalroy kept in the background. He listened, but said hardly anything.
The turn of fortune's wheel was distinctly favourable. If the night
ended as it had begun there was a chance that he and Irene might slip
away to the Dutch frontier next morning, since he had ascertained
definitely that Holland was secure for the time, and was impartially
interning all combatants, either Germans or Belgians, who crossed the
border. At this time he was inclined to abandon his own project of
striving to steal through the German lines. He was some