to go with you."

"I don't mind listening to Jan's yarn myself," grunted the miller. "And
isn't it time we had some supper? Killing Prussians is hungry work. Did
you hear Busch? He squealed like a pig.--Leontine, cut some chunks of
beef and bread, and open one of these bottles of wine."

There was solid sense in the old man's crude rejoinder. Criminals about
to suffer the death penalty often enjoy a good meal. These six people,
who had just escaped death, or--where the women were concerned--a
degradation worse than death, and before whose feet the grave might yawn
wide and deep at once and without warning, were nevertheless greatly in
want of food.

So they ate as they talked.

Maertz's story was coherent enough when set forth in detail. He was
dazed and shaken by the fall from the wagon; but, helped by the sentry,
who bore witness that the collision was no fault of his, being the
outcome of obedience to the officer's order, he contrived to calm the
startled horses. The officer even offered to find a few men later who
would help to pull the wagon out of the ditch, so Jan was told to "stand
by" until the column had passed. Meaning no harm, he asked what had
become of his passengers. This naturally evoked other questions, and a
search was made, with the result that the lamp and Dalroy's discarded
sabots were found. The lamp, of course, was numbered, and carried the
initials of a German state railway; but this "exhibit" only bore out
Maertz's statement that a man from Aix had come in the wagon to explain
to Joos why the consignment of oats had been so long held up in the
goods yard.

In fact, a squad of soldiers had put the wagon right, and were
reloading it, when the bodies of Heinrich and his companion were
discovered in the stable. Suspicion fell at once on the missing pair.
Maertz would have been shot out of hand if an infuriated officer had not
recollected that by killing the Walloon he would probably destroy all
chance of tracing the man who had "murdered" two of his warriors. So
Maertz was arrested, and dumped into a cellar until such time as a
patrol could take him to Vise and investigate matters there.

Meanwhile the unforeseen resistance offered to the invaders along the
line of the Meuse and neighbourhood of Liege was throwing the German
military machine out of gear. In this initial stage of the campaign "the
best organised army in the world" was like a powerful locomotive engine
fitted with every mechan