l eyes there
rather than to the river bank, so the three men and three women passed
along the tow-path unseen and unchallenged.

After a half-mile of rapid progress Dalroy judged that they were safe
for the time, and allowed Madame Joos to take a much-needed rest. Though
breathless and nearly spent, she, like the others, found an irresistible
fascination in the scene lighted by the burning trees. The whole
countryside was resplendent in crimson and silver, because the landscape
was now steeped in moonshine, and the deep glow of the fire was most
perceptible in the patches where ordinarily there would be black
shadows. The Meuse resembled a river of blood, the movement of its
sluggish current suggesting the onward roll of some fluid denser than
water. Old Joos, whose tongue was seldom at rest, used that very simile.

"Those cursed Prussians have made Belgium a shambles," he added
bitterly. "Look at our river. It isn't our dear, muddy Meuse. It's a
stream in the infernal regions."

"Yes," gasped his wife. "And listen to those guns, Henri! They beat a
sort of _roulade_, like drums in hell!"

This stout Walloon matron had never heard of Milton. Her ears were not
tuned to the music of Parnassus. She would have gazed in mild wonder at
one who told of "noises loud and ruinous,"

When Bellona storms
With all her battering engines, bent to raze
Some capital city.

But in her distress of body and soul she had coined a phrase which two,
at least, of her hearers would never forget. The siege of Liege did,
indeed, roar and rumble with the din of a demoniac orchestra. Its
clamour mounted to the firmament. It was as though the nether fiends,
following Moloch's advice, were striving,

Arm'd with Hell flames and fury, all at once,
O'er Heaven's high towers to force resistless way.

Dalroy himself yielded to the spell of the moment. Here was red war such
as the soldier dreams of. His warrior spirit did not quail. He longed
only for the hour, if ever the privilege was vouchsafed, when he would
stand shoulder to shoulder with the men of his own race, and watch with
unflinching eye those same dread tokens of a far-flung battle line.

Irene Beresford seemed to read his passing mood. "War has some elements
of greatness," she said quietly. "The pity is that while it ennobles a
few it degrades the multitude."

With a woman's intuition, she had gone straight to the heart of the
problem propound