having been besought to curb his tongue, convoyed Leontine. Until
Pepinster was reached, they took the main road, with its river of
troops. None gave them heed. Not a man addressed an uncivil word to
them. The soldiers were cheery and well-behaved.

They halted that night at Louveigne, which was absolutely unscathed.
Next day they passed through Hamoir and Maffe, and the peasants were
gathering the harvest!

Huy and Andenne, a villager told them, were occupied by the Germans, but
all was quiet. They pushed on, turning north-west from Maffe, and
descended into the Meuse valley about six o'clock in the evening. It was
ominous that the bridge was destroyed and a cluster of houses burning in
Seilles, a town on the opposite, or left, bank of the river. But Andenne
itself, a peaceful and industrious place, seemed to be undisturbed.
While passing a farm known as Dermine they fell in with a priest and a
few Belgians who were carrying a mortally wounded Prussian officer on a
stretcher.

Then, to his real chagrin, Dalroy heard that the Belgian outposts had
been driven south and west only that morning. One day less in Verviers,
and he and the others would have been out of their present difficulties.
However, he made the best of it. Surely they could either cross the
Meuse or reach Namur next day; while the fact that some local residents
were attending to the injured officer would supply the fugitives with an
excellent safe-conduct into Andenne, just as a similar incident had been
their salvation at Argenteau.

The stretcher was taken into the villa of a well-to-do resident; and, it
being still broad daylight, Joos asked to be directed to the house of
Monsieur Alphonse Stauwaert. The miller was acquainted with the
topography of the town, but the Stauwaert family had moved recently to a
new abode.

"Barely two hundred metres, _tout droit_," he was told.

They had gone part of the way when a troop of Uhlans came at the gallop
along the Namur road. The soldiers advanced in a pack, and were
evidently in a hurry. Madame Joos was seated in the low-built, flat
cart, drawn by two strong dogs, which had brought her from Verviers.
Maertz was leading the animals. The other four were disposed on both
sides of the cart. At the moment, no other person was nearer than some
thirty yards ahead. Three men were standing there in the roadway, and
they moved closer to the houses on the left. Maertz, too, pulled his
team on to the pavement on th