ere, or anywhere else where these brutes may
be?"

"Huy has been occupied by the Germans since the 12th, and is their
temporary headquarters. From what I gather, they usually spare such
towns. That is why we never dreamed of Andenne being sacked."

Dalroy remembered the aged cure's exposition of _Kultur_ as a policy.
"Is this sort of thing going on generally, then?" he asked.

Monsieur Pochard was a Frenchman. He raised his eyebrows. "Where can you
have been, monsieur, not to know what has happened at Liege, Vise,
Flemelle Grande, Blagny Trembleur, and a score of other places?"

"Vise!" broke in the cracked, piping voice of Joos. "What's that about
Vise?"

"It is burnt to the ground, and nearly all the inhabitants killed."

"Is anything said of a fat major named Busch, whom Henri Joos the miller
stuck with a fork?"

"A Prussian, do you mean?"

"Ay. One of the same breed--a Westphalian."

"I haven't heard."

"He tried to assault my daughter, so I got him. The second one, a Uhlan,
killed my wife, and I got _him_ too. I cut his throat down there in the
main street. It's easy to kill Germans. They're soft, like pigs."

Though Joos's half-demented boasting was highly injudicious, Dalroy did
not interfere. He was in a mood to let matters drift. They could not
well be worse. He had tried to control the course of events in so far as
they affected his own and Irene Beresford's fortunes, but had failed
lamentably. Now, fate must take charge.

Pochard's comment was to the point, at any rate. "I congratulate you,
monsieur," he said. "I'll do a bit in that line myself when this little
one is lodged with his aunt in Huy. If every Belgian accounts for two
Prussians, you'll hold them till the French and English join up."

"Do you know for certain where the English are?" put in Dalroy eagerly.

"Yes, at Charleroi. The French are in Namur. Come with me to Huy. A few
days, and the _sales Alboches_ will be pelting back to the Rhine."

For the second time Dalroy heard a slang epithet new to him applied to
the Germans. He little guessed how familiar the abbreviated French form
of the word would become in his ears. Briton, Frenchman, Slav, and
Italian have cordially adopted "Boche" as a suitable term for the common
enemy. It has no meaning, yet conveys a sense of contemptuous dislike.
Stricken France had no heart for humour in 1870. The merciless foe was
then a "Prussian"; in 1914 he became a "Boche," and the change held a
c