z took her literally.

"I'll be glad when we're in the open country again, mademoiselle," he
said. "I don't like this forest. One can't guess what may be hiding
round the corner."

Yet they stopped that night at Braine le Comte, and crossed Enghien next
day without incident. It is a pity that such a glorious ramble should be
described so baldly. In happier times, when Robert Louis Stevenson took
that blithe journey through the Cevennes with a donkey, a similar
excursion produced a book which will be read when the German madness
has long been relegated to a detested oblivion. But Uhlan pickets and
"square-head" sentries supply wretched sign-posts in a land of romance,
and the wanderers were now in a region where each kilometre had to be
surveyed with caution.

Maertz owned an aunt in every village, and careful inquiry had, of
course, located one of these numerous relatives in Lierde, a hamlet on
the Grammont-Gand road. Oudenarde was strongly held by the enemy, but
the roads leading to Gand were the scene of magnificent exploits by the
armoured cars of the Belgian army. Certain Belgian motorists had become
national heroes during the past fortnight. An innkeeper in Grammont told
with bated breath how one famous driver, helped by a machine-gun crew,
was accounting for scores of marauding cavalrymen. "The English and
French are beaten, but our fellows are holding them," he said with a
fine air. "When you boys get through you'll enjoy life. My nephew, who
used to be a great _chasseur_, says there is no sport like chasing
mounted Boches."

This frank recognition of Dalroy as one of the innumerable young
Belgians then engaged in crossing the enemy's lines in order to serve
with their brothers was an unwitting compliment to a student who had
picked up the colloquial phrases and Walloon words in Maertz's uncouth
speech. A man who looked like an unkempt peasant should speak like one,
and Dalroy was an apt scholar. He never trod on doubtful ground.
Strangers regarded him as a taciturn person, solely because of this
linguistic restraint. Maertz made nearly all inquiries, and never erred
in selecting an informant. The truth was that German spies were rare in
this district. They were common as crows in the cities, and on the
frontiers of Belgium and France, but rural Brabant harboured few, and
that simple fact accounts for the comparatively slow progress of the
invaders as they neared the coast.

It was at a place called Oomberg