t. Far
back in the line we met two cripples, hobbling along side by side as
though for company, and still farther back a Belgian soldier came, like
a rear guard, with his gun swung over his back and his sweaty black hair
hanging down in his eyes.

In an undertone he was apparently explaining something to a little
bow-legged man in black, with spectacles, who trudged along in his
company. He was the lone soldier we saw among the refugees--all the
others were civilians.

Only one man in all the line hailed us. Speaking so low that we could
scarcely catch his words, he said in broken English:

"M'sieurs, the French are in Brussels, are they not?"

"No," we told him.

"The British, then--they must be there by now?"

"No; the British aren't there, either."

He shook his head, as though puzzled, and started on.

"How far away are the Germans?" we asked him.

He shook his head again. "I cannot say," he answered; "but I think they
must be close behind us. I had a brother in the army at Liege," he
added, apparently apropos of nothing. And then he went on, still
shaking his head and with both arms tightly clasped round a big bundle
done up in cloth, which he held against his breast.

Very suddenly the procession broke off, as though it had been chopped in
two; and almost immediately after that the road turned into a street and
we were between solid lines of small cottages, surrounded on all sides
by people who fluttered about with the distracted aimlessness of
agitated barnyard fowls. They babbled among themselves, paying small
heed to us. An automobile tore through the street with its horn
blaring, and raced by us, going toward Brussels at forty miles an hour.
A well-dressed man in the front seat yelled out something to us as he
whizzed past, but the words were swallowed up in the roaring of his
engine.

Of our party only one spoke French, and he spoke it indifferently. We
sought, therefore, to find some one who understood English. In a minute
we saw the black robe of a priest; and here, through the crowd, calm and
dignified where all others were fairly befuddled with excitement, he
came--a short man with a fuzzy red beard and a bright blue eye.

We hailed him, and the man who spoke a little French explained our case.
At once he turned about and took us into a side street; and even in
their present state the men and women who met us remembered their
manners and pulled off their hats and bowed before him.