e said in French. "My husband is dead."

"When did he die?" one of us asked.

She blinked, as though trying to remember.

"That night," she said as though there had never been but one night.
"They killed him then--that night." "Who killed him?" "They did."

She pointed in the direction of the square fronting the station. There
were German soldiers where she pointed--both living ones and dead ones.
The dead ones, eighty-odd of them, were buried in two big crosswise
trenches, in a circular plot that had once been a bed of ornamental
flowers surrounding the monument of some local notable. The living ones
were standing sentry duty at the fence that flanked the railroad tracks
beyond.

"They did," she said; "they killed him! Will you buy some postal cards,
m'sieur? All the best pictures of the ruins!"

She said it flatly, without color in her voice, or feeling or emotion.
She did not, I am sure, flinch mentally as she looked at the Germans.
Certainly she did not flinch visibly. She was past flinching, I
suppose.

The officer in command of the force holding the town came, just before
we started, to warn us to beware of bicyclists who might be encountered
near Tirlemont.

"They are all franc-tireurs--those Belgians on wheels," he said. "Some
of them are straggling soldiers, wearing uniforms under their other
clothes. They will shoot at you and trust to their bicycles to get
away. We've caught and killed some of them, but there are still a few
abroad. Take no chances with them. If I were in your place I should be
ready to shoot first."

We asked him how the surviving populace of Louvain was behaving.

"Oh, we have them--like that!" he said with a laugh, and clenched his
hand up in a knot of knuckles to show what he meant. "They know better
than to shoot at a German soldier now; but if looks would kill we'd all
be dead men a hundred times a day." And he laughed again.

Of course it was none of our business; but it seemed to us that if we
were choosing a man to pacify and control the ruined people of ruined
Louvain this square-headed, big-fisted captain would not have been our
first choice.

It began to rain hard as our automobile moved through the wreckage-
strewn street which, being followed, would bring us to the homeward
road--home in this instance meaning Germany. The rain, soaking into the
debris, sent up a sour, nasty smell, which pursued us until we had
cleared the town. That exhalation might fu