e cellar, but with these and two
eggs, which Jan knew where to look for in the straw in the barn, they
made an excellent breakfast. They gave Fidel the last of the milk, and
then, much refreshed, made ready to start upon a strange and lonely
journey the end of which they did not know. They tied their best
clothes in a bundle, which Jan hung upon a stick over his shoulder, and
were just about to leave the house, when Marie cried out, "Suppose
Mother should come back and find us gone!"

"We must leave word where we have gone, so she will know where to look
for us, of course," Jan answered capably.

"Yes, but how?" persisted Marie. "There's no one to leave word with!"

This was a hard puzzle, but Jan soon found a way out. "We must write a
note and pin it up where she would be sure to find it," he said.

"The very thing," said Marie.

They found a bit of charcoal and a piece of wrapping-paper, and Jan was
all ready to write when a new difficulty presented itself. "What shall
I say?" he said to Marie. "We don't know where we are going!"

"We don't know the way to any place but Malines," said Marie; "so we'll
have to go there, I suppose."

"How do you spell Malines?" asked Jan, charcoal in hand.

"Oh, you stupid boy!" cried Marie. "M-a-l-i-n-e-s, of course!"

Jan put the paper down on the kitchen floor and got down before it on
his hands and knees. He had not yet learned to write, but he managed to
print upon it in great staggering letters:--

"DEAR MOTHER

WE HAVE GONE TO MALINES TO FIND YOU.

JAN AND MARIE."

This note they pinned upon the inside of the kitchen door.

"Now we are ready to start," said Jan; and, calling Fidel, the two
children set forth. They took a short cut from the house across the
pasture to the potato-field. Here they dug a few potatoes, which they
put in their bundle, and then, avoiding the road, slipped down to the
river, and, following the stream, made their way toward Malines.

It was fortunate for them that, screened by the bushes and trees which
fringed the bank of the river, they saw but little of the ruin and
devastation left in the wake of the German hosts. There were farmers
who had tried to defend their families and homes from the invaders.
Burning houses and barns marked the places where they had lived and
died. But the children, thinking only of their lost mother, and of
keeping themselves as much out of sight as possible in their search for
her, were spared most of thes