THE DAY OF WRATH

BNIV. OF CALIF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGELES

THE DAY OF WRATH

A STORY OF 1914

BY

LOUIS TRACY

Author of " The Wings of the Morning," " Flower of the Gorse," etc.. etc.

NEW YORK

EDWARD J. CLODE

PUBLISHER

COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY

EDWARD J. CLODE

All Rights Reserved

PREFACE

THIS book demands no explanatory word. But I do wish to assure the reader that every incident in its pages casting discredit on the invaders of Belgium is founded on actual fact. I refer those who may doubt the truth of this sweeping statement to the official records pub- lished by the Governments of Great Britain, France, and Belgium.

L. T.

2133303

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I THE LAVA-STREAM . . . . 1

II IN THE VORTEX 23

III FIRST BLOOD . . . . . 39

IV THE TRAGEDY OF VISE ... 58 V BILLETS ...... 75

VI THE FIGHT IN THE MILL ... 94

VEI THE WOODMAN'S HUT . . . Ill

VIII A RESPITE . ... . .129

IX AN EXPOSITION OF GERMAN

METHODS . . . . . ... 147

X ANDENNE . . . . . * 166

XI A TRAMP ACROSS BELGIUM . . 186

XII AT THE GATES OF DEATH . . . 206

XIII THE WOODEN HORSE OF TROY . . 226

XIV THE MARNE — AND AFTER . . . 246 XV "CARRY ON!" 264

CHAPTER I

THE LAVA-STREAM

"TT^OB God's sake, if you are an English-

ri man, help me!"

That cry of despair, so subdued yet piercing in its intensity, reached Arthur Dal- roy as he pressed close on the heels of an all- powerful escort in Lieutenant Karl von Halwig, of the Prussian Imperial Guard, at the ticket- barrier of the Friedrich Strasse Station on the night of Monday, 3rd August 1914.

An officer's uniform is a passe-partout in Germany; the showy uniform of the Imperial Guard adds awe to authority. It may well be doubted if any other insignia of rank could have passed a companion in civilian attire so easily through the official cordon which barred the chief railway station at Berlin that night to all unauthorised persons.

Von Halwig was in front, impartially cursing and shoving aside the crowd of police and rail- way men. A gigantic ticket-inspector, catching sight of the Guardsman, bellowed an order to ' ' clear the way ; ' ' but a general officer created a momentary diversion by choosing that for- bidden exit. Von Halwig 's heels clicked, and his right hand was raised in a salute, so Dalroy was given a few seconds wherein to scrutinise

THE DAY OF WRATH

the face of the terrified woman who had ad- dressed him. He saw that she was young, an Englishwoman, and undoubtedly a lady by her speech and garb.

"What can I do for you?" he asked.

' ' Get me into a train for the Belgian frontier. I have plenty of money, but these idiots will not even allow me to enter the station."

He had to decide in an instant. He had every reason to believe that a woman friendless and alone, especially a young and good-looking one, was far safer in Berlin — where some thou- sands of Britons and Americans had been caught in the lava-wave of red war now flowing unrestrained from the Danube to the North Sea — than in the train which would start for Belgium within half-an-hour. But the tearful indignation in the girl's voice — even her folly in describing as "idiots" the hectoring Jacks- in-omce, any one of whom might have under- stood her — led impulse to triumph over saner judgment.

* ' Come along ! quick ! " he muttered. ' ' You 're my cousin, Evelyn Fane ! ' '

With a self-control that was highly creditable, the young lady thrust a hand through his arm. In the other hand she carried a reticule. The action surprised Dalroy, though feminine intui- tion had only displayed common-sense.

"Have you any luggage?" he said.

"Nothing beyond this tiny bag. It was hope- less to think of "

THE LAVA-STREAM

Von Halwig turned at the barrier to insure his English friend's safe passage.

11 Hallo!" he cried. Evidently he was taken aback by the unexpected addition to the party.

"A fellow-countrywoman in distress," smiled Dalroy, speaking in German. Then he added, in English, "It's all right. As it happens, two places are reserved."

Von Halwig laughed in a way which the Englishman would have resented at any other moment.

' ' Excellent ! " he guffawed. * ' Beautifully con- trived, my friend. — Hi, there, sheep's-head!"— this to the ticket-inspector — "let that porter with the portmanteau pass !"

Thus did Captain Arthur Dalroy find himself inside the Friedrich Strasse Station on the night when Germany was already at war with Russia and France. With him was the stout leather bag into which he had thrown hurriedly such few articles as were indispensable — an ironic distinction when viewed in the light of subsequent events ; with him, too, was a charm- ing and trustful and utterly unknown travelling companion.

Von Halwig was not only vastly amused but intensely curious ; his endeavours to scrutinise the face of a girl whom the Englishman had apparently conjured up out of the maelstrom of Berlin were almost rude. They failed, how- ever, at the outset. Every woman knows ex- actly how to attract or repel a man's admira-

THE DAY OF WRATH

tion ; this young lady was evidently determined that only the vaguest hint of her features should be vouchsafed to the Guardsman. A fairly large hat and a veil, assisted by the angle at which she held her head, defeated his intent. She still clung to Dalroy's arm, and relin- quished it only when a perspiring platform- inspector, armed with a list, brought the party to a first-class carriage. There were no sleeping-cars on the train. Every wagon-lit in Berlin had been commandeered by the staff.

"I have had a not-to-be-described-in- words difficulty in retaining these corner places," he said, whereupon Dalroy gave him a five-mark piece, and the girl was installed in the seat facing the engine.

The platform-inspector had not exaggerated his services. The train was literally besieged. Scores of important officials were storming at railway employes because accommodation could not be found. Dalroy, wishful at first that Von Halwig would take himself off instead of standing near the open door and peering at the girl, soon changed his mind. There could not be the slightest doubt that were it not for the presence of an officer of the Imperial Guard he and his "cousin" would have been unceremoni- ously bundled out on to the platform to make room for some many-syllabled functionary who "simply must get to the front." As for the lady, she was the sole representative of her sex travelling west that night.

THE LAVA-STREAM

Meanwhile the two young men chatted ami- cably, using German and English with equal ease.

"I think you are making a mistake in going by this route," said Von Halwig. "The frontier lines will be horribly congested dur- ing the next few days. You see, we have to be in Paris in three weeks, so we must hurry."

"You are very confident," said the English- man pleasantly.

He purposely avoided any discussion of his reasons for choosing the Cologne-Brussels- Ostend line. As an officer of the British army, he was particularly anxious to watch the vaunted German mobilisation in its early phases.

"Confident! Why not? Those wretched little piou-pious" — a slang term for the French infantry — "will run long before they see the whites of our eyes."

"I haven't met any French regiments since I was a youngster; but I believe France is far better organised now than in 1870," was the noncommittal reply.

Von Halwig threw out his right arm in a wide sweep. ' * We shall brush them aside — so, ' ' he cried. "The German army was strong in those days; now it is irresistible. You are a soldier. You know. To-night's papers say England is wavering between peace and war. But I have no doubt she will be wise. That

THE DAY OF WRATH

Channel is a great asset, a great safeguard, eh?"

Again Dalroy changed the subject. "If it is a fair question, when do you start for the front!"

"To-morrow, at six in the morning."

"How very kind of you to spare such valua- ble time now!"

' ' Not at all ! Everything is ready. Germany is always ready. The Emperor says 'Mobilise,' and, behold, we cross the frontier within the hour!"

' * War is a rotten business, ' ' commented Dal- roy thoughtfully. "I've seen something of it in India, where, when all is said and done, a scrap in the hills brings the fighting men alone into line. But I'm sorry for the unfortunate peasants and townspeople who will suffer. What of Belgium, for instance ? ' '

"Ha! Les braves Beiges!" laughed the other. "They will do as we tell them. What else is possible? To adapt one of your own proverbs: 'Needs must when the German drives!' "

Dalroy understood quite well that Von Hal- wig's bumptious tone was not assumed. The Prussian Junker could hardly think otherwise. But the glances cast by the Guardsman at the silent figure seated near the window showed that some part of his vapouring was meant to impress the feminine heart. A gallant figure he cut, too, as he stood there, caressing his

THE LAVA-STREAM

Kaiser-fashioned moustaches with one hand while the other rested on the hilt of his sword. He was tall, fully six feet, and, according to Dalroy's standard of physical fitness, at least a stone too heavy. The personification of Nietzsche's Teutonic "overman," the "big blonde brute" who is the German military ideal, Dalroy classed him, in the expressive phrase of the regimental mess, as "a good bit of a bounder." Yet he was a patrician by birth, or he could not hold a commission in the Imperial Guard, and he had been most helpful and painstaking that night, so perforce one must be civil to him.

Dalroy himself, nearly as tall, was lean and lithe, hard as nails, yet intellectual, a cavalry officer who had passed through the Oxford mint.

By this time four other occupants of the compartment were in evidence, and a ticket- examiner came along. Dalroy produced a num- ber of vouchers. The girl, who obviously spoke German, leaned out, purse in hand, and was about to explain that the crush in the booking- hall had prevented her from obtaining a ticket.

But Dalroy intervened. "I have your tick- et," he said, announcing a singular fact in the most casual manner he could command.

"Thank you," she said instantly, trying to conceal her own surprise. But her eyes met Von Halwig's bold stare, and read therein not

8 THE DAY OF WKATH

only a ready appraisement of her good looks but a perplexed half -recognition.

The railwayman raised a question. Contrary to the general custom, the vouchers bore names, which he compared with a list.

' ' These tickets are for Herren Fane and Dal- roy, and I find a lady here,'* he said sus- piciously.

"Fraulein Evelyn Fane, my cousin," ex- plained Dalroy. ' ' A mistake of the issuing of- fice."

"But "

"Ach, was!" broke in Von Hal wig impa- tiently. "You hear. Some fool has blundered. It is sufficient,"

At any rate, his word sufficed. Dalroy en- tered the carriage, and the door was closed and locked.

"Never say I haven't done you a good turn," grinned the Prussian. "A pleasant journey, though it may be a slow one. Don't be sur- prised if I am in Aachen before you. ' '

Then he coloured. He had said too much. One of the men in the compartment gave him a sharp glance. Aachen, better known to trav- elling Britons as Aix-la-Chapelle, lay on the road to Belgium, not to France.

"Well, to our next meeting!" he went on boisterously. "Run across to Paris during the occupation. ' '

"Good-bye! And accept my very grateful thanks," said Dalroy, and the train started.

THE LAVA-STREAM

"I cannot tell you how much obliged I am," said a sweet voice as he settled down into his seat. ' ' Please, may I pay you now for the ticket which you supplied so miraculously!"

"No miracle, but a piece of rare good-luck," he said. "One of the attaches at our Embassy arranged to travel to England to-night, or I would never have got away, even with the sup- port of the State Councillor who requested Lieutenant von Halwig to befriend me. Then, at the last moment, Fane couldn't come. I meant asking Von Halwig to send a messenger to the Embassy with the spare ticket."

' * So you will forward the money to Mr. Fane with my compliments," said the girl, opening her purse.

Dalroy agreed. There was no other way out of the difficulty. Incidentally, he could not help noticing that the lady was well supplied with gold and notes.

As they were fellow-travellers by force of circumstances, Dalroy took a card from the pocket-book in which he was securing a one- hundred-mark note.

"We have a long journey before us, and may as well get to know each other by name," he said.

The girl smiled acquiescence. She read, "Captain Arthur Dalroy, 2nd Bengal Lancers, Junior United Service Club."

"I haven't a card in my bag," she said simply, "but my name is Beresford — Irene

10 THE DAY OF WRATH

Beresford — Miss Beresford," and she coloured prettily. "I have made an effort of the ex- planation," she went on; "but I think it is stupid of women not to let people know at once whether they are married or single."

"I'll be equally candid," he replied. "I'm not married, nor likely to be."

"Is that defiance, or merely self-defence?"

"Neither. A bald fact. I hold with Kitch- ener that a soldier should devote himself ex- clusively to his profession."

1 ' It would certainly be well for many a heart- broken woman in Europe to-day if all soldiers shared your opinion," was the answer; and Dalroy knew that his vis-d-vis had deftly guided their chatter on to a more sedate plane.

The train halted an unconscionable time at a suburban station, and again at Charlottenburg. The four Germans in the compartment, all Prussian officers, commented on the delay, and one of them made a Joke of it.

"The signals must be against us at Liege," he laughed.

"Perhaps England has sent a regiment of Territorials across by the Ostend boat, ' ' chimed in another. Then he turned to Dalroy, and said civilly, "You are English. Your country will not be so mad as to join in this adventure, will she?"

"This is a war of diplomats," said Dalroy, resolved to keep a guard on his tongue. ' ' I am quite sure that no one in England wants war."

THE LAVA-STREAM 11

"But will England fight if Germany invades Belgium?"

' ' Surely Germany will do no such thing. The integrity of Belgium is guaranteed by treaty.'*

"Your friend the lieutenant, then, did not tell you that our army crossed the frontier to-day?"

' ' Is that possible ? ' '

"Yes. It is no secret now. Didn't you realise what he meant when he said his regiment was going to Aachen? But, what does it mat- ter? Belgium cannot resist. She must give free passage to our troops. She will protest, of course, just to save her face. ' '

The talk became general among the men. At the moment there was a fixed belief in Germany that Britain would stand aloof from the quarrel. So convinced was Austria of the British atti- tude that the Viennese mob gathered outside the English ambassador's residence that same evening, and cheered enthusiastically.

During another long wait Dalroy took ad- vantage of the clamour and bustle of a crowded platform to say to Miss Beresford in a low tone, "Are you well advised to proceed via Brussels? Why not branch off at Oberhausen, and go home by way of Flushing?"

"I must meet my sister in Brussels," said the girl. "She is younger than I, and at school there. I am not afraid — now. They will not interfere with any one in this train, especially a woman. But how about you? You have the

12 THE DAY OF WRATH

unmistakable look of a British officer."

"Have I?" he said, smiling. "That is just why I am going through, I suppose."

Neither could guess the immense significance of those few words. There was a reasonable chance of escape through Holland during the next day. By remaining in the Belgium-bound train they were, all unknowing, entering the crater of a volcano.

The ten-hours' run to Cologne was drawn out to twenty. Time and again they were shunted into sidings to make way for troop trains and supplies. At a wayside station a bright moon enabled Dalroy to take stock of two monster howitzers mounted on specially constructed bogie trucks. He estimated their bore at sixteen or seventeen inches ; the fittings and accessories of each gun filled nine or ten trucks. How prepared Germany was! How thorough her organisation! Yet the hurrying forward of these giant siege-guns was prema- ture, to put it mildly? Or were the German generals really convinced that they would sweep every obstacle from their path, and ham- mer their way into Paris on a fixed date 1 Dal- roy thought of England, and sighed, because his mind turned first to the army — barely one hun- dred thousand trained men. Then he remem- bered the British fleet, and the outlook was more reassuring !

After a night of fitful sleep dawn found the travellers not yet half-way. The four Germans

THE LAVA-STREAM 13

were furious. They held staff appointments, and had been assured in Berlin that the clock- work regularity of mobilisation arrangements would permit this particular train to cover the journey according to schedule. Meals were irregular and scanty. At one small town, in the early morning, Dalroy secured a quantity of rolls and fruit, and all benefited later by his forethought.

Newspapers bought en route contained dark forebodings of England's growing hostility. A special edition of a Hanover journal spoke of an ultimatum, a word which evoked harsh denunciations of " British treachery" from the Germans. The comparative friendliness in- duced by Dalroy 's prevision as a caterer van- ished at once. When the train rolled wearily across the Rhine into Cologne, ten hours late, both Dalroy and the girl were fully aware that their fellow-passengers regarded them as po- tential enemies.

It was then about six o 'clock on the Tuesday evening, and a loud-voiced official announced that the train would not proceed to Aix-la- Chapelle until eight. The German officers went out, no doubt to seek a meal ; but took the pre- caution of asking an officer in charge of some Bavarian troops on the platform to station a sentry at the carriage door. Probably they had no other intent, and merely wished to safeguard their places; but Dalroy realised now the im- prudence of talking English, and signed to the

14 THE DAY OF WRATH

girl that she was to come with him into the corridor on the opposite side of the carriage.

There they held counsel. Miss Beresford was firmly resolved to reach Brussels, and flinched from no difficulties. It must be remem- bered that war was not formally declared be- tween Great Britain and Germany until that evening. Indeed, the tremendous decision was made while the pair so curiously allied by fate were discussing their programme. Had they even quitted the train at Cologne they had a fair prospect of reaching neutral territory by hook or by crook. But they knew nothing of Liege, and the imperishable laurels which that gallant city was about to gather. They elected to go on!

A station employe brought them some un- palatable food, which they made a pretence of eating. Irene Beresford 's Hanoverian German was perfect, so Dalroy did not air his less accurate accent, and the presence of the sentry was helpful at this crisis. Though sharp-eyed and rabbit-eared, the man was quite civil.

At last the Prussian officers returned. He who had been chatty overnight was now brusque, even overbearing. ' * You have no right here!" he vociferated at Dalroy. "Why. should a damned Englishman travel with Ger- mans? Your country is perfidious as ever. How do I know that you are not a spy?"

* ' Spies are not vouched for by Councillors of State," was the calm reply. "I have in my

THE LAVA-STREAM 15

pocket a letter from his Excellency Staatsrath von Auschenbaum authorising my journey, and you yourself must perceive that I am escorting a lady to her home."

The other snorted, but subsided into his seat. Not yet had Teutonic hatred of all things Brit- ish burst its barriers. But the pressure was increasing. Soon it would leap forth like the pent-up flood of some mighty reservoir whose retaining wall had crumbled into ruin.

1 ' Is there any news ? ' ' went on Dalroy civilly. At any hazard, he was determined, for the sake of the girl, to maintain the semblance of good- fellowship. She, he saw, was cool and collected. Evidently, she had complete trust in him.

For a little while no one answered. Ulti- mately, the officer who regarded Liege as a joke said shortly, "Your Sir Grey has made some impudent suggestions. I suppose it is what the Americans call * bluff'; but bluffing Germany is a dangerous game. ' '

"Newspapers exaggerate such matters," said Dalroy.

"It may be so. Still, you'll be lucky if you get beyond Aachen, ' ' was the ungracious retort. The speaker refused to give the town its French name.

An hour passed, the third in Cologne, before the train rumbled away into the darkness. The girl pretended to sleep. Indeed, she may have dozed fitfully. Dalroy did not attempt to engage her in talk. The Germans gossiped in

16

low tones. They knew that their nation had spied on the whole world. Naturally, they held every foreigner in their midst as tainted in the same vile way.

From Cologne to Aix-la-Chapelle is only a two hours' run. That night the journey con- sumed four. Dalroy no longer dared look out when the train stood in a siding. He knew by the sounds that all the dread paraphernalia of war was speeding toward the frontier ; but any display of interest on his 'part would be posi- tively dangerous now; so he, too, closed his eyes.

By this time he was well aware that his real trials would begin at Aix; but he had the phi- losopher's temperament, and never leaped fences till he reached them.

At one in the morning they entered the sta- tion of the last important town in Germany. Holland lay barely three miles away, Belgium a little farther. The goal was near. Dalroy felt that by calmness and quiet determination he and his charming protege might win through. He was very much taken by Irene Beresford. He had never met any girl who attacted him so strongly. He found himself wondering whether he might contrive to cultivate this strangely formed friendship when they reached England. In a word, the self-denying ordinance popularly attributed to Lord Kitchener was weakening in Captain Arthur Dalroy.

Then his sky dropped, dropped with a bang.

THE LAVA-STREAM 17

The train had not quite halted when the door was torn open, and a bespectacled, red-faced officer glared in.

"It is reported from Cologne that there are English in this carriage," he shouted.

* ' Correct, my friend. There they are ! ' ' said the man who had snarled at Dalroy earlier.

"You must descend," commanded the new- comer. ' * You are both under arrest. ' '

* ' On what charge f ' ' inquired Dalroy, bitterly conscious of a gasp of terror which came in- voluntarily from the girl's lips.

"You are spies. A sentry heard you talking English, and saw you examining troop-trains from the carriage window. ' '

So that Bavarian lout had listened to the Prussian officer's taunt, and made a story of his discovery to prove his diligence.

"We are not spies, nor have we done any- thing to warrant suspicion," said Dalroy quietly. ' ' I have letters ' '

"No talk. Out you come!" and he was dragged forth by a bloated fellow whom he could have broken with his hands. It was folly to resist, so he merely contrived to keep on his feet, whereas the fat bully meant to trip him ignominiously on to the platform.

* * Now you ! ' * was the order to Irene, and she followed. Half-a-dozen soldiers closed around. There could be no doubting that preparations had been made for their reception.

4 ' May I have my portmanteau ? ' ' said Dalroy.

18 THE DAY OF WRATH

" You are acting in error, as I shall prove when given an opportunity. ' '

"Shut your mouth, you damned English- man"— that was a favourite phrase on German lips apparently — "would you dare to argue with me 1 — Here, one of you, take his bag. Has the woman any baggage? No. Then march them to the "

A tall young lieutenant, in the uniform of the Prussian Imperial Guard, dashed up breath- lessly.

"Ah, I was told the train had arrived!'* he cried. "Yes, I am in search of those two "

"Thank goodness you are here, Von Hal- wig ! ' ' began Dalroy.

The Guardsman turned on him a face aflame with fury. ' ' Silence ! " he bellowed. " I '11 soon settle your affair. — Take his papers and money, and put him in a waiting-room till I return," he added, speaking to the officer of reserves who had affected the arrest. "Place the lady in another waiting-room, and lock her in. I'll see that she is not molested. As for this English schwein-hund, shoot him at the least sign of resistance."

"But, Herr Lieutenant," began the other, whose heavy paunch was a measure of his self- importance, "I have orders "

" Ach, was! I know! This Englishman is not an ordinary spy. He is a cavalry captain, and speaks our language fluently. Do as I tell you. I shall come back in half-an-hour. —

THE LAVA-STREAM 19

Fraulein, you are in safer hands. You, I fancy, will be well treated. ' '

Dalroy said not a word. He saw at once that some virus had changed Von Halwig 's urbanity to bitter hatred. He was sure the Guardsman had been drinking, but that fact alone would not account for such an amazing volte-face. Could it be that Britain had thrown in her lot with France? In his heart of hearts he hoped passionately that the rumour was true. And he blazed, too, into a fierce if silent resentment of the Prussian's satyr-like smile at Irene Beres- ford. But what could he do! Protest was worse than useless. He felt that he would be shot or bayoneted on the slightest pretext.

Von Halwig evidently resented the presence of a crowd of gaping onlookers.

"No more talk!" he ordered sharply. "Do as I bid you, Herr Lieutenant of Reserves I"

"Captain Dalroy!" cried the girl in a voice of utter dismay, * ' don 't let them part us ! "

Von Halwig pointed to a door. "In there with him ! " he growled, and Dalroy was hustled away. Irene screamed, and tried to avoid the Prussian's outstretched hand. He grasped her determinedly.

"Don't be a fool!" he hissed in English. "/ can save you. He is done with. A firing-party or a rope will account for him at daybreak. Ah! calm yourself, gnadiges Fraulein. There are consolations, even in war."

Dalroy contrived, out of the tail of his eye,

20 THE DAY OF WRATH

to see that the distraught girl was led toward a ladies' waiting-room, two doors from the apartment into which he was thrust. There he was searched by the lieutenant of reserves, not skilfully, because the man missed nearly the whole of his money, which he carried in a pocket in the lining of his waistcoat. All else was taken — tickets, papers, loose cash, even a cigarette-case and favourite pipe.

The instructions to the sentry were emphatic : "Don't close the door! Admit no one without sending for me ! Shoot or stab the prisoner if he moves ! ' '

And the fat man bustled away. The station was swarming with military big-wigs. He must remain in evidence.

During five long minutes Dalroy reviewed the situation. Probably he would be executed as a spy. At best, he could not avoid internment in a fortress till the end of the war. He pre- ferred to die in a struggle for life and liberty. Men had escaped in conditions quite as des- perate. Why not he? The surge of impotent anger subsided in his veins, and he took thought.

Outside the open door stood the sentry, hold- ing his rifle, with fixed bayonet, in the attitude of a sportsman who expects a covey of par- tridges to rise from the stubble. A window of plain glass gave on to the platform. Seem- ingly, it had not been opened since the station was built. Three windows of frosted glass in

THE LAVA-STREAM 21

the opposite wall were, to all appearance, prac- ticable. Judging by the sounds, the station square lay without. Was there a lock and key on the door! Or a bolt? He could not tell from his present position. The sentry had orders to kill him if he moved. Perhaps the man would not interpret the command literally. At any rate, that was a risk he must take. With head sunk, and hands behind his back, obviously in a state of deep dejection, he began to stroll to and fro. Well, he had a fighting chance. He was not shot forthwith.

A slight commotion on the platform caught his eye, the sentry's as well. A tall young officer, wearing a silver helmet, and accom- panied by a glittering staff, clanked past ; with him the lieutenant of reserves, gesticulating. Dalroy recognised one of the Emperor's sons; but the sentry had probably never seen the princeling before, and was agape. And there was not only a key but a bolt !

With three noiseless strides, Dalroy was at the door and had slammed it. The key turned easily, and the bolt shot home. Then he raced to the middle window, unfastened the hasp, and raised the lower sash. He counted on the thick- headed sentry wasting some precious seconds in trying to force the door, and he was right. As it happened, before the man thought of looking in through the platform window Dalroy had not only lowered the other window behind him but dropped from the sill to the pavement

22 THE DAY OF WRATH

between the wall and a covered van which stood there.

Now he was free — free as any Briton could be deemed free in Aix-la-Chapelle at that hour, one man among three army corps, an unarmed Englishman among a bitterly hostile population which recked naught of France or Belgium or Russia, but hated England already with an almost maniacal malevolence.

And Irene Beresford, that sweet-voiced, sweet-faced English girl, was a prisoner at the mercy of a "big blonde brute," a half -drunken, wholly enraged Prussian Junker. The thought rankled and stung. It was not to be borne. For the first time that night Dalroy knew what fear was, and in a girPs behalf, not in his own.

Could he save her? Heaven had befriended him thus far; would a kindly Providence clear his brain and nerve his spirit to achieve an almost impossible rescue?

The prayer was formless and unspoken, yet it was answered. He had barely gathered his wits after that long drop of nearly twelve feet into the station yard before he was given a vague glimpse of a means of delivering the girl from her immediate peril.

CHAPTER II

IN THE VOETEX

THE van, one among a score of similar vehi- cles, was backed against the curb of a raised path. At the instant Dalroy quitted the window-ledge a railway employe appeared from behind another van on the left, and was clearly bewildered by seeing a well-dressed man spring- ing from such an unusual and precarious perch.

The new-comer, a big, burly fellow, who wore a peaked and lettered cap, a blouse, baggy breeches, and sabots, and carried a lighted hand- lamp, looked what, in fact, he was — an engine- cleaner. In all likelihood he guessed that any one choosing such a curious exit from a waiting- room was avoiding official scrutiny. He hurried forward at once, holding the lamp above his head, because it was dark behind the row of vans.

"Hi, there!" he cried. "A word with you, Freiherr!" The title, of course, was a bit of German humour. Obviously, he was bent on investigating matters. Dalroy did not run. In the street without he heard the tramp of marching troops, the jolting of wagons, the clatter of horses. He knew that a hue and cry could have only one result — he would be pulled down by a score of hands. Moreover,

23

24 THE DAY OF WRATH

with the sight of that suspicious Teuton face, its customary boorish leer now replaced by a surly inquisitiveness, came the first glimmer of a fantastically daring way of rescuing Irene Beresford.

He advanced, smiling pleasantly. "It's all right, Heinrich," he said. "I've arrived by train from Berlin, and the station was crowded. Being an acrobat, I took a bounce. What?"

The engine-cleaner was not a quick-witted person. He scowled, but allowed Dalroy to come near — too near.

"I believe you're a verdammt Engl " he

began.

But the popular German description of a Briton died on his lips, because Dalroy put a good deal of science and no small leaven of brute force into a straight punch which reached that cluster of nerves known to pugilism as 4 ' the point. ' ' The German fell as though he had been pole-axed, and his thick skull rattled on the pavement.

Dalroy grabbed the lamp before the oil could gush out, placed it upright on the ground, and divested the man of blouse, baggy breeches, and sabots. Luckily, since every second was pre- cious, he found that he was able to wedge his boots into the sabots, which he could not have kept on his feet otherwise. His training as a soldier had taught him the exceeding value of our Fifth Henry's advice to the British army gathered before Harfleur :

IN THE VORTEX 25

In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility ; But when the blast of war blows in our ears Then imitate the action of the tiger.

The warring tiger does not move slowly. Half-a-minute after his would-be captor had crashed headlong to the hard cobbles of Aix-la- Chapelle, Dalroy was creeping between two wagons, completing a hasty toilet by tearing off collar and tie, and smearing his face and hands with oil and grease from lamp and cap. Even as he went he heard a window of the waiting-room being flung open, and the excited cries which announced the discovery of a half- naked body lying beneath in the gloom.

He saw now that to every van was harnessed a pair of horses, their heads deep in nose-bags, while men in the uniform of the Commis- sariat Corps were grouped around an officer who was reading orders. The vans were sheeted in black tarpaulins. With German at- tention to detail, their destination, contents, and particular allotment were stencilled on the cov- ers in white paint : * * Liege, baggage and fodder, cavalry division, 7th Army Corps." He learnt subsequently that this definite legend ap- peared on front and rear and on both sides.

Thinking quickly, he decided that the burly person whose outer garments he was now wear- ing had probably been taking a short cut to the station entrance when he received the sur- prise of his life. Somewhat higher up on the

26 THE DAY OF WRATH

right, therefore, Dalroy went baok to the nar- row pavement close to the wall, and saw some soldiers coming through a doorway a little ahead. He made for this, growled a husky "Good-morning " to a sentry stationed there, entered, and mounted a staircase. Soon he found himself on the main platform ; he actually passed a sergeant and some Bavarian soldiers, bent on recapturing the escaped prisoner, rush- ing wildly for the same stairs.

None paid heed to him as he lumbered along, swinging the lamp.

A small crowd of officers, among them the youthful prince in the silver Pickel-haube, had collected near the broken window and now open door of the waiting-room from which the "spy" had vanished. Within was the fat lieutenant of reserves, gesticulating violently at a pallid sentry.

The prince was laughing. "He can't get away," he was saying. "A bold rascal. He must be quieted with a bayonet-thrust. That's the best way to inoculate an Englishman with German Kultur."

Of course this stroke of rare wit evoked much mirth. Meanwhile, Dalroy was turning the key in the lock which held Irene Beresf ord in safe keeping until Von Halwig had dis- charged certain pressing duties as a staff officer.

The girl, who was seated, gave him a terrified glance when he entered, but dropped her eyes

IN THE VORTEX 27

immediately until she became aware that this rough-looking visitor was altering the key. Dalroy then realised by her startled movement that his appearance had brought fresh terror to an already overburthened heart. Hitherto, so absorbed was he in his project, he had not given a thought to the fact that he would offer a sinister apparition.

"Don't scream, or change your position, Miss Beresford," he said quietly in English. "It is I, Captain Dalroy. We have a chance of es- cape. Will you take the risk?"

The answer came, brokenly it is true, but with the girl's very soul in the words. "Thank God!" she murmured. "Bisk? I would sacri- fice ten lives, if I had them, rather than remain here."

Somehow, that was the sort of answer Dal- roy expected from her. She sought no ex- planation of his bizarre and extraordinary garb. It was all-sufficient for her that he should have come back. She trusted him implicitly, and the low, earnest words thrilled him to the core.

He saw through the window that no one was paying any attention to this apartment. Pos- sibly, the only people who knew that it con- tained an Englishwoman as a prisoner were Von Halwig and the infuriated lieutenant of reserves.

Jumping on to a chair, Dalroy promptly twisted an electric bulb out of its socket, and

28 THE DAY OF WRATH

plunged the room in semi-darkness, which he increased by hiding the hand-lamp in the folds of his blouse. Given time, no doubt, a dim light would be borrowed from the platform and the windows overlooking the square; in the sudden gloom, however, the two could hardly distinguish each other.

"I have contrived to escape, in a sense," said Dalroy; "but I could not bear the notion of leaving you to your fate. You can either stop here and take your chance, or come with me. If we are caught together a second time these brutes will show you no mercy. On the other hand, by remaining, you may be fairly well treated, and even sent home soon."

He deemed himself in honour bound to put what seemed then a reasonable alternative be- fore her. He did truly believe, in that hour, that Germany might, indeed, wage war inflexi- bly, but with clean hands, as befitted a nation which prided itself on its ideals and warrior spirit. He was destined soon to be enlightened as to the true significance of the Kultur which a jack-boot philosophy offers to the rest of the world.

But Irene Beresford's womanly intuition did not err. One baleful gleam from Von Halwig's eyes had given her a glimpse of infernal depths to which Dalroy was blind as yet. "Not only will I come with you ; but, if you have a pistol or a knife, I implore you to kill me before I am captured again," she said.

IN THE VORTEX 29

Here, then, was no waste of words, but rather the ring of finely-tempered steel. Dal- roy unlocked the door, and looked out. To the right and in front the platform was nearly empty. On the left the group of officers was crowding into the waiting-room, since some hint of unfathomable mystery had been wafted up from the Bavarians in the courtyard, and the slim young prince, curious as a street lounger, had gone to the window to investigate.

Dalroy stood in the doorway. "Pull down your veil, turn to the right, and keep close to the wall," he said. "Don't run! Don't even hurry! If I seem to lag behind, speak sharply to me in German."

She obeyed without hesitation. They had reached the end of the covered-in portion of the station when a sentry barred the way. He brought his rifle with fixed bayonet to the "engage."

"It is forbidden," he said.

"What is forbidden?" grinned Dalroy amia- bly, clipping his syllables, and speaking in the roughest voice he could assume.

"You cannot pass this way."

"Good! Then I can go home to bed. That will be better than cleaning engines."

Fortunately, a Bavarian regiment was de- tailed for duty at Aix-la-Chapelle that night; the sentry knew where the engine-sheds were situated no more than Dalroy. Further, he was not familiar with the Aachen accent.

30 THE DAY OF WRATH

"Oh, is that it?" he inquired.

"Yes. Look at my cap !"

Dalroy held up the lantern. The official let- tering was evidently convincing.

"But what about the lady?"

"She's my wife. If you're here in half-an- hour she'll bring you some coffee. One doesn't leave a young wife at home with so many soldiers about."

"If you both stand chattering here neither of you will get any coffee," put in Irene em- phatically.

The Bavarian lowered his rifle. "I'm re- lieved at two o'clock," he said with a laugh. "Lose no time, schcene Frau. There won't be much coffee on the road to Liege."

The girl passed on, but Dalroy lingered. "Is that where you're going?" he asked.

"Yes. We're due in Paris in three weeks."

"Lucky dog!"

"Hans, are you coming, or shall I go on alone?" demanded Irene.

"Farewell, comrade, for a little ten min- utes," growled Dalroy, and he followed.

An empty train stood in a bay on the right, and Dalroy espied a window-cleaner's ladder in a corner. "Where are you going, woman?" he cried.

His "wife" was walking down the main plat- form which ended against the wall of a signal- cabin, and there might be insuperable difficul- ties in that direction.

IN THE VORTEX 31

"Isn't this the easiest way?" she snapped.

"Yes, if you want to get run over."

Without waiting for her, he turned, shoul- dered the ladder, and made for a platform on the inner side of the bay. A ten-foot wall indi- cated the station's boundary. Irene ran after him. Within a few yards they were hidden by the train from the sentry's sight.

"That was clever of you!" she whispered breathlessly.

1 ' Speak German, even when you think we are alone, ' ' he commanded.

The platform curved sharply, and the train was a long one. When they neared the engine they saw three men standing there. Dalroy at once wrapped the lamp in a fold of his blouse, and leaped into the black shadow cast by the wall, which lay athwart the flood of moonlight pouring into the open part of the station. Quick to take the cue, it being suicidal to think of bamboozling local railway officials, Irene followed. Kicking off the clumsy sabots, Dal- roy bade his companion pick them up, ran back some thirty yards, and placed the ladder against the wall. Mounting swiftly, he found, to his great relief, that some sheds with low- pitched roofs were ranged beneath; otherwise, the height of the wall, if added to the elevation of the station generally above the external ground level, might well have proved disas- trous.

"Up you come," he said, seating himself

32 THE DAY OF WRATH

astride the coping-stones, and holding the top of the ladder.

Irene was soon perched there too. He pulled up the ladder, and lowered it to a roof.

"Now, you grab hard in case it slips," he said.

Disdaining the rungs, he slid down. He had hardly gathered his poise before the girl tum- bled into his arms, one of the heavy wooden shoes she was carrying giving him a smart tap on the head.

"These men!" she gasped. "They saw me, and shouted."

Dalroy imagined that the trio near the engine must have noted the swinging lantern and its sudden disappearance. With the instant de- cision born of polo and pig-sticking in India, he elected now not to essay the slanting roof just where they stood. Shouldering the ladder again, he made off toward a strip of shadow which seemed to indicate the end of a some- what higher shed. He was right. Irene fol- lowed, and they crouched there in panting silence.

Nearly every German is a gymnast, and it was no surprise to Dalroy when one of their pursuers mounted on the shoulders of a friend and gained the top of the wall.

"There's nothing to be seen here," he an- nounced after a brief survey.

The pair beneath must have answered, be- cause he went on, evidently in reply, "Oh, I

IN THE VORTEX 33

saw it myself. And I'm sure there was some one up here. There 's a sentry on No. 5. Run, Fritz, and ask him if a man with a lantern has passed recently. I'll mount guard till you re- turn. ' '

Happily a train approached, and, in the re- sultant din Dalroy was enabled to scramble down the roof unheard.

The ladder just reached the ground; so, be- fore Fritz and the sentry began to suspect that some trickery was afoot in that part of the sta- tion, the two fugitives were speeding through a dark lane hemmed in by warehouses. At the first opportunity, Dalroy extinguished the lan- tern. Then he bethought him of his compan- ion's appearance. He halted suddenly ere they entered a lighted thoroughfare.

"I had better put on these clogs again," he said. "But what about you? It will never do for a lady in smart attire to be seen walking through the streets with a ruffian like me at one o 'clock in the morning. ' '

For answer, the girl took off her hat and tore away a cluster of roses and a coquettish bow of ribbon. Then she discarded her jacket, which she adjusted loosely across her shoulders.

1 * Now I ought to look raffish enough for any- thing," she said cheerfully.

Singularly enough, her confidence raised again in Dalroy 's mind a lurking doubt which the success thus far achieved had not wholly stilled.

34 THE DAY OF WRATH

"My candid advice to you now, Miss Beres- ford, is that you leave me," he said. "You will come to no harm in the main streets, and you speak German so well that you should have little difficulty in reaching the Dutch frontier. Once in Holland you can travel to Brussels by way of Antwerp. I believe England has de- clared war against Germany. The behaviour of Von Halwig and those other Prussians is most convincing on that point. If so "

"Does my presence imperil you, Captain Dalroy?" she broke in. She could have said nothing more unwise, nothing so subtly calcu- lated to stir a man's pride.

"No," he answered shortly.

"Why, then, are you so anxious to get rid of me, after risking your life to save me a few minutes ago?"

"I am going straight into Belgium. I deem it my duty. I may pick up information of the utmost military value."

"Then I go into Belgium too, unless you positively refuse to be bothered with my com- pany. I simply must reach my sister without a moment of unnecessary delay. And is it really sensible to stand here arguing, so close to the station?"

They went on without another word. Dalroy was ruffled by the suggestion that he might be seeking his own safety. Trust any woman to find the joint in any man's armour when it suits her purpose.

IN THE VORTEX 35

Aix-la-Chapelle was more awake on that Wednesday morning at one o 'clock than on any ordinary day at the same hour in the afternoon. The streets were alive with excited people, the taverns and smaller shops open, the main avenues crammed with torrents of troops streaming westward. Regimental bands struck up martial airs as column after column de- bouched from the various stations. When the musicians paused for sheer lack of breath the soldiers bawled " Deutschland, Deutschland, uber alles" or "Die Wacht am Rhine" at the top of their voices. The uproar was, as the Germans love to say, colossal. The enthusiasm was colossal too. Aix-la-Chapelle might have been celebrating a great national festival. It seemed ludicrous to regard the community as in the throes of war. The populace, the officers, even the heavy-jowled peasants who formed the majority of the regiments then hurrying to the front, seemed to be intoxicated with joy. Dal- roy was surprised at first. He was not pre- pared for the savage exultation with which German militarism leaped to its long-dreamed- of task of conquering Europe.

Irene Beresford, momentarily more alive than he to the exigencies of their position, bought a common shawl at a shop in a side street, and threw away her tattered hat with a careless laugh. She was an excellent actress. The woman who served her had not the remotest notion that this bright-

36 THE DAY OF WRATH

eyed girl belonged to the hated English race.

The incident brought back Dalroy's vagrom thoughts from German methods of making war to the serious business which was his own par- ticular concern. The shop was only a couple of doors removed from the Franz Strasse; he waited for Irene at the corner, buying some cheap cigars and a box of matches at a tobac- conist's kiosk. He still retained the lantern, which lent a touch of character. The carriage- cleaner's breeches were wide and loose at the ankles, and concealed his boots. Between the sabots and his own heels he had added some inches to his height, so he could look easily over the heads of the crowd; he was watching the passing of a battery of artillery when an open automobile was jerked to a standstill directly in front of him. In the car was seated Von Halwig.

That sprig of Prussian nobility was in a mighty hurry, but even he dared not interfere too actively with troops in motion, so, to pass the time as it were, he rolled his eyes in anger at the crowd on the pavement.

It was just possible that Irene might appear inopportunely, so Dalroy rejoined her, and led her to the opposite side of the cross street, where a wagon and horses hid her from the Guardsman's sharp eyes.

Thus it happened that Chance again took the wanderers under her wing.

A short, thick-set Walloon had emptied a

IN THE VORTEX 37

glass of schnapps at the counter of a small drinking-bar which opened on to the street, and was bidding the landlady farewell.

"I must be off," he said. "I have to be in Vise by daybreak. This cursed war has kept me here a whole day. Who is fighting who, I'd like to know?"

"Vise!" guffawed a man seated at the bar. "You'll never get there. The army won't let you pass."

"That's the army's affair, not mine," was the typically Flemish answer, and the other came out, mounted the wagon, chirped to his horses, and made away.

Dalroy was able to note the name on a small board affixed to the side of the vehicle : * * Henri Joos, miller, Vise."

1 1 That fellow lives in Belgium, ' ' he whispered to Irene, who had draped the shawl over her head and neck, and now carried the jacket rolled into a bundle. "He is just the sort of dogged countryman who will tackle and overcome all obstacles. I fancy he is carrying oats to a mill, and will be known to the frontier officials. Shall we bargain with him for a lift I ' '

"It sounds the very thing," agreed the girl.

In their eagerness, neither took the precau- tion of buying something to eat. They over- took the wagon before it passed the market. The driver was not Joos, but Joos's man. He was quite ready to earn a few francs, or marks ( — he did not care which — by conveying a couple

38 THE DAY OF WRATH

of passengers to the placid little town of whose mere existence the wide world outside Bel- gium was unaware until that awful first week in August 1914.

And so it came to pass that Dalroy and his protege passed out of Aix-la-Chapelle without let or hindrance, because the driver, spurred to an effort of the imagination by promise of largesse, described Irene to the Customs men as Henri Joos's niece, and Dalroy as one dep- uted by the railway to see that a belated con- signment of oats was duly delivered to the miller.

Neither rural Germany nor rural Belgium was yet really at war. The monstrous shadow had darkened the chancelleries, but it was hardly perceptible to the common people. Moreover, how could red-fanged war affect a remote place like Vise? The notion was non- sensical. Even Dalroy allowed himself to as- sure his companion that there was now a rea- sonable prospect of reaching Belgian soil with- out incurring real danger. Yet, in truth, he was taking her to an inferno of which the like is scarce known to history. The gate which opened at the Customs barrier gave access ap- parently to a good road leading through an undulating country. In sober truth, it led to an earthly hell.

CHAPTER HI

FIRST BLOOD

THOUGH none of the three in the wagon might even hazard a guess at the tremendous facts, the German wolf had already made his spring and been foiled. Not only had he missed his real quarry, France, he had also broken his fangs on the tough armour of Liege. These things Dalroy and Irene Beresford were to learn soon. The first intimation that the Bel- gian army had met and actually fought some portion of the invading host came before dawn.

The road to Vise ran nearly parallel with, but some miles north of, the main artery be- tween Aix-la-Chapelle and Liege. During the small hours of the night it held a locust flight of German cavalry. Squadron after squadron, mostly Uhlans, trotted past the slow-moving cart; but Joos's man, Maertz, if stolid and heavy-witted, had the sense to pull well out of the way of these hurrying troopers; beyond evoking an occasional curse, he was not mo- lested. The brilliant moon, though waning, helped the riders to avoid him.

Dalroy and the girl were comfortably seated, and almost hidden, among the sacks of oats; they were free to talk as they listed.

Naturally, a soldier's eyes took in details at

39

40 THE DAY OF WRATH

once which would escape a woman; but Irene Beresford soon noted signs of the erratic fight- ing which had taken place along that very road.

11 Surely we are in Belgium now?" she whispered, after an awed glance at the lights and bustling activity of a field hospital estab- lished near the hamlet of Aubel.

"Yes," said Dalroy quietly, "we have been in Belgium fully an hour."

"And have the Germans actually attacked this dear little country?"

"So it would seem. ' '

"But why? I have always understood that Belgium was absolutely safe. All the great nations of the world have guaranteed her in- tegrity. ' '

"That has been the main argument of every spouter at International Peace Congresses for many a year," said Dalroy bitterly. "If Bel- gium and Holland can be preserved by agree- ment, they contended, why should not all other vexed questions be settled by arbitration? Yet one of our chaps in the Berlin Embassy, the man whose ticket you travelled with, told me that the Kaiser could ;be bluntly outspoken when that very question was raised during the autumn manoeuvres last year. 'I shall sweep through Belgium thus,' he said, swinging his arm as though brushing aside a feeble old crone who barred his way. And he was talking to a British officer too."

FIRST BLOOD 41

"What a crime! These poor, inoffensive people! Have they resisted, do you think?"

"That field hospital looked pretty busy," was the grim answer.

A little farther on, at a cross road, there could no longer be any doubt as to what had happened. The remains of a barricade littered the ditches. Broken carts, ploughs, harrows, and hurdles lay in heaps. The carcasses of scores of dead horses had been hastily thrust aside so as to clear a passage. In a meadow, working by the light of lanterns, gangs of sol- diers and peasants were digging long pits, while row after row of prone figures could be glimpsed when the light carried by those direct- ing the operations chanced to fall on them.

Dalroy knew, of course, that all the indica- tions pointed to a successful, if costly, German advance, which was the last thing he had counted on in this remote countryside. If the tide of war was rolling into Belgium it should, by his reckoning, have passed to the south-west, engulfing the upper valley of the Meuse and the two Luxembourgs perhaps, but leaving un- touched the placid land on the frontier of Hol- land. For a time he feared that Holland, too, was being attacked. Understanding something of German pride, though far as yet from plumb- ing the depths of German infamy, he imag- ined that the Teutonic host had burst all bar- riers, and was bent on making the Rhine a German river from source to sea.

42 THE DAY OF WRATH

Naturally he did not fail to realise that the lumbering wagon was taking him into a country already securely held by the assailants. There were no guards at the cross roads, no indica- tions of military precautions. The hospital, the grave-diggers, the successive troops of cavalry, felt themselves safe even in the semi-darkness, and this was the prerogative of a conquering army. In the conditions, he did not regard his life as worth much more than an hour's pur- chase, and he tortured his wits in vain for some means of freeing the girl, who reposed such im- plicit confidence in him, from the meshes of a net which he felt to be tightening every min- ute. He simply dreaded the coming of day- light, heralded already by tints of heliotrope and pink in the eastern sky. Certain undulat- ing contours were becoming suspiciously clear in that part of the horizon. It might be only what Hafiz describes as the false dawn; but, false or true, the new day was at hand. He was on the verge of advising Irene to seek shelter in some remote hovel which their guide could surely recommend when Fate took con- trol of affairs.

Maertz had now pulled up in obedience to an unusually threatening order from a Uhlan officer whose horse had been incommoded in passing. Above the clatter of hoofs and ac- coutrements Dalroy's trained ear had detected the sounds of a heavy and continuous can- nonade toward the south-west.

FIRST BLOOD 43

"How far are we from Vise?" he asked the driver.

The man pointed with his whip. "You see that black knob over there?" he said.

"Yes."

"That's a clump of trees just above the Meuse. Vise lies below it."

"But how far?"

"Not more than two kilometres."

Two kilometres! About a mile and a half! Dalroy was tortured by indecision. ' * Shall we be there by daybreak?"

"With luck. I don't know what's been happening here. These damned Germans are swarming all over the place. They must be making for the bridge."

"What bridge?"

"The bridge across the Meuse, of course. Don't you know these parts?"

1 * Not very well. ' '

"I wish I were safe at home; I'd get indoors and stop there," growled the driver, chirping his team into motion again.

Dalroy 's doubts were stilled. Better leave this rustic philosopher to work out their com- mon salvation.

A few hundred yards ahead the road bifur- cated. One branch led to Vise, the other to Argenteau. Here was stationed a picket, evi- dently intended as a guide for the cavalry.

Most fortunately Dalroy read aright the intention of an officer who came forward with

44 THE DAY OF WRATH

an electric torch. "Lie as flat as you can!" he whispered to Irene. "If they find us, pretend to be asleep."

"Hi, you!" cried the officer to Maertz, "where the devil do you think you're going?"

"To Joos's mill at Vise," said the gruff Walloon.

"What's in the cart I"

"Oats."

"Almachtig! Where from?"

' ' Aachen. ' '

"You just pull ahead into that road there. I'll attend to you and your oats in a minute or two."

"But can't I push on?"

The officer called to a soldier. * ' See that this fellow halts twenty yards up the road," he said. "If he stirs then, put your bayonet through him. These Belgian swine don't seem to understand that they are Germans now, and must obey orders."

The officer, of course, spoke in German, the Walloon in the mixture of Flemish and Low Dutch which forms the patois of the district. But each could follow the other's meaning, and the quaking listeners in the middle of the wagon had no difficulty at all in comprehending the gravity of this new peril.

Maertz was swearing softly to himself; they heard him address a question to the sentry when the wagon stopped again. "Why won't your officer let us go to Vise ? " he growled.

FIRST BLOOD 45

" Sheep's head! do as you're told, or it will be bad for you," was the reply.

The words were hardly out of the soldier's mouth before a string of motor lorries, heavy vehicles with very powerful engines, thundered up from the rear. The leaders passed without difficulty, as there was plenty of room. But their broad flat tires sucked up clouds of dust, and the moon had sunk behind a wooded height. One of the hindermost transports, taking too wide a bend, crashed into the wagon. The startled horses plunged, pulled Maertz off his perch, and dragged the wagon into a deep ditch. It fell on its side, and Dalroy and his com- panion were thrown into a field amid a swirl of laden sacks, some of which burst.

Dalroy was unhurt, and he could only hope that the girl also had escaped injury. Ere he rose he clasped her around the neck and clapped a hand over her mouth lest she should scream. ' ' Not a word ! " he breathed into her ear. * ' Can you manage to crawl on all-fours straight on by the side of the hedge? Never mind thorns or nettles. It's our only chance."

In a few seconds they were free of the hubbub which sprang up around the overturned wagon and the transport, the latter having shattered a wheel. Soon they were able to rise, crouching behind the hedge as they ran. They turned at an angle, and struck off into the country, follow- ing the line of another hedge which trended slightly uphill. At a gateway they turned

46 THE DAY OF WRATH

again, moving, as Dalroy calculated, on the general line of the Vise road. A low-roofed shanty loomed up suddenly against the sky. It was just the place to house an outpost, and Dalroy was minded to avoid it when the lowing of a cow in pain revealed to his trained intelli- gence the practical certainty that the animal had been left there unattended, and needed milk- ing. Still, he took no unnecessary risks.

"Remain here," he murmured. "I'll go ahead and investigate, and return in a minute or so."

He did not notice that the girl sank beneath the hedge with a suspicious alacrity. He was a man, a fighter, with the hot breath of war in his nostrils. Not yet had he sensed the cruel strain which war places on women. Moreover, his faculties were centred in the task of the moment. The soldier is warned not to take his eyes off the enemy while reloading his rifle lest the target be lost ; similarly, Dalroy knew that concentration was the prime essential of scout- craft.

Thus he was deaf to the distant thunder of guns, but alive to the least rustle inside the building; blind to certain ominous gleams on the horizon, but quick to detect any moving object close at hand. He made out that a door stood open; so, after a few seconds' pause, he slipped rapidly within, and stood near the wall on the side opposite the hinges. An animal stirred uneasily, and the plaintive lowing

FIRST BLOOD 47

ceased. He had dropped the sabots long since, and the lamp was lost in the spill out of the wagon, but most fortunately he had matches in his pocket. He closed the door softly, struck a match, guarding the flame with both hands, and looked round. He found himself in a ram- shackle shed, half -barn, half-stable. In a stall was tethered a black-and-white cow, her udder distended with milk. Huddled up against the wall was the corpse of a woman, an old peasant, whose wizened features had that waxen tint of camailleu gris with which, in their illuminated missals of the Middle Ages, the monks loved to portray the sufferings of the early Christian martyrs. She had been stabbed twice through the breast. An overturned pail and milking- stool showed how and where death had sur- prised her.

The match flickered out, and Dalroy was left in the darkness of the tomb. He had a second match in his hand, and was on the verge of striking it when he heard a man's voice and the swish of feet through the grass of the pasture without.

"This is the place, Heinrich," came the words in guttural German, and breathlessly. Then, with certain foulnesses of expression, the speaker added, "I'm puffed. That girl fought like a wild cat. ' '

"She's pretty, too, for a Belgian," agreed another voice.

"So. But I couldn't put up with her screech-

48 THE DAY OF WRATH

ing when you told her that a bayonet had stopped her grandam's nagging tongue."

' Ach, was! What matter, at eighty?"

Dalroy had pulled the door open. Stooping, he sought for and found the milking-stool, a solid article of sound oak. Through a chink he saw two dark forms ; glints of the dawn on fixed bayonets showed that the men were carrying their rifles slung. At the door the foremost switched on an electric torch.

" You milk, Heinrich," he said, " while I show a glim. ' '

He advanced a pace, as Dalroy expected he would, so the swing of the stool caught him on the right side of the head, partly on the ear and partly on the rim of his Pickel-haube. But his skull was fractured for all that. Heinrich fared no better, though the torch was shattered on the rough paving of the stable. A thrust floored him, and he fell with a fearsome clatter of accoutrements. A second blow on the temple stilled the startled oath on his lips. Dalroy divested him of the rifle, and stuffed a few clips of cartridges into his own pockets.

Then, ready for any others of a cut-throat crew, he listened. One of the pair on the ground was gasping for breath. The cow began lowing again. That was all. There was neither sight nor sound of Irene, though she must have heard enough to frighten her badly.

"Miss Beresford!" he said, in a sibilant hiss which would carry easily to the point where he

FIRST BLOOD 49

had left her. No answer. Nature was still. It was as though inanimate things were awake, but quaking. The breathing of the unnamed German changed abruptly into a gurgling croak. Heinrich had traversed that stage swiftly under the second blow. From the roads came the sharp rattle of horses' feet, the panting of motors. The thud of gun-fire smote the air in- cessantly. It suggested the monstrous pulse- beat of an alarmed world. Over a hilltop the beam of a searchlight hovered for an instant, and vanished. Belgium, little Belgium, was in a death-grapple with mighty Germany. Even in her agony she was crying, "What of Eng- land? Will England help?" Well, one Eng- lishman had lessened by two the swarm of her enemies that night.

Dalroy was only vaguely conscious of the scope and magnitude of events in which he was bearing so small a part. He knew enough of German methods in his immediate surround- ings, however, to reck as little of having killed two men as though they were rats. His sole and very real concern was for the girl who answered not. Before going in search of her he was tempted to don a Pickel-haube, which, with the rifle and bayonet, would, in the misty light, deceive any new-comers. But the field appeared to be untenanted, and it occurred to him that his companion might actually en- deavour to hide if she took him for a German soldier. So he did not even carry the weapon.

50 THE DAY OF WRATH

He found Irene at once. She had simply fainted, and the man who now lifted her limp form tenderly in his arms was vexed at his own forgetfulness. The girl had slept but little during two nights. Meals were irregular and scanty. She had lived in a constant and in- creasing strain, while the real danger and great physical exertion of the past few minutes had provided a climax beyond her powers.

Like the mass of young officers in the British army, Dalroy kept himself fit, even during fur- lough, by long walks, daily exercises, and sys- tematic abstention from sleep, food, and drink. If a bed was too comfortable he changed it. If an undertaking could be accomplished equally well in conditions of hardship or luxury he chose hardship. Soldiering was his profession, and he held the theory that a soldier must al- ways be ready to withstand the severest tax on brain and physique. Therefore the minor pri- vations of the journey from Berlin, with its decidedly strenuous sequel at Aix-la-Chapelle, and this D'Artagnan episode in the neighbour- hood of Vise, had made no material drain on his resources.

A girl like Irene Beresford, swept into the sirocco of war from the ordered and sheltered life of a young Englishwoman of the middle- classes, was an altogether different case. He believed her one of the small army of British- born women who find independence and fair remuneration for their services by acting as

FIRST BLOOD 51

governesses and ladies ' companions on the Con- tinent. Nearly every German family of wealth and social pretensions counted the Englische Frdulein as a member of the household; even in autocratic Prussia, Kultur is not always spelt with a ' * K. " She was well-dressed, and supplied with ample means for travelling ; but plenty of such girls owned secured incomes, treating a salary as an "extra." Moreover, she spoke German like a native, had a small sister in Brussels, and had evidently met Von Halwig in one of the great houses of the capital. Un- doubtedly, she was a superior type of governess, or, it might be, English mistress in a girls' high school.

These considerations did not crowd in on Dalroy while he was holding her in close em- brace in a field near Vise at dawn on the morn- ing of Wednesday, 5th August. They were the outcome of nebulous ideas formed in the train. At present, his one thought was the welfare of a hapless woman of his own race, be she a peer's daughter or a postman's.

Now, skilled leader of men though he was, he had little knowledge of the orthodox remedies for a fainting woman. Like most people, he was aware that a loosening of bodices and cor- sets, a chafing of hands, a vigorous massage of the feet and ankles, tended to restore circula- tion, and therefore consciousness. But none of these simple methods was practicable when a party of German soldiers might be hunting for

52 THE DAY OF WRATH

both of them, while another batch might be minded to follow "Heinrich" and his fellow- butcher. So he carried her to the stable and laid her on a truss of straw noted during that first vivid glimpse of the interior.

Then, greatly daring, he milked the cow.

Not only did the poor creature's suffering make an irresistible appeal, but in relieving her distress he was providing the best of nourish- ment for Irene and himself. The cow gave no trouble. Soon the milk was flowing steadily into the pail. The darkness was abysmal. On one hand lay a dead woman, on the other an unconscious one, and two dead men guarded the doorway. Once, in Paris, Dalroy had seen one of the lurid playlets staged at the Grand Guignol, wherein a woman served a meal for a friend and chatted cheerfully during its prog- ress, though the body of her murdered husband was stowed behind a couch and a window- curtain. He recalled the horrid little tragedy now; but that was make-believe, this was grim reality.

Yet he had ever an eye for the rectangle of the doorway. When a quality of grayness sharpened its outlines he knew it was high time to be on the move. Happily, at that instant, Irene sighed deeply and stirred. Ere she had any definite sense of her surroundings she was yielding to Dalroy 's earnest appeal, and allow- ing him to guide her faltering steps. He carried the pail and the rifle in his left hand. With the

FIRST BLOOD 53

right he gripped the girl's arm, and literally forced her into a walk.

The wood indicated by Maertz was plainly visible now, and close at hand, and the first rays of daylight gave colour to the landscape. The hour, as Dalroy ascertained later, was about a quarter to four.

It was vitally essential that they should reach cover within the next five minutes; but his companion was so manifestly unequal to sus- tained effort that he was on the point of carry- ing her in order to gain the protection of the first hedgerow when he noticed that a slight de- pression in the hillside curved in the direction of the wood. Here, too, were shrubs and tufts of long grass. Indeed, the shallow trough proved to be one of the many heads of a ravine. The discovery of a hidden way at that moment contributed as greatly as any other circum- stance to their escape. They soon learnt that the German hell-hounds were in full cry on their track.

At the first bend Dalroy called a halt. He told Irene to sit down, and she obeyed so will- ingly that, rendered wiser by events, he feared lest she should faint again.

When travelling he made it a habit to carry two handkerchiefs, one for use and one in case of emergency, such as a bandage being in sud- den demand, so he was able to produce a square of clean cambric, which he folded cup-shape and partly filled with milk. It was the best

54 THE DAY OF WRATH

substitute he could devise for a strainer, and it served admirably. By this means they drank nearly all the milk he had secured, and, with each mouthful, Irene felt a new eichor in her veins. For the first time she gave heed to the rifle.

"How did you get that?" she asked, wide- eyed with wonder.

"I picked it up at the door of the shed," he answered.

"I remember now," she murmured. "You left me under a hedge while you crept forward to investigate, and I was silly enough to go off in a dead faint. Did you carry me to the shed?"

"Yes."

"What a bother I must have been. But the finding of a rifle doesn't explain a can of milk."

"The really important factor was the cow," he said lightly. "Now, young lady, if you can talk you can walk. We have a little farther to go."

* ' Have we ? " she retorted, bravely emulating his self-control. "I am glad you have fixed on our destination. It's quite a relief to be in charge of a man who really knows what he wants, and sees that he gets it."

He led the way, she followed. He had an eye for all quarters, because daylight was com- ing now with the flying feet of Aurora. But this tiny section of Belgium was free from Germans, for the very good reason that their

FIRST BLOOD 55

cohorts already held the right bank of the Meuse at many points, and their engineers were throwing pontoon bridges across the river at Vise and Argenteau.

From the edge of the wood Dalroy looked down on the river, the railway, and the little town itself. He saw instantly that the whole district south of the Meuse was strongly held by the invaders. Three arches of a fine stone bridge had been destroyed, evidently by the retreating Belgians ; but pontoons were in posi- tion to take its place. Twice already had Bel- gian artillery destroyed the enemy's work, and not even a professional soldier could guess that the guns of the defence were only awaiting a better light to smash the pontoons a third time. In fact, barely half-a-mile to the right of the wood, a battery of four 5.9 's was posted on high ground, in the hope that the Belgian guns of smaller calibre might be located and crushed at once. Even while the two stood looking down into the valley, a sputtering rifle-fire broke out across the river, three hundred yards wide at the bridge, and the volume of musketry steadily increased. Men, horses, wagons, and motors swarmed on the roadway or sheltered behind warehouses on the quays.

As a soldier, Dalroy was amazed at the speed and annihilating completeness of the German mobilisation. Indeed, he was chagrined by it, it seemed so admirable, so thoroughly thought- out in each detail, so unapproachable by any

56 THE DAY OF WRATH

other nation in its pitiless efficiency. He did not know then that the vaunted Prussian-made military machine depended for its motive-power largely on treachery and espionage. Toward the close of July, many days before war was declared, Germany had secretly massed nine hundred thousand men on the frontiers of Belgium and the Duchy of Luxembourg. Her armies, therefore, had gathered like felons, and were led by master-thieves in the per- sons of thousands of German officers domi- ciled in both countries in the guise of peaceful traders.

Single-minded person that he was, Dalroy at once focussed his thoughts on the immediate problem. A small stream leaped down from the wood to the Meuse. Short of a main road bridge its turbulent course was checked by a mill-dam, and there was some reason to believe that the mill might be Joos's. The building seemed a prosperous place, with its two giant wheels on different levels, its ample granaries, and a substantial house. It was intact, too, and somewhat apart from the actual line of battle. At any rate, though the transition was the time- honoured one from the frying-pan to the fire, in that direction lay food, shelter, and human beings other than Germans, so he determined to go there without further delay. His main purpose now was to lodge his companion with some Belgian family until the tide of war had swept far to the west. For himself, he meant

FIRST BLOOD 57

to cross the enemy's lines by hook or by crook, or lose his life in the attempt.

"One more effort," he said, smiling con- fidently into Irene's somewhat pallid face. "Your uncle lives below there, I fancy. We're about to claim his hospitality. ' '

He hid the rifle, bayonet, and cartridges in a thicket. The milk-pail he took with him. If they met a German patrol the pail might serve as an excuse for being out and about, whereas the weapons would have been a sure passport to the next world.

It was broad daylight when they entered the miller's yard. They saw the name Henri Joos on a cart.

* l Good egg ! ' ' cried Dalroy confidently. " I 'm glad Joos spells his Christian name in the French way. It shows that he means well, any- how!"

CHAPTER IV

THE TRAGEDY OF

EARLY as was the hour, a door leading to the dwelling-house stood open. The sound of feet on the cobbled pavement of the mill-yard brought a squat, beetle-browed old man to the threshold. He surveyed the strangers with a curiously haphazard yet piercing underlook. His black eyes held a glint of red. Here was one in a subdued torment of rage, or, it might be, of ill-controlled panic.

"What now?" he grunted, using the local argot.

Dalroy, quick to read character, decided that this crabbed old Walloon was to be won at once or not at all.

"Shall I speak French or German?" he said quietly. The other spat.

"Qu'est-ce que tu veux que je te dise, moi?" he demanded. Now, the plain English of that question is, "What do you wish me to say?" But the expectoration, no less than the biting tone, lent the words a far deeper meaning.

Dalroy was reassured. "Are you Monsieur Henri Joos?" he said.

"Ay."

"This lady and I have come from Aix-la* Chapelle with your man, Maertz."

68

THE TRAGEDY OF VISE 59

1 'Oh, he's alive, then?"

"I hope so. But may we not enter?"

Joos eyed the engine-cleaner's official cap and soiled clothes, and his suspicious gaze trav- elled to Dalroy's well-fitting and expensive boots.

"Who the deuce are you?" he snapped.

"I'll tell you if you let us come in."

"I can't hinder you. It is an order, all doors must be left open."

Still, he made way, though ungraciously. The refugees found themselves in a spacious kitchen, a comfortable and cleanly place, Dutch in its colourings and generally spick and span aspect. A comely woman of middle age, and a plump, good-looking girl about as old as Irene, were seated on an oak bench beneath a window. They were clinging to each other, and had evidently listened fearfully to the brief con- versation without.

The only signs of disorder in the room were supplied by a quantity of empty wine-bottles, drinking-mugs, soiled plates, and cutlery, spread on a broad table. Irene sank into one of half-a-dozen chairs which had apparently been used by the feasters.

Joos chuckled. His laugh had an ugly sound. "Pity you weren't twenty minutes sooner," he guffawed. ' ' You 'd have had company, pleasant company, visitors from across the frontier."

"I, too, have crossed the frontier," said Irene, a wan smile lending pathos to her beauty.

60 THE DAY OF WRATH

"I travelled with Germans from Berlin. If I saw a German now I think I should die."

At that, Madame Joos rose. "Calm thyself, Henri," she said. "These people are friends."

"Maybe," retorted her husband. He turned on Dalroy with surprising energy, seeing that he was some twenty years older than his wife. "You say that you came with Maertz," he went on. "Where is he? He has been absent four days."

By this time Dalroy thought he had taken the measure of his man. No matter what the outcome to himself personally, Miss Beresford must be helped. She could go no farther with- out food and rest. He risked everything on the spin of a coin. "We are English," he said, speaking very slowly and distinctly, so that each syllable should penetrate the combined brains of the Joos family. "We were only trying to leave Germany, meaning harm to none, but were arrested as spies at Aix-la-Chapelle. We escaped by a ruse. I knocked a man silly, and took some of his clothes. Then we happened on Maertz at a corner of Franz Strasse, and persuaded him to give us a lift. We jogged along all right until we reached the cross-roads beyond the hill there," and he pointed in the direction of the wood. "A German officer re- fused to allow us to pass, but a motor transport knocked the wagon over, and this lady and I were thrown into a field. We got away in the confusion, and made for a cowshed lying well

THE TRAGEDY OF VISE 61

back from the road and on the slope of the hill. At that point my friend fainted, luckily for herself, because, when I examined the shed, I found the corpse of an old woman there. She had evidently been about to milk a black-and- white cow when she was bayoneted by a German soldier "

He was interrupted by a choking sob from Madame Joos, who leaned a hand on the table for support. In pose and features she would have served as a model for Hans Memling's "portrait" of Saint Elizabeth, which in happier days used to adorn the hospital at Bruges. "The Widow Jaquinot," she gasped.

"Of course, madame, I don't know the poor creature's name. I was wondering how to act for the best when two soldiers came to the stable. I heard what they were saying. One of them admitted that he had stabbed the old woman ; his words also implied that he and his comrade had violated her granddaughter. So I picked up a milking-stool and killed both of them. I took one of their rifles, which, with its bayonet and a number of cartridges, I hid at the top of the ravine. This is the pail which I found in the shed. No doubt it belongs to the Jaquinot household. Now, I have told you the actual truth. I ask nothing for myself. If I stay here, even though you permit it, my pres- ence will certainly bring ruin on you. So I shall go at once. But I do ask you, as Christian people, to safeguard this young English lady,

62 THE DAY OF WRATH

and, when conditions permit, and she has recov- ered her strength, to guide her into Holland, unless, that is, these German beasts are attack- ing the Dutch too. ' '

For a brief space there was silence. Dalroy looked fixedly at Joos, trying to read Irene Beresford's fate in those black, glowing eyes. The womenfolk were won already; but well he knew that in this Belgian nook the patriarchal principle that a man is lord and master in his own house would find unquestioned acceptance. He was aware that Irene's gaze was riveted on him in a strangely magnetic way. It was one thing that he should say calmly, "So I picked up a milking-stool, and killed both of them," but quite another that Irene should visualise in the light of her rare intelligence the epic force of the tragedy enacted while she lay un- conscious in the depths of a hedgerow. Dalroy could tell, Heaven knows how, that her very soul was peering at him. In that tense moment he knew that he was her man for ever. But — surgit amari aliquid! A wave of bitterness welled up from heart to brain because of the conviction that if he would, indeed, be her true knight he must leave her within the next few seconds. Yet his resolution did not waver. Not once did his glance swerve from Joos's wizened face.

It was the miller himself who first broke the spell cast on the curiously assorted group by Dalroy 's story. He stretched out a hand and

THE TRAGEDY OF VISE 63

took the pail. "This is fresh milk," he said, examining the dregs.

"Yes. I milked the cow. The poor animal was in pain, and my friend and I wanted the milk."

"You milked the cow — before?"

"No. After."

"Grand Dieu! you're English, without doubt."

Joos turned the pail upside down, appraising it critically. "Yes," he said, "it's one of Du- pont's. I remember her buying it. She gave him fifty kilos of potatoes for it. She stuck him, he said. Half the potatoes were black. A rare hand at a bargain, the Veuve Jaquinot. And she's dead you tell me. A bayonet thrust?"

"Two."

Madame Joos burst into hysterical sobbing. Her husband whisked round on her with that singlar alertness of movement which was one of his most marked characteristics.

* ' Peace, wife ! " he snapped. * ' Isn 't that what we're all coming to? What matter to Dupont now whether the potatoes were black or sound?"

Dalroy guessed that Dupont was the iron- monger of Vise. He was gaining a glimpse, too, of the indomitable soul of Belgium. Though itching for information, he checked the^impulse, because time pressed horribly.

"Well," he said, "will you do what you can

64 THE DAY OF WRATH

for the lady? The Germans have spared you. You have fed them. They may treat you de- cently. I'll make it worth while. I have plenty of money "

Irene stood up. " Monsieur/' she said, and her voice was sweet as the song of a robin, "it is idle to speak of saving one without the other. Where Monsieur Dalroy goes I go. If he dies, I die."

For the first time since entering the mill Dalroy dared to look at her. In the sharp, crisp light of advancing day her blue eyes held a tint of violet. Tear-drops glistened in the long lashes ; but she smiled wistfully, as though pleading for forgiveness.

"That is sheer nonsense," he cried in Eng- lish, making a miserable failure of the anger he tried to assume. "You ought to be rea- sonably safe here. By insisting on remaining with me you deliberately sacrifice both our lives. That is, I mean," he added hastily, aware of a slip, "you prevent me too from taking the chance of escape that offers."

"If that were so I would not thrust myself on you," she answered. "But I know the Germans. I know how they mean to wage war. They make no secret of it. They intend to strike terror into every heart at the outset. They are not men, but super-brutes. You saw Von Halwig at Berlin, and again at Aix-la- Chapelle. If a titled Prussian can change his superficial manners — not his nature, which

65

remains invariably bestial — to that extent in a day, before he has even the excuse of actual war, what will the same man become when roused to fury by resistance? But we must not talk English." She turned to Joos. "Tell us, then, monsieur," she said, grave and serious as Pallas Athena questioning Perseus, "have not the Prussians already ravaged and de- stroyed Vise?"

The old man's face suddenly lost its bronze, and became ivory white. His features grew convulsed. He resembled one of those gro- tesque masks carved by Japanese artists to simulate a demon. "Curse them!" he shrilled. "Curse them in life and in death — man, woman, and child! What has Belgium done that she should be harried by a pack of wolves I Who can say what wolves will do?"

Joos was aboil with vitriolic passion. There was no knowing how long this tirade might have gone on had not a speckled hen stalked firmly in through the open door with obvious and settled intent to breakfast on crumbs.

"del!" cackled the orator. "Not a fowl was fed overnight!"

In real life, as on the stage, comedy and tragedy oft go hand in hand. But the speckled hen deserved a good meal. Her entrance un- doubtedly stemmed the floodtide of her owner's patriotic wrath, and thus enabled the five peo- ple in the kitchen to overhear a hoarse cry

66 THE DAY OF WRATH

from the roadway: "Hi, there, dummer Esel! whither goest thou? This is Joos's mill."

"Quick, Leontine!" cried Joos. "To the second loft with them! Sharp, now!"

In this unexpected crisis, Dalroy could neither protest nor refuse to accompany the girl, who led him and Irene up a back stair and through a well-stored granary to a ladder which communicated with a trap-door.

"I'll bring you some coffee and eggs as soon as I can," she whispered. "Draw up the lad- der, and close the door. It's not so bad up there. There's a window, but take care you aren't seen. Maybe," she added tremulously, "you are safer than we now."

Dalroy realised that it was best to obey.

' ' Courage, mademoiselle ! " he said. * * God is still in heaven, and all will be well with the world."

"Please, monsieur, what became of Jan Maertz?" she inquired timidly.

"I'm not quite certain, but I think he fell clear of the wagon. The Germans should not have ill-treated him. The collision was not his fault."

The girl sobbed, and left them. Probably the gruff Walloon was her lover.

Irene climbed first. Dalroy followed, raised the ladder noiselessly, and lowered the trap. His brow was seamed with foreboding, as, de- spite his desire to leave his companion in the care of the miller's household, he had an in-

THE TRAGEDY OF VISE 67

stinctive feeling that he was acting unwisely. Moreover, like every free man, he preferred to seek the open when in peril. Now he felt him- self caged.

Therefore was he amazed when Irene laughed softly. "How readily you translate Browning into French!" she said.

He gazed at her in wonderment. Less than an hour ago she had fainted under the stress of hunger and dread, yet here was she talking as though they had met in the breakfast-room of an English country house. He would have said something, but the ancient mill trembled under the sudden crash of artillery. The roof creaked, the panes of glass in the dormer window rat- tled, and fragments of mortar fell from the walls. Unmindful, for the moment, of Leon- tine Joos's warning, Dalroy went to the win- dow, which commanded a fine view of the town, river, and opposite heights.

The pontoon bridge was broken. Several pontoons were in splinters. The others were swinging with the current toward each bank. Six Belgian field-pieces had undone the night's labour, and a lively rat-tat of rifles, mixed with the stutter of machine guns, proved that the defenders were busy among the Germans trapped on the north bank. The heavier ord- nance brought to the front by the enemy soon took up the challenge; troops occupying the town, which, for the most part, lies on the south bank, began to cover the efforts of the

68 THE DAY OF WRATH

engineers, instantly renewed. History was being written in blood that morning on both sides of the Meuse. The splendid defence of- fered by a small Belgian force was thwarting the advance of the 9th German Army Corps. Similarly, the 10th and 7th were being held up at Verviers and on the direct road from Aix to Liege respectively. All this meant that General Leman, the heroic commander-in-chief at Liege, was given most precious time to gar- rison that strong fortress, construct wire en- tanglements, lay mines, and destroy roads and railways, which again meant that Von Em- mich's sledge-hammer blows with three army corps failed to overwhelm Liege in accordance with the dastardly plan drawn up by the Ger- man staff.

Dalroy, though he might not realise the mar- vellous fact then, was in truth a spectator of a serious German defeat. Even in the condi- tions, he was aglow with admiration for the pluck of the Belgians in standing up so valiantly against the merciless might of Ger- many. The window was dust-laden as the out- come of earlier gun-fire, and he was actually on the point of opening it when Irene stopped him.

"Those men below may catch sight of you," she said.

He stepped back hurriedly. Two forage- carts had been brought into the yard, and preparations were being made to load them

THE TRAGEDY OF VISE 69

with oats and hay. A truculent-looking ser- geant actually lifted his eyes to that particular window. But he could not see through the dimmed panes, and was only estimating the mill's probable contents.

Dalroy laughed constrainedly. "You are the better soldier of the two," he said. "I nearly blundered. Still, I wish the window was open. I want to size up the chances of the Belgians. Those are bigger guns which are answering, and a duel between big guns and little ones can have only one result."

Seemingly, the German battery of quick- firers had located its opponents, because the din now became terrific. As though in response to Dalroy 's desire, three panes of glass fell out owing to atmospheric concussion, and the watchers in the loft could follow with ease the central phase of the struggle. The noise of the battle was redoubled by the accident to the window, and the air-splitting snarl of the high- explosive shells fired by the 5.9 's in the effort to destroy the Belgian guns was specially deaf- ening. That sound, more than any other, seemed to affect Irene's nerves. Involuntarily she clung to Dalroy 's arm, and he, with no other intent than to reassure her, drew her trembling form close.

It was evident that the assailants were suf- fering heavy losses. Scores of men fell every few minutes among the bridge-builders, while casualties were frequent among the troops lin-

70 THE DAY OF WRATH

ing the quays. Events on the Belgian side of the river were not so marked; but even Irene could make out the precise moment when the defenders' fire slackened, and the line of pon- toons began to reach out again toward the far- ther shore.

"Are the poor Belgians beaten, then?" she asked, with a tender sympathy which showed how lightly she estimated her own troubles in comparison with the agony of a whole nation.

' ' I think not, ' ' said Dalroy. ' ' I imagine they have changed the position of some, at least, of their guns, and will knock that bridge to smithereens again just as soon as it nears completion. ' '

The forage-carts rumbled out of the yard. Dalroy noticed that the soldiers wore linen covers over the somewhat showy Pickel-hauben, though the regiments he had seen in Aix-la- Chapelle swaggered through the streets in their ordinary helmets. This was another instance of German thoroughness. The invisibility of the gray-green uniform was not so patent when the Pickel-haube lent its glint, but no sooner had the troops crossed the frontier than the linen cover was adjusted, and the masses of men became almost merged in the browns and greens of the landscape.

The two were so absorbed in the drama being fought out before their eyes that they were quite startled by a series of knocks on the boarded floor. Dalroy crept to the trap door

THE TRAGEDY OF VISE 71

and listened. Then, during an interval between the salvoes of artillery, he heard Leontine's voice, " Monsieur! Mademoiselle!"

He pulled up the trap. Beneath stood Leon- tine, with a long pole in her hands. Beside her, on the floor, was a laden tray.

"I've brought you something to eat," she said. "Father thinks you had better remain there at present. The Germans say they will soon cross the river, as they intend taking Liege to-night."

Not until they had eaten some excellent rolls and butter, with boiled eggs, and drank two cups of hot coffee, did they realise how rav- enously hungry they were. Then Dalroy per- suaded Irene to lie down on a pile of sacks, and, amid all the racket of a fierce engage- ment, she slept the sleep of sheer exhaustion. Thus he was left on guard, as it were, and saw the pontoons once more demolished.

After that he, too, curled up against the wall and slept. The sound of rifle shots close at hand awoke him. His first care was for the girl, but she lay motionless. Then he looked out. There was renewed excitement in the main road, but only a few feet of it was visible from the attic. A number of women and chil- dren ran past, all screaming, and evidently in a state of terror. Several houses in the town were on fire, and the smoke hung over the river in such clouds as to obscure the north bank.

Old Henri Joos came hurriedly into the yard.

72 THE DAY OF WRATH

He was gesticulating wildly, and Dalroy heard a door bang as he vanished. Refusing to be penned up any longer without news of what was happening, Dalroy lowered the ladder, and, after ascertaining that Irene was still asleep, descended. He made his way to the kitchen, pausing only to find out whether or not it held any German soldiers.

Joos's shrill voice, raised in malediction of all Prussians, soon decided that fact. He spoke in the local patois, but straightway branched off into French interlarded with German when Dalroy appeared.

* ' Those hogs ! " he almost screamed. ' * Those swine-dogs! They can't beat our brave boys of the 3rd Regiment, so what do you think they're doing now? Murdering men, women, and children out of mere spite. The devils from hell pretended that the townsfolk were shooting at them, so they began to stab, and shoot, and burn in all directions. The officers are worse than the men. Three came here in an automobile, and marked on the gate that the mill was not to be burnt — they want my grain, you see — and, as they were driving off again, young Jan Smit ran by. Poor lad, he was breathless with fear. They asked him if he had seen another car like theirs, but he could only stutter. One of them laughed, and said, 'I'll work a miracle, and cure him.' Then he whipped out a revolver and shot the boy dead. Some soldiers with badges on their arms saw

THE TRAGEDY OF VISE 73

this. One of them yelled, 'Man hat geschossen' ('The people have been shooting'), though it was their own officer who fired, and he and the others threw little bombs into the nearest cot- tages, and squirted petrol in through the win- dows. Madame Didier, who has been bed- ridden for years, was burnt alive in that way. They have a regular corps of men for the job. Then, 'to punish the town/ as they said, they took twenty of our chief citizens, lined them up in the market-place, and fired volleys at them. There was Dupont, and the Abbe Courvoisier, and Monsieur Philippe the notary, and — ah, mon Dieu, I don't know — all my old friends. The Prussian beasts will come here soon. — Wife! Leontine! how can I save you? They are devils — devils, I tell you — devils mad with drink and anger. A few scratches in chalk on our gate won't hold them back. They may be here any moment. You, mademoiselle, had better go with Leontine here and drown your- selves in the mill dam. Heaven help me, that is the only advice a father can give!"

Dalroy turned. Irene stood close behind. She knew when he left the garret, and had fol- lowed swiftly. She confessed afterwards that she thought he meant to carry out his self- denying project, and leave her.

"You are mistaken, Monsieur Joos," she said now, speaking with an aristocratic calm which had an immediate effect on the miller and his distraught womenfolk. "You do not

74 THE DAY OF WRATH

know the German soldier. He is a machine that obeys orders. He will kill, or not kill, ex- actly as he is bidden. If your house has been excepted it is absolutely safe."

She was right. The mill was one of the places in Vise spared by German malice that day. A well-defined section of the little town was given up to murder, and loot, and fire, and rapine. Scenes were enacted which are in- describable. A brutal soldiery glutted its worst passions on an unarmed and defenceless popu- lation. The hour was near when some hysterical folk would tell of the apparition of angels at Mons; but old Henri Joos was un- questionably right when he spoke of the pres- ence of devils in Vise.

CHAPTER V

BILLETS

THE miller's volcanic outburst seemed to have exhausted itself; he subsided to the oaken bench, leaned forward, elbows on knees, and thrust his clenched fists against his ears as though he would shut out the deafening clamour of the guns. This attitude of dejection evi- dently alarmed Madame Joos. She forgot her own fears in solicitude for her husband. Bend- ing over him, she patted his shoulder with a maternal hand, since every woman is at heart a mother — a mother first and essentially.

11 Maybe the lady is right, Henri," she said tenderly. " Young as she is, she may under- stand these things better than countryfolk like us."

"Ah, Lise," he moaned, "you would have dropped dead had you seen poor Dupont. He wriggled for a long minute after he fell. And the Abbe, with his white hair! Some animal of a Prussian fired at his face.'*

' * Don 't talk about it, ' ' urged his wife. " It is bad for you to get so excited. Remember, the doctor warned you "

' ' The doctor ! Dr. Laf arge ! A soldier ham- mered on the surgery door with the butt of his rifle, and, when the doctor came out, twirled

75

76 THE DAY OF WKATH

the rifle and stabbed him right through the body. I saw it. It was like a conjuring trick. I was giving an officer some figures about the contents of the mill. The doctor screamed, and clutched at the bayonet with both hands. And who do you think the murderer was!"

Madame Joos's healthy red cheeks had turned a ghastly yellow, but she contrived to stammer, "Dieu! The poor doctor! But how should I know?"

1 'The barber, Karl Schwartz."

"Karl a soldier!"

"More, a sergeant. He lived and worked among us ten years — a spy. It was the doctor who got him fined for beating his wife. No wonder Monsieur Lafarge used to say there were too many Germans in Belgium. The officer I was talking to watched the whole thing. He was a fat man, and wore spectacles for writing. He lifted them, and screwed up his eyes, so, like a pig, to read the letters on the brass door-plate. 'Almachtig/' he said, grinning, 'a successful operation on a doctor by a patient.' I saw red. I felt in my pocket for a knife. I meant to rip open his paunch. Then one of our shells burst near us, and he scuttled. The wind of the explosion knocked me over, so I came home."

The two, to some extent, were using the local patois; but their English hearers understood nearly every word, because these residents on the Belgian border mingle French, German,

BILLETS 77

and a Low Dutch dialect almost indiscrimi- nately. Dalroy at once endeavoured to divert the old man's thoughts. The massacre which had been actually permitted, or even organ- ised, in the town by daylight would probably develop into an orgy that night. Not one woman now, but three, required protection. He must evolve some definite plan which could be carried out during the day, because the hordes of cavalry pressing toward the Meuse would soon deplete Joos's mill; and when the place ceased to be of value to the commissariat the protecting order would almost certainly be re- voked. Moreover, Leontine Joos was young and fairly attractive.

In a word, Dalroy was beginning to under- stand the psychology of the German soldier in war-time.

"Let us think of the immediate future," he struck in boldly. "You have a wife and daugh- ter to safeguard, Monsieur Joos, while I have Mademoiselle Beresford on my hands. Your mill is on the outskirts of the town. Is there no village to the west, somewhere out of the direct line, to which they could be taken for safety?"

"The west!" growled Joos, springing up again, "isn't that where these savages are go- ing? That is the way to Liege. I asked the officer. He said they would be in Liege to-night, and in Paris in three weeks."

"Is it true that England has declared war?"

78 THE DAY OF WRATH

"So they say. But the Prussians laugh. You have no soldiers, they tell us, and their fleet is nearly as strong as yours. They think they have caught you napping, and that is why they are coming through Belgium. Paris first, then the coast, and they've got you. For the love of Heaven, monsieur, is it true that you have no army?"

Dalroy was stung into putting Britain's case in the best possible light. "Not only have we an army, every man of which is worth three Germans at a fair estimate ; but if England has come into this war she will not cease fighting until Prussia grovels in the mud at her feet. How can you, a Belgian, doubt England's good faith? Hasn't England maintained your nation in freedom for eighty years I ' '

* ' True, true ! But the Prussians are sure of victory, and one's heart aches when one sees them sweep over the land like a pestilence. I haven't told you one-tenth "

"Why frighten these ladies needlessly? The gun-fire is bad enough. You and I are men, Monsieur Joos. We must try and save our women. ' '

The miller was spirited, and the implied taunt struck home.

"It's all very well talking in that way," he cried; "but what's going to happen to you if a German sees you? Que diable! You look like an Aachen carriage-cleaner, don't you, with your officer air and commanding voice, and your

BILLETS 79

dandy boots, and your fine clothes showing when the workman's smock opens! The lady, too, in a cheap shawl, wearing a blouse and skirt that cost hundreds of francs! — Leontine, take mon- sieur "

"Dalroy."

"Take Monsieur Dalroy to Jan Maertz's room, and let him put on Jan's oldest clothes and a pair of sabots. Jan's clogs will just about fit him. And give mademoiselle one of your old dresses."

He whirled round on Dalroy. "What became of Jan Maertz? Did the Germans really kill him? Tell us the truth. Leontine, there, had better know."

"I think he is safe," said Dalroy. "I have already explained to your daughter how the ac- cident came about which separated us. Maertz was pulled out of the driver's seat by the reins when the horses plunged and upset the wagon. He may arrive any hour."

"The Germans didn't know, then, that you and the lady were in the cart?"

"No."

"I hope Jan hasn't told them. That would be awkward. But what matter? You talk like a true man, and I'll do my best for you. It's nothing but nonsense to think of getting away from Vise yet. You're a Liegeois whom I hired to do Jan's work while he went to Aix. Every- body in Vise knows he went there four days ago. I can't lift heavy sacks of grain at my

80 THE DAY OF WRATH

age, and I must have a man's help. You see? Sharp, now. When that fat fellow gets his puff again he'll be here for more supplies. And mind you don't wash your face and hands. You're far too much of a gentleman as it is."

"One moment," interrupted Irene. "I want your promise, Captain Dalroy, that you will not go away without telling me. ' '

She could not guess how completely old Joos's broken story of the day's events in Vise had changed Dalroy 's intent.

"I would as soon think of cutting off my right hand," he said.

Their eyes met and clashed. It was dark in the mill's kitchen, even at midday; but the girl felt that the tan of travel and exposure on her face was yielding to a deep crimson. "Come, Leontine," she cried almost gaily, "show me how to wear one of your frocks. I'll do as much for you some day in London. ' '

"You be off, too," growled Joos to Dalroy. "When the Germans come they must see you about the place."

The old man was shrewd in his way. The sooner these strangers became members of the household the less likely were they to attract attention.

Thus it came about that both Dalroy and Irene were back in the kitchen, and clothed in garments fully in keeping with their new rules, when a commissariat wagon entered the yard. A Bavarian corporal did not trouble to open the

BILLETS 81

door in the ordinary way. He smashed the latch with his shoulder. "Why is this door closed?" he demanded fiercely.

"Monsieur " began Joos.

' * Speak German, you swine ! ' '

"I forgot the order, Herr Kaporal. As you see, it was only on the latch. ' '

"Don't let it happen again. Load the first wagon with hay and the second with flour. While you're at it, these women can cook us a meal. Where do you keep your wine?"

"Everything will be put on the table, mons — Herr Kaporal."

"None of your lip! — Here, you, the pretty one, show me the wine-cupboard. I'll make my own selection. We Bavarians are famous judges of good wine and pretty women, let me tell you. ' '

The corporal's wit was highly appreciated by the squad of four men who accompanied him. They had all been drinking. It is a notable fact that during the early days of the invasion of Belgium and France — in effect, while wine and brandy were procurable by theft — the army which boasts the strictest discipline of any in the world was unquestionably the most drunken that has ever waged successful war.

Irene was "the pretty one" chosen as guide by this hulking connoisseur, but she knew how to handle boors of his type.

"You must not talk in that style to a girl from Berlin," she said icily. "You and your

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men will take what is given you, or I'll find your oberleutnant, and hear what he has to say about it."

She spoke purposely in perfect German, and the corporal was vastly surprised.

''Pardon, gnddiges Fraulein," he mumbled with a clumsy bow. "I no offence meant. We will within come when the meal is ready. About — turn!" The enemy was routed.

The miller and his man worked hard until dusk. The fat officer turned up, and lost no opportunity of ogling the two girls. He handed Joos a payment docket, which, he explained grandiolquently, would be honoured by the military authorities in due course. Joos pock- eted the document with a sardonic grin. There was some fifteen thousand francs' worth of grain and forage stored on the premises, and he did not expect to see a centime of hard cash from the Germans, unless, as he whispered grimly to Dalroy, they were forced to pay double after the war. Meanwhile the place was gutted. Wagon after wagon came empty and went away loaded.

Driblets of news were received. The passage of the Meuse had been achieved, thanks to a flanking movement from Argenteau. Liege had fallen at the first attack. The German High Sea Fleet was escorting an army in transports to invade England, where, meanwhile, Zep- pelins were destroying London. Vise, having been sufficiently " punished" for a first offence,

BILLETS 83

would now be spared so long as the inhabitants "behaved themselves." If a second "lesson" were needed it would be something to re- member.

The first and last of these items were correct, inasmuch as they represented events and defi- nite orders affecting the immediate neighbour- hood. Otherwise, the budget consisted of ever more daring flights of Teutonic imagination, the crescendo swelling by distance. Liege was so far from having fallen that the 7th Division, de- prived of the support of the 9th and 10th Di- visions, had been beaten back disastrously from the shallow trenches in front of the outer girdle of forts. The 10th was about to share the same fate; and the 9th, after being delayed nearly three days by the glorious resistance offered by the Belgians at Vise, was destined to fare likewise. But rumour as to the instant "cap- ture" of Liege was not rife among the lower ranks alone of the German army. The com- mander-in-chief actually telegraphed the news to the All-Highest at Aix ; when the All-Highest discovered the truth the commander-in-chief de- cided that he had better blow his brains out, and did.

The fact was that the overwhelming horde of invaders could not be kept out of the city of Liege by the hastily mobilised Belgian army; but the heroic governor, General Leman, held the ring of forts intact until they were pulver- ised by the heavy ordnance of which Dalroy had

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seen two specimens during the journey to Co- logne. Many days were destined to elapse be- fore the last of the strongholds, Fort Loncin, crumbled into ruins by the explosion of its own magazine; and until that was achieved the mighty army of Germany dared not advance an- other kilometre to the west.

When the Bavarian corporal had gone through every part of the house and outbuild- ings, and satisfied himself that the only stores left were some potatoes and a half -bag of flour, he informed the miller that he and his squad would be billeted there that evening.

"Your pantry is bare," he said, "but the wine is all right, so we'll bring a joint which we 'planted' this morning. Be decent about the wine, and your folk can have a cut in, too."

Possibly he meant to be civil, and there was a chance that the night might pass without in- cident. Vise itself was certainly quiet save for the unceasing stream of troops making for the pontoon bridge. The fighting seemed to have shifted to the west and south-west, and Joos put an unerring finger on the situation when he said pithily, "Liege is making a deuce of a row after being taken."

* ' How many forts are there around the city ? ' ' inquired Dalroy.

"Twelve, big and little. Pontisse and Bar- chon cover the Meuse on this side, and Fleron and Evegnee bar the direct road from Aix. Un- less I am greatly in error, monsieur, the Ger-

BILLETS 85

man wolf is breaking his teeth on some of them at this minute."

Liege itself was ten miles distant; Pontisse, the nearest fort, though on the left bank of the river, barely six. The evening was still, there being only a slight breeze from the south-west, which brought the loud thunder of the guns and the crackle of rifle-fire. It was the voice of Belgium proclaiming to the high gods that she was worthy of life.

The Bavarians came with their "joint," a noble piece of beef hacked off a whole side looted from a butcher 's shop. Madame Joos cut off an ample quantity, some ten pounds, and put it in the oven. The girls peeled potatoes and prepared cabbages. In half-an-hour the kitchen had an appetising smell of food being cooked, the men were smoking, and a casual visitor would never have resolved the gather- ing into its constituent elements of irreconcila- ble national hatreds.

The corporal even tried to make amends for having damaged the door. He examined the broken latch. "It's a small matter," he said apologetically. "You can repair it for a trifle; and, in any case, you will sleep all the better that we are here."

Though somewhat maudlin with liquor, he was very much afraid of the "girl from Ber- lin." He could not sum her up, but meant to behave himself; while his men, of course, fol- lowed his lead unquestioningly.

86 THE DAY OF WRATH

Dalroy kept in the background. He listened, but said hardly anything. The turn of for- tune's wheel was distinctly favourable. If the night ended as it had begun there was a chance that he and Irene might slip away to the Dutch frontier next morning, since he had ascertained definitely that Holland was secure for the time, and was impartially interning all combatants, either Germans or Belgians, who crossed the border. At this time he was inclined to abandon his own project of striving to steal through the German lines. He was somewhat weary, too, after the unusual labour of carrying heavy sacks of grain and flour down steep lad- ders or lowering them by a pulley. Thus, he dozed off in a corner, but was aroused sud- denly by the entry of the commissariat officer and three subalterns. With them came an orderly, who dumped a laden basket and a case of champagne on the floor.

The corporal and his satellites sprang to attention.

The fat man took the salute, and glanced around the kitchen. Then he sniffed. "What! roast beef?" he said. "The men fare better than the officers, it would seem.— Be off, you ! ' '

"Herr Major, we are herein billeted," stut- tered the corporal.

"Be off, I tell you, and take these Belgian swine with you! I make my quarters here to- night."

Joos, of course, he recognised ; and the miller

BILLETS 87

said, with some dignity, that the gentlemen would be made as comfortable as his resources permitted, but he must remain in his own house.

The fat man stared at him, as though such insolence were unheard-of. "Here," he roared to the corporal, " pitch this old hog into the Meuse. He annoys me."

Meanwhile, one of the younger officers, a strapping Westphalian, lurched toward Irene. She did not try to avoid him, thinking, per- haps, that a passive attitude was advisable. He caught her by the waist, and guffawed to his companions, "Didn't I offer to bet you fel- lows that Busch never made a mistake about a woman? Who'd have dreamed of finding a beauty like this one in a rotten old mill f ' '

The Bavarians had collected their rifles and sidearms, and were going out sullenly. Each of the officers carried a sword and revolver.

Irene saw that Dalroy had risen in his corner. She wrenched herself free. * * How am I to pre- pare supper for you gentlemen if you bother me in this way?" she demanded tartly.

"Behave yourself, Fritz," puffed the major. "Is that your idea of keeping your word? Mama, if she is discreet, will go to bed, and the young ones will eat with us. — Open that case of wine, orderly. I'm thirsty. — The girls will have a drink too. Cooking is warm work. — Hallo ! What the devil ! Kaporal, didn't you hear my order?"

Dalroy grabbed Joos, who was livid with

88 THE DAY OF WRATH

rage. The two girls were safe for the hour, and must endure the leering of four tipsy scoun- drels. A row at the moment would be the wild- est folly.

"March!" he said gruffly. "The oberleut- nant doesn't want us here."

"Le brave Beige knows when to clear out," grinned one of the younger men, giving Dalroy an odiously suggestive wink.

Somehow, the fact that Dalroy took command abated the women's terror; even the intracta- ble Joos yielded. Soon the two were in the yard with the dispossessed Bavarians, these latter being in the worst of temper, as they had now to search for both bed and supper. They strode away without giving the least heed to their presumed prisoners.

Joos, like most men of choleric disposition, was useless in a crisis of this sort. He gibbered with rage. He wanted to attack the intruders at once with a pitchfork.

Dalroy shook him to quieten his tongue. "You must listen to me," he said sternly.

The old man's eyes gleamed up into his. In the half-light of the gloaming they had the sheen of polished gold. ' * Monsieur, ' ' he whim- pered, "save my little girl! Save her, I im- plore you. You English are lions in battle. Yon are big and strong. I'll help. Between us we can stick the four of them."

Dalroy shook him again. * * Stop talking, and listen," he growled wrathfully. "Not another

BILLETS 89

word here! Come this way!" He drew the miller into an empty stable, whence the kitchen door and the window were in view. "Now," he muttered, "gather your wits, and answer my questions. Have you any hidden weapons? A pitchfork is too awkward for a fight in a room."

"I had nothing but a muzzle-loading gun, monsieur. I gave it up on the advice of the burgomaster. They Ve killed him. ' '

"Very well. Remain here on guard. I'll go and fetch a rifle and bayonet. Nothing will happen to the women till these brutes have eaten, and have more wine in them. Don't you understand? The younger men have made a hellish compact with their senior. You heard that, didn't you?"

"Yes, yes, monsieur. Who could fail to know what they meant? Surely the good God sent you to Vise to-day ! ' '

"Promise, now! No interference till I re- turn, even though the women are frightened. You'll only lose your life to no purpose. I'll not be long away."

"I promise. But, monsieur, pour I' amour de Dieu, let me stick that fat Busch!"

Dalroy was in such a fume to secure a reliable arm that he rather neglected the precautions of a soldier moving through the enemy's country. It was still possible to see clearly for some distance ahead. Although the right bank of the Meuse that night was overrun with the Kaiser's troops along a front of nearly twenty

90 THE DAY OF WRATH

miles, the ravine, with its gurgling rivulet, was one of those peaceful oases which will occur in the centre of the most congested battlefield. Now that the crash of the guns had passed sullenly to a distance, white-tailed rabbits scurried across the path; some stray sheep, driven from the uplands by the day's tumult, gathered in a group and looked inquiringly at the intruder ; a weasel, stalking a selected rabbit as is his piratical way, elected to abandon the chase and leap for a tree.

These very signs showed that none other had breasted the slope recently, so Dalroy strode out somewhat carelessly. Nevertheless, he was endowed with no small measure of that sixth sense which every shikari must possess who would hunt either his fellowmen or the beasts of the jungle. He was passing a dense clump of brambles and briars when a man sprang at him. He had trained himself to act promptly in such circumstances, and had decided long ago that to remain on the same ground, or even try to retreat, was courting disaster. His plan was to jump sideways, and, if practicable, a little nearer an assailant. The sabots rendered him less nimble than usual, but the dodge quite disconcerted an awkward opponent. The vicious downward sweep of a heavy cudgel just missed his left shoulder, and he got home with the right in a half -arm jab which sent the re- cipient sprawling and nearly into the stream.

Dalroy made after him, seized the fallen

BILLETS 91

stick, and recognised — Jan Maertz! "How now," he said wrathfully, "are you, too, a Prussian?"

Jan raised a hand to ward off the expected blow. "Caput!" he cried. "I'm done! You must be the devil! But may the Lord help my poor master and mistress, and the little Leontine ! ' '

"That is my wish also, sheep's head! What evil have I done you, then, that you should want to brain me at sight?"

"They're after you — the Germans. They mean to catch you, dead or alive. A lieutenant of the Guard pulled me away from in front of a firing-party, and gave me my life on condi- tion that I ran you down."

Here was an extraordinary development. It was vitally important that Dalroy should get to know the exact meaning of the Walloon's disjointed utterances, yet how could he wait and question the man while the Prussian sultans were feasting in the mill?

Dalroy stooped over Maertz, who had risen to his knees, and caught him by the shoulder. "Jan Maertz," he said, "do you hope to marry Leontine Joos? If so, Heaven has just pre- vented you from committing a great crime. She, and her mother, and the lady who came with me from Aix, are in the mill with four German officers — a set of foul, drunken brutes who will stop at no excess. I'm going now to get a rifle. You make quietly for the stable

92 THE DAY OF WRATH

opposite the kitchen door. You will find Joos there. He will explain. Tell me, are you for Belgium or Germany in this war f ' '

The Walloon might be slow-witted, but Dalroy 's words seemed to have pierced his skin.

"For Belgium, monsieur, to the death," he answered.

"So am I. I'm an Englishman. As you go, think what that means."

Leaving Maertz to regain his feet and the stick, Dalroy rushed on up the hill. The un- expected struggle had cost him but little delay ; yet it was dark, and the miller was nearly frantic with anxiety, when he returned.

"Is Maertz with you?" was his first ques- tion.

"Yes, monsieur," came a gruff voice out of the gloom of the stable.

"Do you know now how nearly you blun- dered?"

* ' Monsieur, I would have tackled St. Peter to save Leontine."

' * Quick ! ' ' hissed Joos, ' ( let us kill these hogs 1 We have no time to spare. The others will be here soon."

"What others?"

"Jan will tell you later. Come, now. Leave Busch to me ! "

"Keep quiet!" ordered Dalroy sternly. "We cannot murder four men in cold blood. I'll listen over there by the window. You two remain here till I call you."

BILLETS 93

But there was no need for eavesdropping. Leontine's voice was raised shrilly above the loud-clanging talk and laughter of the unin- vited guests. "No, no, my mother must stay !" she was shrieking. "Monsieur, for God's sake, leave my mother alone! Ah, you are hurting her. — Father! father! — Oh, what shall we do? Is there no one to help us?"

CHAPTER VI

THE FIGHT IN THE MILL

As Dalroy burst open the door, which was locked, the heartrending screams of the three women mingled with the vile oaths of their assailants. He had foreseen that the door would probably be fastened, and put his whole strength into the determination to force the bolt without warning. The scene which met his eyes as he rushed into the room was etched in Rembrandt lights and shadows by a lamp placed in the centre of the table.

Near a staircase — not that which led to the lofts, but the main stairway of the domestic part of the dwelling — Madame Joos was strug- gling in the grip of the orderly and one of the lieutenants. Another of these heroes — they all belonged to a Westphalian detachment of the commissariat — was endeavouring to overpower Irene. His left arm pinned her left arm to her waist; his right arm had probably missed a similar hold, because the girl's right arm was free. She had seized his wrist, and was striv- ing to ward off a brutal effort to prevent her from shrieking. Busch, that stout satyr, was seated. Dalroy learnt subsequently that the sudden hubbub arose because Irene resisted his attempt to pull her on to his knee. The last of

94

THE FIGHT IN THE MILL 95

the younger men was clasping Leontine to his breast with rascally intent to squeeze the breath out of her until she was unable to strug- gle further.

Now Dalroy had to decide in the fifth part of a second whence danger would first come, and begin the attack there. The four officers had laid aside their swords, but the lieutenants had retained belts and revolvers. Busch, as might be expected, was only too pleased to get rid of his equipment. His tunic was unbut- toned, so that he might gorge at ease. Some- how, Dalroy knew that Irene would not free the hand which was now closing on her mouth. The two Walloons carried short forks with four prongs — Joos had taken to heart the English- man's comment on the disadvantage of a pitch- fork for close fighting — and Jan Maertz might be trusted to deal with the ruffian who was nearly strangling Leontine. There remained the gallant lieutenant whose sense of humour permitted the belief that the best way to force onward a terrified elderly woman was to plant a knee against the small of her back. He had looked around at once when the door flew open, and his right hand was already on the butt of an automatic pistol. Him, therefore, Dalroy bayoneted so effectually that a startled oath changed into a dreadful howl ere the words left his lips. The orderly happened to be nearer than the officer, so, as the bayonet did its work, Dalroy kicked the lout's feet from under him,

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and thrust him through the body while on the floor. A man who had once won the Dholepur Cup, which is competed for by the most famous pig-stickers in India, knew how to put every ounce of weight behind the keen point of a lance, because an enraged boar is the quickest and most courageous fighter among all the fierce creatures of the jungle. But he was slightly too near his quarry ; the bayonet reached the stone floor through the man's body, and snapped at the forte.

Then he wheeled, and made for Irene's assailant.

The instant Dalroy appeared at the door the girl had caught the Prussian's thumb in her strong teeth, and not only bit him to the bone but held on. With a loud bellow of "Help! Come quickly!" he released her, and struck fiercely with his left hand. Yet this gentle girl, who had never taken part in any more violent struggle than a school romp, had the presence of mind to throw herself backward, and thus discount the blow, while upsetting her adver- sary's balance. But her clenched teeth did not let go. It came out long afterwards that she was a first-rate gymnast. One day, moved by curiosity on seeing some performance in a cir- cus, she had essayed the stage trick of hanging head downward from a cross-bar, and twirling around another girl's body girdled by a strap working on a swivel attached to a strong pad which she bit resolutely. Then she discovered

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a scientific fact which very few people are aware of. The jaw is, perhaps, the strongest part of the human frame, and can exercise a power relatively far greater than that of the hands. Of course, she could not have held out for long, but she did thwart and delay the maddened Prussian during two precious sec- onds. Even when he essayed to choke her she still contrived to save herself by seizing his free hand.

By that time Dalroy had leaped to the rescue. Shortening the rifle in the way familiar to all who have practised the bayonet exercise, he drove it against the Prussian's neck. The jagged stump inflicted a wound which looked worse than it was; but the mere shock of the blow robbed the man of his senses, and he fell like a log.

In order to come within striking distance, Dalroy had to jump over Busch. Old Joos, piping in a weird falsetto, had sprung at the fat major and spitted him in the stomach with all four prongs of the fork. Busch toppled over backward with a fearsome howl, the chair breaking under his weight combined with a frantic effort to escape. The miller went with him, and dug the terrible weapon into his soft body as though driving it into a truss of straw. Maertz, a lusty fellow, had made shorter work of his man, because one prong had reached the German's heart, and he was stilled at once. But Joos thrust and thrust again,

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even using a foot to bury the fork to its shoulder.

This was the most ghastly part of a thrilling episode. Busch writhed on the floor, screaming shrilly for mercy, and striving vainly to stay with his hands the deadly implement from eat- ing into his vitals.

That despairing effort gave the miller a ghoulish satisfaction. "Aha!" he chortled, "you laughed at Lafarge! Laugh now, you swine! That's for the doctor, and that's for my wife, and that's for my daughter, and that's for me!"

Dalroy did not attempt to stop him. These men must die. They had come to the mill to destroy; it was just retribution that they them- selves should be destroyed. His coolness in this crisis was not the least important factor in a situation rife with peril. His method of attack had converted a fight against heavy odds into a speedy and most effectual slaughter. But that was only the beginning. Even while the frenzied yelling of the squirming Busch was subsiding into a frothy gurgle he went to the door and listened. A battery of artillery was passing at a trot, and creating din enough to drown the cries of a hundred Busches.

He looked back over his shoulder. Madame Joos was on her knees, praying. The poor woman had no thought but that her last hour had come. Happily, she was spared the sight of her husband's vengeance. Happily, too,

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none of the women fainted. Leontine was pant- ing and sobbing in Maertz's arms. Irene, lean- ing against the wall near the fireplace, was gazing now at Joos, now at the fallen man at her feet, now at Dalroy. But her very soul was on fire. She, too, had yielded to the mad- ness of a life-and-death struggle. Her eyes were dilated. Her bosom rose and fell with laboured breathing. Her teeth were still clenched, her lips parted as though she dreaded to find some loathsome taste on them.

Maertz seemed to have retained his senses, so Dalroy appealed to him. "Jan," he said quietly, ' ' we must go at once. Get your master and the others outside. Then extinguish the lamp. Hurry ! We haven 't a second to spare. ' '

Joos heard. Satisfied now that the fork had been effective, he straightened his small body and said shrilly, "You go, if you like. I'll not leave my money to be burnt with my house. — Now, wife, stir yourself. Where's that key?"

The familiar voice roused Madame Joos from a stupor of fear. She fumbled in her bodice, and produced a key attached to a chain of fine silver. Her husband mounted nimbly on a chair, ran a finger along one of the heavy beams which roofed the kitchen, found a cunningly hidden keyhole, and unlocked a long, narrow receptacle which had been scooped out of the wood. A more ingenious, accessible, yet un- likely hiding-place for treasure could not read-

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ily be imagined. He took out a considerable sum of money in notes, gold, and silver. Though a man of wealth, with a substantial account in the state bank, he still retained the peasant's love of a personal hoard.

Stowing away the money in various pockets, Joos got down off the chair. Busch was dy- ing, but he was not unconscious. He had even watched the miller's actions with a certain de- tached curiosity, and the old fellow seemed to become aware of the fact. "So," he cackled, "you saw, did you? That should annoy you in your last hour, you fat thief. — Yes, yes, mon- sieur, I'll come now. — Leontine, stop blubbing, and tie up that piece of beef and some bread in a napkin. We fighting men must eat. — Jan, put the bottles of champagne and the pork-pie in a basket. — Leontine, run and get your own and your mother's best shoes. You can change them in the wood."

"What wood?" put in Maertz.

"We can't walk to Maestricht by the main road, you fool."

"That's all right for you and madame here, and for Leontine, perhaps. But I remain in Belgium. My friends are fighting yonder at Liege, and I'm going to join them. And these others mustn't try it. The frontier is closed for them. I was offered my life only two hours ago if I arrested them."

"Jan!" cried Leontine indignantly.

"It 's true. Why should I tell a lie? I didn't

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understand then the sort of game the Prussians are playing. Now that I know "

"Miss Beresford," broke in Dalroy em- phatically, "if these good people will not es- cape when they may we must leave them to their fate."

"Do come, Monsieur Joos," said Irene, speaking for the first time since the tragedy. "By remaining here you risk your life to no purpose."

"We are coming now, ma'm'selle."

Suddenly the miller's alert eye was caught by a spasmodic movement in the limbs of the last man whom Dalroy struck down. "Tiens!" he cried, "that fellow isn't finished with yet."

He was making for the prostrate form with that terrible fork when Dalroy ran swiftly, and collared him. "Stop that!" came the angry command. "A fair fight must not degenerate into murder. Out you get now, or I'll throw you out!"

Joos laughed. "Yon 're making a mistake, monsieur," he said. "These Prussians don't fight that way. They'd kill you just for the fun of the thing if you were tied hand and foot. But let the rascal live if it pleases you. As for this one," and he spurned Busch's body with his foot, "he's done. Did you hear him? He squealed like a pig."

Dalroy was profoundly relieved when the automatic pistols and ammunition were col- lected, the lamp extinguished, the door closed,

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and the whole party had passed through a garden and orchard to the gloom of the ravine. The hour was about half -past eight o'clock. Twenty-four hours earlier he and Irene were about to leave Cologne by train, believing with some degree of confidence that they might be allowed to cross the frontier without let or hindrance! Life was then conventional, with a spice of danger. Now it had descended in the social scale until they ranked on a par with the dog that had gone mad and must be slain at sight. The German code of war is a legal paraphrase of the trickster's formula, " Heads I win, tails you lose." The armies of the Fatherland are ordered to practise * 'frightful- ness," and so terrorise the civil population that the inhabitants of the stricken country will compel their rulers to sue for peace on any terms. But woe to that same civil population if some small section of its members resists or avenges any act of "frightfulness." Soldiers might murder the Widow Jacquinot and ravish her granddaughter, officers might plan a bestial orgy in the miller's house; but Dalroy and Joos and Maertz, in punishing the one set of crimes and preventing another, had placed themselves outside the law. Neither Joos nor Maertz cared a farthing rushlight about the moral consequences of that deadly struggle in the kitchen, but Dalroy was in different case. He knew the certain outcome. Small wonder if his heart was heavy and his brow seamed.

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His own fate was of slight concern, since he had ceased to regard life as worth more than an hour's purchase at any time from the mo- ment he leaped down into the station yard at Aix-la-Chapelle. But it was hard luck that the accident of mere association should have bound up Irene Beresford's fortunes so irre- vocably with his. Was there no way out of the maze in which they were wandering? What, for instance, had Jan Maertz meant by his cryptic statements?

"We must halt here," Dalroy said authori- tatively, stopping short in the shadow of a small clump of trees on the edge of the ravine, a place whence there was a fair field of view, yet so close to dense brushwood that the best of cover was available instantly if needed.

"Why?" demanded Joos. "I know every inch of the way. ' '

"I want to question Maertz," said Dalroy shortly. "But don't let me delay you on that account. Indeed, I advise you to go ahead, and safeguard Madame Joos and your daughter. I would even persuade, if I can, Mademoiselle Beresford to go with you."

"I don't mind listening to Jan's yarn my- self," grunted the miller. "And isn't it time we had some supper? Killing Prussians is hungry work. Did you hear Busch? He squealed like a pig. — Leontine, cut some chunks of beef and bread, and open one of these bot- tles of wine."

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There was solid sense in the old man 's crude rejoinder. Criminals about to suffer the death penalty often enjoy a good meal. These six people, who had just escaped death, or — where the women were concerned — a degradation worse than death, and before whose feet the grave might yawn wide and deep at once and without warning, were nevertheless greatly in want of food.

So they ate as they talked.

Maertz's story was coherent enough when set forth in detail. He was dazed and shaken by the fall from the wagon ; but, helped by the sentry, who bore witness that the collision was no fault of his, being the outcome of obedience to the officer's order, he contrived to calm the startled horses. The officer even offered to find a few men later who would help to pull the wagon out of the ditch, so Jan was told to ''stand by'* until the column had passed. Meaning no harm, he asked what had become of his passengers. This naturally evoked other questions, and a search was made, with the re- sult that the lamp and Dalroy's discarded sa- bots were found. The lamp, of course, was numbered, and carried the initials of a German state railway; but this "exhibit" only bore out Maertz's statement that a man from Aix had come in the wagon to explain to Joos why the consignment of oats had been so long held up in the goods yard.

In fact, a squad of soldiers had put the wagon

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right, and were reloading it, when the bodies of Heinrich and his companion were discovered in the stable. Suspicion fell at once on the miss- ing pair. Maertz would have been shot out of hand if an infuriated officer had not recollected that by killing the Walloon he would probably destroy all chance of tracing the man who had "murdered" two of his warriors. So Maertz was arrested, and dumped into a cellar until such time as a patrol could take him to Vise and investigate matters there.

Meanwhile the unforeseen resistance offered to the invaders along the line of the Meuse and neighbourhood of Liege was throwing the Ger- man military machine out of gear. In this initial stage of the campaign "the best organ- ised army in the world" was like a powerful locomotive engine fitted with every mechanical device for rapid advance, but devoid of either brakes or reversing gear. As the 7th and 10th Divisions recoiled from the forts of Liege in something akin to disastrous defeat, congestion and confusion spread backward to the advanced base at Aix. Hospital trains from the front compelled other trains laden with reserves and munitions to remain in sidings. The roads be- came blocked. Brigades of infantry and cav- alry, long lines of guns and wagons, were halted during many hours. Frantic staff- officers in powerful cars were alternately urg- ing columns to advance and demanding a clear passage to the rear and the headquarters staff.

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No regimental commandant dared think and act for himself. He was merely a cog in the ma- chine, and the machine had broken down. Actu- ally, the defenders of Liege held up the Kaiser 's legions only a few days, but it is no figure of speech to say that when General Leman dropped stupefied by an explosion in Fort Loncin he had established a double claim to immortality. Not only had he shattered the proud German legend of invincibility in the field, but he had also struck a deadly blow at German strategy. With Liege and Leman out of the way, it would seem to the student of war that the invaders must have reached Paris early in September. They made tremendous strides later in the ef- fort to maintain their "time-table," but they could never overtake the days lost in the valley of the Meuse.

What a tiny pawn was Jan Maertz in this game of giants! How little could he realise that his very existence depended on the shock of opposing empires!

The communications officer at the cross-roads had not a moment to spare for many an hour after Jan's execution was deferred. At last, about nightfall, when the 9th Division got into motion again, he snatched a slight breathing- space. Remembering the prisoner, he detailed a corporal and four men to march him to Vise and make the necessary inquiries at Joos 's mill.

For Maertz 's benefit he gave the corporal precise instructions. "If this fellow's story is

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proved true, and you find the man and the woman he says he brought from Aachen, return here with the three of them, and full investiga- tion will be made. If no such man and woman have arrived at the mill, and the prisoner is shown to be a liar, shoot him out of hand."

A young staff-officer, a lieutenant of the Guards, stretching his legs while his chauffeur was refilling the petrol-tank, overheard the loud-voiced order, and took a sudden and keen interest in the proceedings.

"One moment," he said imperatively, "what's this about a man and a woman brought from Aachen? Who brought them? And when?"

The other explained, laying stress, of course, on the fractured skulls of two of his best men.

1 1 Hi, you ! ' ' cried the Guardsman to Maertz, "describe these two."

Maertz did his best. Dalroy, to him, was literally a railway employe ; but his recollection of Irene's appearance was fairly exact. More- over, he was quite reasonably irritated and alarmed by the trouble they had caused. Then the lamp and sabots were produced, and the questioner swore mightily.

"Leave this matter entirely in my hands," he advised his confrere. "It is most important that these people should be captured, and this is the very fellow to do it. I'll promise him his life, and the safety of his friends, and pay him well into the bargain, if he helps me to get

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hold of that precious pair. You see, we shall have no difficulty in catching and identifying him again if need be. Personally, I believe he is telling the absolute truth, and is no more responsible for the killing of your men than you are."

Lieutenant Karl von Halwig's comparison erred only in its sheer inadequacy. The com- munications officer's responsibility was great. He had failed to control his underlings. He was blind and deaf to their excesses. What matter how they treated the wretched Belgians if the road was kept clear? It was nothing to him that an old woman should be murdered and a girl outraged so long as he kept his squad intact.

"So now you know all about it, monsieur," concluded Maertz. "When I met you in the ravine I thought you were escaping, and let out at you. God be praised, you got the better of me!"

"Was the staff officer's name Von Halwig?" inquired Dalroy.

"Name of a pipe, that's it, monsieur! I heard him tell it to the other pig, but couldn't recall it."

"And when were you to meet him?"

"He had to report to some general at Argen- teau, but reckoned to reach the mill about nine o 'clock. ' '

"Oh, father dear, let us all be going!" pleaded Leontine.

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"One more word, and I have finished," put in Dalroy. He turned again to Maertz. "What did you mean by saying a little while ago that the frontier is closed?"

"The lieutenant — Von Halwig, is it? — sent some Uhlans to the major of a regiment guard- ing the line opposite Holland. He wrote a message, but I know what was in it because he told the other officer. 'They're making for the frontier,' he said, 'and if they haven't slipped through already we'll catch them now without fail. They mustn't get away this time if we have to arrest and examine every Bel- gian in this part of the country.' "

* * Ho ! ho ! " piped Joos, who had listened in- tently to Jan's recital, "why didn't you tell us that sooner, animal? What chance, then, have I and madame and Leontine of dodging the rascals?"

"Caput!" cried Maertz, scratching his head, "that settles it! I never thought of that!"

"Oh, look!" whispered Leontine. "They're searching the mill ! ' '

So earnest and vital was the talk that none of the others had chanced to look down the ravine. They saw now that lights were moving in the upper rooms of the mill. Either Von Halwig had arrived before time, or some mes- senger had tried to find the commissariat of- ficers, and had raised an alarm.

Joos took charge straight away, like the masterful old fellow that he was. "This local-

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ity isn't good for our health," he said. "The night is young yet, but we must leg it to a safer place before we begin planning. Leave nothing behind. We may need all that food. — Come, Lise," and he grabbed his wife's arm, "you and I will lead the way to the Argenteau wood. The devil himself can't track me once I get there. — Trust me, monsieur, I'll pull you through. That lout, Jan Maertz, is all muscle and no brain. What Leontine sees in him I can't guess."

For the time being, Dalroy believed that the miller might prove a resourceful guide. Before deciding the course he personally would pursue it was absolutely essential that he should learn the lay of the land and weigh the probabilities of success or failure attached to such alterna- tives as were suggested.

"We had better go with our friends," he said to Irene. * 4 They know the country, and I must have time for consideration before striking out a line of my own."

"I think it would be fatal to separate," she agreed. "When all is said and done, what can they hope to accomplish without your help?"

Joos's voice came to them in eager if sub- dued accents. He was telling his wife how ac- counts were squared with Busch. "I stuck him with the fork," he chortled, "and he squealed like a pig!"

CHAPTER VII

THE WOODMAN'S HUT

THE miller was cunning as a fox. He ar- gued, subtly enough, that if a man just arrived from Argenteau was the first to discover the dead Prussians, the neighbourhood of Argen- teau itself might be the last to undergo close search for the "criminals" who had dared pun- ish these demi-gods. Following a cattle-path through a series of fields, he entered a country lane about a mile from Vise. It was a narrow, deep-rutted, winding way — a shallow trench cut into the soil by many generations of pack animals and heavy carts. The long interreg- num between the solid pavement of Rome and the broken rubble of Macadam covered Europe with a network of such roads. An unchecked growth of briars, brambles, and every species of prolific weed made this particular track an ideal hiding-place.

Gathering the party under the two irreg- ular lines of pollard oaks which marked the otherwise hardly discernible hedgerows, Joos explained that, at a point nearly half-a-mile distant, the lane joined the main road which winds along the right bank of the Meuse.

"That is our only real difficulty — the cross- in

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ing of the road, ' ' he said. ' * It is sure to be full of Germans; but if we watch our chance we should contrive to scurry from one side to the other without being seen. ' '

Such confidence was unquestionably cheer- ing. Even Dalroy, though he put a somewhat sceptical question, did not really doubt that the old man was adopting what might, in the cir- cumstances, prove the best plan.

"What happens when we do reach the other side, Monsieur Joos I " he inquired.

"Then we enter a disused quarry in the depths of a wood. The Meuse nearly surrounds the wood, and there is barely room for a tow- path between the river's edge and a steep cliff. The quarry forms the landward face, as one may say, and among the trees is a woodman's hut. I shall be surprised if we find any Ger- mans there."

"From your description it seems to be a suitable post for a strong picket watching the river. ' '

"No, monsieur. The slope falls away from the river, while the opposite bank is flat and open. I have been a soldier in my time, and I understand these things. It would be all right for observation purposes if these pigs hadn't seized the bridge-heads at Vise and Argenteau ; but I saw their cursed Uhlans on the left bank many hours ago."

"Lead on, friend," said Dalroy simply. "When we come within a hundred metres of the

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main road let me do the scouting. I'll tell you when and how to advance."

"Is monsieur a soldier then?"

"Yes."

"An officer perhaps!"

"Yes."

"Ah, a thousand pardons if I presumed to lecture you. Yet I am certainly in the right about the wood."

"I have never doubted you, Monsieur Joos. Do you know what time the moon rises?"

"Late. Eleven o'clock at the earliest."

"All the better, if you are sure of the way. ' '

"I could find it blindfolded. So could Leon- tine. She goes there to pick bilberries."

The homely phrase was unconsciously dra- matic. From the highroad came the raucous singing of German soldiers, the falsetto of drunkards with an ear for music. In the dis- tance heavy artillery was growling, and high explosive shells were bursting with a violence that seemed to rend the sky. Over an area of many miles to the west the sharp tapping of musketry and the staccato splutter of machine guns told of hundreds of thousands of men en- gaged in a fierce struggle for supremacy. On every hand the horizon was red with the glare of burning houses. The thought of a village girl picking bilberries in a land so scarred by war and rapine produced an effect at once striking and fantastic. It was as though a ray

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of pure white light had pierced the lurid depths of a volcano.

Dalroy advised the women to take off their linen aprons, and Madame Joos to remove as well a coif of the same material. He unfas- tened and threw away the stump of the bayonet. Then they moved on in Indian file, the miller leading.

A definite quality of blackness loomed above the low-lying shroud of mist which at night in still weather always marks the course of a great river.

* ' The wood ! ' ' whispered Joos. ' ' We are near the road now."

Dalroy went forward to spy out the condi- tions. A column of infantry was passing. These fellows were silent, and therefore sin- ister. They marched like tired men, and their shuffling feet raised a cloud of dust.

An officer lighted a cigarette. "Those guz- zling Prussians would empty the Meuse if it ran with wine," he growled, evidently in re- sponse to a remark from a companion.

"Our brigadier was very angry about the broken bottles in the streets of Argenteau," said the other. ' ' Two tires were ruined before the chauffeur realised that the place was lit- tered with glass."

These were Saxons, cleaner-minded, manlier fellows than the Prussians. Behind them Dal- roy heard the rumble of commissariat wagons. He failed utterly to understand the why and

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wherefore of the direction the troops were tak- ing. According to his reckoning, they should have been going the opposite way. But that was no concern of his at the moment. He knew the Saxon by repute, and hurried back to the two men and three women crouching under a hedge, having already noted a little mound on the left of the cross-roads where cover was available. He explained what they were to do — steal forward, one by one, hide behind the mound, and dart across when a longer space than usual separated one wagon from another, as the mounted escort would probably be grouped in front and in rear of the convoy.

"Ah, that is the cavalry," said Joos. "It stands on a rock by the roadside. ' '

"It is hard to distinguish anything owing to mist and dust," said Dalroy. "Of course, the darkness is all to the good. — If you ladies do not scream, whatever happens, and you run quickly when I give the word, I don't think there will be any real danger. ' '

In the event, they were able to cross the road in a body, and without needless haste. A horse stumbled and fell, and had to be unharnessed before being got on to its feet again. The incident held up the column during some minutes, so Dalroy was not compelled to aban- don the rifle, which it would have been foolish in the extreme to carry if there was the slight- est chance of being seen.

Thenceforth progress was safe, though slow

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and difficult, because the gloom beneath the trees was that of a vault. Even the miller per- force yielded place to Leontine's young eyes and sureness of foot. There were times, dur- ing the ascent of one side of the quarry, when whispered directions were necessary, while Madame Joos had to be hauled up a few awk- ward places bodily.

Still, they reached the hut, a mere logger's shed, but a veritable haven for people so mani- festly in peril. They were weary, too. No member of the Joos household had slept throughout the whole of Tuesday night, and the women especially were flagging under the strain.

The little cabin held an abundant store of shavings, because its normal tenant rough- hewed his logs into sabots. Here, then, was a soft, warm, and fragrant resting-place. Dal- roy took command. He forbade talking, even in whispers. Maertz, who promised to keep awake, was put on guard outside till the moon rose.

The wisdom of preventing excited conversa- tion was shown by the fact that the five people huddled together on the shavings were soon asleep. There was nothing strange in this. Humanity, when surfeited with emotion, be- comes calm, almost phlegmatic. Were it other- wise, after a week of war soldiers would not be sane men, but maniacs.

Dalroy resolved to sleep for two hours.

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About eleven o 'clock he got up, went quietly to the door, and found Maertz seated on the ground, his back propped against the wall, and his head sunk on his breast. As a consequence, he was snoring melodiously.

He woke quickly enough when the English- man's hand was clapped over his mouth and held there until his torpid wits were sufficiently clear that he should understand the stern words muttered in his ear.

"Pardon, monsieur," he said shamefacedly. 1 ' I thought there was no harm in sitting down. I listened to the guns, and began counting them. I counted one hundred and ninety-nine shots, I think, and then "

"And then you risked six lives, Leontine's among them ! ' '

"Monsieur, I have no excuse."

"Yet you have been a soldier, I suppose? And you gabble of serving your country?"

1 1 It will not happen again, monsieur. ' '

Dalroy pretended an anger he did not really feel. He wanted this stolid Walloon to remain awake now, at any rate, so turned away with an ejaculation of contempt.

Maertz rose. He endured an eloquent silence for nearly a minute. Then he murmured, "Monsieur, I shall not offend a second time. Counting guns is worse than watching sheep jumping a fence."

The moon had risen, revealing a cleared space in front of the hut. A dozen yards away a thin

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fringe of brushwood and small trees marked the edge of the quarry, while the woodcutter's path was discernible on the left. A slight breeze had called into being the myriad tongues of the wood, and Dalroy realised that the unceasing cannonade, joined to the rustling of the leaves, would drown any sound of an approaching enemy until it was too late to retreat. He knew that Von Halwig, not to mention the military authorities at Vise, would spare no effort to hunt out and destroy the man who had dared to flout the might of Germany, so he was far from satisfied with the apparent safety of even this secluded refuge.

' 'Have you a piece of string in your pock- ets ? " he demanded gruffly.

Trust a carter to carry string, strong stuff warranted to mend temporarily a broken strap. Maertz gave him a quantity.

"I am going to the cross road," he contin- ued. "Keep a close watch till I return. When you hear any movement, or see any one, say clearly 'Vise.' If it is I, I shall answer 1 Liege. ' Do you understand ? ' '

"Perfectly, monsieur. A challenge and a countersign. ' '

Dalroy believed the man might be trusted now. Taking the rifle, he made off along the path, treading as softly as the cumbrous sabots would permit. He was tempted to go bare- footed, but dreaded the lameness which might result from a thorn or a sharp rock. At a

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suitable place, half-way down the steep path by the side of the quarry, he tied a pistol to a stout sapling, and, having fastened a cord to the trigger, arranged it in such fashion that it must catch the feet of any one coming that way. The weapon was at full cock, and in all likeli- hood the unwary passer-by would get a bullet in his body.

It was dark under the trees, of course, but the moon was momentarily increasing its light, and the way was not hard to find. He mem- orised each awkward turn and twist in case he had to retreat in a hurry. Once the lower level was reached there was no difficulty, and, with due precautions, he gained the shelter of a hedge close to the main road.

The stream of troops still continued. Few things could be more ominous than this unend- ing torrent of armed men. By how many similar roads, he wondered, was Germany pour- ing her legions into tiny Belgium? Was she forcing the French frontier in the same re- morseless way? And what of Russia? When he left Berlin the talk was only of marching against the two great allies. If Germany could spare such a host of horse, foot, and artillery for the overrunning of Belgium, while moving the enormous forces needed on both flanks, what millions of men she must have placed under arms long before the mobilisation order was announced publicly! And what was England doing and saying? England! the home of lib-

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erty and a free press, where demagogues spouted platitudes about the "curse of mili- tarism," and encouraged that very monster by leaving the richest country in the world open to just such a sudden and merciless attack as Belgium was undergoing before his eyes!

Lying there among the undergrowth, listen- ing to the tramp of an army corps, and watch- ing the flicker of countless rifle-barrels in the moonlight, he forgot his own plight, and thought only of the unpreparedness of Britain. He was a soldier by training and inclination. He harboured no delusions. Man for man, the alert, intelligent, and chivalrous British army was far superior to the cannon-fodder of the German machine. But of what avail was the hundred thousand Britain could put in the field in the west of Europe against the four millions of Germany? Here was no combat of a David and a Goliath, but of one man against forty. Naturally, France and Russia came into the picture, yet he feared that France would break at the outset of the campaign, while Austria might hold Russia in check long enough to en- able Germany to work her murderous design. Be it remembered, he could not possibly esti- mate the fine and fierce valour of the resistance offered by Belgium. It seemed to him that the Teuton hordes must already be hacking their way to the coast, leaving sufficient men and guns to contain the Belgian fortresses, and halt-

THE WOODMAN'S HUT 121

ing only when the white cliffs of England were visible across the Channel.

If his anxious thoughts wandered, however, and a gnawing doubt ate into his soul lest the British fleet might, as the Germans in Vise claimed, have been taken at a disadvantage, he did not allow his eyes and ears to neglect the duties of the hour.

A fall in the temperature had condensed the river mist, and the air near the ground was much clearer now than at eight o'clock. The breeze, too, gathered the dust into wraiths and scurrying wisps through which glimpses of the sloping uplands toward Aix were obtainable. During one of these unhampered moments he caught sight of something so weird and un- canny that he was positively startled.

A sorrow-laden, waxen-hued face seemed to peer at him for an instant, and then vanish. But there could be no face so high in the air, twenty feet or more above the heads of a Prus- sian regiment bawling " Deutschland, Deutsch- land uber alles." The land was level there- abouts. The apparition, consequently, must be a mere trick of the imagination. Yet he saw, or fancied he saw, that same spectral face twice again at intervals of a few seconds, and was vexed with himself for allowing his bemused senses to yield to some supernatural influence. Then the vision came a fourth time, and a thrill ran through every fibre in his body.

Because there could be no mistake now. The

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face, so mournful, so benign, so pitying, bore on the forehead a crown of thorns! Even while the blood coursed in Dalroy's veins with the awe of it, he knew that he was looking at the figure of Christ on the Cross. This, then, was the calvary spoken of by Joos, and invisible in the earlier murk. The beams of the risen moon etched the painted carving in most realistic lights and shadows. The pallid skin glistened as though in agony. The big, piercing eyes gazed down at the passing soldiers as the Man of Sorrows might have looked at the heedless legionaries of Rome.

The travelled Briton, to whom the wayside calvary is a familiar object in many a con- tinental landscape, can seldom pass the twisted, tortured figure on the Cross without a feeling of awe, tempered by insular non- comprehension of the religious motive which thrusts into prominence the most solemn em- blem of Christianity in unexpected and often incongruous places. Seen as Dalroy saw it, a hunted fugitive crouching in a ditch, while the Huns who would again destroy Europe were lurching past in thousands within a few feet of where he lay, the image of Christ crucified had a new and overwhelming significance. It induced a vague uneasiness of spirit, almost a doubt. That very day he had killed four men and gravely wounded a fifth, and there was no shred of compunction in his soul. Yet, in body and mind, he was worthy of his class, and this

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gray old world has failed to evolve any finer human type than that which is summed up in the phrase, an officer and a gentleman. For the foulest of crimes, either committed or con- templated, he had been forced to use both the scales and the sword of justice ; but there was something wholly disturbing and abhorrent in the knowledge that two thousand years after the Great Atonement men professedly Chris- tian should so wantonly disregard every prin- ciple that Christ taught and practised and died for. He reflected bitterly that the German soldier, whether officer or private, is enjoined to keep a diary. What sort of record would ' * Heinrich, ' ' or Busch, or the three Westphalian lieutenants have left of that day's doings if they had lived and told the truth?

The answer to these vexed questionings came with the swift clarity of a lightning flash. Another rift in the dust-clouds revealed the upper part of the Cross, and the moonbeams shone on a gilded scroll. Dalroy knew his Bible. "And a superscription also was written over Him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew : ' This is the King of the Jews. ' And one of the malefactors which were hanged railed on Him, saying, 'If Thou be Christ, save Thy- self and us.' "

From that instant one God-fearing Briton, at least, never again allowed the shadow of a doubt to darken his faith in the divine if in- scrutable purpose. He had passed already

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through dark and deadly hours, while others were then near at hand; but he was steadfast in doing what he conceived his duty without seeking to interpret the ways of Providence. "If Thou be Christ?" It was the last taunt of the unbeliever, though the veil of the temple would be rent in twain, and the earth would quake, and the graves be opened, and the bodies of the saints arise and be seen by many !

A harsh command silenced the singing. An officer had reined in his horse, and was demand- ing the nature, of the errand which brought a squad of men from Vise.

"Sergeant Karl Schwartz, Herr Haupt- mann," reported the leader of the party. "An Englishman, assisted by a miller named Joos and his man, Maertz, has killed three of our officers. He also wounded Herr Leutnant von Huntzel, of the 7th Westphalian regiment, who has recovered sufficiently to say what happened. The general-major has ordered a strict search. I, being acquainted with the district, am bring- ing these men to a wood where the rascals may be hiding."

"Killed three, you say? The fiend take all such Schweinhunds and their helpers! Good luck to you. — Vorwdrtsf"

The column moved on. Schwartz, the treacherous barber of Vise, led his men into the lane. There were eleven, all told — hopeless odds — because this gang of hunters was ready for a fight and itching to capture a verdammt

THE WOODMAN'S HUT 125

Engldnder. And Joos's "safe retreat" had been guessed by the spy who knew what every inhabitant of Vise did, who had watched and noted even such a harmless occupation as Leon- tine's bilberry-picking, who was acquainted with each footpath for miles around, from whose crafty eyes not a cow-byre on any remote farm in the whole countryside was concealed.

This misfortune marked the end, Dalroy thought. But there was a chance of escape, if only for the few remaining hours of the night, and he took it with the same high courage he displayed in going back to the rescue of Irene Beresford in the railway station at Aix. He had a rifle with five rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber. At the worst, he might be able to add another couple of casual- ties to the formidable total already piled up during the German advance on Liege.

The sabots offered a serious handicap to rapid and silent movement, but he dared not dispense with them, and made shift to follow Schwartz and the others as quietly as might be. He was helped, of course, by the din of the guns and the rustling of the leaves; but there was an open space in the narrow road before it merged in the wood which he could not cross until the Germans were among the trees, and precisely in that locality Schwartz halted his men to explain his project. Try as he might, Dalroy, crouched behind a pollard oak, could not overhear the spy's words. But he smiled

126 THE DAY OF WRATH

when the party went on in Indian file, Schwartz leading, because the enemy was acting just as he hoped the enemy would act.

He did not press close on their heels now, but remained deliberately at the foot of the hill and on the edge of the quarry. Standing erect, with the rifle at the ready, he waited. He could hear nothing, but judged time and distance by counting fifty slow steps. He was right to a fifth of a second. A shot rang out, and was followed instantly by a yell of agony. He saw the flash, and, taking aim somewhat below it, fired six rounds rapidly. A fusillade broke out in the wood, the Germans, like himself, firing at the one flash above and the six beneath. A bullet cut through his blouse on the left shoul- der and scorched his skin ; but when the maga- zine was empty he ran straight on for a few yards, turned to the right, stepping with great caution, and threw himself flat behind a rock. As he ran, he had refilled the magazine, but now meant using the rifle as a last resource only.

In effect, matters had fallen out exactly as he calculated. Schwartz had blundered into the man-trap set on the path half-way up the cliff, and was shot. The others, lacking a leader, and stupefied by the firing and the darkness, bolted like so many rabbits to the open road and the moonlight as soon as the seeming attack from the rear ceased.

Uncommon grit was needed to press on

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through a strange wood at night, up a difficult path bordering a precipice when each tree might vomit the flame of a gunshot. And these fellows were not cast in heroic mould. Their one thought was to get back the way they came. They were received warmly, too. The passing regiment, hearing the hubbub and seeing the flashes, very reasonably supposed they were being taken in flank by a Belgian force, and blazed away merrily at the first moving objects in sight in that direction.

Dalroy does not know to this day exactly how the battle ended in rear, nor did he care then. He had routed the enemy in his own neighbour- hood, and that must suffice. Regaining the path, he sped upward, pausing only to retrieve the pistol which had proved so efficient a sen- tinel. Judging by the groans and the ster- torous breathing which came from among the undergrowth close to the path, Karl Schwartz's services as a spy and guide were lost to the great cause of Kultur. Dalroy did not bother about the wretch. He pressed on, and reached the plateau above the quarry. The clearing was now flooded with moonlight, and the door- way of the hut was plainly visible. Jan Maertz was not at his post, but this was not surprising, as he would surely have joined old Joos and the terrified women at the first sounds of the firing.

"Liege!" said Dalroy, speaking loudly enough for any one in the hut to hear. There

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was no answer. "Liege!" he cried again, with a certain foreboding that things had gone awry, and dreading lest the precious respite he had secured might be wasted irretrievably.

But the hut was empty, and he realised that he might grope like a blind man for hours in the depths of the wood. The one-sided battle which had broken out in the front of the calvary had died down. He guessed what had hap- pened, the blunder, the frenzied explanations, and their sequel in a quick decision to detach a company and surround the wood.

In his exasperation he forgot the silent figure surveying the scene at the cross roads, and swore like a very natural man, for he was now utterly at a loss what to do or where to go.

CHAPTER VIII

A RESPITE

NEVER before in the course of a somewhat varied life had Dalroy felt so irresolute, so helplessly the victim of circumstances. Bereft of the local knowledge possessed by Joos and the other Belgians, any scheme he adopted must depend wholly on blind chance. The miller had described the wood as occupying a promon- tory in a bend of the Meuse, with steep cliffs forming the southern bank of the river. There was a tow-path; possibly, a series of narrow ravines or clefts gave precarious access from the plateau to this lower level. Probably, too, in the first shock of fright, the people in the hut had made for one of these cuttings, taking Irene with them. They believed, no doubt, that the Englishman had been shot or captured, and' after that spurt of musketry so alarmingly near at hand the lower part of the wood would seem alive with enemies.

Dalroy blamed himself, not the others, for this fatal bungling. Before snatching a much- needed rest he ought to have arranged with Joos a practicable line of retreat in the event of a night alarm. Of course he had imposed silence on all as a sort of compulsory relief from the tension of the earlier hours, but tye

129

130 THE DAY OF WRATH

saw now that he was only too ready to share the miller's confidence. Not without reason had poor Dr. Lafarge warned his fellow- countrymen that ' l there were far too many Ger- mans in Belgium. ' ' Schwartz and his like were to be found in every walk of life, from the mer- chant princes who controlled the trade of Ant- werp to the youngest brush-haired waiter in the Cafe de la Regence at Brussels.

Dalroy was aware of a grim appropriateness in the fate of Schwartz. The German auto- matic pistols carried soft-nosed bullets, so the arch-traitor who murdered the Vise doctor had himself suffered from one of the many infernal devices brought by Kultur to the battlefields of Flanders. But the punishment of Schwartz could not undo the mischief the wretch had caused. The men he led knew the nature and purpose of their errand. They would report to the first officer met on the main road, who might be expected to detail instantly a sufficient force for the task of clearing the wood. In fact, the operation had become a military necessity. There was no telling to what extent the locality was held by Belgian troops, as, of course, the runaway warriors would magnify the firing a hundredfold, and no soldier worth his salt would permit the uninterrupted march of an army corps along a road flanked by such a danger-point. In effect, Dalroy conceived a hundred reasons why he might anticipate a sudden and violent end, but not one offering

A RESPITE 131

a fair prospect of escape. At any rate, he re- fused to be guilty of the folly of plunging into an unknown jungle of brambles, rocks, and trees, and elected to go back by the path to the foot of the quarry, whence he might, with plenty of luck, break through on a flank before the Germans spread their net too wide.

He had actually crossed some part of the clearing in front of the hut when his gorge rose at the thought that, win or lose in this game of life and death, he might never again see Irene Beresford. The notion was intolerable. He halted, and turned toward the black wall of the wood. Mad though it was to risk revealing his whereabouts, since he had no means of knowing how close the nearest pursuers might be, he shouted loudly, "Miss Beresford!"

And a sweet voice replied, "Oh, Mr. Dalroy, they told me you were dead, but I refused to believe them!"

Dalroy had staked everything on that last despairing call, little dreaming that it would be answered. It was as though an angel had spoken from out of the black portals of death. He was so taken aback, his spirit was so shaken, that for a few seconds he was tongue-tied, and Irene appeared in the moonlit space before he stirred an inch. She came from an unexpected quarter, from the west, or Argenteau, side.

' ' The others said I was a lunatic to return, ' * she explained simply; "but, when I came to my full senses after being aroused from a sound

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sleep, and told to fly at once because the Ger- mans were on us, I realised that you might have outwitted them again, and would be look- ing for us in vain. So, here I am ! ' '

He ran to her. Now that they were together again he was swift in decision and resolute as ever. "Irene," he said, "you're a dear. Where are our friends? Is there a path? Can you guide me?"

' ' Take my hand, ' ' she replied. ' ' We turn by a big tree in the corner. I think Jan Maertz followed me a little way when he saw I was determined to go back."

"I suppose I had unconscious faith in you, Irene," he whispered, "and that is why I cried your name. But no more talking now. Rapid, silent movement alone can save us."

They had not gone twenty yards beneath the trees when some one hissed, "Vise!"

"Liege, you lump ! ' ' retorted Dalroy.

"Monsieur, I "

"Shut up! Hold mademoiselle's hand, and lead on. ' '

He did not ask whither they were going. The path led diagonally to the left, and that was what he wanted — a way to a flank.

Maertz, however, soon faltered and stopped in his tracks.

"The devil take all woods at night-time!" he growled. ' ' Give me the highroad and a wagon- team, and I'll face anything."

"Are you lost?" asked Dalroy.

A KE SPITE 133

"I suppose so, monsieur. But they can't be far. I told Joos "

' ' Jan, is that you ? ' ' cried Leontine 's voice.

" Ah, Dieu merci! These infernal trees "

"Silence now!" growled Dalroy impera- tively. ' 1 Go ahead as quickly as possible. ' '

The semblance of a path existed; even so, they stumbled over gnarled roots, collided with tree-trunks which stood directly in the way, and had to fend many a low branch off their faces. They created an appalling noise; but were favoured by the fact that the footpath led to the west, whereas the pursuers must climb the cliff on the east.

Leontine, however, led them with the quiet certainty of a country-born girl moving in a familiar environment. She could guess to a yard just where the track was diverted by some huge-limbed elm or far-spreading chestnut, and invariably picked up the right line again, for the excellent reason, no doubt, that the dense undergrowth stood breast high elsewhere at that season of the year.

After a walk that seemed much longer than it really was — the radius of the wood from the hut being never more than two hundred yards in any direction — the others heard her say anx- iously, ' ' Are you there, father ? ' '

"Where the deuce do you think I'd be?" came the irritated demand. "Do you imagine that your mother and I are skipping down these rocks like a couple of weasels?"

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"It is quite safe," said the girl. "I and Marie Lafarge went down only last Thursday. Jules always goes that way to Argenteau. He has cut steps in the bad places. Jan and I will lead. We can help mother and you."

Dalroy, still holding Irene's arm, pressed forward.

"Are we near the tow-path?" he asked.

"Oh, is that you, Monsieur I' Anglais?" chuckled the miller. "Name of a pipe, I was positive those sales Alboches had got you twenty minutes since. Yes, if you trip in the next few yards you '11 find yourself on the tow- path after falling sixty feet."

"Go on, Leontine!" commanded Dalroy. 1 ' What you and your friend did for amusement we can surely do to save our lives. But there should be moonlight on this side. Have any clouds come up?"

"These are firs in front, monsieur. Once clear of them, we can see."

"Very well. Don't lose another second. Only, before beginning the descent, make cer- tain that the river bank holds no Germans. ' '

Joos grumbled, but his wife silenced him. That good lady, it appeared, had given up hope when the struggle broke out in the kitchen. She had been snatched from the jaws of death by a seeming miracle, and regarded Dalroy as a very Paladin. She attributed her rescue en- tirely to him, and was almost inclined to be sceptical of Joos's sensational story about the

A RESPITE 135

killing of Busch. * ' There never was such a man for arguing," she said sharply. "I do believe you'd contradict an archbishop. Do as the gen- tleman bids you. He knows best."

Now, seeing that madame herself, after one look, had refused point-blank to tackle the supposed path, and had even insisted on retreat- ing to the cover of the wood, Joos was entitled to protest. Being a choleric little man, he would assuredly have done so fully and freely had not a red light illumined the tree-tops, while the crackle of a fire was distinctly audible. The Germans had reached the top of the quarry, and, in order to dissipate the impenetrable gloom, had converted the hut into a beacon.

"Misericorde!" he muttered. ''They are burning our provisions, and may set the for- est ablaze!"

And that is what actually happened. The vegetation was dry, as no rain had fallen for many a day. The shavings and store of logs in the hut burned like tinder, promptly creating a raging furnace wholly beyond the control of the unthinking dolts who started it. The breeze which had sprung up earlier became a roaring tornado among the trees, and some acres of woodland were soon in flames. The light of that fire was seen over an area of hun- dreds of miles. Spectators in Holland wrongly attributed it to the burning of Vise, which was, however, only an intelligent anticipation of events, because the delightful old town was com-

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pletely destroyed a week later in revenge for the defeats inflicted on the invaders at Tirlemont and St. Trond during the first advance on Ant- werp.

Once embarked on a somewhat perilous de- scent, the fugitives gave eyes or thought to naught else. Jules, the pioneer quoted by Leontine, who was the owner of the hut and maker of sabots, had rough-hewed a sort of stairway out of a narrow cleft in the rock face. To young people, steady in nerve and sure of foot, the passage was dangerous enough, but to Joos and his wife it offered real hazard. How- ever, they were allowed no time for hesitancy. With Leontine in front, guiding her father, and Maertz next, telling Madame Joos where to put her feet, while Dalroy grasped her broad shoul- ders and gave an occasional eye to Irene, they all reached the level tow-path without the least accident. Irene, by the way, carried the rifle, so that Dalroy should have both hands at liberty.

Without a moment's delay he took the weapon and readjusted the magazine, which he had removed for the climb. Bidding the others follow at such a distance that they would not lose sight of him, yet be able to retire if he found the way disputed by soldiers, he set off in the direction of Argenteau.

In his opinion the next ten minutes would decide whether or not they had even a remote chance of winning through to a place of com-

A RESPITE 137

parative safety. He had made up his own mind what to do if he met any Germans. He would advise the Joos family and Maertz to hide in the cleft they had just descended, while he would take to the Meuse with Irene — provided, that is, she agreed to dare the long swim by night. Happily there was no need to adopt this counsel of despair. The fire, instead of assist- ing the flanking party on the western side, only delayed them. Sheer curiosity as to what was happening in the wood drew all eyes there rather than to the river bank, so the three men and three women passed along the tow-path un- seen and unchallenged.

After a half-mile of rapid progress Dalroy judged that they were safe for the time, and allowed Madame Joos to take a much-needed rest. Though breathless and nearly spent, she, like the others, found an irresistible fascination in the scene lighted by the burning trees. The whole countryside was resplendent in crimson and silver, because the landscape was now steeped in moonshine, and the deep glow of the fire was most perceptible in the patches where ordinarily there would be black shadows. The Meuse resembled a river of blood, the move- ment of its sluggish current suggesting the on- ward roll of some fluid denser than water. Old Joos, whose tongue was seldom at rest, used that very simile.

''Those cursed Prussians have made Belgium a shambles," he added bitterly. "Look at our

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river. It isn't our dear, muddy Meuse. It's a stream in the infernal regions."

"Yes," gasped his wife. "And listen to those guns, Henri! They beat a sort of roulade, like drums in hell ! ' '

This stout Walloon matron had never heard of Milton. Her ears were not tuned to the music of Parnassus. She would have gazed in mild wonder at one who told of "noises loud and ruinous,"

When Bellona storms

With all her battering engines, bent to raze Some capital city.

But in her distress of body and soul she had coined a phrase which two, at least, of her hearers would never forget. The siege of Liege did, indeed, roar and rumble with the din of a demoniac orchestra. Its clamour mounted to the firmament. It was as though the nether fiends, following Moloch's advice, were striving,

Arm'd with Hell flames and fury, all at once, O'er Heaven's high towers to force resistless way.

Dalroy himself yielded to the spell of the moment. Here was red war such as the soldier dreams of. His warrior spirit did not quail. He longed only for the hour, if ever the privi- lege was vouchsafed, when he would stand shoulder to shoulder with the men of his own race, and watch with unflinching eye those same dread tokens of a far-flung battle line.

A RESPITE 139

Irene Beresford seemed to read his pass- ing mood. "War has some elements of great- ness," she said quietly. "The pity is that while it ennobles a few it degrades the mul- titude."

With a woman's intuition, she had gone straight to the heart of the problem propounded by Teutonism to an amazed world. The "deg- radation" of a whole people was already Ger- many's greatest and unforgivable offence. Few, even the most cynical, among the students of European politics could have believed that the Kaiser's troops would sully their country's repute by the inhuman excesses committed dur- ing those first days in Belgium. At the best, "war is hell"; but the great American leader who summed up its attributes in that pithy phrase thought only of the mangled men, the ruined homesteads, the bereaved families which mark its devastating trail. He had seen noth- ing of German " f rightf ulness. " The men he led would have scorned to ravage peaceful vil- lages, impale babies on bayonets and lances, set fire to houses containing old and bedridden people, murder hostages, rape every woman in a community, torture wounded enemies, and shoot harmless citizens in drunken sport. Yet the German armies did all these things before they were a fortnight in the field. They are not impeached on isolated counts, attributable, per- haps, to the criminal instincts of a small minor- ity. They carried out bestial orgies in bat-

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talions and brigades acting under word of com- mand. The jolly, good-humoured fellows who used to tramp in droves through the Swiss passes every summer, each man with a rucksack on his back, and beguiling the road in lusty song, seemed to cast aside all their cheerful camaraderie, all their exuberant kindliness of nature, when garbed in the "field gray" livery of the State, and let loose among the pleasant vales and well-tilled fields of Flanders. That will ever remain Germany's gravest sin. When ' ' the thunder of the captains and the shouting ' ' is stilled, when time has healed the wounds of victor and vanquished, the memories of Vise, of Louvain, of Aershot, of nearly every town and hamlet in Belgium and Northern France once occupied by the savages from beyond the Rhine, will remain imperishable in their horror. German Kultur was a highly polished veneer. Exposed to the hot blast of war it peeled and shrivelled, leaving bare a diseased, worm-eaten structure, in which the honest fibre of humanity had been rotted by vile influences, both social and political.

Women seldom err when they sum up the characteristics of the men of a race, and the women of every other civilised nation were united in their dislike of German men long be- fore the first week in August, 1914. Irene Beresford had yet to peer into the foulest depths of Teutonic "degradation"; but she had sensed it as a latent menace, and found in its

A RESPITE 141

stark records only the fulfilment of her vague fears.

Dalroy read into her words much that she had left unsaid. "At best it's a terrible neces- sity, ' ' he replied ; ' * at worst it 's what we have seen and heard of during the past twenty-four hours. I shall never understand why a people which prided itself on being above all else in- tellectual should imagine that atrocity is a means toward conquest. Such a theory is so untrue historically that Germany might have learnt its folly. ' '

Joos grew uneasy when his English friends spoke in their own language. The suspicious temperament of the peasant is always doubtful of things outside its comprehension. He would have been astounded if told they were discuss- ing the ethics of warfare.

"Well, have you two settled where we're to go?" he demanded gruffly. "In my opinion, the Meuse is the best place for the lot of us."

"In with you, then," agreed Dalroy, "but hand over your money to madame before you take the dip. Leontine and Jan may need it later to start the mill running. ' '

Maertz laughed. The joke appealed strongly.

Madame Joos turned on her husband. "How you do chatter, Henri !" she said. "We all owe our lives to this gentleman, yet you aren't sat- isfied. The Meuse indeed! What will you be saying next!"

* ' How far is Argenteau f ' ' put in Dalroy.

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"That's it, where the house is on fire," said the miller, pointing.

"About a kilometre, I take it?"

"Something like that."

* ' Have you friends there ? ' '

"Ay, scores, if they're alive."

"I hear no shooting in that direction. More- over, an army corps is passing through. Let us go there. Something may turn up. We shall be safer among thousands of Germans than here."

They walked on. The Englishman's air of de- cision was a tonic in itself.

The fire on the promontory was now at its height, but a curve in the river hid the fugi- tives from possible observation. Dalroy was confident as to two favourable factors — the men of the marching column would not search far along the way they had come, and their commander would recall them when the wood yielded no trace of its supposed occupants.

There had been fighting along the right bank of the Meuse during the previous day. Ger- man helmets, red and yellow Belgian caps, por- tions of accoutrements and broken weapons, littered the tow-path. But no bodies were in evidence. The river had claimed the dead and the wounded Belgians; the enemy's wounded had been transferred to Aix-la-Chapelle.

Nearing Argenteau they heard a feeble cry. They stopped, and listened. Again it came, clearly this time : " Elsa ! Elsa ! ' '

It was a man's voice, and the name was that

A RESPITE 143

of a German woman. Maertz searched in a thicket, and found a young German officer lying there. He was delirious, calling for the help of one powerless to aid.

He seemed to become aware of the presence of some human being. Perhaps his atrophied senses retained enough vitality to hear the passing footsteps.

"Elsa!" he moaned again, "give me water, for God's sake!"

"He's done for," reported Maertz to the waiting group. "He's covered with blood."

"For all that he may prove our salvation," said Dalroy quickly. ' * Sharp, now ! Pitch our firearms and ammunition into the river. We must lift a gate off its hinges, and carry that fellow into Argenteau."

Joos grinned. He saw the astuteness of the scheme. A number of Belgian peasants bring- ing a wounded officer to the ambulance would probably be allowed to proceed scot-free. But he was loath to part with the precious fork on which the blood of "that fat Busch" was con- gealing. He thrust it into a ditch, and if ever he was able to retrieve it no more valued souvenir of the great war will adorn his dwell- ing. They possessed neither wine nor water; but a tiny rivulet flowing into the Meuse under a neighbouring bridge supplied the latter, and the wounded man gulped down great mouthf uls out of a Pickel-haube. It partially cleared his wits.

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"Where am I?" he asked faintly.

Dalroy nodded to Joos, who answered, "On the Meuse bank, near Argenteau."

"Ah, I remember. Those cursed "

Some dim perception of his surroundings choked the word on his lips. "I was hit," he went on, "and crawled among the bushes."

"Was there fighting here this morning?"

1 ' Yes. To-day is Tuesday, isn 't it ! "

"No, Wednesday midnight."

"Ach, Gott! That verdammt ambulance missed me ! I have lain here two days !"

This time he swore without hesitation, since he was cursing his own men.

Jan came with a hurdle. "This is lighter than a gate, monsieur," he explained.

Dalroy nudged Joos sharply, and the miller took the cue. "Eight," he said. "Now, you two, handle him carefully. ' '

The German groaned piteously, and fainted.

* ' Oh, he 's dead ! ' ' gasped Irene, when she saw his head drop.

"No, he will recover. But don't speak Eng- lish.— As for you, Jan Maertz, no more of your 'monsieur' and 'madame.' I am Pierre, and this lady is Clementine. You understand!"

Dalroy spoke emphatically. Had the Ger- man retained his wits their project might be undone. In the event, the pain of movement on the hurdle revived the wounded man, and he asked for more water. They were then enter- ing the outskirts of Argenteau, so they kept on.

A RESPITE 145

Soon they gained the main road, and Joos inquired of an officer the whereabouts of a field hospital. He directed them quite civ- illy, and offered to detail men to act as bearers. But the miller was now his own shrewd self again.

' ' No, ' ' he said bluntly, * ' I and my family have rescued your officer, and we want a safe conduct."

Off they went with their living passport. The field hospital was established in the village school, and here the patient was turned over to a surgeon. As it happened, the latter recog- nised a friend, and was grateful. He sent an orderly with them to find the major in charge of the lines of communication, and they had not been in Argenteau five minutes before they were supplied with a laisser passer, in which they figured as Wilhelm Schultz, farmer, and wife, Clementine and Leontine, daughters, and the said daughters ' fiances, Pierre Dampier and Georges Lambert ; residence Aubel ; destination Andenne.

There was not the least hitch in the matter. The major was, in his way, courteous. Joos gave his own Christian name as "Guillaume," but the German laughed.

"You're a good citizen of the Fatherland now, my friend," he guffawed, "so we'll make it 'Wilhelm.' As for this pair of doves," and he eyed the two girls, "warn off any of our lads. Tell them that I, Major von Arnheim,

146 THE DAY OF WRATH

said so. They're a warm lot where a pretty woman is concerned."