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

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

“M’sieurs, the French are in Brussels, are they not?”

“No,” we told him.

“The British, then—­they must be there by now?”

“No; the British aren’t there, either.”

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

“How far away are the Germans?” we asked him.

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

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

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

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

At a door let into a high stone wall he stopped and rang a bell.  A brother in a brown robe came and unbarred the gate for us, and our guide led us under an arched alley and out again into the open; and behold we were in another world from the little world of panic that we had just left.  There was a high-walled inclosure with a neglected tennis court in the middle, and pear and plum trees burdened with fruit; and at the far end, beneath a little arbor of vines, four priests were sitting together.  At sight of us they rose and came to us, and shook hands all round.  Almost before we knew it we were in a bare little room behind the ancient Church of Saint Jacques, and one of the fathers was showing us a map in order that we might better understand the lay of the land; and another was uncorking a bottle of good red wine, which he brought up from the cellar, with a halo of mold on the cork and a mantle of cobwebs on its sloping shoulders.