Realization came to us that here we were, pocketed.  There were armed Belgians in an alley behind us and armed Germans in the street before us; and we were nicely in between.  If shooting started the enemies might miss each other, but they could not very well miss us.  Two of our party found a courtyard and ran through it.  The third pressed close up against a house front and I made for the half-open door of a shop.

Just as I reached it a woman on the inside slammed it in my face and locked it.  I never expect to see her again; but that does not mean that I ever expect to forgive her.  The next door stood open, and from within its shelter I faced about to watch for what might befall.  Nothing befell except that the Germans rode slowly past me, both vigilantly keen in poise and look, both with weapons unshipped.

I got an especially good view of the cavalry.  He was a tall, lean, blond young man, man with a little yellow mustache and high cheekbones like an Indian’s; and he was sunburned until he was almost as red as an Indian.  The sight of that limping French dragoon the day before had made me think of a picture by Meissonier or Detaille, but this German put me in mind of one of Frederic Remington’s paintings.  Change his costume a bit, and substitute a slouch hat for his flat-topped lancer’s cap, and he might have cantered bodily out of one of Remington’s canvases.

He rode past me—­he and his comrade on the wheel—­and in an instant they were gone into another street, and the people who had scurried to cover at their coming were out again behind them, with craned necks and startled faces.

Our group reassembled itself somehow and followed after those two Germans who could jog along so serenely through a hostile town.  We did not crowd them—­our health forbade that—­but we now desired above all things to get back to our taxicab, two miles or more away, before our line of retreat should be cut off.  But we had tarried too long at our bread and cheese.

When we came to where the street leading to the Square of Saint Jacques joined the street that led in turn to the Brussels road, all the people there were crouching in their doorways as quiet as so many mice, all looking in the direction in which we hoped to go, all pointing with their hands.  No one spoke, but the scuffle of wooden-shod feet on the flags made a sliding, slithering sound, which someway carried a message of warning more forcible than any shouted word or sudden shriek.

We looked where their fingers aimed, and, as we looked, a hundred feet away through a cloud of dust a company of German foot soldiers swung across an open grassplot, where a little triangular park was, and straightened out down the road to Brussels, singing snatches of a German marching song as they went.

And behind them came trim officers on handsome, high-headed horses, and more infantry; then a bicycle squad; then cavalry, and then a light battery, bumping along over the rutted stones, with white dust blowing back from under its wheels in scrolls and pennons.