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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It began to rain hard as our automobile moved through the wreckage-strewn street which, being followed, would bring us to the homeward road—­home in this instance meaning Germany.  The rain, soaking into the debris, sent up a sour, nasty smell, which pursued us until we had cleared the town.  That exhalation might fully have been the breath of the wasted place, just as the distant, never-ending boom of the guns might have been the lamenting voice of the war-smitten land itself.

I remember Liege best at this present distance by reason of a small thing that occurred as we rode, just before dusk, through a byway near the river.  In the gloomy, wet Sunday street two bands of boys were playing at being soldiers.  Being soldiers is the game all the children in Northern Europe have played since the first of last August.

From doorways and window sills their lounging elders watched these Liege urchins as they waged their mimic fight with wooden guns and wooden swords; but, while we looked on, one boy of an inventive turn of mind was possessed of a great idea.  He proceeded to organize an execution against a handy wall, with one small person to enact the role of the condemned culprit and half a dozen others to make up the firing squad.

As the older spectators realized what was afoot a growl of dissent rolled up and down the street; and a stout, red-faced matron, shrilly protesting, ran out into the road and cuffed the boys until they broke and scattered.  There was one game in Liege the boys might not play.