It was a strange picture they made there.  On the wall, on a row of hooks, still hung the small umbrellas and book-satchels of the pupils.  Presumably at the coming of the Germans they had run home in such a panic that they left their school-traps behind.  There were sums in chalk, half erased, on the blackboard; and one of the troopers took a scrap of chalk and wrote “On to Paris!” in big letters here and there.  A sleepy parrot, looking like a bundle of rumpled green feathers, squatted on its perch in a cage behind the master’s desk, occasionally emitting a loud squawk as though protesting against this intrusion on its privacy.

When their wine had warmed them our soldier-hosts sang and sang, unendingly.  They had been on the march all day, and next day would probably march half the day and fight the other half, for the French and English were just ahead; but now they sprawled over the school benches and drummed on the boards with their fists and feet, and sang at the tops of their voices.  They sang their favorite marching songs—­Die Wacht am Rhein, of course; and Deutschland, Deutschland, Uber Alles! which has a fine, sonorous cathedral swing to it; and God Save the King!—­with different words to the air, be it said; and Haltet Aus!  Also, for variety, they sang Tannenbaum—­with the same tune as Maryland, My Maryland!—­and Heil dir im Sieges-kranz; and snatches from various operas.

When one of us asked for Heine’s Lorelei they sang not one verse of it, or two, but twenty or more; and then, by way of compliment to the guests of the evening, they reared upon their feet and gave us The Star Spangled Banner, to German words.  Suddenly two of them began dancing.  In their big rawhide boots, with hobbed soles and steel-shod heels, they pounded back and forth, while the others whooped them on.  One of the dancers gave out presently; but the other seemed still unimpaired in wind and limb.  He darted into an adjoining room and came back in a minute dragging a half-frightened, half-pleased little Belgian scullery maid and whirled her about to waltz music until she dropped for want of breath to carry her another turn; after which he did a solo—­Teutonic version—­of a darky breakdown, stopping only to join in the next song.

It was eleven o’clock and they were still singing when we left them and went groping through dark hallways to where our simple hay mattress awaited us.  I might add that we were indebted to a corporal of lancers for the hay, which he pilfered from the feed racks outside after somebody had stolen the two bundles of straw one of us had previously purchased.  Except for his charity of heart we should have lain on the cold flagging.

The next morning was Thursday morning, and by Thursday night, at the very latest, we counted on being back in Brussels; but we were not destined to see Brussels again for nearly six weeks.  We breakfasted frugally on good bread and execrable coffee at a half-wrecked little cafe where soldiers had slept; and at eleven o’clock, when we had bestowed Bulotte, the ancient nag, and the dogcart on an accommodating youth—­giving them to him as a gracious gift, since neither he nor anyone else would buy the outfit at any price—­we repaired to the villa to report ourselves and start on our return to the place whence we had come so laboriously.