All at once, coming out of nowhere, a wave of panic swept down the street like a squall across a still pond.

“Bing—­Bang!” went wooden shutters over windows, the stout housewives flinging the bars home and gathering up their children.  Doors slammed, windows closed—­it was like something in a play—­and almost as soon as it takes to tell it there was not a head, not a sound; the low houses were one blank wall, and we stood in the street alone.

Just such scenes as this people must have known in the days when Europe was a general battle-ground—­when the French or the Spanish came into Flanders; just such villages, just such housewives slamming shutters close—­you can see them now in old Flemish pictures.

Slowly doors and windows opened, heads poked out.  The little street filled, the knots of people gathered again.  We walked up and down, the linen merchant flinging out his arms and his reassurances more and more vigorously.  Half an hour passed, and then, all at once, it came again.  And this time it was real.  The Germans were coming!

Down the straight, paved highway, a mile or so away, at the farther end of an avenue of elms which framed them like a tunnel, was a band of horsemen.  They were coming at an easy trot, half a dozen in single file on either side of the road.  We could see their lances, held rakishly upstanding across the saddle, then the tail of the near horse whisking to and fro.  One, crossing over, was outlined against the sky, and those who could see whispered:  “One is standing sidewise!” as if this were somehow important.  Tears rolled down the cheeks of the women huddled inside the door before which we stood.

Coming nearer and nearer up that long tunnel of trees, like one of those unescapable things seen in dreams, the little gray spot of moving figures grew to strange proportions—­“the Germans!”—­front of that frightful avalanche.  A few hundred yards away they pulled down to a walk, and slowly, peering sharply out from under their helmets, entered the silent street.  Another moment and the leader was alongside, and we found ourselves looking up at a boy, not more than twenty he seemed, with blue eyes and a clean-cut, gentle face.  He passed without a look or word, but behind him a young officer, soldier-like and smart in the Prussian fashion, with a half-opened map in his hand, asked the way to a near-by village.  He took the linen merchant’s direction without pausing and the horses swung down the side street.  “Do you speak English?” he called back, as if, in happier times, we might have been friends, and, without waiting for an answer, trotted on into the growing dusk.