and went wrong first, and had to come back through that horrible camp again.  Seven times we were stopped and searched, and each time I pointed to my German brassard and produced my Belgian Carte d’Identite.  Sister did not speak French or German, but she was very good and did not lose her head, or give us away by speaking English to me.  And at last—­it seemed hours to us—­we got safely past the last sentry.  Footsore and weary, but very thankful, we trudged back to Brussels.

But that was not quite the end of our adventure, for just as we were getting into Brussels an officer galloped after us, and dismounted as soon as he got near us.  He began asking in broken French the most searching questions as to our movements.  I could not keep it up and had to tell him that we were English.  He really nearly fell down with surprise, and wanted to know, naturally enough, what we were doing there.  I told him the exact truth—­how we had started out for Malines, were unable to get there and so were returning to Brussels.  “But,” he said at once, “you are not on the Malines road.”  He had us there, but I explained that we had rested at a convent and that the nuns had shown us a short cut, and that we had got on to the wrong road quite by mistake.  He asked a thousand questions, and wanted the whole history of our lives from babyhood up.  Eventually I satisfied him apparently, for he saluted, and said in English as good as mine, “Truly the English are a wonderful nation,” mounted his horse and rode away.

I did not try any more excursions to Tirlemont after that, but heard later on that my nurse was safe and in good hands.

* * * * *

My business in Brussels was now finished, and I wanted to return to my hospital at M. The German authorities met my request with a blank refusal.  I was not at all prepared for this.  I had only come in for two days and had left all my luggage behind me.  Also one cannot leave one’s hospital in this kind of way without a word of explanation to anyone.  I could not go without permission, and it was more than sixty kilometres, too far to walk.  I kept on asking, and waited and waited, hoping from day to day to get permission to return.

Instead of that came an order that every private ambulance and hospital in Brussels was to be closed at once, and that no wounded at all were to be nursed by the English Sisters.  The doctor and several of the Sisters belonging to the Red Cross unit were imprisoned for twenty-four hours under suspicion of being spies.  Things could not go on like this much longer.  What I wanted to do was to send all my nurses back to England if it could be arranged, and return myself to my work at M. till it was finished.  We were certainly not wanted in Brussels.  The morning that the edict to close the hospitals had been issued, I saw about 200 German Red Cross Sisters arriving at the Gare du Nord.

I am a member of the International Council of Nurses, and our last big congress was held in Germany.  I thus became acquainted with a good many of the German Sisters, and wondered what the etiquette would be if I should meet some of them now in Brussels.  But I never saw any I knew.