“They don’t know.  The Bosches took all they had and drove the live-stock away.  These few sticks are all they have left.  Curious, isn’t it,” he added meditatively, “that you never see any Flemish fugitives without their feather-beds?” I had often noticed it.  Also I had noticed the curious purposelessness of their salvage, as though in trying to save everything they succeeded in saving nothing that was of any consequence.  Perhaps it is that, as some one has remarked, all things suddenly become equally dear when you have to leave them.

“But where are they going?”

The man stared at my companion as he put my question; the woman gazed vacantly at the lowering horizon, but neither uttered a word.  The canary in its little prison of wire-work piped joyfully, as a gleam of sunshine lit up the watery landscape.  Somewhere the guns spoke in a dull thunder.  The woman was pleating a fold of her skirt between thumb and forefinger, plucking and unplucking with immense care and concentration.  The man was suddenly shaken with a fit of asthma, and clutched at the cart as though seeking support.

We waited for some reply, and at length the man answered between the spasms of his malady.

“He says he doesn’t know,” my companion translated.  “He’s never been outside his parish before.  But he thinks he’ll go to Brussels and see the King of the Belgians.  He doesn’t know the Germans are in Brussels.  And anyhow he’s on the wrong road.”

“But surely,” I hazarded, “the maire or the cure could have told him better.”

“He says the Germans shot the cure and carried off the maire.  It’s a way they’ve got, you know.”

It was now clear to us that this tragic couple were out on an uncharted sea.  Their little world was in ruins.  The bells that had called them to the divine offices were silent; the little church in which they had knelt at mass was in ruins; the parish registers which chronicled the great landmarks in their lives had been devoured by the flames; their hearth was cold and their habitation desolate.  They had watched the heavens but they might not sow; they had turned their back on the fields which they would never reap.  There was an end to all their husbandry, and they had no one left to speak with their enemies in the gate.  This was the secret of their heavy lethargy.

My companion and I took counsel together.  It were better, we agreed, to maintain them on the road to Bailleul.  For we knew that, though Bailleul had been stripped bare by the German hussars before they evacuated it, the French, out of the warmth of their hearts, and the British, out of the fulness of their supplies, would succour this forlorn couple.  Many a time had I known the British soldier pass round the hat to relieve the refugees out of the exiguous pay of himself and his fellows; not seldom has he risked a stoppage of pay or a spell of field-punishment by parting with an overcoat, for whose absence at kit inspection he would supply every excuse but the true one.  And, therefore, to Bailleul we directed them to go.