As we sat in chairs tilted against the wall and watched, we witnessed an interesting little side play.  At the first coming of the German skirmishers the people of this quarter of the town had seemed stupefied with amazement and astonishment.  Most of them, it subsequently developed, had believed right up to the last minute that the forts of Liege still held out and that the Germans had not yet passed the gateways of their country, many kilometers to the eastward.  When the scouts of the enemy appeared in their streets they fell for the moment into a stunned state.  A little later the appearance of a troop of Uhlans had revived their resentment.  We had heard that quick hiss and snarl of hatred which sprang from them as the lancers trotted into view on their superb mounts out of the mouth of a neighboring lane, and had seen how instantaneously the dull, malignant gleam of gun metal, as a sergeant pulled his pistol on them, had brought the silence of frightened respect again.

It now appeared that realization of the number of the invaders was breeding in the Belgians a placating spirit.  If a soldier fell out of line at the door of a house to ask for water, all within that house strove to bring the water to him.  If an officer, returning from a small sortie into other streets, checked up to ask the way to rejoin his command, a dozen eager arms waved in chorus to point out the proper direction, and a babble of solicitous voices arose from the group about his halted horse.

Young Belgian girls began smiling at soldiers swinging by and the soldiers grinned back and waved their arms.  You might almost have thought the troops were Allies passing through a friendly community.  This phase of the plastic Flemish temperament made us marvel.  When I was told, a fortnight afterward, how these same people rose in the night to strike at these their enemies, and how, so doing, they brought about the ruination of their city and the summary executions of some hundreds of themselves, I marveled all the more.

Presently, as we sat there, we heard—­above the rumbling of cannon wheels, the nimble clunking of hurrying hoofs and the heavy thudding of booted feet, falling and rising all in unison—­a new note from overhead, a combination of whir and flutter and whine.  We looked aloft.  Directly above the troops, flying as straight for Brussels as a homing bee for the hive, went a military monoplane, serving as courier and spy for the crawling columns below it.  Directly, having gone far ahead, it came speeding back, along a lower air lane and performed a series of circling and darting gyrations, which doubtlessly had a signal-code meaning for the troops.  Twice or three times it swung directly above our heads, and at the height at which it now evoluted we could plainly distinguish the downward curve of its wing-planes and the peculiar droop of the rudder —­both things that marked it for an army model.  We could also make out the black cross painted on its belly as a further distinguishing mark.