Of all the pitiful sights I have ever seen, that road was the most utterly pitiful.  We moved on slowly through a dense throng of fugitives—­ men, women, and little children—­all with bundles over their shoulders, in which was all that they possessed.  A woman with three babies clinging to her skirts, a small boy wheeling his grandmother in a wheelbarrow, family after family, all moving away from the horror that lay behind to the misery that lay in front.  We had heard of Louvain, and we had seen Termonde, and we understood.  As darkness came down we lit our lamps, and there along the roadside sat rows of fugitives, resting before recommencing their long journey through the night.  There was one row of little children which will live for ever in my memory, tiny mites sitting together on a bank by the roadside.  We only saw them for an instant as our lights fell on them, and they disappeared in the darkness.  Germany will have to pay for Louvain and Termonde.  It is not with man that she will have to settle for that row of little children.

We had a few vacant seats when we left Antwerp, but they were soon filled by fugitives whom we picked up on the road.  Strangely enough, we picked up two of our friends in Antwerp with their families.  One was the doctor who had taken all our radiographs for us, and to whom we owed a great deal in many ways.  He had left his beautiful house, with X-ray apparatus on which he had spent his fortune, incomparably superior to any other that I have ever seen, and here he was trudging along the road, with his wife, his two children, and their nurse.  They were going to St. Nicholas, on their way to Holland, and were delighted to get a lift.  Unfortunately, by some mistake, the nurse and children left the bus at Zwyndrecht, a few miles from Antwerp, the doctor came on to St. Nicholas, and his wife went right through with us to Ghent.  It took him three days to find the children, and when we last heard from him he was in Holland, having lost everything he had in the world, and after two months he had not yet found his wife.  And this is only an instance of what has happened all over Belgium.

We reached St. Nicholas about eight o’clock, having covered thirteen miles in three hours.  It was quite dark, and as we had a long night before us we decided to stop and get some food for ourselves and our patients.  There was not much to be had, but, considering the stream of fugitives, it was wonderful that there was anything.  We hoped now to be able to push on faster, and to reach Ghent before midnight, for it is only a little over twenty miles by the direct road.  To our dismay, we found that Lokeren, half-way to Ghent, was in the hands of the Germans, and that we must make a detour, taking us close to the Dutch border, and nearly doubling the distance.  Without a guide, and in the dark, we could never have reached our destination; but we were fortunate enough to get a guide, and we set out on our long drive through the night.  Twenty minutes later a German scouting party entered St. Nicholas.  It was a narrow margin, but it was sufficient.