They joined in behind the stream of other carts which we were now accustomed to seeing.  In fact, this general exodus no longer astonished us.  It seemed as if the panic had spread over the whole of Flanders like a drop of oil on a sheet of paper.  To us, who consider ourselves as living in the suburbs of Paris, Belgium is so far away!

I wound off my film and was returning towards the house, when two very distinguished looking girls stepped off their bicycles and asked for directions.  I gave them with pleasure and in turn ventured a few questions.

They were from St. Quentin!  That startled me.  They had been en route two days.  They had not seen the Germans, but the town had been officially evacuated.  A man on a bicycle had sped by them the day before and announced the bombardment and destruction of their native city!  Hard fighting at La Fere.

St. Quentin!  Then the Germans were on our soil!  The Belgians were right—­they were evidently advancing rapidly.  But why worry?  We were safe as long as we had the French army between us and them.

Thought as yet the day was but a couple of hours old, I was weary.  This business of hotel-keeping on so large it scale with so little assistance was beginning to tell on my strength.  I opened the gate and told George and Leon to welcome any who wished to come in, and then repairing to the kitchen, I sat down and began helping the others prepare vegetables.  The discovery that in spite of all their good will guests had necessarily left many traces of their passage, brought me to my feet again, and we were all hard at work when a haggard female face looked in at the kitchen window.

“Is there a doctor here?”

“No,—­but—­”

The woman burst into tears.  Madame Guix and I hurried out into the court.  “My baby—­I can’t seem to warm her,” moaned the poor mother.  “She hasn’t eaten anything since yesterday.”

And stretching out her arms, the woman showed us an infant that she had been carrying in her apron.  It was dead.

I had difficulty in overcoming my emotion, but Madame Guix took the poor little corpse into her arms, and I helped the mother to an arm chair in the refectory.

A cup of strong coffee brought back a little color to her wan cheeks and she told us she was from Charleville.  The Taubes had got in their sinister work to good advantage among the civil population but they were merely the forerunners of another and heavier bombardment.  The townspeople had fled in their night clothes.

“Are you alone?”

“Yes—­I’m not a native of Charleville.  My husband and I have only been married a year.  He left the second of August and the baby was born the tenth.  She’s only three weeks old.”

No wonder the mother looked haggard—­one hundred and fifty miles on foot, with a newborn infant in her arms, fleeing for her life before the barbarous hordes!