wallow."

For ten days the Bavarians had Gerbeviller. They tore it to pieces
before they got it, then burned the remains because they said the
population sniped at them. All the orgy of Louvain was repeated here,
unchronicled to our people at home. The church looks like a Swiss
cheese from shell-holes. Its steeple was bound to be an observation
post, reasoned the Germans; so they poured shells into it. But the
brewery had a tall chimney which was an even better lookout, and the
brewery is the one building unharmed in the town. The Bavarians
knew that they would need that for their commissariat. For a Bavarian
will not fight without his beer. The land was littered with barrels after
they had gone. I saw some in trenches occupied by Bavarian
reserves not far back of where their firing-line had been.

"However, the fact that the brewery is intact and the church in ruins
does not prove that a brewery is better than a church. It only proves
which is the Lord's side in this war," said Sister Julie. But I get ahead
of my story.

In the middle of the main street were half a dozen smoke-blackened
houses which remained standing, an oasis in the sea of destruction,
with doors and windows intact facing gaps where doors and windows
had been. We entered with a sense of awe of the chance which had
spared these buildings.

"Sister Julie!" the major called.

A short, sturdy nun of about sixty years answered cheerily and
appeared in the dark hall. She led us into the sitting-room, where she
spryly placed chairs for our little party. She was smiling; her eyes
were sparkling with a hospitable and kindly interest in us, while I felt,
on my part, that thrill of curiosity that one always has when he meets
some celebrated person for the first time--curiosity no less keen than
if I were to meet Barbara Frietchie.

Through all that battle of ten days, with the cannon never silent day or
night, with shells screaming overhead and crashing into houses;
through ten days of thunder and lightning and earthquake, she and
her four sister associates remained in Gerbeviller. When the town
was fired they moved from one building to another. They nursed both
wounded French and Germans; also wounded townspeople who
could not flee with the others.

"You were not frightened? You did not think of going away?" she was
asked.

"Frightened?" she answered. "I had not time to think of that. Go
away? How could I when the Lord's work had come to me?"

Pres