ut of France in war-time is not a simple matter.

When we tried to follow the flight of our luggage through the station
door we were stopped by a sentry with a rifle. We produced our
passports. They were not enough.

At the sight of us brought to halt there, all the refugees began to
agitate their slips of paper. And on the slips we read the words
"_Laissez-passer_."

My British Red Cross lady had no "_laissez-passer_." I had only my
sixteenth part in the "_laissez-passer_" of the Corps, and that, hidden
away in the Commandant's breast-pocket, was a part either of the
luncheon-party or of the interview with the Belgian Minister of War.

We couldn't get military passes, for military passes take time; and the
train was due in about fifteen minutes.

And the fatherly porter had vanished, taking with him the secret of our
luggage.

It was a fatherly old French gentleman who advised us to go to the
British _Consulat_. And it was a fatherly old French _cocher_ who drove
us there, or rather who drove us through interminable twisted streets
and into blind alleys and out of them till we got there.

As for our luggage, we renounced it and Mr. Foster's and Dr. Hanson's
luggage in the interests of our own safety.

At last we got to the British _Consulat_. Only I think the _cocher_ took
us to the Town Hall and the Hospital and the British Embassy and the
Admiralty offices first.

At intervals during this transit the British Red Cross lady explained
again that she was doing the right thing in leaving Ostend. It wasn't as
if she was leaving her post, she was going on a hospital ship. She was
sure she had done the right thing.

It was not for me to be unsympathetic to an obsession produced by a
retreat, so I assured her again and again that if there ever was a right
thing she had done it. My heart bled for this poor lady, abandoned by
the organization that had brought her out.

In the courtyard of the _Consulat_ we met a stalwart man in khaki, who
smiled as a god might smile at our trouble, and asked us why on earth we
hadn't got a passage on the naval transport _Victoria_, sailing at three
o'clock. We said nothing would have pleased us better, only we had
never heard of the _Victoria_ and her sailing. And he took us to the
Consul, and the Consul--who must have been buried alive in detail--gave
us a letter to Captain King of the _Victoria_, and the _cocher_ drove us
to the dock.

Captain King was an angel. He was the hea