en't time--so they tie the corpses
together, slinging four on a pole for easy handling, ship them to
Germany, and chuck them into furnaces."

"So," guffawed Maertz, "the swine know where they are going then!"

To Dalroy's secret amazement, Irene, who understood each word, laughed
with the others. Campaigning had not coarsened, but it had undeniably
hardened her nature. A month ago she would have shuddered at sight of
these dun trucks, with their ghastly freight. Now, so long as they only
contained Germans, she surveyed them with interest.

"Allowing forty bodies to one wagon," she said, "there are over a
thousand dead men in that train alone."

The farmer spat approval. "I've been busy, and have missed some; but
that's the tenth lot which has gone east this morning," he remarked
cheerfully.

"Is the road to Nivelles fairly open?" Dalroy ventured to inquire.

"One never knows. Anyhow, always give the next village as your
destination. If doubtful, travel by night."

This counsel was well meant. In the silent bitterness of hours yet to
come, Dalroy recalled it, and wished he had profited by it.

Roughly speaking, they had set out on a fifty miles' tramp, which the
men could have tackled in two days, or less. But the presence of Irene
lowered the scale, and Dalroy apportioned matters so that twelve miles
daily formed their programme, with, as the _entrepreneurs_ say, power to
increase or curtail. Thus, that first afternoon, the date being
September 2nd, they pulled up at Gembloux, quite a small place, finding
supper and beds in a farm beyond the village.

Next day they pushed ahead through Nivelles, and entered the forest of
Soignies, that undulating woodland on which Wellington depended for the
protection of a dangerous flank during the unavoidable retreat to the
coast if Napoleon had beaten the British army at Waterloo.

Dalroy explained the Iron Duke's strategy to Irene as they paced a road
which provides an ideal walking tour.

"That a General was not worth his salt who did not secure the track of
his army if defeated was one of his fixed principles," he said. "He
would never depart from it, and his dispositions at Waterloo were based
on it. In fact, his solicitude in that respect nearly caused a row
between him and Bluecher."

"Let me see," mused the girl aloud. "The Germans have never fought the
British in modern times until this war."

"That is correct."

"And how far away is Mons?"

Dalroy smiled