d they could have expected or
hoped to hear--a tremendous roar of laughter! Paul's courage in
defying them had won the admiration of the German soldiers at last.
Brave men are nearly always ready to pay a tribute to bravery in others.

But if they had escaped from one danger, they had still to face another
and one that might be even greater, as they well knew. For Raymond,
the butcher, had seen them in the cellar. No doubt he knew by this
time what had happened to his guns, and he would certainly know who was
to blame for their condition. He would be more certain than ever that
they were traitors to Belgium, since he was too stupid to understand
how well the scouts had served him, and it was sure that he and his
cronies of the civic guard would make some attempt to secure revenge.

Indeed, even as they came into the street, Paul saw a lurking figure
across the way, that moved as they did.

"Don't look around," he whispered to Arthur. "But I think that Raymond
is watching us from the other side of the street. We must be careful."

And then, suddenly, without the slightest warning, a whistling sound
that both scouts knew well after their experience during the shelling
of the German battery near their old home, was heard overhead. It was
followed in a few seconds by a terrific explosion. But fortunately the
explosion was at some distance. The shell, for it was a shell that
they had heard, burst outside of the village and did no damage.

But it created a tremendous effect, none the less. At once the German
officers came running from the doctor's house where they were
quartered, and, as more shells burst nearby, bugles sounded, and the
German soldiers came running to the centre of the village, gathering
rapidly from the houses where they had been enjoying their brief
respite from war. Sentries and all were called in, and within three
minutes the troops were off, at the double quick, going in the
direction whence they had come to enter the village of Hannay.

And now the comparative silence of the night, that had been broken
before then only by the dull and intermittent thunder of the guns
around Liege, was shattered in a thousand ways. Heavy firing by
infantry rifles, as well as by field guns, came from the north. It was
plain that Belgian or French troops must have been advancing with great
rapidity to interfere with the German raid on the country between Liege
and Brussels. Flashes of fire marked the bur