me directions about the road. She gave them cheerfully, though the
house at her back was little more than a mass of ruins.

"Were you here in the fighting?" we asked.

"But no, messieurs," she answered with a short laugh. "If I had been
here, I should not be here. I ran away to Holland and returned yesterday
to my house. But how shall I creep in?" She pointed over her shoulder to
the pile of bricks. "I am not a cat or a rat."

They are indomitable, those Flemish people. At Lierre we were very
hungry and searched vainly for an inn or a grocery. At last in one of
the streets we saw a little baker-shop. The upper story was riddled and
broken. But the shop was untouched, the window-shade half up, and
underneath we could see two loaves of bread. We went in. The bare-armed
baker met us.

"Can you sell us a little bread?"

"But certainly, messieurs, that is what I am here for. Not the window
loaves, however; I have a fresh loaf, if you please. Also a little
cheese, if you will."

"Were you here in the fighting?"

"Assuredly not! It was impossible. But I hurried back after three days.
You see, messieurs, some people were returning, and me--I am the Baker
of Lierre."

He said it as if it were a title of nobility.

At Malines (Mechelen) the devastation appeared perhaps more shocking
because we had known the russet and gray old city so well in peaceful
years. Many of the streets were impassable, choked with debris. One side
of the great Square was knocked to fragments. The huge belfry, Saint
Rombaud's Tower, wherein hangs the famous carillon of more than thirty
bells, was battered but still stood firm. The vast cathedral was a
melancholy wreck of its former beauty and grandeur. The roof was but a
skeleton of bare rafters; the side wall pierced with gaping rents and
holes; the pictured windows were all gone; the sunlight streamed in
everywhere upon the stone floor, strewn with an indescribable confusion
of shattered glass, fallen beams, fragments of carved wood, and broken
images of saints.

A little house behind the Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the roof
and upper story of which had been pierced by shells, seemed to be
occupied. We knocked and went in. The man and his wife were in the
sitting-room, trying to put it in order. Much of the furniture was
destroyed; the walls were pitted with shrapnel-scars, but the cheap
ornaments on the mantel were unbroken. In the ceiling was a big hole,
and in the floor a pit i