ow keen and sharp it was. He added, with appropriate gestures, that he
had honed it with the particular intent of slicing off a few English
heads. For one, and speaking for one only, I may say I was, on the
whole, rather glad when he departed from among us.

When we grew tired of watching the troop trains streaming south we
fought the flies, and listened for perhaps the tenth time to the story
of Stevens' experience when he first fell into German hands, six days
before.

Stevens was the young American who accompanied Gerbeaux, the Frenchman,
and Hennebert, the Belgian, on their ill-timed expedition from Brussels
in an automobile bearing without authority a Red Cross flag. Gerbeaux
was out to get a story for the Chicago paper which he served as Brussels
correspondent, and the Belgian hoped to take some photographs; but a
pure love of excitement brought Stevens along. He had his passport to
prove his citizenship and a pass from General von Jarotzky, military
commandant of Brussels, authorizing him to pass through the lines. He
thought he was perfectly safe.

When their machine was halted by the Germans a short distance south and
west of Waterloo, Stevens, for some reason which he could never
understand, was separated from his two companions and the South-African
negro chauffeur. A sergeant took him in charge, and all the rest of the
day he rode on the tail of a baggage wagon with a guard upon either side
of him. First, though, he was searched and all his papers were taken
from him.

Late in the afternoon the pack-train halted and as Stevens was
stretching his legs in a field a first lieutenant, whom he described as
being tall and nervous and highly excitable, ran up and, after berating
the two guards for not having their rifles ready to fire, he poked a gun
under Stevens' nose and went through the process of loading it,
meanwhile telling him that if he moved an inch his brains would be blown
out. A sergeant gently edged Stevens back out of the danger belt, and,
from behind the officer's back another man, so Stevens said, tapped
himself gently upon the forehead to indicate that the Herr Lieutenant
was cracked in the brain.

After this Stevens was taken into an improvised barracks in a deserted
Belgian gendarmerie and locked in a room. At nine o'clock the
lieutenant came to him and told him in a mixture of French and German
that he had by a court-martial been found guilty of being an English spy
and that at s