an infantry to break through.

The infantry assaults lasted until eight o'clock in the morning, when
the Germans withdrew, heavily shaken. They had hoped to rush the forts
with heavy masses of infantry, supported only by light artillery, and
they had failed. They now waited for the heavy guns, which were already
on the road, to arrive, and very soon forts Fleron and Chaudfontaine
were deluged with an accurate fire of enormous shells, so powerful as to
overturn the massive cupolas and to pierce concrete walls twelve feet
thick as though they were made of butter. Such shells as these they had
never been built to withstand, and it was not long before they
succumbed, thus opening a way for the invaders towards the town itself.

Forts Evegnee and Barchon soon shared the same fate, and the Belgian
field army, which had continued to maintain an heroic resistance, began
to fall back on the town.

Max and Dale had not been allowed to see much of these events. Before
midnight they were accosted by a patrol and ordered to return to the
safety of the town.

Early the following day, before the fall of the forts and the retreat of
the Belgian army, Max and Dale carried out their intention of presenting
themselves at the casting-shops and lending a hand in the making of
shells. To their satisfaction they found the work going forward with
splendid energy and smoothness, and, with their own ardour kindled by
the sights they had seen the previous night, they joined zealously in
the work.

Presently it came home to Max that there had been considerable changes
in the personnel of the shop since he had last worked there. The men he
looked out for--those with whom he had been on most friendly terms when
he was there--were gone, and their places were taken by other and, for
the most part, younger men, all quite strangers to the place so far as
he could see.

But, most strange of all, the language of the shop was German. The
Walloon, or Flemish-speaking Belgians, were the men who had gone, and
German-speaking workmen had taken their places.

On making a few cautious enquiries, Max learned that the men who had
gone had been transferred to shops which were still engaged in executing
peace-time orders, rails, axles, wheels, and the like, and that the
whole of the shell output was being handled by the newer German-speaking
workmen.

Max felt no particular resentment at this. He did not like it, but he
knew the manager's preference for th