On the evening of August 5 Nurse Cavell was engaged in binding lint on the wound of one of the invaders, when a peremptory knock on the door resounded through the quiet hospital. Not waiting for admission, half a dozen German soldiers burst open the door with the butt-ends of their rifles and entered the ward. Without preamble the corporal in charge seized Miss Cavell roughly, and commenced to drag her away from his wounded compatriot to whom she ministered. The Englishwoman did not quail before this uncouth representative of 'Kultur,' but with calmness and dignity demanded to know the reason of the brutal exhibition of authority. The bullying corporal's instructions evidently included nothing in the way of explanation. He considered a cuff to be the best means of meeting the situation; and forthwith he marched her through the gathering gloom to the military prison of St. Gilles. The German authorities made no public announcement of the arrest of the English nurse or any of her alleged associates. In all probability at first they maintained secrecy in the hope of being able to incriminate other suspects, and thus make a clean sweep of an agency that had attempted to lift by the fraction of an inch the iron heel that was grinding out the life of suffering Belgium. Three weeks elapsed before Edith Cavell's relatives in England heard of her arrest from a chance traveller who had come to England from Belgium. The news was communicated to the Foreign Office, and on August 26 Sir Edward Grey requested Mr. Page, the United States Ambassador in London, to make inquiry of the United States Minister at Brussels whether the arrest of Miss Cavell was an actual fact, and, if so, the reason assigned for it. In the interval the German authorities were hard at work in securing evidence, not merely to justify the arrest, but to provide plausible excuse for the execution of the prisoner, which later sinister mockeries of justice proved to have been a foregone conclusion from the commencement. It is believed that not only did German spies ransack Belgium for evidence, but some even visited Norwich to interrogate Miss Cavell's friends, to trace her movements, and, if possible, to intercept her correspondence. But even then the testimony against the prisoner aggregated but a sorry charge of presenting a great-coat to an ill-clad man, a glass of water to a thirsty pilgrim, and small coins to persons who were being hunted for their lives. There was a fear that these 'crimes' would be insufficient to secure a conviction on a capital charge. There was no time to ferret out any real damning testimony, and so the jailers of the English nurse fell back upon the method of attempting to convict her out of her own mouth.