"Arrêtez!" cried the sentinels, on either side the road, lifting their rifles as they spoke. Of course we came to a stop immediately. Then the chauffeur would lean far out, and whisper in a hoarse, low voice, the password, which varied with an incessant variety. Sometimes it would be "Ostend" or "Termond" or "Demain" or "General" or "Bruxelles" or "Belgique," or whatever the War Office chose to make it. Then the sentinel would nod. "Good," he would say, and on we would go. The motor car lent me by the Belgian War Office, was driven by an excitable old Belgian, who loved nothing better than to get into a dangerous spot. His favourite saying, when we got near shell-fire, and one asked him if he were frightened, was: "One can only die once." And the louder the shells, the quicker he drove towards them; and I used to love the way his old eyes flashed, and I loved too the keenly disappointed look that crept over his face when the sentinels refused to let him go any nearer the danger line, and we had to creep ignominiously back to safety. "Does not your master ever go towards the fighting?" I asked him. "Non, madame," he answered sadly, "Mon general, he is the PAPA of the Commissariat! He does not go near the fighting. He only looks after the eating." We left Antwerp one morning about nine o'clock, and sped outwards through the fortifications, being stopped every ten minutes as usual by the sentinels and asked to show our papers. On we ran along the white tree-lined roads through exquisite green country. The roads were crowded constantly with soldiers coming and going, and in all the villages we found the Headquarters of one or other Division of the Belgian Army, making life and bustle indescribable in the flagged old streets, and around the steps of the quaint mediæval Town Halls and Cathedrals. [Illustration: A FRIENDLY CHAT.] We had gone a long way when we were brought to a standstill at a little place called Heyst-op den Berg, where the sentinels leaned into our car and had a long friendly chat with us. "You cannot go any further," they said. "The Germans are in the next town ahead; they are only a few kilometres away." "What town is it?" I asked. "Aerschot," they replied. "That is on the way to Louvain, is it not?" I asked. "I have been trying for a long time to get to Louvain!" "You can never get to Louvain, Madam," the sentinels told me smilingly. "Between here and Louvain lies the bulk of the German Army." Just then, a _chasseur_, mounted on a beautiful fiery little brown Ardennes horse, came galloping along, shouting as he passed, "The Germans have been turned out of Aerschot; we have driven them out, _les sales cochons!_" He jumped off his horse, gave the reins to a soldier and leapt into a train that was standing at the station.