As we step out of the horrors of that church some German prisoners that have just been brought in, are being marched by. And then rage overcomes one of the young Lieutenants. White, trembling, beside himself, he rushes forward. He shouts. He raves. He is thinking of that room; they were of Belgium, those girls and women; he is of Belgium too; and he flings his scorn and hatred at the Uhlans marching past, he lashes and whips them with his agony of rage until the cowering prisoners are out of hearing. The other Lieutenant at last succeeds in silencing him. "What is the use, mon ami!" he says. "What is the use?" Perhaps this outburst is reported to headquarters by somebody. For that night at the Officers' Mess, the Captain of the regiment has a few words to say against shewing anger towards prisoners, and very gently and tactfully he says them. He is a Belgian, and all Belgians are careful to a point that is almost beyond human comprehension in their criticisms of their enemies. "Let us be careful never to demean ourselves by humiliating prisoners," says the Captain, looking round the long roughly-set table. "You see, my friends, these poor German fellows that we take are not all typical of the crimes that the Germans commit; lots of them are only peasants, or men that would prefer to stay by their own fireside!" "What about Aerschot and the church?" cry a score of irritated young voices. The Captain draws his kindly lips together, and attacks his black bread and tinned mackerel. "Ah," he says, "we must remember they were all drunk!" And as he utters these words there flash across my mind those old, old words that will never die: "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." CHAPTER VI THE SWIFT RETRIBUTION As I stood in the rain, down there in the ruined blackened piazza of Aerschot, someone drew my attention to the hole in the back-window of the Burgomaster's house. In cold blood, the Germans had shot the Burgomaster. And they had shot two of his children. And as they could not find the Burgomaster's wife, who had fled into the country, they had offered 4,000 francs reward for her. A hoarse voice whispered that in that room with the broken window, the German Colonel who had ordered the murder of the good, kind, beloved Burgomaster, had met his own fate. Yes! In the room of the dead Burgomaster's maidservant, the German colonel had fallen dead from a shot fired from without. By whose hand was it fired, that shot that laid the monster at his victim's feet? "By the hand of an inferieur!" someone whispers. And I put together the story, and understand that the girl's village sweetheart avenged her. They are both dead now--the girl and her village swain--shot down instantly by the howling Germans. But their memory will never die; for they stand--that martyred boy and girl,--for Belgium's fight for its women's honour and the manliness of its men. CHAPTER VII THEY WOULD NOT KILL THE COOK