“Please yourself, Mademoiselle. But in war-time, a little hotel, on a high road, with the post office opposite and the Gendarmerie next door, is not the place of residence I should personally choose. Good-bye, Mademoiselle; good-bye, all. I must be off.” The dispatch carrier mounts his machine, bends over the handle bars in best professional style, and is quickly lost to view in a cloud of dust. We remain chatting out-of-doors for a little while. There is a careworn look on the faces of the women, a certain quiet determination in the eyes of the men. I understand. At midnight, in a neighbouring village, I had heard the dreaded Tocsin sound out the call to arms. The tones of the harsh, crude bell, mingled with the agonised cries of sorrow-stricken women. No one slept. Some were helping loved ones to make their preparations for departure, others were quietly watching the ceaseless stream of men pass by. Hour after hour they came pouring into the village from outlying hamlets, summoned by beacon fires from the surrounding hills. Many paused to admire the long queue of patient, fly-tormented horses waiting to be shoed by the _maréchal_. In five hours the last message had been delivered, the last good-bye said. The men were gone. But the memory of their going is not easily effaced.... GETTING READY “Les Prussiens, les Prussiens!” These words are uttered in hoarse whispers under my window while I dress. They send a nervous tremor down my spine. At breakfast I am informed that the Germans are only a day’s march distant. They have already crossed the frontier and are advancing on us. Bombarded Liège is safer than Manhay, situated on one of the high roads from the frontier. The blindest Teuton could not miss this short, straight line of white-washed houses. I join the crowd of peasants standing in a cluster at the cross-roads. Everyone is busy advising, gesticulating, prophesying. Other peasants are pouring in from the neighbouring villages for directions and news. Any stranger at once forms the nucleus of an entranced group. There is much chattering but little real excitement. These people who live on the edge of big events are never unprepared. M. le Précepteur is busy in the post office trying to decipher governmental wires. Several _malle-postes_, like two-horsed roofed-in wagonettes, are waiting about, their drivers ready to take round letters—the last batch, who knows!—to the scattered villages around. A very small girl, fortified by a very large dog, is deftly steering back some wandering cows from the direction of Malempré. The village idiot has been trying to get up a game in the skittle alley, but is promptly squelched. Motor-cyclists are coming and going in the direction of Liège. Cars shoot through every few minutes at a break-neck speed carrying men in uniform. The Commandant, peaked hat and uniform complete, lolls at the door of the Gendarmerie. His horse is being walked up and down by a farmer’s boy.