Like Madame Job they are thirsting for news. But unlike her they keep the longing to themselves. Madame Job has, I believe, a sneaking hope that Albert may turn up one day outside the little white-washed inn. I suspect she would rather have her beloved Albert a live coward than a dead hero. A wire has come from Erezée, ten miles away, to say that packets of letters have arrived. A system of hand-messengers has been successful in bringing them through from Namur without mishap. Who will volunteer to rush them to Manhay through our Uhlan-infested country? The postmen refuse because of the trouncing their comrades received yesterday. M. A—— and I agree to have a try. He harnesses the hotel horse and we start off in the light spring dog-cart. Behind we have two refugees from Gouvy. They own no luggage beyond a bird-cage, so we are not over-loaded. Gouvy is a frontier town which the Germans are fortifying in case of their enforced retreat. They have installed several regiments there and made the inhabitants’ lives unbearable. The station-master, postmaster and other civilians have been sent off as prisoners of war to Berlin after the pleasant Teuton fashion. These poor refugees are going to their parents at Barvaux, near Namur. May they find peace there as they expect. Personally I doubt it! The drive to Erezée is uneventful. We suspect a Uhlan behind every tree-trunk but none appears. No living soul is on the road. As we enter the village street the peasants run out of the houses to welcome us. It is almost a royal progress. We realise how isolated these villages now are from one another. A tiny Belgian flag is flying from the church at the top of the hill. Evidently the best the village could provide; it must have taken the choir, the Curé and all his merry, merry men to hoist it to its present height. As a decorative item that flag is beneath contempt. Its slender flag-pole is of such curved dimensions as to make it stick out from the belfry quite lop-sidedly. But as a moral factor it is beyond all praise.... We alight by the picturesque old pump. A crowd, including the gypsies from a travelling caravan, gathers round us anxious to hear the news. In return they tell us theirs. One story interests me. At Hotton, near Melreux, a few miles away, the Colonel of an invading troop called on the doctor’s wife and politely asked her for the address of the Bourgmestre. The doctor’s wife, not to be outdone in civility, sent her little girl along to show him. In a short while the Colonel returned with the Bourgmestre in tow as prisoner. “Where is your husband?” he demanded of the doctor’s wife. “Out visiting patients,” she replied. “Out when I ask for him!” shrieked the infuriated officer, “I will have him shot for disobeying orders!” This gross piece of injustice was happily not perpetrated. The Colonel graciously forgave the doctor, for, when the soldiers went to fetch him, he was found tending the German wounded with tender care....