All the Uhlans ask me that. They seem so amazed that we do not scuttle like rabbits at their approach. “No, I am not afraid,” I answer. “But you are in more danger here than my brother who is a prisoner in Russia,” he persists. I translate this to the family of Job, who all tearfully implore me, as they have done a hundred times in the last week, to disguise myself as a peasant and pretend to be one of them.... It seems a skulking thing for a Britisher to do. I can’t face it. “You see, Fräulein, there are many spies. They have shot women as well as men before Liège. There is short shrift for spies in war-time. You are alone too. So much the more suspicious.” “I must take my chance.” “Stay in your room then.” Stay in my room, indeed, when ten, twenty times a day my help is sought in smoothing over difficulties, interpreting orders for the enemy or the peasants. A likely plan! A Cuirassier speaks of himself and the family he never expects to see again. “My five brothers are all serving in the army,” he says, “the sixth is a prisoner in Russia. My two sisters’ husbands are soldiers too. My father an engineer, aged sixty-five and in weak health, has also been compelled to come forward and serve his country. My mother was like that when we came away,” he passes the back of his hand across his eyes. I begin to pity the German women nearly as much as I pity the Belgian peasants. But then the former have suffered no atrocities—as yet. MAPS AND MINES One day I ask the Cuirassier why he has no markings on his shoulder straps. He coughs, blushes, then unbuttons one and turns it back to show a large N. surmounted by an Imperial crown embroidered in blood red. “The Czar was our Colonel, Fräulein,” he says, in the horrified accents usually reserved for the mention of the Prince of Darkness. The fact does not seem to me so awful. I hide a smile. “Many of the men tore the straps off their uniforms before they would go on active service,” he says seriously. I ask him why he is such friends with the swashbuckler. “One does not choose one’s comrades in war-time, Fräulein.” He brings out a map which seems to have every fir tree and blade of grass in the country accurately described on it and draws his finger along the page until he comes to Namur. “The French have blown up every bridge over the Meuse.” He indicates the length of the river between Namur and Liège. “We shall build them again.” He goes on to tell me facts about the countryside which I thought only the peasants knew. The network of patrols with which Germans enmesh the country so far in advance of the body of the army, seems to have done its work well. I translate to the Job family, who listen amazed. The Cuirassier tries to pump me, very deftly, very innocently. “Have you heard anything of the number of French in Namur. Have they been strengthening the defences there during the last two weeks. Is it true that their food supply is inadequate to the needs of the town?”