'We were in Brussels when it came. The professor was sure everything would quiet down in a little bit, an' he said we'd better stay right there. And anyhow, it wasn't easy to get away. It was all just awful, with one country after another slipping in. Only things came so quick a person didn't hardly have time to catch their breath an' think "how awful," 'fore something worse was jumping right on top of it. Well, we stayed and stayed, till at last the Germans came. It certainly was a sight to see 'em--but I ain't goin' to tell about that, I'm just goin' to skip right along to what I set out to tell. 'The professor and his wife had left their only child, a mighty sickly little thing, with her grandmother in Paris, and when things got so bad they were pretty near distracted to get to her. Well, one morning the professor came in and told us he'd run across a young American, a Mr. Grenville, who was being sent to Paris on some special diplomatic business. He had a big automobile, and he thought maybe he could get it fixed to take us all, too. It looked like a mighty crazy thing to do, but there wasn't any holdin' the professor an' his wife on account of their child, and me and the other lady, we was afraid to be left behind. Well, after a lot of runnin' around from one official to another, they did finally get it all fixed for us to go, an' the next day we started out with an American flag on the front of our car. Of course we were stopped a lot of times and all our papers gone through and everything, but each time they let us go on account of Mr. Grenville bein' a United States official. We'd started early, an' by noon we'd come a right smart piece, an' about that time we began to hear firing on in front. Did you ever hear them big guns?' she broke off to ask, her childlike eyes questioning me. I shook my head. 'Well, you needn't never want to hear 'em,' she said. 'When they commenced we all kind of looked at one another, an' I reckon we was all scared. Anyhow, I know _I_ was. Why, at home I'm 'fraid of a thunderstorm. But still we kept on. The sound of the firin' got louder an' louder, but it was never very close, and along late in the afternoon it sort of died off, an' we commenced to draw breath again, and think everything was goin' to be all right. I'm 'most sure now we must have missed the way, for just about that time we ran upon a piece of road that was all tore up. There were big holes in it from the shells, an' those tall poplars alongside were all snapped off, an' their branches stripped down like a child peels a switch. You could smell the fresh sap like you can in lumber camps at home. Well, we had to slow up an' kind of pick our way, and on round the very next turn we ran right up on them.' 'On the fighting!' I gasped.