I moved my base, therefore, to Waterloo, to a friendly little hostelry that had already proved useful on our long skirmishing runs. In the late afternoon another excursion to the south-east left little doubt that the main German advance was progressing on this northern line. Reports of German cavalry met us in the villages. But what was happening to the Allied armies? On the return I met, and followed for some distance through the lanes, a regiment of French infantry, who were making a forced march to join the Belgians. It hardly seemed possible, therefore, that the evacuation rumours which I had heard in Brussels could be true. To help towards a solution I started again, this Wednesday evening, towards Louvain, and ran through the town at dusk. I had come to know Louvain very well, in the days of my interviews with the Headquarter Staff. There was a little restaurant at the corner of the odd-shaped "Place," facing the magnificent Hotel de Ville, where I could watch the constant stream of cars and columns passing in and out of the cordon that surrounded the church, which contained the Commander-in-Chief, and sometimes even the King. Occasionally a British Staff officer would cheer me with the sight of the well-known uniform. There were always Belgian army surgeons, in the brown cap, ready for a gossip, restless horses with unhandy recruit riders, for amusement, and walks through the deserted picturesque streets, for a change to the eye. In a week or so I got to know it well, its quaint atmosphere of a mediæval university town charged with the restless electricity of military occupation, the uneasy mystery of an uncertain fate. And in another week or so--it was not. I passed through it, or rather round it that evening for the last time; past the lines of soldiers sleeping under the station shelters, and the sentries with their handkerchief puggrees. I saw it only once again, the next night, by the glare of a few burning houses on the outskirts, beacons of the Belgian retreat and the German occupation. Wednesday. Beyond Louvain progress in the dark was very difficult. I failed to get the news I sought, but I heard something of the enemy. I made my way during the night down behind the Belgian lines at Geet Betz, with a returning officer as guide. Here the advanced German right wing, chiefly cavalry--Uhlans and dragoons--has been trying to turn the Belgian left. They have been repulsed once to-day in the attempt to cross the river, and suffered enormously owing to their advance in column formation. The Belgians, too, have suffered considerably from the mitrailleuse, but have held their entrenchment with remarkable courage. The Germans returned to the attack, and were expected to renew the assault to-night. It was too dark to see or be seen in the undulating fields, but voices from the trenches and the movements of horses, and the occasional rush of a military motor, acted as signs.