Picking up all the women we could, we were back in Wavre to give the news. Nothing could be done. Not a friendly soldier seemed alive in the neighbourhood. For a time we watched. With half a dozen anxious elders I laboriously climbed the great church tower. We strained our eyes, to see nothing real, but a lot of imaginary conflagrations. Meanwhile the guns boomed far off, and the refugee villagers began to pour in below us. A curious, pathetic sight. The women had put on their best black dresses, to save them; the men, their black coats. Later, they came in as they were, dragging and carrying children, women just from or near childbirth, girls with scarfs full of food or apples. They were frightened, hurrying, and quiet. But when the town at last understood the rage of the men, and of the women too, is past description. There was no outcry, but they cursed, clustering together, some of the men in tears, at being deprived of arms, at not being allowed to defend their homes--they, a horde of big men, against a handful. They were long past reasoning with. It was a sane order that deprived even the Guards of arms and shut them, chafing, behind the communal steps. At last the sight of the refugees grew too painful. We went off to pick up what we could. Twice we ran to the near end of Gastouche, bringing back untidy loads of children and mothers. The second time we tried to get through, by a corner, a few miles further to Overrysche. We had just passed the barrier of faggots and village carts, with two nervous-bold Guards at the "present," when at the end of a short cross lane through the cottages on the right I saw the flicker and movement of horse soldiers passing, sixty yards off. The same instant a shot came from a cottage behind them, and a rush of shrieking women down the lane. We turned at once and waited: the Uhlans, some eight of them, had wheeled back out of sight, where the cottages ran into the wood. The men shouted to the women to keep indoors; a few stray children ran back and forwards in the lane, crying. Then the door of a far cottage opened, and the crippled soldier who had fired the shot was half-carried out. A fine red-bearded fellow. He was perspiring, inarticulate with rage at having missed and with the lust of fighting. We shoved him into the car, with a few more women, and got back to Wavre. As we passed, we saw some thirty of the Civic Guard shut in a yard, down a lane, behind a wooden barrier. Even the civic calm had begun to quiver. The surging, homeless crowd of villagers were talking loudly at the corners; and every now and then a farmer in shirtsleeves bicycled furiously in, to complain of a house occupied or horses stolen. The German outposts were all round us, and the place undefended.