Malines was deserted. It was the night of an interval between the retirement of the Germans and the resumption of advance by the Belgians. But the German bombardment continued, directed obviously at the destruction of the church and the empty buildings. At intervals the guns resumed throughout the night; but their fire was ill-directed. As we were threading our way through the streets, a clatter of hoofs warned us to take shelter. We hurried into the empty church. In the dark, through the door, we heard, and saw in the faint light, a few peasants walking past with hands raised, driven by some mounted Uhlans. Four of the peasants were left sitting hunched up on the steps. After long, anxious moments the patrol clattered away, firing wantonly at the windows of the church; and again firing in the distance. During our wait, to let them get clear away, there was the deafening report of a shell bursting not far from the church; and plaster rattled down from the roof. Much of the town was in ruins; swaths through the houses, cleared away to free the fire from the Belgian forts. And the prominent buildings, public and private, had evidently provided targets for the German guns. To-day I heard that, while I was getting clear of the town, a very gallant rescue was being made by four Belgian ambulance men. They ran cars to the river, crossed a small pontoon, left by the Germans, on foot, and succeeded in carrying eight wounded Belgians, left in a little schoolhouse behind the German lines, back across the pontoon to the cars. They had been lying there untended. The Belgian troops, or what I saw of them as I worked back to the railway this morning, seemed in excellent heart. The repulse of the Germans two days ago, and the strength of the fortress behind them, have gone far to remove the anxiety that inevitably followed their heavy losses in the recent field actions and the growing consciousness of hopelessly inferior numbers. Many of them belonged to the fresh divisions, the flower of the heroic little army. At last they know 'where the English are,' and 'what the French are doing,' and the vague and intimidating hugeness of their own task has contracted to a definite, perceptible plan of campaign. An eye-witness tells me the retreat from Louvain was conducted in splendid order and in high spirits. The Germans followed till they came under the fire of the outermost fort. To-day the little Belgians were as cordial and ready to smile as in the first days after Liége. In the grey morning to-day the country near the Belgian lines was an extraordinary sight. Already the light was flashing from the water of slight, precautionary inundations; and there are whole tracts ready to follow suit. Chateaux destroyed, for purposes of defensive fire; woods cut down; trees, which obstructed the ranges, hacked away; a country already half devastated, as if by an enemy.