While public attention was more or less centred on these continued explosions, fires broke out in all the railway stations, one of which was almost entirely destroyed. Many explanations were set afloat in the familiar German fashion, the most persistent being that rue Haute thieves had done it in order to pillage certain cars—an absurd suggestion, since thieves do not usually light a beacon to attract attention to their deeds. One damning fact, moreover—the simultaneity of the conflagrations—suggested some inexplicable Teuton object, perhaps mere vengeance. The theory of vengeance was given weight by an account given us by the mayor of Charleroi. Just before the Germans withdrew, some officers visited him and, without giving a hint of their intentions, asked him to call together all the former Belgian railroad employés and send them to work at the station. The mayor, considering this a reasonable request, willingly agreed, got the men together, and set them to work. Scarcely were they all gathered in and about the station than terrific explosions took place in the yard and on near-by tracks. Fifty-eight of the unsuspecting Belgians were killed, and many others, living in the vicinity, either slain or wounded, while every window in the entire town was shattered, doors also and many objects of value. Hundreds of cars containing ammunition had been secretly attached by a fuse wire, which the Germans lighted and left to do its deadly work, while they fled into safety and were never again seen. Some intrepid Belgians, fortunately, discovered the fuse, cut it, and thus saved two hundred and twenty car-loads of high-power explosives, some of which stood in the centre of the town and would have caused its entire wreckage. The mayor also told us a shocking story in regard to a hospital in his town which the Germans had occupied during the war. At their departure they removed their wounded, and announced that the hospital was at his disposal. On going to visit it, he found a number of French and English wounded lying on the floor, who stated they had never had a bed, and were in a deplorable condition. Outside, in the ambulance garage, the door of which was locked, he found seventeen dead bodies of soldiers, entirely devoid of clothing and therefore impossible to identify as to nationality. In a corner of this place were heaped a ghastly collection of amputated human limbs. These and the bodies were in a state of decomposition that rendered their removal both dangerous and horrible.