The terror which these acts temporarily roused in the peasantry was revealed to me the day I ventured out, by bicycle, to our villa in the vicinity of Wavre. No other means of conveyance being available, I discovered, after considerable search, an old wheel unearthed from the depths of a merchant’s cellar—one of the few secreted to escape requisition. No trains were running and no trams, and offer of high payment failed to tempt the drivers of such few miserable hack-horses as remained after the taxi-cabs had been seized. But, by starting early in the morning, it was possible to make the trip by wheel, pack, and return before nightfall. So, having obtained a German pass from Government headquarters the day after my visit to the sleepy officer at the post office, I attached a small American flag to the handle-bar, and started forth at six a.m. through the deserted Bois, and thence to still more deserted country roads. There was no traffic in those days save occasional German military cars, and no sign of human or any other life on the roads. The Belgians were then for the most part keeping indoors, in some cases through fear of the Germans, in others because, commerce and business being dead, they had nothing to tempt them out; therefore, until I reached an outlying village, I met no one to direct me. Here, while coasting down the main road, flanked by modest peasant abodes, I was startled by seeing two men rush out, and wave frantically to stop me. “You can’t proceed!” exclaimed one as I dismounted. “Come quickly into the house! _Vite! Vite!_ They are there, just beyond!” “Who?” I asked, amazement at this hysterical excitement making me forget the cause of their terror. “_Les Allemands!_ Come—be quick; they will appear at any moment!” If a tribe of hungry cannibals had been in the vicinity, their agitation could not have been greater. Women were shrieking warnings from windows, children peering terrified from behind curtains, and the two men literally trying to drag me indoors. “But I _must_ go on!” I exclaimed. “I have a pass and am an American!” “_C’est égal!_ they respect nothing!” was the reply. “They will shoot you down! They will rob and tear you to bits! _Ne savez-vous pas ce que c’est qu’un Boche?_ He is a beast without reason! He stops at nothing! Think only what our innocents have suffered!” “And my old father, who did no wrong!” wailed a woman from the window. “They are burning the village beyond!” cried another. Then several at once: “They killed my brother.... They cut off the hands of little children;... they burned the farm of So-and-so and murdered his daughter!... _Et mon fils! mon fils!_ the father of a family! he lies, buried with twenty others in a heap, at Tamines!”