Not until they had eaten some excellent rolls and butter, with boiled eggs, and drank two cups of hot coffee, did they realise how ravenously hungry they were. Then Dalroy persuaded Irene to lie down on a pile of sacks, and, amid all the racket of a fierce engagement, she slept the sleep of sheer exhaustion. Thus he was left on guard, as it were, and saw the pontoons once more demolished. After that he, too, curled up against the wall and slept. The sound of rifle shots close at hand awoke him. His first care was for the girl, but she lay motionless. Then he looked out. There was renewed excitement in the main road, but only a few feet of it was visible from the attic. A number of women and children ran past, all screaming, and evidently in a state of terror. Several houses in the town were on fire, and the smoke hung over the river in such clouds as to obscure the north bank. Old Henri Joos came hurriedly into the yard. He was gesticulating wildly, and Dalroy heard a door bang as he vanished. Refusing to be penned up any longer without news of what was happening, Dalroy lowered the ladder, and, after ascertaining that Irene was still asleep, descended. He made his way to the kitchen, pausing only to find out whether or not it held any German soldiers. Joos's shrill voice, raised in malediction of all Prussians, soon decided that fact. He spoke in the local _patois_, but straightway branched off into French interlarded with German when Dalroy appeared. "Those hogs!" he almost screamed. "Those swine-dogs! They can't beat our brave boys of the 3rd Regiment, so what do you think they're doing now? Murdering men, women, and children out of mere spite. The devils from hell pretended that the townsfolk were shooting at them, so they began to stab, and shoot, and burn in all directions. The officers are worse than the men. Three came here in an automobile, and marked on the gate that the mill was not to be burnt--they want my grain, you see--and, as they were driving off again, young Jan Smit ran by. Poor lad, he was breathless with fear. They asked him if he had seen another car like theirs, but he could only stutter. One of them laughed, and said, 'I'll work a miracle, and cure him.' Then he whipped out a revolver and shot the boy dead. Some soldiers with badges on their arms saw this. One of them yelled, '_Man hat geschossen_' ('The people have been shooting'), though it was their own officer who fired, and he and the others threw little bombs into the nearest cottages, and squirted petrol in through the windows. Madame Didier, who has been bedridden for years, was burnt alive in that way. They have a regular corps of men for the job. Then, 'to punish the town,' as they said, they took twenty of our chief citizens, lined them up in the market-place, and fired volleys at them. There was Dupont, and the Abbé Courvoisier, and Monsieur Philippe the notary, and--_ah, mon Dieu_, I don't know--all my old friends. The