Dalroy shook his head. "I wish I might credit that," he said sadly. "I am a soldier, monsieur, and you may take it from me that such a feat is quite impossible in the time. We might send twenty or thirty thousand men by the end of this week, and another similar contingent by the end of next week. But months must elapse before we can put in the field an army big enough to make headway against the swarms of Germans I have seen with my own eyes." "Months!" gasped the curé. "Then what will become of my unhappy country? Even to-day we are living on hope. Liège still holds out, and the people are saying, 'The English are coming, all will be well!' A man was shot to-day in this very town for making that statement." "He must have been a fool to voice his views in the presence of German troops." The priest spread wide his hands in sorrowful gesture. "You don't understand," he said. "Belgium is overrun with spies. It is positively dangerous to utter an opinion in any mixed company. One or two of the bystanders will certainly be in the pay of the enemy." Though the curé was now on surer ground than when he spoke of a British army on Belgian soil, Dalroy egged him on to talk. "My chief difficulty is to know how the money was raised to support all these agencies," he said. "Consider, monsieur. Germany maintains an enormous army. She has a fleet second only to that of Britain. She finances her traders and subsidises her merchant ships as no other nation does. How is it credible that she should also find means to keep up a secret service which must have cost millions sterling a year?"