Having pushed my way through the loafers, who stood waiting before the house, I was able to continue my journey to Maastricht. A few days later I had to go to Canne, a Belgian hamlet near the frontier, south of Maastricht. In the evening of August 18th an atrociously barbarous crime had been committed there, a cool-blooded murder. At Canne live some good, kind Flemings, who would not hurt a fly. The kind-hearted burgomaster had, moreover, tried for days to comfort his fellow-citizens, and was for ever saying: "Leave everything to me; I'll invite them to have a glass of wine with me, and you will see then that they are kind people." This he had done. Already for many days he had treated several officers to his best claret. Tuesday night, August 18th, at about 11 o'clock, a train of luggage carts passed through Canne, and in the village the Browning of one of the soldiers in the last van went off suddenly. This was the signal for all Germans to start shooting indiscriminately, anywhere, at anything, happily without hitting anybody. A few tipsy soldiers went to the burgomaster's house, and no sooner had his wife opened the door for the barbarians, when a shot was fired, the bullet passing through the unfortunate lady's head into the wall opposite the door. I was there early the next morning and saw the hole. It is evident that the soldiers ill-treated the dead lady with their rifles in a horrible manner, for a large part of the wall was spattered over with blood. After having murdered the burgomaster's wife, the villains attacked a guest, Mr. Derricks, a lawyer, and member of the Provincial States, whom they killed with a bayonet. His wife broke a leg when she tried to fly to the cellar. Mr. Derricks lived at Roelanche, but with his wife and seven children had fled for security to Canne, where he was hospitably received in Mr. Poswick's, the burgomaster's, house. When I got to the house everything was in a frightful state. A pair of curtains showed traces of fire; cupboards had been emptied, and nearly all the china and glass broken; statuary lay broken on the floor; windows were smashed; bits of bricks and plaster from the ceilings, through which many shots had been fired, completed the scene of destruction. On the doorstep I picked up a cartridge-case, which I have always kept, because it is highly probable that it had contained the bullet which killed Mrs. Poswick. This terrible tragedy took place at scarcely six yards from the Netherland frontier, for the burgomaster's house stands by a road half Belgian and half Netherland. The Netherland soldiers who were doing frontier-duty on the latter part had to fly from the mad shooting of the Germans. They hid behind a wall that was quickly full of bullet-holes. The German soldiers spent a considerable time guzzling the burgomaster's wine, which they looted, and afterwards went off in the direction of Tongres.