If it were not that the movements of the toilet are largely automatic, Stewart would never have finished his, but he was washed and dressed at last, and descended to the café which served also as the dining-room. It was crowded to the doors with vociferous French soldiers, very weary and very dirty, and all clamoring to be served at once. Their claims were greater than his, Stewart thought, and after all it wouldn't harm him to go breakfastless; but just then the landlady appeared again, and drew him through a door opening behind the bar. "This way, monsieur," she said. "I have a little table for you here in the court." A spasm of memory clutched Stewart's heart as he saw the snowy table set in a shady corner, and he drank his coffee and ate his rolls and honey like a man in a dream. "Monsieur Stewart?" asked a voice. He looked up to find a French officer standing at his elbow. "Yes," he said. "Pardon me; I did not see you." "Monsieur was distrait," said the other, with a smile. "I have a message," and he held out a large, square envelope. With a hand whose trembling he could not control, Stewart tore open the envelope and unfolded the note within. It was very brief: Dear Monsieur Stewart: There is a distressing lack of surgeons at the Belgian front, and we are sending all that we can. I remember your generous offer of your services, and if I may command them I trust that you will join the party which is leaving at once. Faithfully yours, Fernande. No news, then! But here was something he could do--wounds to dress--suffering to relieve. "I am ready," he said, and rapped for his bill. Half an hour later he was speeding northward again along the valley of the Meuse toward Namur, in company with two other surgeons, Frenchmen, who seemed very thoughtful and depressed. Stewart, who had expected to find the roads crowded with _matériel_ and troop-train after troop-train rolling northward to the aid of struggling Belgium, was astonished to perceive no evidences of war whatever--just the same peaceful countryside he had passed through the day before. Something had gone wrong, then; and he turned to his companions for information, but they only shrugged their shoulders gloomily and shook their heads. At Namur they left the car, and the orderly, who had told Stewart that his destination was Landen, some distance farther on, came back to sit with him in the tonneau, evidently welcoming the opportunity to talk to some one. He had spent two or three years as a clerk in an uncle's silk house in Boston, and so spoke English fluently. He too was gloomy about the immediate outlook. The French, it seemed, had been caught off their guard--or, rather, while guarding themselves from the only blow which could legitimately be struck at them by mobilizing along the eastern frontier, had been stabbed in the back by the German attack through Belgium.