A certain number of men and women had been locked up in the Court of the Prison. At six in the evening a German machine gun, placed on the hill above, opened fire on them, and an old woman and three other persons were brought down. While a certain number of soldiers were perpetrating this massacre, others pillaged and sacked the houses of the town, and broke open all safes, sometimes blasting them with dynamite. Their work of destruction and theft accomplished, the soldiers set fire to the houses, and the town was soon no more than an immense furnace. The women and children had been all shut up in a Convent, where they were kept prisoners for four days. These unhappy women remained in ignorance of the lot of their male relations. They were expecting themselves to be shot also. All around the town continued to blaze. The first day the monks of the Convent had given them a certain supply of food. For the remaining days they had nothing to eat but raw carrots and green fruit. To sum up, the town of Dinant is destroyed. It counted 1,400 houses; only 200 remain. The manufactories where the artisan population worked have been systematically destroyed. Rather more than 700 of the inhabitants have been killed; others have been taken off to Germany, and are still retained there as prisoners. The majority are refugees scattered all through Belgium. A few who remained in the town are dying of hunger. It has been proved by our Enquiry that German soldiers, while exposed to the fire of the French entrenched on the opposite bank of the Meuse, in certain cases sheltered themselves behind a line of civilians, women and children. (V.) MASSACRES AT HASTIERE AND SURICE On August 23rd, the Germans entered the village of Hastiere-par-dela.(1) They arrested Dr. Halloy, a Surgeon of the Red Cross, and shot him. Crossing the street, they went to the house of Alphonse Aigret, a butcher, drove out him, his wife and his children, and shot him and his elder son. Next they went to the farm of Jules Rifon, took him out of his cellar, where he had hidden with his daughters, and shot him. They also killed the farmer Bodson and his two sons, with ten other inhabitants of the village. The place was then sacked, and the greater part of the houses burned. The number of persons killed or wounded was very large. The ancient church of Hastiere suffered odious profanation. Horses were stabled in it. The priestly vestments were torn and befouled. The lamps, statues, and holy-water stoups were broken. The reliquary was smashed, and the relics scattered about. Among them were some relics of the Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne, which had escaped the fury of the Huguenots of 1590 and the Revolution of 1790. The tabernacle resisted an attempt at burglary, but two of the four altars were profaned; the sepulchres at the altars were broken open and the remains in them thrown out and trampled under foot.