In sad contrast to these lively scenes was that a few months later, just before the Kaiser's troops entered the town. A mournful procession of refugees moving to the quay, men with stolid faces guiding little dog-carts piled high with luggage, anxious women and weary children laden with bundles--all seeking the promised safety of England. Every year there was held at Ostend a curious ceremony which drew excursionists from all corners of the country to witness. This was the benediction of the sea, which was performed by the more intelligent Belgians with all the decorum of a religious rite. The ceremony went back apparently at least to the early sixteenth century, for it is recorded that after a certain inundation of the coast the fishermen joined with ship-owners in contributing the sum of 271 francs to the Church, which was instructed to use it for the benefit of the fish in the North Sea. This was no doubt the beginning of the procession to the shore. Running inland from Ostend one comes before long to Roulers, where there was a training convent for missionaries. We found the town an active, commercial place, and drove over rattling streets to the outskirts and our destination, the Convent of the Missionary Sisters of St. Augustine. The Mother Superior had invited us to visit them because six of the little sisters were about to start for the Philippines, some to go to a convent in the Bontoc country among the headhunters, where L. had followed the trail on horseback with the Governor and the Secretary of War, a short time before. We wanted to show appreciation of their undertaking, for they have always spread good reports of the United States' government of the islands. The buildings were neither large nor extensive, for the sisterhood is limited and the order comparatively new. There was an American flag--rather a queer one, for the little sisters had made it themselves--hanging with the Belgian flag above the door, and inside there were decorations of flags and paper flowers and streamers, all quite sweet and pathetic. Mother Ursula, a nice looking woman, met us and conducted us into a room where the forty little sisters were huddled together, peering at us out of their headdresses, with the liveliest curiosity. It was natural enough that they should be curious, too, for during their two years of instruction they were never allowed to go out, and saw very few laymen. At any rate, their eyes never left us all the time we were with them. They seemed very docile and obedient, and were pretty and young, but they were rather ignorant, although they were taught a little English besides the native dialect of the savage places where they were to go, and a little music. They played and sang for us, so badly but so touchingly and anxiously--the Old Kentucky Home, in a way to make one cry, and the Star Spangled Banner--both in English.