Horace laughed admiringly. Decidedly his aunt had grit. The passage of the German Army had not shaken her nerve a scrap. "Well, Aunt," he said, "if that's the way you feel about it, there's no need for me to stay. I've got to go to school." "If you take care of yourself as well as I can take care of myself, there'll be no trouble," quoth she, and went back to wash her breakfast dishes as nonchalantly as though a detachment of men were not searching cottage after cottage. When, a little later, there came a knock at the door, she went and looked out. The officer spoke to her in French. Aunt Abigail, who, in the three years that she had been in the country, had only learned enough French to do her marketing, answered, "Talk English!" "Are you English?" the officer demanded in that tongue, a look of hate on his face. "Is that an English flag?" she replied testily. "We have come to search the house," said the officer and strode forward. "Search nothing!" declared Aunt Abigail. "This is an American house!" and she slammed the door in his face. There was a heated conference outside between the German officer and the mayor, but the result was that the search-party passed on. The telegraph lines were not yet closed and Germany was still trying to keep the friendship of the United States. Meantime, school had opened with but few boys present, for almost half of the boys had fled with their families, and many of those remaining had been kept at home by their frightened parents. As the morning wore on, however, a few of the boys came straggling in. Jacques Oopsdiel, the bell-ringer, the youngest boy in the school, was one of those who had remained. The lads struggled hard to keep discipline under the strong spirit of the placard on the master's chair, but the excitement of the morning had been too great and little work was done. Suddenly, an ominous figure darkened the wide-open door. "What is this--a school?" the officer of the search-party asked, in German. "Yes," answered Horace, taking the lead, as head boy, now that Deschamps was no longer there, but answering in French. "Where is your schoolmaster?" "At Liége." Horace ached to add that he was probably aiding in the defense of the forts but thought that such a statement might bring vengeance on the school, and so he desisted. "But where is the schoolmaster who is teaching you now?" "In his chair!" replied Horace, a trifle defiantly. The officer strode in, followed by six of his men. He clanked up to the chair and read the word on the placard. With a German oath he tore it off, threw it on the floor and ground it under his heel. Then he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote heavily on the blackboard the word: DEUTSCHLAND "There," he said. "That is your master now!"