Croquier nodded. Bomal, a railway station on the road from Liége to Jemelle and a junction of four high roads, was evidently a good place to avoid. As evening came on, the fugitives ate heartily from the contents of their pockets and, as soon as the darkness favored, struck south and a little east to avoid Bomal and the main roads. The flames of a burning village, sure evidence that the Germans were near, drove them west again. A wide road thronged with motor-lorries, one following upon another so that they almost touched, delayed them for two hours, but they crossed under a culvert near Odeigne. The woods were filled with refugees from near by villages, and though these were loyal Belgians, Croquier would not allow himself to be seen by them, lest they should let a word slip. The two fugitives passed scores of bodies of women and children, murdered by the Germans and left unburied. Corpses were thrown into the wells, contaminating the water. Those who had been wounded were abandoned, without any attempt to relieve their sufferings. The men remaining had been commandeered to dig trenches and build defensive works against troops of their own country, in defiance of the laws of warfare, just as, in other places, women were herded together to walk in front of the German troops during the fighting, their living bodies being made to serve as a human shield against machine-gun fire. When they fell they were left to die.[9] Horace and the hunchback passed through this zone of misery and camped for the succeeding day on the Ourthe River, three quarters of a mile north of Laroche. [Illustration: LIQUID FIRE PROJECTED FROM THE GERMAN TRENCHES.] [Illustration: _Courtesy of "L'Illustration."_ LIQUID FIRE PROJECTED FROM PORTABLE RESERVOIRS.] Hilly and rugged country made the next night's traveling difficult, and, many times, with their hearts in their mouths, the two fugitives were compelled to dart for a few hundred yards along a road, though every highway leading to Jemelle--which seemed to be a German rendezvous--was choked with troops and supporting wagon-trains. Near Grupont, they found a woman sitting on the bank of a road, beside the body of a boy, six years old. "Can we be of any service, Madame?" Croquier asked, stopping. "Not unless you can raise the dead," she answered bitterly, but dry-eyed. "See you, Monsieur, my little Theophile was playing with a toy gun, a thing of wood, Monsieur, and painted red, which shot a cork on the end of a string, when the Germans came. "'He will learn to shoot a real gun some day,' an officer said, 'kill the young viper before he learns to bite.' So they shot him and marched on, laughing."[10]