One evening a train full of Belgian refugees had just entered the railway station of one of our southern towns. Worn out and dazed, the poor martyrs stepped down slowly, one by one, on to the unfamiliar platform where Frenchmen were waiting to welcome them. Carrying with them a few articles of clothing, caught up at haphazard, they had climbed up into the coaches without so much as asking themselves what was their destination. They had taken refuge there in hurried flight, desperate flight from horror and death, from fire, mutilations unspeakable and Sadic outrages--such things, deemed no longer possible on earth, had been brooding still, it seemed, in the depths of pietistic German brains, and, like an ultimate spewing forth of primeval barbarities, had burst suddenly upon their country and upon our own. Village, hearth, family--nothing remained to them; without purpose, like waifs and strays, they had drifted there, and in the eyes of all lay horror and anguish. Among them were many children, little girls, whose parents were lost in the midst of conflagrations or battles; aged grandmothers, too, now alone in the world, who had fled, scarce knowing why, clinging no longer to life, yet urged on by some obscure instinct of self-preservation. The faces of these aged women expressed no emotion, not even despair; it seemed as if their souls had actually abandoned their bodies and reason their brains. Lost in that mournful throng were two quite young children, holding each other tightly by the hand, two little boys, evidently two little brothers. The elder, five years of age perhaps, was protecting the younger, whose age may have been three. No one claimed them; no one knew them. When they found themselves alone, how was it that they understood that if they would escape death they, too, must climb into that train? Their clothes were neat, and they wore warm little woollen stockings. Evidently they belonged to humble but careful parents. Doubtless they were the sons of one of those glorious soldiers of Belgium who fell like heroes upon the field of honour--sons of a father who, in the moment of death, must needs have bestowed upon them one last and tender thought. So overwhelmed were they with weariness and want of sleep that they did not even cry. Scarcely could they stand upright. They could not answer the questions that were put to them, but above all they refused to let go of each other; that they would not do. At last the big, elder brother, still gripping the other's hand for fear of losing him, realised the responsibilities of his character of protector; he summoned up strength to speak to the lady with the brassard, who was bending down to him. "Madame," he said, in a very small, beseeching voice, already half-asleep, "Madame, is anyone going to put us to bed?"