Hilda brought her beautiful big ambulance to their door. There was room enough inside for them all to go together, with their bundles of household goods. And the mother smiled, saying: "The shells will spare me. They will not hurt me." "You refuse me to-day," replied Hilda, "but to-morrow I shall come again to take you away. I will take you to a new, safe home." * * * * * Very early the next morning, Hilda heard the sick crumble that meant the crunching of one more dwelling. She hurried to the door, and looked down the road. The place of the new birth had tumbled, and a thick smoke was rising from the wreck. She ran faster than she had ever run for her own safety. She came to the little home in a ruin of plaster and glass and brick-dust. Destruction, long overdue, had fallen out of the sunny blue sky on the group of reckless survivors in that doomed village. The soldiers were searching in the smoking litter for bodies. Big sister and little sister and brother were dead, and the little old grandmother. The mother, with shell wounds at her nursing breasts, was dying. Only "Pervyse" was living and to live. By a miracle of selection, he lay in the wreck of his house and the grave of his people--one foot half off, but otherwise a survivor of the shell that had fallen and burst inside his home. Swiftly Hilda in her car, carried mother and child to La Panne to the great military hospital. The mother died in two hours on the operating table, and "Pervyse" was alone in a world at war. The story and fame of him spread through the last city left to the Belgians. All the rest of their good land was trampled by the alien and marred by shell-fire and petrol. Here, alone in Flanders, there was still music in the streets, even if it was often a dead march. And here life was still normal and orderly. "Pervyse" found shelter in the military hospital where his mother had come only to die. He was the youngest wounded Belgian in all the wards. They put him in a private room with a famous English Colonel, and they called the two "Big Tom" and "Little Tom." The blue calico was changed for white things and "Pervyse" had a deep, soft cradle and more visitors than he cared to see. * * * * *