His throat had been cut and his blood was on the floor, and he was dead.

They led us into the shell of the place, the stone walls being still staunchly erect; but the roof was gone, and in the cinders and dust on the planks of an inner room they showed us a big dull-brown smear.
This, they told us, pointing, was the place where he lay.

One man in pantomime acted out the drama of the discovery of the body.

He was a born actor, that Belgian villager, and an orator--with his hands.
Somehow, watching him, I visualized the victim as a little man, old and stoop-shouldered and feeble in his movements.
I looked about the room.

The corner toward the road was a black ruin, but the back wall was hardly touched by the marks of the fire.
On a mantel small bits of pottery stood intact, and a holy picture on the wall--a cheap print of a saint--was not even singed.