We paid it in advance, in case anything should happen on the way, and he took us in a venerable open carriage behind two crow-bait skeletons that had once, in a happier day when hay was cheaper, been horses.
We drove slowly, taking the middle of the wide Brussels road.

On our right, traveling in the same direction, crawled an unending line of German baggage wagons and pontoon trucks.

On our left, going the opposite way, was another line, also unending, made up of refugee villagers, returning afoot to the towns beyond Louvain from which they had fled four days earlier.

They were footsore and they limped; they were of all ages and most miserable-looking.

And, one and all, they were as tongueless as so many ghosts.