With them, all fleeing from the same foe, all moving in one direction, were family carriages, the servants on the box in disordered livery, as they had served dinner, or coatless, but still in the striped waistcoats and silver buttons of grooms or footmen, and bicyclers with bundles strapped to their shoulders, and men and women stumbling on foot, carrying their children.

Above it all rose the breathless scream of the racing-cars, as they rocked and skidded, with brakes grinding and mufflers open; with their own terror creating and spreading terror.
Though eager in sympathy, the people of Brussels themselves were undisturbed.

Many still sat at the little iron tables and smiled pityingly upon the strange figures of the peasants.

They had had their trouble for nothing, they said.

It was a false alarm.