“Then in they came—a non-commissioned officer and four privates who filed through the doorway, saluted, and stood at attention. ‘I am named Sergeant Schneider—Herr Leutnant Mahn?’ the leader asked.
“‘Yes,’ responded the lieutenant quietly.
“‘My warrant,’ said the sergeant, offering a paper. ‘You are under arrest. Come.’
“The lieutenant rose slowly from his chair. He thrust his pistol into its holster. His eyes were bright and very calm. For an instant I admired him although he was my enemy; he was so calm, so sure. God was with him, I know. ‘Ab exitio servavit, nicht, Herr monk?’ he asked.
“He picked up from the table the written order of von Manteuffel. ‘Your passport and carte d’identite,’ he continued slowly, as if we had been speaking of them. ‘You may stay in charge of the monastery with Piet. All is in order.... Your photograph, Herr.’ He handed me his own photograph—the photograph you see on the wall, monsieur. ‘Your Ausweiss!’ He gave me the written order from von Manteuffel directing that the monastery be burned. Then he turned quietly to the file of soldiers and walked out before them....
“It is not the face of a bad man, that face in the photograph, monsieur,” said Brother Jan, as I stared again into the steady, narrow eyes of the picture of Lieutenant Mahn. “God asks no questions of men when He would use them. Our monastery is saved through the hand of a stranger and an enemy. It is the work of God, laus Deo! Let us praise God, monsieur.”
VI
GHOSTS
Belgian peasants say that on the Eve of All Souls unquiet spirits are loosed from their graves for an hour after sunset. Those who died by violence, or those who died unshriven, rise from the dark and speak to passersby; they rise with the load of their sins upon them, with the hatred, or fear, or agony, or longing which they felt while dying, still in their tortured hearts, and they beg the passersby to take vengeance on their enemies, or to give them news of those they loved or hated. And after a brief hour they sink back again into the dust.
I believe the story, for I have met those sad spirits. It was on a foggy evening in October—All Souls’ Eve—on the road from Brussels to Antwerp, where Belgians and Britons a year before faced the German hordes in weeks of bitter fighting. We were in a terrible hurry. Pierre, the chauffeur, was driving the motor-car; I was seated beside him. The headlights blurred like drowned eyes, and the open windshield dripped with wet. If we met a belated cart, or if we misjudged distances on that winding road, we would never reach our destination alive! But we were in a hurry, for it was All Souls’ Eve—the night of the dead.