"He didn't tell me I was a fool, but I could see he thought I was, and I didn't tell him he was a fool, but he could see I thought he was, so the matter stopped at that."
"But, Aunt Abigail," said Horace, puzzled between the truth in the master's words and the grain of truth in his aunt's ideas, "suppose the army runs amuck and the officers can't control it?"
"Then it isn't much of an army," she snapped back. "I hear a lot of talk about discipline. If the officers can't keep the men from turning into savages, the way you and the mayor think they will, then it's time a war came along for somebody to beat sense into their heads. Not that that has anything to do with it. I told your father I'd be here when he came back, and it'll take more than a fight between two of these little European countries—which we could tuck into the State of Texas without noticing it—to make me break my word."
Horace realized the ignorant narrowness of his aunt's position. He had often deplored the arrogant Americanism which estranged her foreign friends. It hurt him, sometimes, when his schoolfellows made fun of America's boastfulness and bluff, for he knew that many of their criticisms were just. At the same time, he knew, too, that there were many things in America wherein his country was superior to Europe. And, while he raged inwardly at his aunt's prejudices, he could not but admire her pluck.
"Lots of people are leaving to-night," he ventured.
"I know. I've been helping them to pack. Some of them have gone with nothing more than the clothes they stood in, others wanted to carry their house, yes, their gardens, too, I reckon, on their backs. Such weeping and making a to-do I never saw. I'm not criticizing any one, understand, only—I stay. Do you want to go?"
"No," said Horace, "I stay, too."
"Good thing," she said, tartly; "I'd hate to see any nephew of mine show a yellow streak."
Horace spent a large part of that night in helping householders who had decided to flee from the German advance, every one having been warned by the mayor. Hardly any one slept that night in Beaufays. Up to midnight and after, the roads were thronged with the people of the little village, escaping for their lives. Every horse in the village or on the farms around was hitched to the largest vehicle that it could draw, while many walked, carrying their goods. It was the first installment of that host of misery which, for the next month, crowded Belgium from Liége to the sea. All night the bombardment grew heavier and heavier, and, toward morning, heavy cannonading to the west told that the fort of Boncelles was being attacked. Beaufays, lying just outside the line of defense, as yet had seen no other evidence of the battle than the drifting clouds of smoke by day and the flashes of fire by night.
Breakfast-time came on the morning of August 6 in the little village of Beaufays, the last breakfast its citizens would eat under their own flag for many a weary year. Horace was just finishing his meal when a bugle-call rent the air, followed by the clattering of horses' hoofs. He jumped up and went to the door.