The major nodded.
"Pfadfinder, hein?" he said. This, as both Paul and Arthur knew, was what the Boy Scouts were called in Germany, just as in France and Belgium they were called Eclaireurs Francais or Eclaireurs Belges, as the case might be. "You can go no further this way. We shall take you to Hannay, and there you will have to stay for a time. No civilians are allowed at this time to leave their own villages. The whole country beyond here is a battleground, for we shall soon be in touch with the enemy on the way to Brussels. Still, you shall be safe enough. I have a boy of my own, who is a Pfadfinder with a troop in Eisenach."
CHAPTER XV
THE BUTCHER'S WIFE
Major Kellner was walking.
"I am saddle weary," he explained. "So I am walking for a time for a rest and a change, while they lead my horse. Walk with me, you young ones."
They found that Major Kellner, gruff as he was, was really an officer of the same kindly type as Colonel Schmidt, whom it seemed he knew very well.
"If Colonel Schmidt was satisfied to let you go, it is well," he said. "Now tell me what you have seen."
There was not much, of course, that they could tell him. He was not trying, it seemed, to extract military information from them, but wanted to know how the Belgian people felt about the war.