Arthur made a grimace.
"Ugh!" he said. "Yes, that's true! Or a detachment that had that man Ridder along! You're right, Paul. We might be a great deal worse off than we are! But I'll tell you one thing. When we come back into Hannay with the Germans, there will be a lot of people there who are sure that we have been in league with them from the beginning."
"I hope not," said Paul, looking troubled. "But I'm afraid you're right. They can't understand, of course. I don't blame them for feeling as they do. But it's rather hard, when I was only trying to do what would be best for them. And I believe we did save them from having a very bad time there. You see, these people have a couple of guns along. They're not very big, and they wouldn't make very much impression on a fortified place, but if they were turned on a defenseless village like Hannay, they would destroy it in a very few minutes."
In Hannay, as the battalion marched in, past the remains of the barricade, at which most of the men looked with a tolerant smile, the street was again deserted. Major Kellner rode straight up to the mairie, and Paul and Arthur could see that he was holding a conference with the maire. The battalion was halted and during this conference stood at ease. Then quick orders came back; never from the officers, but always, Paul noticed, from the non-commissioned officers, to whom the captains and lieutenants gave the commands.
Then the battalion split up. One company broke ranks and immediately swarmed through the village, looking curiously at everything, while the other marched on, passing out of sight before long in a cloud of dust. Major Kellner remained with the company that stayed behind, and Paul and Arthur, who were at liberty, seemingly, to wander about the village as they pleased, saw him looking for quarters in disgust. After a time he settled upon the house of the local doctor, and there he and the officers were soon at home. Meanwhile the men scattered themselves in the different houses of the place, two to each house, as a rule, though sometimes there were more.
"Why are they staying here, I wonder?" said Arthur.
"I don't know," said Paul, with a shrug of his shoulders. "But I suppose there will be fighting all along here if the Germans advance on Brussels. It's all done on orders from the staff headquarters, you see. If I knew what sort of a force was operating here, perhaps I could tell you. I think Liege is being attacked by one army corps—that's about forty-five thousand men, in three divisions. These men may be part of a division that is operating independently, or they may be getting their orders from the headquarters of a whole army."
"What do you mean by army? The whole German army?"
"No. You know roughly how they will divide their forces, don't you? An army has a certain work to do. It may be of almost any size—two hundred, three hundred, even five or six hundred thousand men. That is, from five to fifteen army corps. It has its own commanding general, who is responsible to the general staff. One plan that I've heard talked about as likely to be used by the Germans is to have two armies coming through Belgium, one through Luxembourg, one through Lorraine and one from the Rhine Valley. Then they would have one army in East Prussia and another in Silesia to fight against the Russians."
"I see. Paul, aren't you hungry? I am."