The shooting drew nearer. A number of women and children, with a few men, appeared. They were running and screaming. The first batch fled past; but an elderly dame, spent with even a brief flurry, halted for a few seconds when she saw the group near the dog-team.
“Henri Joos!” she gasped. “And Léontine! What, in Heaven’s name, are you doing here?”
It was Madame Stauwaert, the Andenne cousin with whom they hoped to find sanctuary.
The miller gazed at her in a curiously abstracted way. “Is that you, Margot?” he said. “We were coming to you. But they have wounded Lise. See! Here she is!”
Madame Stauwaert looked at the corpse as though she did not understand at first. Then she burst out hysterically, “She’s dead, Henri! They’ve killed her! They’re killing all of us! They pulled Alphonse out of the house and stabbed him with a bayonet. They’re firing through the openings into the cellars and into the ground-floor rooms of every house. If they see a face at a bedroom window they shoot. Two Germans, so drunk that they could hardly stand, shot at me as I ran. Ah, dear God!”
She swayed and sank in a faint. The flying crowd increased in numbers. Some one shouted, “Fools! Be off, for your lives! Make for the quarries.”
Dalroy decided to take this unknown friend’s advice. The terrified people of Andenne had, at least, some definite goal in view, whereas he had none. He lifted Madame Stauwaert and placed her beside the dead body on the cart.
“Come,” he said to Maertz, “get the dogs into a trot.—Léontine, look after your father, and don’t lose sight of us!”
He grasped Irene by the arm. The tiny vehicle was flat and narrow, and he was so intent on preventing the unconscious woman from falling off into the road that he did not miss Joos and his daughter until Irene called on Maertz to stop. “Where are the others?” she cried. “We must not desert them.”