"Good!" ejaculated Kenneth. "The Belgians are driving home an attack."
The two Germans gave not the slightest hint of alarm, but stolidly continued their meal. Their indifference caused the lads to wonder. It was not a conflict between two armed forces, but a massacre! It was the commencement of what was, in the words of the Prime Minister of Great Britain, "the greatest crime against civilization and culture since the Thirty Years' War".
Fortunately Kenneth and his companion were spared the horrors of having to witness the indiscriminate shooting of luckless civilians, but, from their coign of vantage, they were spectators of the scene of destruction that followed.
Tall, lurid flames burst forth from the centre of the town of Louvain. Gradually the ever-widening circle of fire spread till the bulk of the houses was one vast holocaust.
Throughout that terrible night the lads remained at the window, watching the progress of the conflagration and listening to the shrieks of panic and terror from the brutally-maltreated inhabitants.
That was von Manteuffel's method of covering up the blunder made by his half-drunken troops.
CHAPTER XXIII
A Bolt from the Blue
At seven the following morning the two guards were relieved. During the night they had been stolidly indifferent to everything that was taking place. They permitted their prisoners liberty of action within the limits of the room, but they maintained a ceaseless vigilance, keeping their loaded rifles within arm's-length the whole of the time.