Held by the Enemy.
The long, narrow street was being swept by a hail of lead. Once again was Dinant stricken.
The Germans—ordered by the assassin who led them—were firing indiscriminately into the houses as they rode along.
A woman sleeping in the top room of the hotel was killed, while, in the next house, a poor little child was mortally wounded, and died in its mother’s arms. Those who opened their doors, startled at the commotion, were all ruthlessly shot down. The marauders, more savage than the warriors of the Khalifa, spared nobody.
Aimée, seated upon a mouldy wine-barrel in the stuffy cellar amid that crowd of terrified women, listened to the firing, keenly apprehensive of Edmond’s fate. That sudden and unexpected meeting now seemed to her like some strange dream.
Hiding there, she knew not the savage, awful acts that were being committed by the Kaiser’s assassins, acts which were but the prelude of a reign of terror.
“Do not be distressed, Mademoiselle,” urged old Uncle François, placing his big, heavy hand kindly upon the girl’s shoulder. “You are safe here, and besides, our soldiers will soon drive out the enemy, as they did before.”
As he spoke, the earth shook beneath the roar of a big field-gun.
“Hark! They are firing upon them from the citadel?” he added.
That night proved one of breathless suspense. The sound of intermittent firing could be heard, even down in that vaulted cellar, together with the heavier explosions which, ever and anon, shook the ancient place to its very foundations.