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."
In the midst of a scattered mob came the laggards. Joos was not hurrying at all. He was smiling horribly. In his hand he held a large pocket-knife open. "It was all I had," he explained calmly. "But Margot said Lise was dead, so it did his business."
"I'm glad," said Dalroy. "It was your privilege. But you must run now, for Léontine's sake, as she will not leave you, and the Germans may be on us at any moment."
Luckily, the stream of people swerved into a by-road; the "quarries" of which some man had spoken opened up in the hillside close at hand. On top were woods, and a cart-track led that way at a sharp gradient. Dalroy assisted the dogs by pushing the cart, and they reached the summit. Pausing there, while Irene and the weeping Léontine endeavoured to revive Madame Stauwaert, to whom they must look for some sort of guidance as to their next move, he went to the lip of the excavation, and surveyed the scene.
Dusk was creeping over the picturesque valley, but the light still sufficed to reveal distances. The railway station, with all the houses in the vicinity, was on fire. Nearly every dwelling along the Namur road was ablaze; while the trim little farms which rise, one above the other, on the terraced heights of the right bank of the Meuse seemed to have burst into flame spontaneously. Seilles, too, on the opposite bank, was undergoing the same process of wanton destruction; but, a puzzling thing, rifles and machine-guns were busy on both sides of the river, and the flashes showed that a sharp engagement was taking place.