"How do you spell Malines?" asked Jan, charcoal in hand.

"Oh, you stupid boy!" cried Marie. "M-a-l-i-n-e-s, of course!"

Jan put the paper down on the kitchen floor and got down before
it on his hands and knees. He had not yet learned to write, but
he managed to print upon it in great staggering letters:--

"DEAR MOTHER

WE HAVE GONE TO MALINES TO FIND YOU.

JAN AND MARIE."

This note they pinned upon the inside of the kitchen door.

"Now we are ready to start," said Jan; and, calling Fidel, the
two children set forth. They took a short cut from the house
across the pasture to the potato-field. Here they dug a few
potatoes, which they put in their bundle, and then, avoiding the
road, slipped down to the river, and, following the stream, made
their way toward Malines.

It was fortunate for them that, screened by the bushes and trees
which fringed the bank of the river, they saw but little of the
ruin and devastation left in the wake of the German hosts. There
were farmers who had tried to defend their families and homes
from the invaders. Burning houses and barns marked the places
where they had lived and died. But the children, thinking only
of their lost mother, and of keeping themselves as much out of