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They led us into the shell of the place,
the stone walls being still staunchly erect; but the roof was gone, and
in the cinders and dust on the planks of an inner room they showed us a
big dull-brown smear.
This, they told us, pointing, was the place where he lay. One man in
pantomime acted out the drama of the discovery of the body. He was a
born actor, that Belgian villager, and an orator--with his hands.
Somehow, watching him, I visualized the victim as a little man, old and
stoop-shouldered and feeble in his movements.
I looked about the room. The corner toward the road was a black ruin,
but the back wall was hardly touched by the marks of the fire.
On a mantel small bits of pottery stood intact, and a holy picture on
the wall--a cheap print of a saint--was not even singed. At the foot of
the cellar steps curdled milk stood in pans; and beside the milk, on a
table, was a half-moon of cheese and a long knife.
We wanted to know why the man who lived here had been killed. They
professed ignorance then--none of them knew, or, at least, none of them
would say.


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