The Belgian Twins | Page 7

table, "pop into bed, both
of you, as fast as you can go. You are already half asleep! Father, you
help them with their buttons, and hear them say their prayers, while I
wash up these dishes and take care of the milk." She took a candle from
the chimney-piece as she spoke, and started down cellar with the
skimmer. When she came back into the kitchen once more, the children
were safely tucked in bed, and her husband was seated by the kitchen
door with his chair tipped back against the wall, smoking his evening
pipe. Mother Van Hove cleared the table, washed the dishes, and
brushed the crumbs from the tiled floor. Then she spread the white sand
once more under the table and in a wide border around the edge of the
room, and hung the brush outside the kitchen door.
Father Van Hove smoked in silence as she moved about the room. At
last he said to her, "Leonie, did you hear what our neighbor Maes said
to-night as we were talking in the road?"
"No," said his wife, "I was hurrying home to get supper."
"Maes said there are rumors of a German army on our frontier," said
Father Van Hove.
His wife paused in front of him with her hands on her hips. "Who
brought that story to town?" she demanded.
"Jules Verhulst," answered her husband.
"Jules Verhulst!" sniffed Mother Van Hove with disdain. "He knows
more things that aren't so than any man in this village. I wouldn't
believe anything on his say-so! Besides, the whole world knows that all
the Powers have agreed that Belgium shall be neutral ground, and have
bound themselves solemnly to protect that neutrality. I learned that in
school, and so did you."
"Yes," sighed Father Van Hove. "I learned it too, and surely no nation
can have anything against us! We have given no one cause for
complaint that I know of."
"It's nonsense," said his wife with decision. "Belgium is safe enough so
far as that goes, but one certainly has to work hard here just to make

ends meet and get food for all the hungry mouths! They say it is
different in America; there you work less and get more, and are farther
away from meddlesome neighboring countries besides. I sometimes
wish we had gone there with my sister. She and her husband started
with no more than we have, and now they are rich--at least they were
when I last heard from them; but that was a long time ago," she
finished.
"Well," said Father Van Hove, as he stood up and knocked the ashes
from his pipe, "it may be that they have more money and less work, but
I've lived here in this spot ever since I was born, and my father before
me. Somehow I feel I could never take root in any other soil. I'm
content with things as they are."
"So am I, for the matter of that," said Mother Van Hove cheerfully, as
she put Fidel outside and shut the door for the night. Then, taking the
candle from the chimney-piece once more, she led the way to the inner
room, where the twins were already soundly sleeping.
III
THE ALARM
THE ALARM
For some time the little village of Meer slept quietly in the moonlight.
There was not a sound to break the stillness, except once when Mother
Van Hove's old rooster caught a glimpse of the waning moon through
the window of the chicken-house, and crowed lustily, thinking it was
the sun. The other roosters of the village, wiser than he, made no
response to his call, and in a moment he, too, returned to his interrupted
slumbers. But though there was as yet no sound to tell of their approach,
the moon looked down upon three horsemen galloping over the yellow
ribbon of road from Malines toward the little village. Soon the sound of
the horses' hoofs beating upon the hardened earth throbbed through the
village itself, and Fidel sat up on the kitchen doorstep, pricked up his
ears, and listened. He heard the hoof- beats and awakened the echoes
with a sharp bark.
Mother Van Hove sat up in bed and listened; another dog barked, and
another, and now she, too, heard the hoof-beats. Nearer they came, and
nearer, and now she could hear a voice shouting. She shook her
husband. "Wake up!" she whispered in his ear, "something is wrong!
Fidel barks, and I hear strange noises about. Wake up!"

"Fidel is crazy," said Father Van Hove sleepily. "He thinks some
weasel is after the chickens very likely. Fidel will attend to it. Go to
sleep."
He sank back again upon his pillows, but his wife seized his arm and
pulled him up.
"Listen!"