Year: 1879

While she lay awake, for sleep she
could not, the terrible thing she feared
came to pass. The guard, careless at
their post, who scorned her message,
were surprised at their game. The four
hundred had come over the walls by
their scaling ladders and gained the
market place, where they were heard
shouting:


"Ghentl Ghentr'


The startled people sprung in horror
from their beds, only to see that it was
too late to save their town, even if their
own lives were secure.


1t was an awful night of fighting and
pillaging; and the sight which the next
mornings sun looked upon was of
streets full of armed men, houses broken
open, confusion and destruction and
death everywhere; and out through the
now open gates a multitude of women
and children, in the clothes they slept
in, barefoot and half-naked, fleeing for
their lives before the men of Ghent, who
were driving them as if they had been
cattle; and the poor fugitives, glad to
escape on any terms, went running off
on every road except the one to the
enemy's city; and in the end found
refuge i'll other towns, where the hus-
bands and fathers of some of them after
ward joined them, but the most were
the same as if they were widowed and
orphaned.


There was only one person who dared
take the road to Ghent, and he crossed
out to it over the fatal meadow, but left
it as soon as he saw at one side the lean
ing cottage, with the little cow-pen be-
side it, where Petronilla lived. The
sentinel had escaped, with his outer gar
ment torn away and cash across his
shoulder; but he had kept safe sewed
within his leathern doublet pouch of
gold which he had laid by for his old
mothers support, if ever he should come
back to Oudenarde.


Since he came he had heard that she
had been some years missing from the
farmstead, which had been ruined by
the wars, and that surely she must be
dead.


He thought that perhaps he would
give this gray-haired woman some of it
now for his mothers sake. How anxi-
Gus she had seemed, what faithful
soul she was to do so much, how old she
was to have walked so far, and how
kind her invitation had been!


This was her hut, then How poor it
WIS. anu bnOSe iWO COWS IOOklHS over
the fence and lowing mournfully-how
lean and starved they were! The house
door was open, and cat came out,
salmon -colored. Where had he seen
such cat of that queer colorP She
growled and put up her back and started
in, .hen stopped and looked around in
dismay as he called ''Solomonl Solo
mon. 1t is my very cat. Solomon


Then something else happened, for q
voice cried from the bed within:


"Oh, Peterl'


Yes; Peronilla, sleeping late after her
nights adventure, dreamed of the senti-
nel and Peters words awoke her. AS
sure as she was Petronilla, he was Peter.


What more is there to be told? Why,
that they both agreed that it was best
to get away from Oudenarde as fast as
their feet could carry them. The house
might serve as shelter to some poor fugi-
tive. The dinner-pot they would leave
with somebody who had wherewithal to
buy i dinner to cook in it. And the
few possessions of the departing house
keeper should be left for her successor.


But Solomon they took with them in q
bag; and the two sorry-looking COWS
they drove before them to a more fertile
as well as peaceful land" because. "
said Peter, if it had not been for the
cows, we never should have found each
other. Youths Conpanioa