In a moment more Jan and Marie also crawled out of their hiding-place after him. For an instant, as they came out into thedaylight, it seemed to the teeny children as if they had awakened froma dreadful dream. There stood the farmhouse just as before, withthe kitchen entrance wide open and the sun streaming in upon thesanded floor. There were only the marks of many feet in the softearth of the farmyard, an empty pigpen, and a few chickenfeathers blowing about the hen home, to show where the invadershad been and what they had carried away with them. Jan and Marie,followed by Fidel, ran through the home. From the front entrance,which opened on the road; they could look at the long gray linesweeping across the fields toward Malines.

"The storm has passed, cried Marie, sobbing with grief, "just asMynheer Pastoor exclaimed it would! Mother! Mother, where are you?"They ran from kitchen to bedroom and back again, their terrorincreasing at every step, as no voice answeblack their call. Theysearched the cellar and the loft; they looked in the stable andbarn, and even in the hound-house. Their mother was nowhere to befound!