THE TIRED CHILDREN

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2391, 22 February 1915, Page 7

THE TIRED CHILDREN

PIERRE LOTI'S STORY, Pierre Loti, the famous French writer, tells this pathetic incident in "King Albert's Book''; _ Ll_ "At evening in one of our southern towns, a train full of Belgian refugees ran into the and, poor martyrs, exhausted and bewildered, got out slowly, one by one, on the unfamiliar platform. where , French people were waiting to receive them. . : "Carrying a few provisions caught up at random, they had got into the carriages without even asking whither they were boun,d, urged by their anxiety to flee, to flee desperately from horror and death, from unspeakable mutilation and Sadie outrage—from things that seemed.no longer possible in the world, but which, it seems, were lying dormant in pietistic German brains, and had suddenly beiched forth upon their land and purs' like a belated, manifestation or original barbarism. . "They no longer possessed a village, a home, nor a family: they arrived like jeisam cast up by the waters, and the eves of all were full of terrified anguish: Many children, little girls whose parents had disappeared in the stress of fire and battle; aged women, now alone in the world, who had fled, hardly knowing why, no longer caring for life, but moved by / some obscure instinct of self-preservation. . , "Two little creatures, lost m the pitiable throng, held each other tightly by the hand, two little boys obviously brothers—the elder, who may have been five ye'ars old, protecting the younger, of about three. No one claimed them, no one knew them. How had they been able to understand, finding themselves alone, that they, too, must get into this train to escape death._ Their clothes were decent, and their little stockings were thick and warm; clearly they belonged to humble but careful parents; they were doubtless the sons of one of those sublime Belgian soldiers who had fallen heroically on the battlefield. and whose last thought had.perhaps been one of supreme tenderness for them. , •- ■ "The elder, clasping the little one s hand closely, as if fearing to lose him, seemed to wak© to a sens© or his duty as protector, and, half'asleep alreadyi found strength to say in a suppliant tone, to the Red Cross lady bending over . . - " 'Madame, are they gomg to put us to bed soon?' " . "For the moment this was all they were capable of wishing, all that they hoped for from human pity; to be put ' be<J - , , . . "They were put to ben at once, together,'of course, still holding each other tightly.. by th© band, and, nestling on© against the other, they fell at the same moment into the tranquil unonsciousness of childish slumber. ."Once, long ago, in the China Sea, during the war, two little Frightened birds, smaller even than our wrens, nrrived. I know not how, on board our ironclad, in our Admiral's cabin, and all day long, though no one attempted to disturb them, they fluttered from side to side, perching on cornices and plant 3. f ' ~ , • "At nightfall, when F Tfftd forgotten them, the Admiral sent for me. It was to show me, not without emdtron, the two little visitors, who had gone to rost in his room, perched upon a slender silken cord, above his bed. They nestled closely together, two little balls of feathers: touching and almost morged ono in the other, and slept without tho slightest fear, sure of our pity. _ "And these little Belgians sleeping side by side made me think of the two little 'birds lost in the China Sea. There was tho same confidence and the same innocent slumber but a greater tenderness was about to watch over them,"-