LOTI AND THE TIRED CHILDREN.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 157, 8 March 1915, Page 3

LOTI AND THE TIRED CHILDREN.

A PATETIO INCIDENT. [Pierre Loti, the famous French Writer, tells this pathetic incident in "King Albert's Book."] "At evening in one of our southern towns, a train full of Belgian refugees ran into the station, 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 bound, urged by hetir 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 belched forth v.poTi their land and ours like a belated manifestation of original barbarism.

TWO LITTLE BOYS. "They no longer possessed a village, nor a home, nor a family; they arrived like jetsam cast up by the waters, and inn eyes of all were full of anguish. Many children, little girls whose parents had disappeared in the stress of fire and battle; and 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 in the pitiable throng, held each other tightly by the hand, two.little "boys obviously brothers —the elder, who may have been five years 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 V Their clothes were decent, and their h'.ltle 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 herioeally 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 wake to ti .bc-rce of his duty as protector/ and, half asleep already, found to say an a supplicant tone, to the Eed Cross lady bending over him:

"■ 'Madame, are they going to put us to bed new?' "Far the momenf this was all they were eapable of wishing, all that they fioped for from human pity: to be put to bed.

"They were put to bed at once, together, of course, still holding e.'ich other tightly by the haJid, and, nestling one against the other, they fell fit the same moment into the tranquil unconsciousness of childish slumber.

"Once, long ago, in the China Sea, during the war, two little frightened birds, smaller even than our wrens, arrived, 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 plants. THE TWO BIEDS.

"At nightfall, when I had forgotten them, the Admiral sent for me. It was to show me, not y.'ithout emotion, 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 merged one in the other, and slept without the slightest fear, sure of our pity.

"And these little Belgians, sleeping side by side, made me think of the two birds lost in the China Sea. There was the same confidence and the same innocent slumber—but a greater tenderness was about to watch over them."