Besides, the searching chill of a Belgian night was making us stiff.
Scouting up a narrow winding alley, one of the party who spoke German found a courtyard behind a schoolhouse called imposingly L'Ecole Moyenne de Beaumont, where he obtained permission from a German sergeant to stable our mare for the night in the aristocratic companionship of a troop of officers' horses.

Through another streak of luck we preempted a room in the schoolhouse and held it against all comers by right of squatter sovereignty.

There my friends and I slept on the stone floor, with a scanty amount of hay under us for a bed and our coats for coverlets.

But before we slept we dined.
We dined on hard-boiled eggs and stale cheese--which we had saved from midday--in a big, bare study hall half full of lancers.

They gave us rye bread and some of the Prince de Caraman-Chimay's wine to go with the provender we had brought, and they made room for us at the long benches that ran lengthwise of the room.