Page:Love's trilogy.djvu/290

 the street sounds the tramping of horses. I hurry to the window, but at the same moment the door of father's study is flung open and I am pulled back by a strong hand. 'Pull down the blinds, no one must look out,' father says, pale and moved. 'The Germans are here.' An uncanny silence reigns in the room, and, frightened, I crouch against mother's skirts, while the clattering noise of many horses comes nearer. It stops just outside our windows. We only hear some quick, loud words which sound like scolding, then a whimper, new oaths, curses and rattling of arms, restless stamping of horses, and at last a terrified shriek in Danish. In spite of his own orders, father rushes to the window, mother and we children behind him, and from the chair I see a man, in whom I recognise our shoemaker, being dragged along the road behind a prancing horse, on which sits an officer in a shining, white cloak. The street is filled with grand, uniformed horsemen, who now all move on following the officer, who, with the shoemaker as forced guide, is leading the way down towards the fjord, across which the Danish soldiers have fled.

And then that other scene when the wounded Danish soldiers were driven through the streets after the disastrous fight in the hills west of the town. For once the Danes outnumbered the Germans and the victory seemed certain, but unfortunately the colonel who led our men was over-confident. At full-speed he allowed the soldiers to rush down the hill, at the foot of