All readers of Sir Walter Scott's novels will recollect Old Mortality,
the itinerant antiquary, whose craze it was to clean the moss from
gravestones and keep their letters and effigies in good condition.
Private R. Walker, of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, told
me the following story concerning a very similar character.
You have probably heard how the Canadians have brought the spirit of
the trapper to the trenches; of their patience in marking down their
prey. The enemy never know what the Canadians will be about next, and
for a wealth of reasons one imagines that to be opposite the Canadian
trenches in Flanders must be a nerve-racking experience.
The boys from the land of the Maple Leaf are particularly patient in
sapping and mining. They burrow vertical shafts far under the depths
at which they estimate the Germans will counter-mine; they destroy the
enemy's galleries and, creating a series of craters, occupy them and
connect them up with the nearest Canadian trenches.
In these mining operations the Canadians have obtained a good deal of
information concerning the enemy's moves from an old fellow they call
"Gravestones." His chief occupation is the preservation of the rows
of wooden crosses denoting the last resting place of the fallen. The
old man's history is passing strange. He is a Belgian. His daughter,
prior to the war, had taken the veil, but when the country was invaded
the cloisters of most of the convents and monasteries of Belgium were
deserted. The men took up arms; the women helped in the hospitals.
"Gravestones" lived at Genappe, in Brabant. When his daughter joined
him, from her convent, he took flight to Gembroux, hoping to reach the
French border, but the party was intercepted by the Germans. The old
man, pretending to lose the power of articulate speech, was set free.
Meanwhile the daughter, during the cross-examination of her father, had
taken shelter in the old church of the village. Thither she was pursued
by some of the German soldiers.
When they entered the church the girl was hiding by the altar; but in
alarm, as the soldiers advanced towards her, she seized the great gilt
cross surmounting the altar itself and threatened to hurl it down upon
the first man who approached her.
Thereupon one of the sergeants ordered his men to open fire upon her,
as an example to certain of the villagers who had also taken refuge
in the building. Perhaps the men felt the influence of the sacred
precincts they had violated; perhaps they respected the girl's bravery.
Anyway, they fired low. The girl was not killed, but fell under the
altar, both her legs riddled with bullets.
To-day she is believed to be in hospital at Namur, though no accurate
information is obtainable. Meanwhile, her father, once a prosperous
_fabricant_ of paper at Genappe, works out a slow and terrible scheme
of revenge. Lovingly he plants flowers and shrubs on the graves of
those who have helped to defeat the Huns, and incidentally he supplies
the living with information of the utmost value. Living among some
ruins outside Ypres, the bent old fellow is known to all but the
Canadians as the "Hermit of Ypres."