At last one summer’s evening they gathered around the supper table and Ben failed to appear. I would give worlds to have seen the expressions on their faces then, and on the sentry’s later when he came and found no Engländer there to lock up. I had come to seem too permanent there! I was as much an institution on the place as the dog, Telo, or the broken pump.

While they were making these rude discoveries I lay crouched on a bed of moss in a secluded dell in one of the grand duke’s forests smoking my pipe and speculating as to whether another fortnight would find me in Denmark or in a German jail. I had just finished a good supper of bread, “bully,” condensed milk, and dates from my box of English provisions and was resting a moment before going on.

My linen collar wilted with perspiration and I threw it away, having plenty more in my bag to put on in the morning. I had spent most of the afternoon in putting together my civilian attire, for I had to escape from the village in my prisoner’s garb. I carried patches of black cloth in my pockets, accurately cut out to fit the prisoner’s stripes on my cap and trousers. These I sewed on in the midst of a rye field immediately I got clear of the village. My coat, I had found, would not admit of alteration, so I had contrived to get another. I walked into the little room adjoining the barn, belonging to Warner, the old care-taker, and selecting the best of the coats hanging there, a gay cream-colored creation, I put it on under my black one. Then I put two suits of my new English underwear in a parcel under his bed, for I did not care to steal from Warner. He had seen me thrash a German boy without reporting it and had befriended me on various occasions. On top of the parcel I scribbled a note:

I spent most of the time tramping, stopping when tired or when the view pleased me, for a rest, and sleeping in the middle of the day. I passed through numerous villages and towns whose names I usually learned from the mile-posts along the road. These were about ten feet high and at night I had to climb up them and hold my eyes close to the board to read the inscription. It was the first time I had spent the night outside of my cell for many months and I enjoyed the sight of the moon and the stars again. The long North German twilight was glorious, too, and I often lay on some hillside above the fields and meadows and villages, and watched it while I rested.

I was seldom accosted. I nearly ran into an old gentleman in a forest on one occasion, however. He was a thin, academic-looking old chap, wearing glasses and a frock coat, and carrying a cane. What brought him to the forest at that unseemly hour I have never been able to imagine. It was just after midnight and the darkness was so dense that we could neither of us see the other until we were within a few inches proximity, and the mossy earth so effectually concealed the sound of our footsteps that we narrowly averted a collision.

“Donnerwetter!”[9] he screamed in a squeaky voice, throwing up his hands and dropping his cane.

I was startled too, but finding him quite harmless, I bade him: “Guten Abend!”[10] and, laughing, walked on.

Everywhere through this farming country I saw prisoners of war at work, often more numerous than the German laborers. Like faithful slaves in the small farmyards or like gangs of convicts on the big estates, they carried on constantly the work of the absent German men and tilled Germany’s soil. With dull and hardened faces and uniforms stained and patched until Cossack was scarcely distinguishable from chasseur, they drudged wearily on.

I was arrested by an animated scene on the rye fields of a big estate. About thirty English, French, and Russian prisoners with a sprinkling of Polish girls were harvesting and threshing the rye. The sun was scorching hot, and their faces were black with dust and perspiration as they bent over the big, relentless machine. The sole German on the scene, a fat sentry, was sitting on a bench in the shade of a tree, sipping a glass of beer!