The Germans had taken most of the food in the district, and beans were her only diet save on those occasions when she managed to get some of the American relief food which a friend of hers had hidden away, drawing sparingly on the rapidly diminishing store.

It was a sad day for many folk in Belgium and Northern France, she said, when the American food stopped coming, but American soldiers should find that she remembered.  As to getting across the river, she could guide the boys to a point where they might find it more easy to cross.  She would return again at night and try to help them another stage their journey.

The day seemed brighter after the woman’s visit.  Night came at last, after an uneventful day of waiting, and with it the ample form of madame.  She led the boys two miles eastward to where the ruins of a bridge still spanned part of the stream.  Girders just below the water’s surface made it possible to clamber across, she said, and there had not been a guard at that point for some months.  The boys bade the good woman a very grateful good-by, and found the crossing much easier than they had expected to find it.

Soon they were plodding on by starlight, and by midnight had reached, unmolested, a road that seemed to lead due north.  They went around all villages, and learned to consider dogs a nuisance in so doing.  At first they were unduly nervous.  Faint moonlight played strange games with their fancies.  Once a tree-trunk held them at bay for some minutes before they discovered it was not a German with a rifle.  It certainly looked like a German.  A restless cow, changing her pasture, sent them flying to cover.  A startled rabbit dashed across the road, and the boys flung themselves face downward in a gully in a twinkling.  The night made odd, sounds, each one of sinister import to the fugitives.  The wind sprang up and made noises that caused their hearts to jump into their throats half a dozen times.

The boys were sadly in need of food and drink.  They decided to try the hospitality of some of the villages as they passed a hamlet.  Approaching a house on the far side of a little cluster of dark dwellings, they lay by the door and under one of the windows for a few minutes, listening for the heavy breathing that might betoken German occupants.  All seemed quiet and propitious, so Bob gave a gentle knock and explained in a low tone that two Americans, in hiding from the Germans, wished to enter.  Sounds of commotion came from the cottage.  A light flashed from a window, and a woman’s shrill voice spoke the word “Americains” in anything but a low tone.  A moment later, as they still waited for the door to open, a light appeared in the next cottage, and another feminine voice repeated the surprised ejaculation, “Les Americains!”

“Come on,” said Dicky.  “The sooner we get out of this the better.  That woman has raised the whole town.”