The boys ran down the road quietly, but losing no time.  Well it was that they did so, for they had not gone far before several shots were fired behind them, and one or two sinister bullets sang over their heads.  They started running in good earnest then.  Fortunately there was no pursuit.  After a time they slowed down and again became a prey to all their former fears of night noises.  A large bird flew close to Bob’s head and gave him quite a scare.  As they pressed on along the roadway, the clatter of hoof-beats coming toward them sent them to the roadside, where, a ditch offered welcome refuge.

Bob and Dicky jumped in, close together.  At the bottom they hit something soft, which turned beneath them and gave a whistling grunt as their combined weight came down upon it.  In an instant they realized that they had jumped full on top of a man.  Who he was or what he was doing there was of no moment to the boys.  A sound from him might mean their capture.  Bob grabbed the man, grappled with him in the pitch dark, and choked him into unconsciousness, Dicky lending a hand.  A troop of German cavalry clattered up.  Just as the troop drew abreast, the order was given for them to slow from a trot into a walk.  The boys held their breath.  Gradually the horsemen drew past, then away.  Bob waited until they were well in the distance, and then examined the poor fellow underneath.  If the boys had been scared to have jumped on the man, the man had been more than scared to have had them do so.

There was all-round relief when the boys found the victim to be an elderly Belgian farmer; and the relief of the farmer himself as he gathered his scattered wits, to find that the boys had no designs further upon his welfare, was truly comic.  The Germans, he said, had imposed severe penalties on inhabitants who roamed about the country-side between eight o’clock in the evening and daylight.  His quest remained unexplained, except in so far as a sack of something the boys did not examine might have explained it.  Bob advised the old man to remain where he was till morning light, and the boys pressed on.

Before dawn they took refuge in a shed behind a house whose stately lines were marred by the marks of bombardment.

The owner of the half-ruined house and the shed where they had taken refuge proved to be a fine old Belgian, courageous and full of resource.  As soon as he found that the boys were escaping American airmen he brought food and drink to them in plenty.  They were a long way from the Holland line, he said, but they might, with care, get across.  Others had done so.  He would look into the probabilities and possibilities, and let them know.

The shed was a bare, small building of rude boards, with nothing in it.  A few boards were placed across the eaves, forming a sort of loft extending for some seven feet from the end of the building.  It was on these boards that the boys spent their days while waiting for an opportune moment to go further.  Their host would not hear of their suggestions that they should leave the shed until he had arranged plans for their reception at a further station on their journey.