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.
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