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.
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