Casper Daily Tribune Newspaper, November 8, 1918, Page 5

> 69SOSSO0 Coprright, 108, by Pat Alva eee Wheit h@ first told mé that the plan of placing me in a convent disguised » priest had been abandoned he ex- plained it by saying that the cardinal had issued orders to the priests to) help no more fugitives, and I have since wondered whether there was anything in my papers which had turned him against me and led him to forsake me after all he had promised to do for me, Yor perhaps two hours I sat on that} tn se musing about the peculiar tarn in my affairs, when the front door | ned and Huyliger ascended the “I have brought you such of your be- longings as I still had, O’Brien,” he d softly. “The rest, as I told you, I cannot give you. They are no longer in my possession.” I looked through the little bunch he handed me. It included my identifi- cation disk, most of the papers I val- i, and perhaps half of the photo- graphs. . “I don’t know what your object is in retaining the rest of my pictures, Huy-} liger,” I replied, “but as a matter of | fact, the ones that are missing were) only of sentimental value to me and you are welcome to them. We'll call it a beat.” I don't know whether he understood the idiom, but he sat down on the r 's just below me and cogitated for a few moments. “O'Brien,” he started finally, “I’m sorry things have gone the way they have. I feel sorry for you and I would really like to help you. I don’t sup-| pose you will believe me, but the matter of the order which which i asked you to sign was not of my doing. However, we won't go into that. The proposition was made to you and you turned it down, and that’s the end of it. At the same time, I hate to leave, you to your own resources and I am going to make one more suggestion to you for your own good. I have an-) other plan to get you into Holland)! and if you will go with me to anothe: house, I will introduce you to a man| who I think will be in a position to, help you.” | “How many millions of pounds will! nt for his trouble "I answered, | ically. ou can arrange tuvhen you him, Wilt Sod sor = ae I suspected there was something fishy about the proposition, but I felt that I could take care of myself and | decided to see the thing through. I knew Huyliger would not dare to de- liver me to the authorities because of the fact that I had the tell-tale pass- port, which would be his deathknell as well as my own, Accordingly ¥ said I would be quite willing to go with him whenever he was ready, and he suggested that we go the next evening. I pointed out to him that I was en-| tirely without food and asked him whether he could not arrange to bring or send me something to eat while 1) remained in the house. | “I'm sorry, O’Brien,” he replied, “but I'm afraid you will have to, get along| as best you can. When I brought you your breakfast this morning I took a desperate chance. If I had been dis- covered by one of the German soldiers entering this house with food in my possession, I would not only have paid | the penalty myself, but you would have been discovered, too. It is teo danger- ous a proposition. Why don't you go out by yourself and buy your food at the Ss? That would give you con- fidence and you'll need plenty of it when you continue your journey to the border,” There was a good deal of truth in what he said and I really could not blame him for not wanting to tuke any chances to help me in view of the rela- Uons between us, “Very well’ 2D said; “I’ve gone with- out food for many hours at a time be- fore and I suppose I shall be ablé to dv so again. T shall look for you to- inorrow evening.” ‘The next evening he came and I ac- conpanted him to another house not very far from the one in which I had been staying and not unlike it in ap-| Pearance, It, too, was. a substantial | ‘ivelling house which had been upten- unted since the beginning suxe perhaps for such occasional visits as Huyliger and his associates made to it. a Huyliger let himself im and con- Gueted me te a room on the second floor, where he introduced me to two men. One, ¥ could readily see by the | resemblance, was his own brother. | ‘The other was a stranger. Very briefly they explained to me) that they had procured another pass- bert for mez-a genpine one—which Would prove far more effective in help- ‘uz to get me to the frontier then the counterfeit one they had manufac-| tured for me, I think I saw through their gaine) Nsht at the start, but I listened pa- Le utly to what they had to say. “Of course, you will have to return) to us the passport we gave you before! ‘ve can give you the real one,” said! uyliger's brother. | “I haven't the slightest objection,” 1) «plied, “if the new passport is all you! im for it. Will youllet mé see it?” | 2 There was considerable hesitation on | le part of 's brother 2 | otherchap Sere PPROENE SPRAY v, 1 don’t thins that's necessary | he w y yours. Good night!” at all, “Mr. O'iilen,” sald the former. “You give us the old passport and we will be very glad te give you the new one for tt. Isn't that fair: enough?" “dt may be fair enough, my friends,” I retorted, seeing: that it was useless to conceal further the fact:that I was fully aware oftheir: whole plan and why I had been brought to this house; “It may be fair enough, my friends,” 1| said, “but you will get the pasagoe| that I have here,” patting my side and! indicating my inside breast pocket, “only off my dead body!” I suppose the three of them couid have made short work of me then and there if they had wanted to go the| aly and no one would ever have} the wiser, but I had gone through | 80 much and I was feeling so mean to-| wards the whole world just at that! moment that I was determined to sell my life as dearly as possible. “I have that passport here,” I wet plied, “and am going to keep it. If you gentlemen think you can take it from me you are welcome to try!” To tell the truth, I was spoiling for! a fight, and I half wished théy would! start something. The man who had lived in the house had evidently been | a collector of ancient pottery, for the! walls were lined with great pieces of | earthenware which had every eqrmark of possessing great value. They car- tainly possessed great weight. I fig- ured that if the worst came to the! worst that pottery would come in mighty handy. A single blow with one of those big vases would put a man out as neatly as possible and as there was lots of pottery and only three men. I believed I had an excellent chance of holding my own in the combat which I had invited. : Thad already picked out in my mind} what I was going to use, and I got up, | stood with my back to the wall and|/ told them that if they ever figured on getting the passport, then would be their best chance. Apparently they realized that I} meand business and they immediately began to expostulate at the attitude I was taking. One of the men _ spoke excellent English. In fact, he told me that he could speak five languages, and ‘if he | could lie ‘in the others as well as I/ knew he did in my own tongue, he was not only an accomplished linguist, but | @ most versatile liar into the bargain. “My dear fellow,” said the linguist, | “it .is not that we want to deprive you of | the passport. Good heavens! if it will aid you in getting ont of the country, like it. | But for our own protection, you owe it to us to proceed on your Journey | as best you can without it because as | long as you have it in your pos jon) you jeopardize our lives, too, Don't you think it is fdirer that you should | risk your own safety rather than place the lives cf three innocent men in | danger?” | “That may be as it is, my friends,” | T retorted, “and I am glad you realize your danger. Keep it in mind, for in| ease any of you should happen to feel inclined to notify the German authori- j ties that I am in this part of the coun- try, think it oyer befgre you do so, | Remember always that if the Germans | get me, they get the passport, too, und if they get the passport your lives | won't be worth a damn! When I tell | the history of that elever little piece | of pasteboard, I will implicate all three | of you, and whoever is working with | you, and as I am an officer I rather think my word will be taken before The bluff evidently worked, because | I was able to get out of the city with- out molestation from the Germans. I have never seen these men since. I hope I never shall, because I am afraid I might be tempted to do some- thing for which I might otherwise be sorry. I do not mean to imply that all Bel- gians are like this.- I had evidently fallen into the hands of a gang who were endeavoring to make cupital out of the misfortunes of those who were | referred to them for help. In all coun- | tries there are ba Ss weil as good, and in a country which has suffered so much as poor Belgium it is no wonder | if some of the survivors have lost their sense of moral perspective. I know that the average poor peas- ant in Beigium would diy is scanty rations with a needy fugitive sooner | than\a wealthy Belgian would dole out a. morsel from his comparatively | well-stocked larder, Perhaps the poor | have less to lose than the rich if their generosity or charity is discovered by the Huns. There have been many Belgians shot for helping escaped prisoners and other fugitives, and it is not to be wondered at that they are willing to take as few chances as possible. A man with a | fumily, especially, does not feel jus- tified in helping a stranger when he knows that he and his whole fumily muy be shot or sent to prison for their pains. Although I suffered much from the | attitude of Huyliger nnd his associates, | I suppose I ought to hold no grudge aginst them in view of the unenvianle | predicament im which they are in themselves. CHAPTER XIiL. Five Days in an Empty House. The fve days I spent in that house seemed to me Ike five years. During all that time I had very little to eat—| Jess in fact than I had been getting in | the fields. I did not feel it so Dad; per- haps, because of the fact that Lwas no longer exposed to the other privagions which before had combined to make my condition so wretched. I now-had a good place to gleep, at uny rate, dnd I did not wake every half hour or so as} I had been aceustomet, to do in the { fields and woods, dnd, of course,) my | hunger was ‘tot ‘aggravxted by the | physteal éxertions which had’ “been | necessary before. en H Nevertheless, perhagaiherase T had | more tline’now to tilkik) of the hungor- | pains which were gnawing at me uf | the time, I Aon't belibve 1 was ever so iserzble us Twas at that pork mde Qe) yy adventure. I felt so nman exch ia | which to | calllgg on me. JY was standing at the wena German soldiers were hous¢ ai h ot Ben as,. watcher when aut der hour from tir b> S Ld the rt (FONT? | 1 Rummaged the House Many Times. keylfole of the door—to have shown myself at the window was out of the question because the house in which I was concealed was supposed to be untenanted. Because of the fact that I was un- able to speak either Flemish or Ger- man I could not go out and buy food, although I stil, had the money with things that galled one—the thought that I had the wherewithal in my jeans to buy ali the food I needed and yet no way of getting it without en- dangerimg my liberty and life. At night, however, after it was dark, | Iewould steal quietly out of the house to see what I could pick up in the way of food, By that time, of course, the stores weve closed, but I scoured the | streets, the alleys and the byways for | scraps of food and occasionally got up courage enough to appeal to Belgian peasants whom I met on the streets, | and in that way I managed to keep | body and soul together. It was quite apparent to me, haw- | ever, that I was worse off in the city than I had been in the fields, and I) decided to get out of that house just | a@s soon ag I knew definitely that Huy- | liger had made up his miud to do noth- | ing further for me. | ‘When T was not at the keyhole of the | door I spent most of my day on the top floor in a room which looked out on the streets Bygkeeping Welbaway from the | SwindoWw [/@6uKE sde"muell of what was | gning on without being seen myself. | In iny restlessness, F used to walk back and forth in that room and I kept it up | so constantly that I betieve I must have worn a path in the floor. It was nine steps from one wall to the other, and as I had little else to amuse me I fig- ured out one day after I had been | pacing up and down for several hours | just how much distance I would have covered on my way to Holland if my footsteps hid beén taken in that direc- | tion instead of just up and down that | old room, I was very much surprised to find that in three hours I crossed the room no less than 5,000 times and the distance covered was between nine and ten miles. It was not very grati- fying to realize that after walking all that distance I wasn't a step nearer my | |,Soal than when I started, but I had to | do something while waiting for Huy- liger to help me, and pacing up and down was a natural outlet for my | restlessness, | While looking out of the top floor | window one day, E noticed a cat on a window ledge of the house across the street. I had a rice piece of a broken mirror which I had picked up in the house and I used it to amuse myself for an hour at a time shining it in the cat’s eyes across the street. At first | the animal was annoyed by the reflec- tion and would move away, only to | come back a few moments later. By | and by, however, it seemed to get used to the glare and wouldn't budge no matter how strong the sunlight was. Playing with the cat in this way got | me into the habit of watching her té6mings and goings and was Indl) rectly the means of ny getting food a} | day or two lIater—ut a time when I | was so famished that I was rendy to | fo almost anything Winger. It was about 7 o'clock in the even-| ing. I was expecting Huyliger at 8, but I hadn't the slightest hope that he would bring me food, a8 he had told me that he wouldn’t take the risk of having food in his possession when to appease my window im such a way that I could see what was going on in the street without being observed by those who | passed by, when I noticed my friend, | the eat, coming down the steps of the | opposite house with something in his | mouth. Without considering the risks) T ran, I opened the front door, ran, down the steps ahd geross the street, | and pounced on that éat before it could! get away with {ts supper, for that, as | I had tmagined, was what I had seen | in its mouth. It tirned-out to be a piece of stewed ralibit, which I confis- | cated, eazerlys to the honge,., Perhaps 1) cat, r about, eating dno qualms 's dinner, F te laugh, and some of the incidents that _ occurred during my vcluntary impris- | house and I noticed that practically it. That was one of the{ the Germans but of none to the Bel- n ime that Germar From my place of concealment I fre- saw huge carts being pushed the streets gathering po re ‘ ) In Were uSing this “gar- their bread out of, and aad sound revolting to ct is that the Germans have these things down to such a seclence that the ad they make this | is) really! verf good to eat, I know id have like cake to me when I was in iiéed of food; indeed I would have eaten the “garbage” di- rect, let alone the bread. Although, as I have sald, 1 suffered greatly, from hunger while occupying this house, there were one or two things I observed! through the keyhoie or the windows which made me onment were really funny. From the keyhole I could see, for in- stance, a shop window on the other | side of the street, several houses down the block. All day long German sol- ters would be passing in front of the every one of them would stop in front of this store window and look in. Oc- easionally a soldier on duty bent would hurry past, but I think nine out of ten of them were sufficiently interested to spend at least a minute, and some of them three or four minutes gazing at whatever was being exhibited in that window, although I noticed that it failed to attract the Belgians, I have a considerable streak of curi- osity In me, and I couldn't help won- dering what it could be in that window which almost without exception seemed to interest German soldiers but failed to hold the Belgians, and after conjuring my brains for a while on the problem I came to the conclusion that the shop must have been a book-shop and the window contained German magazines, which, naturally enough, | would be of the greatest interest to | gtans. At any rate I resolved that as soon as | night came I would go out and in- | vestigate the window. When I got the | answer I laughed so loud that I was afraid for the moment I must have at- tracted the attention of the neighbors, but I couldn't help it. The window was filled with huge quantities of Sausage! The store was a butcher shop and one of the principal things they sold apparently was sausage. The display they made, although it con- sisted merely of sausages piled in the window, certainly had plenty of “pull- ing” power. It “pulled” nine Ger- mans out of ten out of their course and indirectly “pulled” me right across the street! The idea of those Germans be- ing so interested ih that window dis- play as to stand in front of the win- dow for two, three or four minutes at a time, however, certainly seemed funny to me, and when I got back to the house I sat at.the keyhole again and found just as much interest as before In watching|the Germans atop in their tracks when, they reached the “window, even though I was now aware what the attraction was. One of my chief pecupations during these days was catching flies. I would catch a fly, put him ip a spider's web (there were plenty of them in the old house), and sit down for the spider to come down and get him. But always I pictured myself in the same predice- ment and rescued the fiy just as the spider was about to grab him. Several times when things’ were dull I was tempted to see the tragedy through, but perhaps the same Providence that guided me safely through all perils was guarding, too, the destiny of those flies, for I always weakened and the flies never did’ suffer from my lust for amusement, The house was well supplied with books—in fact, one 6f the choicest li- braries I think I ever saw—but they were all written either In Flemish or French. I could read no Flemish dnd very little French. I might have made a Httle headway with the latter, but the books all seemed too deep for me and I gave it up. There was one thing ‘though that I did read and reread from beginning to end; that was a New York Herald which must have ar- rived just about the time war was de- clared. Severalythings in this in-| terested me, and particularly the base- | ball scores, which I studied with as much enre as 2 real fan posstbiy could an up-to-date score, I couldn't refrain | from laughing when I came te an ac- count of Zimmerman (of the Cubs) being benched for some spnt with the | umpire, and it afforded me just as much interest three years after it had happened—perhaps more—than some | current item of world-wide interest had at that time. J rummaged the house many times from cellar to garret in my search for | Something to eat, but the harvesg of three years of war had made apy suc- | cess along that line impossible. I was | like the man out fn the ocean in a boat | and thirsty with water everywhere but | not a drop to drink. 4 I was tempted while in the city to go to church one Sunday, but my better | judgment told me it would be a useless risk. Of course, someone would surely say something to me and I didn't) know how many Germans would be | there or what migh. happen, so I gave! up that idea. During all the time I was concealed | in this house I saw but one automobile and that was a German staff officer's. | That same afternoon bhad one of the frights of my young life. | Thad been gazing out of the keyhole as usual when I heard coming dowao the street the measured tread of Ger. | man soldiers, It didh't sound like very | many, but there was do doubf in my | soldiers ~ were} marching down the streety--1-went up- | (est the windosy | Stairs and peeked raps ey i fogdwell upon | and sure enough a &quad-of German ins ‘nineties, rte of stewed rabbit | fantry was comihg’ down ‘the. "stecbt ‘was certainly” for a cat to eat panied by fa. tary, motor | when a mabe ing. 1 atefand | fice, hadn't ine slightest idea that 8 ‘ies ipaisenk. suggested whic! might possibly obtgin food again when all other Me <a eee andared dt oY toe me a way in they were co {after me, but stilt | th ibilities the situation gave a Stairs ngain,. “Fered how T could mnke iy sscape Tt = by chance I was the man they y-re after. The idea of hidmg in the Wine cejlar appealed to ine ag. the, most there must “have been Places auiong the wine kegs |) cicee where ajman conld hiinself, ‘but, ak ‘a thitter of foct; I did’ not believe that any such. con! would arise. 8 ‘The marching soldiers came nearer, | I could hear them at the next house. | In a ent L would see them pass the keyhole through which I was look- ing: { ' “Halt!” a } At the word of command shouted by} a junior officer the squad came to at-| tention right in front of the house! “F could hardly believe my ears. seemed almost too good to be true that they could have given up the search Just as they, were about to come upon their quarry, but. unless my ears de celyed .mé@ that wag what they had donaf y © | , i @ possibility ‘that’ the whole thing might be a German ruse did not eseape me, and I remained in the cellar for ently. departed before I ventured. ta would reveal the presen¢e of a sentry upstairs. Not hearing a sound I began to feel that they hud indeed given up the hunt, for I did not, believe that a German It} © ‘fhe passport :vhich I had described | | } | nearly an hour after they had appar- | | move, listening intently in the mean-/ | while for thie slightest sound which | | | } waited no longer, Running down the | Officer would be so considerate of his| stairs I flew into the wine cellar and) although it was almost piteh dark— the only light coming from a grating} which led to the backyard—I soon | found @ satisfactory hiding place in} the extreme rear of the cellar, I had| ha‘l the presence of mind to leave the) doer of the wine cellar ajar, tiguring | that if the soldiers found a closed door} they would be more apt to search for) a fugitive behind it than if the door| wefe open. | My decision to get away from that frout door had been made and carried out none too soon, for I had only just locuted myself between two big wine eases when I heard the tramp of-sol- ‘iets’ feet marching up the front stoop, a ctash at the front door, a few hasty woids of command which I did not un- derstand, and then the noise of scur- zying feet from room to room and such 1 banging and hammering and smash- sng and crashing that I could not make out what was going on. | If Huyliger had revealed my hiding place to the Huns, as I was now, con- iideat he had, I felt that there was lit- Be = — | “1 Figured | Could Put Up a Good Fight.” tle prospect of their overlooking me. They would search the house from top to bottom and, if necessary, rage it to thesground before they would give up the seareh. To escape from the house through the backyard through the tron gvating, which FE had no doubt I could force, seemed to be the logical thing | to do, but the chances were that the | Huns had thrown # cordon around the entire block before the squad was sent to the house. The Germans do these things in an eflicient manuer always. They take nothing for granted. My one chance seemed to be to stand pat in the hope that the officer in charge might possibly come to the con- clusion that he had arrived at the} | employed as | tion with their resour | there is not an absolute crop there isn’t the slightest doubt in my men as to try to trap me rather than carry the cetlar by force if they had the slightest iden that I was there. I took off my shoes and crept scftly and slowly to the cellar steps and then step by step, placing my weight down gradually so as to prevent the steps from creaking, I climbed to the top. The sight that met my eyes as 1 glanced into the kitchen told me the whole story. The water faucets had been ripped from the sinks, the water pipes haveing been torn off, and gas fixtures, cooking utensils and everything else whi¢h contained even the smallest proportion of the metals the Getinans so badly needed had been taken from the kitchen. I walked up- stairs now with more confidence, feel- ing tolerably assured that the soldiers hadn't been after me at all, but had been merely ‘collecting metal and other materials which they expected an elgborate dwelling house like the one in which I was concealed to yield. Later I heard that the Germans have taken practically every ounce of brass, copper and wool they could lay their Even the brass ‘been ruthlessly re- a hands on in Belgiura. out of planos moved, the ious damage a to | valuable property by the removal of jonly an insignificant proportion of | Metal never being taken into consid- | eration. I learned, too, that all dogs | ever fourteen inches high had been | Seized by the Germans, This furnished | lots of speculation among the Belgians | as‘to what use the Germans were put- ting the animals to, the gen 1 im- Pression apparently being that they were being used for food! This, likely to e however, seemed much less me than that they were being dispatch dogs in the trenches, the same as we use thein on our side of the line. They sibly kill the dogs and use their skins for leather and their eareasses for tal- low, but I feel quite sure that the Huns are by no means so short of food that they have to ent dogs yet awhile. Indeed, T want to at here *what Ihave mentioned before ; if anyone has the idea that this war n be won by starving the Huns, he hasn't the slight- est idea how well provided the Ger- mans are in that respect. They have considered their food needs in connec for severai years to come and they have gone at it in such a methodical, systematic way, tanking into consideration every possible contingen that provided » failure, mind that they can last for years, and the worst of it is they are very cock- sure about it themselves. It Is true that the German soldiers want peace. As I watched them through the keyhole in the door I thought how unfavorably they com- pared with our men. They marched alobg the street without laughter, with- out joking, without singing. It was alte: apparent that the war is telling on them, F don’t belteve E saw a single German soldier who didn’t look as if he had lost his best friend—and he probably had, | in the big city, he had told m At the sume time there is a big dif-! ference—certainly a difference of sev- eral years—between wishing the war was over and giving up, and I don't believe the German rank and file any more than their leaders have the slight est Idea at this time of giving up at all, But to return to my experience house. too Jute—that the bird had) Pte while concealed in the house, After My position in that wine cetlar was| He visit of the soldiers, which left enything but a comfortable one, Rats! and nice were scurrying across the floor und the smashing and crashing| going on overhead was anything but promising., Myidently those soldiers t ned that I ought to be hiding tn the walls, for it sounded as though they were tearing off the wainscotting, the picture molding and, im fact, everything thut they could tear or pull apart. Before very long they would finish their search upstairs and would come down to the basement. What they would do when they discovered the wine I had no idea. Perhaps they | would let themselves loose on it and give me wy chance. With a bottle of} wine in euch hand 1 figured I could put | up a good tight in the durk, especially | as lw becoming more and more ac- customed to it-and could begin to dis- tinguish things here \jand there, where- as when they entered the pitchy dark-) ness of the eellur, they would be as; blind as bats im the sun, | Perhaps it was twenty minutes be fore I heard what sounded like my death-knell to me; the soldiers were coming down the cellar steps! 1 | clutched a wine bettle in eich hand: and waited with bated breath. by the descending soldiers. Sotne of the creatures rai across we where 1, ffood between two wine cases, but, 1) was too much inter®sted "ine bigger game to piy any attention to mice, } Rrouphe Trump! “Halt!” Again; an ordegewas given in German, and al- thougiWPid not understand it) am WHINE tos Diesslevery word of It, bes| cause it resulted in the soldiers turn ing righk Aboot face, marching up the through the ball_agd out door and away? of the front | the classed ut that Ume. the house in a wret¢ dec 1 condition, I ted that I would continue my jor towards the frontier, particul: nd gotten all I could out of Huy- or rather he had gotten all he z to get out of me. ¥ concealment in the house I had made various sorties into the elty at night, and I was beginning to fee, more comfortable even when Ger- man soldiers were about. ‘Thr keyhole I had studied very closely the gait of the Belgians, the slovenly droop that characterized most of them, and their g ral uppe: nee, and I felt that in my own dirty and un- shaven condition I must have looked as much like the ay ge poor Belginn as a man could, The only thing that was against me was my height, Several I taller than even tullest Be I had often thought tans, I was | the | that red hair would have gone good ! with my name, but now, of cours: was mighty glad that I was not so endowed, for red-haired Belgians are ubout as rare as German cha ty. There are many, no doubt, who will wonder why I did not get more help than I did at this tle. It is easily answered, When a man is in hourly fear of his life and the ¢ untry is full of sples, as Belgium certuinly was, he Tramp! Tramp! Tramp! In a mo- i is not golng tu help st a one 4 ment they would be tna the cellar come ote alii A ‘On 2H in Re Td almost hear my heart! Garuyn’s mpst suecess(ul ways of tran | beatin he mice scurried across ping the Belglaps has been to pose as floc by t scores, frightened no | wg 5 doubt by the Vibrafion und nose: made| 1! Mnslish or Prone priscuer who tas ” aR ODT eacuped, cppeit tg taem for alt tniplt- cate As My Ns possible, anc tufn the whole Gerinw police loose on them.) As T loot back on those days I think it remarkable that 1 received us mit¢h help us 1 did, bat when People are starving under the conditions now forced upon those un- fortunate people, it is a great ten ta tlon to surrender these escaped pris- oners to German duthdrities and re- cvive the bandsome rewards. offered for them—or for alien spies, as I was mer: res, 1, me as a Spanish sailor, but I was yery dubious about its value. If I / sould have spoken Spanish fluently ib\* might have been worth something to me, but the few words I knew of the language would not have carried me very far if I had been confronted with a Spanish interpreter. J decided to use the passport only as a last resort, preferring to act the part of a deaf and dumb Belgian peasant a8 far as it would carry me, Before I finally left the house I had a remarkable experience which I shall remember as long as I live. CHAPTER Xiv. A Night of Dissipation. During the first two days I spent with -Huyliger after 3 had first arrived other things, of a moving pictu: in town which he said I might have 2 chance to see while there. “jt is free every night in the week except Saturdays and Sundays,” he id, ul once you are inside you would not be apt to be bothered by anyone except when they come to take your order for something to drink. While th is no admission, patrons fare expected to ent or drink while en- joying the pictures.” A day or two later, reets at night in search for food, ssed this place and was very much tempted to go in and spend a few hours, particularly as it would perhaps give me an opportunity to buy something to eat, although { was at a loss to know how I was going te ask for what I wanted. While trying to make up my mind whether it was safe for me to go in { walked half a block past the place, and when I turned baek again and reached the entrance with my. mind made up that I would tate the chance [ ren til tile into a German officer who was just coming out. That settled Mil my bankerings for moving pictures that night. “Where > from, my friend,” I figured, * must be more like you! I guess it is a good night for walking,” The next day, however, in recatiing the incident of the evening before, it while waiking seemed to me that I had been rather foolish What I needed more than anyth else at that time was confi dence. Before I could get to th tier I would have to confront German soldiers many times, because there were more of them between this city and Holland than In any section of the through which I bad so far traveled. Safety In these conting- Mcies would depend largely upon the iness I displaye it wouldn't do to get all excited at the mere sight of au spiked helmet. The Belgians, I had notl . While careful to obey the orders of the Huns, showed no partic ular fear of them, and it seemed to me the sooner I cultivated the same fceling of indifference the better I wovld be ablg to carry off she part I was playing For this reason I made up my mind then and therg that, officers or no of- ficers, I would go,te that show thar night and sit it through no matter what happened. While people may think that I had de 1 unwisely be- cnuse of the upnecessary risk invelved im the adventure, it occurred to me that perhaps after all that theater was about one of the safest places I could attend because that was about the last place Germans would expect to find a ) fugitive English officer in even if they were searching for me. AS soon as evening came, therefore, T started out for the theatre. I fixed myself up as well as possible. TI had on a fairly decent pair of pants which Huyliger had given me and I used a clean ndkerchief as a collar. With my hair brushed up and my beard trimmed as neatly as possible with a pair of rusty scissors which I had found in the house, while my up- pearance was not exactly that of a Beau Brummel, I don’t think I looked much worse than the average Belgian. In these da the average Belgian is very poorly dressed at best, I can’t T had no misgi made my wi tainly I was ge cipline than pleasure, but Thad made up my mind that F was going there to see it through, The entran garden, for it was as much one as the » to the theatre or beer other, was on the and was re side of the buildiag ied by way of an all which ran ngside. Neur the do was a ticke vHler’s | h, but as this Was one of the free nights there wus ao one in the booth, I marched slowly down the alley Imitating us best I could the Indiffer- ent gait of the und when t entered the theate vored to act as though T had been th miny times before. A hi of the lnyout of the ph wus sufficient to enuble me to select my seut. It wus early und there were not more than half a dezen people in the plnee at that time, so that I had my choice. ‘Phere was a raised platform, per- haps two t high, all around the walls of the place except at the end where the stage was located. On ‘this platform tubles were arranged and there were tables on the floor proper as well, I decided promptly that the safest Place for me was as far back as pos sible, where I wonld not be in the line of vision of others in back ef me, Ac sly I slouched over to » table directly opposite the k the seat against the ‘The whole place was now tn front of me, 1 could see everything thut was going on and everyone who (Vo be Continued Tomarrow): |} wall, Money to loan on everything. The Security Lonn Company, Room 4, Kimball Bldg. 1i-1-tf Each nation entering into a peace agreement is bound by all of. the terms agreed upon by its peace cuni- missioners, provided it cannot be shown that each commissioned did nos lari e “idlate’ the instructions given then)! } Bmitome Treas tT a we ce i ee bormBuesonw, aa Sa