show either of these towns, so
we were just as much at sea as ever.

Then it occurred to us that the border troops must be stationed in
either one of these towns, and there would surely be some of them
passing on this road; so we determined to hide in the ditch close by
and watch for them. We came to a place where there were some bushes
growing at the side of the ditch and we hid in these. Finally we saw
two mounted men coming, but they passed so quickly that we couldn't see
much except that they wore grey uniforms. We waited a little longer,
and along came two soldiers on foot. One of these was evidently sick
or wounded, for just as they came opposite us he begged to be allowed
to sit down. They talked for a minute or two and then moved on, but we
had a good look at them. They wore exactly the same uniform as the
German excepting that their hats were different. Instead of a
"pill-box" they had a cap with a square top. All at once I remembered
having seen some pictures of Holland soldiers in the _Daily Mirror_ (an
English paper), and I said, "By golly, I believe they are Hollanders,"
but Mac said, "No; if they were, they wouldn't be dressed like
Germans." One thing we decided on, and that was that we must find a
safer place than the one we were in; so when there was no one in sight
we made our way to a nearby wheat field. We lay there discussing the
situation, and just at 9 o'clock we heard the whistle of a train. We
could hardly believe our ears, and we crawled to the edge of the field
to see in which direction it was going. We found it running right into
the town we had passed, and now we were more muddled than ever, for the
German town that we thought was on the border hadn't a railroad nearer
than fifteen kilometers. We made our way back into the field, took out
our map, and tried to solve the problem.

[Illustration: As I looked before I left Germany; as I looked before I
saw Germany.]

At last we got desperate; we couldn't go on at night unless we found
out where we were, so we thought we would take a chance on going
farther down the road. We hadn't gone far when we saw a man in the
distance, and we slipped into some bushes until he had passed. Going
on farther we saw there was a man coming on a bicycle. We ducked and
hid, and as he got nearer we could see that he had a gun strapped on
his shoulders. We were afraid he had seen us and we were sure there
would be some fun, but fortunately he too