o run away with them, although they did
their best to strike a sober gait. It caused them a great effort to
pause a moment at a cross-roads, where a number of people were collected
before an inn. Some villagers were chatting peaceably with German
soldiers, and the two runaways made a pretense of listening, and even
hazarded a few observations on the weather and the probability of the
rain continuing during the night. They trembled when they beheld a man,
a fleshy gentleman, eying them attentively, but as he smiled with an
air of great good-nature they thought they might venture to address him,
asking in a whisper:

"Can you tell us if the road to Belgium is guarded, sir?"

"Yes, it is; but you will be safe if you cross this wood and afterward
cut across the fields, to the left."

Once they were in the wood, in the deep, dark silence of the slumbering
trees, where no sound reached their ears, where nothing stirred and they
believed their safety was assured them, they sank into each other's arms
in an uncontrollable impulse of emotion. Maurice was sobbing violently,
while big tears trickled slowly down Jean's cheeks. It was the natural
revulsion of their overtaxed feelings after the long-protracted ordeal
they had passed through, the joy and delight of their mutual assurance
that their troubles were at an end, and that thenceforth suffering and
they were to be strangers. And united by the memory of what they had
endured together in ties closer than those of brotherhood, they clasped
each other in a wild embrace, and the kiss that they exchanged at that
moment seemed to them to possess a savor and a poignancy such as they
had never experienced before in all their life; a kiss such as
they never could receive from lips of woman, sealing their undying
friendship, giving additional confirmation to the certainty that
thereafter their two hearts would be but one, for all eternity.

When they had separated at last: "Little one," said Jean, in a trembling
voice, "it is well for us to be here, but we are not at the end. We must
look about a bit and try to find our bearings."

Maurice, although he had no acquaintance with that part of the frontier,
declared that all they had to do was to pursue a straight course,
whereon they resumed their way, moving among the trees in Indian file
with the greatest circumspection, until they reached the edge of the
thicket. There, mindful of the injunction of the kind-hearted villager,
they w