ad travelled by last night, leaving Norden at
7.43 and reaching Esens at 8.50, and Wittmund at 9.13. This train, as
the reader who was with me in it knows, was in correspondence with
another from Emden and the south, and also, I now found, with
services from Hanover, Bremen, and Berlin. He will also remember that
I had to wait three-quarters of an hour at Norden, from 7 to 7.43.

The platform at Norden Junction, therefore, between 7.15, when I
should arrive at it _from_ the east, and 7.43 when Boehme and his
unknown friend should leave it _for_ the east; there, and in that
half-hour, was my opportunity for recognizing and shadowing two at
least of the conspirators. I must take the train they took, and
alight where they alighted. If I could not find them at all I should
be thrown back on the rejected view that Norden itself was the
rendezvous, and should wait there till 10.46.

In the meantime it was all very well to resolve on inaction till
dusk; but after an hour's rest, damp clothes and feet, and the
absence of pursuers, tempted me to take the field again. Avoiding
roads and villages as long as it was light, I cut across country
south-westwards--a dismal and laborious journey, with oozy fens and
knee-deep drains to course, with circuits to be made to pass clear of
peasants, and many furtive crouchings behind dykes and willows. What
little I learnt was in harmony with previous explorations, for my
track cut at right angles the line of the Harke Tief, the stream
issuing at Nessmersiel. It, too, was in the nature of a canal, but
only in embryo at the point I touched it, south of Nesse. Works on a
deviation were in progress, and in a short digression down stream I
sighted another lighter-building yard. As for Hilgenriedersiel, the
fourth of the seven, I had no time to see anything of it at all. At
seven o'clock I was at Hage Station, very tired, wet, and footsore,
after covering nearly twenty miles all told since I left my bed in
the lighter.

From here to Norden it was a run in the train of ten minutes, which I
spent in eating some rye bread and smoked eel, and in scraping the
mud off my boots and trousers. Fatigue vanished when the train drew
up at the station, and the momentous twenty-eight minutes began to
run their course. Having donned a bulky muffler and turned up the
collar of my pea-jacket, I crossed over immediately to the
up-platform, walked boldly to the booking-office, and at once
sighted--von Bruening--y