ogetically; "but father told me to
call, and pay him for some masses. My eldest sister was very ill,
when we came away, and father worries about her.

"Where does the priest live?"

"The last house on the left, as you go out from the farther end of
the village. But anyone will show you it, in the morning.

"You don't want the light any longer?"

For the boys had, while speaking, been taking off their boots, and
making a show of preparing to lie down on the straw.

"No, thank you. Good night.

"Oh, I forgot--what do you charge, a cask, for your best beer?
Father wanted to know and, if the price suits, will send down a
cart to fetch it."

The landlord named the price, and then said good night, and left
them.

When he returned to the room where he had left the German soldiers,
the sergeant asked him a question or two concerning the boys; and
the landlord repeated the substance of the conversation which he
had just had. This allayed the last suspicions which had remained
in the sergeant's mind; and he congratulated himself, greatly, that
he had not taken his men out, in such a night, upon a mere
groundless suspicion.

"If the landlord repeats that yarn to the Germans, it will allay
all suspicion," Ralph said, when they were left alone. "Otherwise
the sergeant might have taken it into his head to come to have a
look at us and, although it would not very much matter that he
should discover that the birds had flown, still it would have put
him on his guard, and he might have doubled the sentries, and made
it much more difficult for us.

"We have had a very narrow squeak for it this time, Percy, old
boy."

"Very, Ralph! I would rather go through twenty battles, again, than
feel as I felt when I saw you start, and thought that I should
never see you again, alive."

"Well, we have no time to lose now, Percy. Have you got your boots
on again? If so, let us start at once. The major and men must be
very anxious, long before this. It must be full an hour since we
came."

"It has been the longest hour I ever passed, Ralph. There now, I am
ready, if you are."

"We must go out very quietly, Percy. I have no doubt that they have
got sentries posted all about. They know that we are in the
neighborhood I wish I knew how many there are of them."

"I found out, from the landlord, that all the fifteen men we saw
here were billeted upon him," Percy said. "He told me at first,
when I asked him, that he could do nothing fo