one idea.
"How does it feel to be blindfolded and stood up against a wall by a
firing squad?" was another pleasant companion idea that kept vigil
with me through the midnight hours. Then my fancies took a
frenzied turn, "Suppose these be brutes of soldiers and they run
us through, saying we were trying to escape."

"Escape!" The word no sooner leaped into my mind than an
almost uncontrollable impulse to escape seized me, or at least I
thought one had. I got upon my feet, observing that the two
soldiers lying beside me on the floor were fast asleep and the
guards at the outer door were nodding. I stepped over their
sleeping forms arid made a reconnoiter of the hallway. There in the
semi-darkness stood seven soldiers of the Kaiser with their seven
guns and their seven glistening bayonets.

Cold steel is not supposed to act as a soothing syrup; but one
glance at those bayonets and my uncontrollable impulse utterly
vanished. You will observe that the bayonet is continually cropping
up in my story. It does, indeed. A bayonet looks far different from
what it did on dress parade. Meet one in war, and its true
significance first dawns upon you. It is not simply a decoration at
the end of a rifle, but it is made to stick in a man's stomach and
then be turned round; and when you realize that this particular one
is made to stick in your particular stomach, it takes on a still
different aspect.

I crawled back into my lair, resolved to seek for deliverance by
mental means, rather than by physical; and as the first rays of light
stole through the window I composed the following document to
His Excellency:

The Officer who has the case of the American, Albert B. Williams,
under supervision: SIR:

As you seem willing to be fair in hearing my case, may I take the
liberty this morning of addressing you upon my charge? I fear that
I made but a feeble defense of myself yesterday; but when I was
accused of offering much money for information relative to the
movements of German troops, the accusation came so suddenly
that I could only deny it. May I now offer a few observations upon
this charge, the nature of which just begins to become clear to
me?

In the first place, it was a sheer impossibility for me to offer "much
money," because all I had was that which, as Mr. Van Hee knows,
Mr. Fletcher gave me when I was left behind.

In the second place, were I a spy, I certainly would not be offering
money in a voice loud enough t