.

The priests bore visible signs of their six miles' tramp through
crumbling scorching sand and under a pitiless sun, as well as of their
laborious toil excavating the large pit. But their distressed appearance
did not arouse the slightest feeling of pity among their tormentors.
Being too late for the meal they were re-lined up, and under a changed
guard were marched back again to the scene of their morning's labour.

Naturally, upon reaching the pit, they concluded that they would have to
continue the excavation. But to their intense astonishment the officer
in charge ordered them to throw all the excavated soil back again into
the hole! This was one of the most glaring examples of performing a
useless task, merely to satisfy feelings of savagery and revenge, that I
encountered in Sennelager, although it was typical of Major Bach and his
methods. He took a strange delight in devising such senseless labours.
Doubtless the authorities anticipated that the priests would make some
demur at being compelled to undo the work which they had done previously
with so much effort and pain. But if this was the thought governing the
whole incident the officials were doomed to suffer bitter
disappointment. The priests, whatever they may have thought, silently
accepted the inevitable, and displayed as much diligence in filling the
pit as they had shown a few hours before in digging it.

Still the afternoon's shovelling caused them greater physical hardship
than the plying of the pick in the morning. They had been denied a
mid-day meal, and their age-enfeebled physique proved barely equal to
the toil. A basin of black acorn coffee and a small fragment of hard
brown bread cannot by any manner of means be construed into strong
sustenance for such a full day's work. During the afternoon one or two
were on the verge of collapse from hunger and fatigue. But their
indomitable spirit kept them up and the pit was duly filled.

By the time the labour had been completed the evening was advancing. For
the fourth time that day they shouldered their burden of tools and set
out on the three miles tramp to camp.

We saw them come in and our hearts went out in pity to them. They
tottered rather than walked, their heads bowed as if in prayer, and
their crosses of tools sinking them nearer to the ground. Seeing that
they had walked twelve miles and had put in some eight hours gruelling
work it was a marvel that the older members of the party had no