fles and,
leaving their knapsacks behind, tramped out. I followed with my guards
upon either side of me. My one fear now was that I should tremble at
the end. I felt no fear, but I was afraid my knees would shake. I
remember how relieved I was when I took the first step to find my legs
did not tremble under me.

"I was resolved, too, that I would not be shot down with my hands tied
behind me. When I faced the squad I meant to shake off the ropes on my
wrists and take the volley with my arms at my sides."

Stevens was marched to the center of the courtyard. Then, without a
word of explanation to him his bonds were removed and he was put in an
automobile and carried off to rejoin the other members of the unlucky
sightseeing party. He never did find out whether he had been made the
butt of a hideous practical joke by a half-mad brute or whether his
tormentor really meant to send him to death and was deterred at the last
moment by fear of the consequences. One thing he did learn--there had
been no court-martial. Thereafter, during his captivity, Stevens was
treated with the utmost kindness by all the officers with whom he came
in contact. His was the only instance that I have knowledge of where a
prisoner has been tortured, physically or mentally, by a German. It was
curious that in this one case the victim should have been an American
citizen whose intentions were perfectly innocent and whose papers were
orthodox and unquestionable.

Glancing back over what I have here written down I find I have failed
altogether to mention the food which we ate on that trip of ours with
the German wrecking crew. It was hardly worth mentioning, it was so
scanty.

We had to eat, during that day while we lay at Gembloux, a loaf of the
sourish soldiers' black bread, with green mold upon the crust, and a pot
of rancid honey which one of the party had bethought him to bring from
Beaumont in his pocket. To wash this mixture down we had a few swigs of
miserably bad lukewarm ration-coffee from a private's canteen, a bottle
of confiscated Belgian mineral water, which a private at Charleroi gave
us from his store, and a precious quart of the Prince de Caraman-
Chimay's commandeered wine--also a souvenir of our captivity. Late in
the afternoon a sergeant sold us for a five-mark piece a big skin-casing
filled with half-raw pork sausage. I've never tasted anything better.

Even so, we fared better than the prisoners in the box cars