en and my envy was tempered.

I spent most of my time casting about for the means for a real
escape. Quite aside from my natural desire for freedom I felt that my
good name as a soldier was at stake. However, I waited for an
opportunity to converse with Simmons and Brumley before doing anything
as I felt that their experience might contain some useful hints for
me.

They appeared at the end of two months, quite undismayed. They told me
of what had happened to them and Simmons approached me on the subject
of making another try of it with them. I readily consented. They were
now convinced that three or four could make the attempt with a better
chance of success than two men. I would have agreed to go an army! All
I wanted was an opportunity to prove my mettle and retrieve my lost
reputation.

They told me their story. It seems that they had been sent out as a
working party to a near by farm. They were locked in the room as usual
at nine o'clock that night after the day's work and then waited until
they had heard the sentry pass by a couple of times on his rounds. The
window was covered with barbed wire which they had no difficulty in
removing. By morning they were well on the way to Switzerland. They
figured that they, too, could do it in six weeks' of walking by
night, laying their course by the stars. They had no money and were
still in khaki.

They were four days' out and lying close in a small clump of bushes
adjoining a field in which women were digging potatoes when a small
boy stumbled on them. They knew they had been seen the day before and
chose this exposed spot rather than the near-by wood, thinking that it
was there the hue and cry would run. But he was a crafty little brat
and pretended that he had not seen them. They were not certain whether
he had or not and hesitated to give their position away by running for
it.

The boy walked until he neared the women, when he broke into a run and
soon all gathered in a little knot, looking and pointing toward the
fugitives. Some of the women broke away and evidently told some
Bavarian soldiers who had been searching. The latter had already been
firing into the woods to flush them out so that if the boy had not
seen them the soldiers would in all likelihood have passed on, after
searching the main wood.

It was just four o'clock with darkness still four hours off. Simmons
and Brumley were unarmed. There was no use in running for it. So they
surrendered with wha