s to avoid. Except on
unfrequented byways we travelled by the fields, hugging the road from
a distance. This made travel arduous but safer.

At that, we were sometimes spoken to in neighborly greeting. We
grunted indifferently in reply, as an unsociable man might. When, as
sometimes happened, people rose up in front of us from gateways or
hidden roads, it was very disconcerting. On such occasions only the
darkness saved us, for we took no chances, wherever there were lights.

It was really harder in the day time; when, try as we might, we could
not count on avoiding for our hiding place the scene of some
labourer's toil or perhaps the covert of some child's play. We slept
by turns with one always on guard. It was difficult indeed for the
guard not to neglect his duty, so utterly weary were we. The lying
position we needs must retain all day long aided that tendency, and
yet we were always so wet and cold that real sleep was difficult to
secure.

In this district the swamps were numerous and difficult to cross. The
small ditches and canals that drained them or the almost equally
swampy fields added to our grief. The feet slipped back at each muddy
step: We fell into ditches: Dogs barked: And we almost wept.

Once a dog helped us by his barking. It was night and we were crossing
a very bad swamp, an old peat bog which was full of the ditches and
holes that the peat had been taken from. These were full of black
water which merged so naturally into the prevailing darkness that we
repeatedly fell into them. We floundered out of one only to fall into
another, uncertain where we were going and lost to all sense of
direction. There was no vestige of track or road. It was then that
the dog barked. We stopped to listen, conversing in low tones.
Certainly, we thought, the dog must be near a house and that meant dry
land and a footing. So we advanced in the direction of the sound,
stopping to listen to each fresh outburst so as to make certain that
we should not approach too closely. Apparently he had smelt us on the
wind.

Before we reached the dog we felt the solid ground under foot and were
off once more at a tangent from the sound of his barking.

The swamps were a great trouble to us, as were also some of the
fields, so cut up by ditches and hedges were they, and yet, in order
to avoid the roads and the wires, we frequently had to lay a
circuitous route to avoid these obstacles or else chance the road,
which we would n