g
out large diamond shaped pieces of the cloth, which when the foot was
placed on it, folded up nicely into a sock of a kind.

The cow, or rather, her milk, was the greatest treat of all.

It required some searching before we found a boat. We finally
discovered a boat house which we broke into and by great good luck
found inside it a boat which answered our purpose. Our chief concern
was lest the owners might raise a hue and cry against the theft.
However, when we reached the further shore we gave the boat a good
push out into the stream so that if they attempted to follow our trail
they might find the boat a long ways down stream.

"August twenty-seventh: Rain left off. Trying to dry ourselves in sun.
Had a hard night keeping clear of town. Good cover in a wood. Meals:
turnips and another obliging cow. Feet pretty sore. No socks. Still in
the best otherwise."

The town in question was the second one we passed after leaving
Bremen. We saw the reflection of its lights in the sky and thought
that we should easily miss it. But suddenly from some high ground we
found ourselves working directly down on the streets so close below us
that we could discern people going to and fro. We turned and fled.

Swinging well round to the south we thought at last to clear the town
easily, instead of which we again came up against it, in the outskirts
this time. And we repeated that disheartening performance a couple of
times before we cleared the obstacle and once more swung on our way.

It was such occurrences as this that disheartened us more than
anything else, even the great hardships. To labor and travail, to do
the seemingly impossible, night after night and then in the snap of a
finger to find all our pains, all our agony gone for nothing, reacted
on us terribly at times.

On the following morning we met with our second narrow escape, under
much the same circumstances as the first. We had crawled into a hedge
toward the heel of the night, and rather earlier than usual on account
of a thick mist which prevented us from holding to our course. When it
lifted we made out the slope of a house roof shoving itself out of
the grey fog directly in front of us. Our hedge divided two fields,
in both of which labourers were already cutting the crops. In this
hedge, on each side of us, were gateways so close together that when,
as occasionally happened, people passed through one, we were forced to
crawl up to the other to avoid detectio