a steaming breakfast, while a few of the chosen were invited
in to watch us polish it off. The crowd remained outside, choking the
road. Some of the bolder of the children crept slyly in the door,
others peered shyly at us from the crack of it. And one little chap,
braver than his comrades, clumped sturdily up to my knee, where he
stood clutching it in round-eyed wonder and saying never a word for
the rest of the meal, envied of his mates.

Not until we had leaned back, not contented, but ashamed to ask for
more, did our hosts give vent to the curiosity that was eating into
their vitals. An interpreter was found and they led us out to the
road so that all might hear. The crowd flocked around while the
officials questioned us. Many were the smothered interjections that
went up from the men and exclamations of pity from the women as our
tale unfolded. And the warm sympathy of their honest faces warmed our
hearts like a good fire.

We started off on our triumphal course again. We were repeatedly
invited into houses for something to eat. We accepted seven such
breakfast invitations during the next two and a half hours and stopped
only out of shame. We were still hungry. Every one gave us cigars,
immense things, which projected from every pocket and which we carried
in bundles under our arms. There was no refusing them. They were the
insignia of the entente. And the coffee! The good, honest, Holland
coffee with no acorns in it! I doubt if our starving bodies could have
carried us many days more on the uncooked roots we had been living on.
The motherly housewives, in their Grecian-like helmets of metal and
glass that fit closely over their smoothed hair like skull-caps,
bustled merrily about, intent only on replenishing our plates and
cups, full of a tearful sympathy which was as welcome as their food.

Later in the day the officials took us to the police station at ----.
We became very much alarmed again. They read our thoughts and a
subdued murmur of: "No intern, no intern," swelled up. The local
burgomaster came to us. His first words, and in good English, too,
were: "Have something to eat." We did. And then more cigars. The
police were a splendid lot of men. They loaded us down with gifts and
asked perfunctory questions for their records. One of them, H. Letema,
of ----, took us to his home, where his comely wife and daughter
loaded the table with good things; while he brought out more cigars.
He showed us to a bed-roo