the hedge by the roadside.
The moon came up. The clank of harness and the gear of guns and
wagons told of approaching artillery or transport, or both. From
the shelter of the hedge the boys watched long lines of dusty shapes
move slowly past. They seemed to be taking an interminable time
about it. Now and then a rough guttural voice rasped out an order.

The boys waited for what seemed hours to them, and the very moment
they would move, along would come another contingent of some sort.
They had evidently struck a corps shifting southward. At last a
good sized gap in the long, ghostly line gave them courage to
cross. They got through safely enough, and kept on steadily for
a time across country. They skirted two villages, and reached a
haystack near a river-bank before daybreak. Out toward the east
they saw the faint outlines of a fairly large town. Before them
lay the river, spanned by a bridge guarded at each end by a German
sentry. Hope fell several degrees.

The boys had climbed upon the stack and pulled the straw well over
them. As they lay looking toward their goal, to the north, the
home of the owner of the stack was at their backs. He made his
appearance at an early hour, and came not far distant. After a
whispered conference, Bob hailed him in a low tone. First the little
man bolted back into his house without investigating the whereabouts
of the mysterious voice. After a time he reappeared, and when Bob
again sung out to him, he gingerly approached the stack, staring
at it like mad, in spite of Bob's continuous warnings that he should
not do so. Finally Bob induced him to mount the slight ladder by
which the boys had climbed to their point of vantage.

He was a little man, with a thin red beard, great rings in his ears,
and piercing, shifty eyes. A reddish, diminutive sort of man,
altogether, with a thin little voice that went with his general
appearance. He was literally scared stiff at the idea of the Boches
finding the boys on his premises. That would mean his house burned,
and death for himself, he said. Germans were all about, he said
fearfully, and no one could escape them. He was so frankly nervous
and so devoutly wishful that the boys had never come near him and
his, that Bob, to ease the little man's mind, promised that the boys
would swim the river when dark came and relieve the tension so far
as the stack-owner was concerned. He was eager enough to see that
the boys were wel