em so thoroughly."

"Not to mention killing and wounding an officer and several men."

Chatting gaily together, but nevertheless keeping a sharp look-out, the
two friends strode along out into the open lands southward of the town,
and then on towards the wide stretch of broken highlands known as the
Ardennes. They had no clear idea of what they would do when they got
there, the one thought in their minds being to find some quiet rural
spot where they could remain in safety and quietude for a little while.

It was certainly as well for them to do so, for the daring and
successful rescue of the prisoner under sentence of death stirred the
city of Liege to its very depths. To the people it was an example of
courage and self-sacrifice joined to determined and skilful leadership;
to the Germans it was most exasperating evidence of their inability to
crush this people notwithstanding their many and varied methods of
repression. The affair was hushed up by the governor so far as he was
able to do so, but it eventually became known that it had been the cause
of a violent altercation between him and the manager of the Durend
works, Herr von Schenkendorf, who was said to have made a strong
complaint to the Imperial Government at the bungling of the military.

Be that as it may, it was certain that no stone was left unturned to
recapture the prisoner and to find out who were the workmen
participating in the rescue. Nothing was ever discovered, but the
manager of the Durend works from that time forward refused to employ any
Walloon workmen anywhere save in the Durend colleries, where they were
supposed to be incapable of doing any serious damage.

CHAPTER XVI

In the Ardennes

After two days' steady tramping Max and Dale arrived at La Roche, a
little town on the Ourthe, well in the broken country of the Ardennes.
They had had no such easy and uneventful journey as they anticipated.
The whole country was in a very unsettled state, the people ready to be
startled and alarmed by every rumour--and they were not few--and viewing
strangers with the utmost suspicion as probably German spies on the
look-out for more victims.

Half the population of the villages passed on the way had gone. Houses
stood unoccupied, with doors wide open, although the furniture of those
who had so lately tenanted them was still within. The whole countryside
bore evidences of a great panic, and some places the more sinister signs
of rough and b