to find some apples.

The first one we came to was a large one, and compactly built. The
night was lit by the stars, and therefore not quite so good for our
purpose, but we had to have something. We cautiously entered a garden
gate which some one had obligingly left open, but when we got in, we
found that the trees were high, and apparently well looked-after, for
not an apple could be found! We were only a few yards from the house,
behind whose darkened windows the family slept, not knowing that the
alien enemy were so near.

We slipped out of the open gate--we could see now why it had been
left open--and went into the next garden--with the same result. Every
apple had been gathered. We started down the street again, walking
cautiously on the grass, and slipping along as quickly as possible.
We carried the sacks, which we had split open, over our shoulders,
and as they were of a neutral shade, they were not so easily seen as
our dark-blue suits would have been.

Suddenly there was the sound of a door opening, ahead of us, on the
other side of the street, and two soldiers came out! We lay flat on
the street where we were, and "froze." The sacks which were wrapped
about us helped to conceal us, or at least made us look less like
men. The soldiers passed along the middle of the street, chatting and
laughing; we could hear their spurs clanking! Coming out of the light
had probably dulled their sight, and they did not see us. We lay
there until their footsteps had died away. Then we got up, and got
out!

We were not hungry any more--at least we were so much more frightened
than hungry that we only knew we were frightened, and we pushed our
way on as fast as we could. That night was the first on which we had
seen the moon. The shelter we found was another group of Christmas
trees, and as we still had a couple of roast potatoes we ate them,
and got a little sleep.

The next night the villages kept getting in our way. When we tried to
avoid one, we got into another, and in one we saw a light twinkling
in an upstairs window, where some woman, probably, sat late at her
work or watched by the bedside of a sick child. As usual, there were
no street lamps, and I think the light inside was a coal-oil lamp!
But not a dog barked, and we came safely out on a road which led in a
westerly direction.

In the morning, when the east began to redden, we got shelter in a
thin wood, and, having found some potatoes outside of one of the