ultivated district; almost every acre was in
garden, potatoes and sugar beets, whose stalks rustled and crackled
as we went through them, and this made our going slower than it
otherwise would have been. There were a few late apples on the trees,
but they were poor, woody ones. I do not know whether they were a
sample of the crop or just the culls that were not considered worth
picking. But we were glad of them, and filled our pockets.

The streams which we came to gave us considerable trouble. We were
not exactly dry, but then we could have been wetter, and so we hunted
for bridges, thereby losing much time and taking grave chances of
being caught. We were new in the matter of escaping, and had a lot
to learn. Now we know we should have waded through without losing a
minute.

That morning, just before stopping-time, in crossing a railway
Bromley tripped over a signal wire, which rang like a burglar alarm
and seemed to set a dozen bells ringing. We quickened our pace, and
when the railway man came rushing out of his house and looked wildly
up and down the track, we were so far away he could not see us!

We kept well to the east, for we knew the location of Frankfort
and that we must avoid it. Bromley had difficulty in keeping his
direction, and I began to suspect that he thought I was lost, too. So
I told him the direction the road ran, and then made an observation
with the compass to convince him, but many a time in the long, black
middle of the night, I thought I detected a disposition to doubt in
his remarks.

When the North Star shone down on us, we could find our way without
trouble, but when the night was clouded, as most of the nights were,
it became a difficult matter.

The third night there was a faintly light patch in the sky, by which
I guided my course and did not use my compass at all. Bromley had
evidently not noticed this, and declared that no human being could
keep his direction on as black a night as this. The faint light in
the sky continued to hold, and I guided our course by it until we
came to a road. Here Bromley insinuated that I had better use my
compass (I was thinking the same thing, too). I assured him it was
not necessary, for I knew the road was running east and west. It was,
I knew, if the light patch in the sky had not shifted.

When we made the observation with the compass, we found it was so;
and Bromley asked me, wonderingly, how I could do it. I told him it
was a sort of sixth