themselves especially unkempt and frowzy-looking. Almost to a man they
were dark, lean, slouchy fellows; they were from the south of France, we
judged. Certainly with a week's growth of black whiskers upon their
jaws they were fit now to play stage brigands without further make-up.

"Wot a bloomin', stinkin', rotten country!" came, two rows back from
where I stood, a Cockney voice uplifted to the leaky skies. "There
ain't nothin' to eat in it, and there ain't nothin' to drink in it,
too."

A little whiny man alongside of me, whose chin was on his breast bone,
spake downward along his gray flannel shirt bosom:

"Just wyte," he said; "just wyte till England 'ears wot they done to us,
'erdin' us about like cattle. Blighters!" He spat his disgust upon the
ground.

We spoke to none of them directly, nor they to us--that also being a
condition imposed by Mittendorfer.

The train was composed of several small box cars and one second-class
passenger coach of German manufacture with a dumpy little locomotive at
either end, one to pull and one to push. In profile it would have
reminded you somewhat of the wrecking trains that go to disasters in
America. The prisoners were loaded aboard the box cars like so many
sheep, with alert gray shepherds behind them, carrying guns in lieu of
crooks; and, being entrained, they were bedded down for the night upon
straw.

The civilians composing our party were bidden to climb aboard the