"Oh, that; that's nothing. But I'll tell you how I got it. It was just
like this. The Germans had us fair, as I tell you, and they shut us up
in a barn in the village; just flung us on the ground and left us to
starve seemingly. They barred up the big door of the barn, and put a
sentry there, and thought we were all right.

"There were sort of slits like very narrow windows in one of the
walls, and on the second day it was, I was looking out of these slits
down the street, and I could see those German devils were up to
mischief. They were planting their machine-guns everywhere handy where
an ordinary man coming up the street would never see them, but I see
them, and I see the infantry lining up behind the garden walls. Then I
had a sort of a notion of what was coming; and presently, sure
enough, I could hear some of our chaps singing 'Hullo, hullo, hullo!'
in the distance; and I says to myself, 'Not this time.'

"So I looked about me, and I found a hole under the wall; a kind of a
drain I should think it was, and I found I could just squeeze through.
And I got out and crept, round, and away I goes running down the
street, yelling for all I was worth, just as our chaps were getting
round the corner at the bottom. 'Bang, bang!' went the guns, behind me
and in front of me, and on each side of me, and then--bash! something
hit me on the head and over I went; and I don't remember anything more
till I woke up here just now."

The soldier lay back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment.
When he opened them he saw that there were other people in the room
besides the minister in the black robes. One was a man in a big black
cloak. He had a grim old face and a great beaky nose. He shook the
soldier by the hand.