clumsy. Like everything else about the German army, this was a practical
and efficient, well tried device.

Then suddenly, early on Tuesday, he was told that he was free to go, or
would be by nightfall. And that day all signs of the German army, save a
small force of Uhlans, vanished from the village. That evening,
refreshed and ready for the road again, Fred set out. And that same
evening, though he did not know it until the next day, England entered
the war against Germany.




CHAPTER III

A STRANGE MEETING


As he walked west Fred noticed, even in the night, a change in the
country. It was not that he passed once in a while a solitary soldier
guarding a culvert, as he neared a railway, or a patrol, with its
twinkling fire, watching this spot or that that needed special guarding.
That was part of war, the part of war that he had been able to foresee.
It wasn't anything due to the war that made an impression on his mind so
much as a sort of thickening of the country. Though he had traveled so
short a distance from the Russian border, there seemed to be more people
about.

Great houses, rising on high ground, with small, contented looking
villages nestling, as it were, under their protection, were frequent. He