mountain wall might have been plainer to me.

"As it was, I couldn't guess. There was no blasting--none that I
could hear. But trains were running and some gigantic enterprise was
being accomplished--some enterprise that apparently demanded speed
and privacy--for not one civilian was to be seen, not one dwelling.
But there were endless mazes of fortifications; and I saw guns being
moved everywhere.

"Well, I was becoming hungry up on that fir-clad battlement. I
didn't know how to get down into the valley. It began to look as
though I'd have to turn back; and that seemed a rather awful
prospect.

"Anyway, what happened, eventually, was this: I started east through
the forest along that pathless tableland, and on the afternoon of
the next day, tired out and almost starved, I stepped across the
Swiss boundary line--a wide, rocky, cleared space crossing a
mountain flank like a giant's road.

"No guards were visible anywhere, no sentry-boxes, but, as I stood
hesitating in the middle of the frontier--and just why I hesitated I
don't know--I saw half a dozen jagers of a German mounted regiment
ride up on the German side of the boundary.

"For a second the idea occurred to me that they had ridden parallel
to the ledge to intercept me; but the idea seemed absurd, granted
even that they had seen me upon the ledge from below, which I never
dreamed they had. So when they made me friendly gestures to come
across the frontier I returned their cheery 'Gruss Gott!' and