passed. When everything was
quiet we started out again, and presently we spied an old man working
on the road. He had only a wheelbarrow and shovel, so we decided to
risk asking him what country we were in. When we came up we bid him
the time of day, and, in the best German we could muster, asked, "Which
is this, Germany or Holland?" The old man looked at us, smiled, and
said "_This is Holland_." It sounded too good to be true, and for an
instant we could only stare at him and each other, then the realization
came that we were _FREE_ and we laughed and hugged one another in our
joy. The old man watched us with a sympathetic smile, for though he
could not understand all that we were saying he knew that we were
escaped prisoners. We must have been a rough-looking pair. We had
travelled a hundred miles at night over all kinds of country, and had
been eight days without any cooked food. Our faces were covered with
hair, and our clothes were ragged and dirty. I weighed only 125
pounds, and the long period of anxiety and mental strain, had aged me
at least ten years. Mac was just as bad, and we must have looked more
like a couple of jail-birds than anything else.

Well, finally we sobered down sufficiently to ask the man how far it
was to the nearest town. He told us it was about five miles to the
little town of "Neda"; but before we started he asked us if we were
hungry. We looked at each other and smiled--and the old man
understood--he insisted on our taking all of his lunch, even the bottle
of tea that he carried--and I assure you no food ever tasted better.
We felt like new men after getting something to eat, and we shall not
soon forget the old Hollander's kindness to us. It was with light
hearts that we finally said "Good-bye" to our new friend and started on
our way to "Neda."

The world looked very different to what it had a few hours before, and
we were so busy talking about our experiences that we scarcely noticed
a man passing by us on a bicycle. He must have heard a scrap of the
conversation, for he turned and looked, and then jumped off his wheel
and came toward us. He said, "Are you Englishmen?" We said, "No, not
exactly; we are Canadians." "Oh," he said, "Canadians. I am a
Hollander myself, but I was educated in England; you must be escaped
prisoners." We replied, "Oh, we are not telling _what_ we are." He
said, "You needn't be afraid, for my sympathy is all with the Allies."
So we told