hes.

And yet Findeisen had escaped!

Necessity had quickened the wits of the dull lad, and had made him
inventive. When they confronted him with the corpse of the sergeant, he
realised that he had committed a murder; and from that moment he felt
his head no longer safe on his shoulders. The fear of death lent him a
subtlety of which he would never otherwise have been capable.

He had, as Wolf guessed, used the iron bed support as an implement. He
had at once recognised that it would be impossible to break through the
principal external wall; the other walls, however, might be expected to
be considerably less strong, and they sounded hollower when he tapped
them. Findeisen knew that one of them merely divided his cell from
another, and so was useless for his purpose. But beyond the other wall
lay a shed in which the fire-engine was kept. Its window, he knew, was
only covered with wire-netting, and opened on to a field.

And as soon as all was quiet in the guard-house he had set to work,
listening anxiously in the direction of the corridor during the pauses
of his boring and levering. The wall was only the length of a brick
thick, and after the first stone had been broken out bit by bit, it
cost but little labour to widen the hole enough to let a man pass.

The night sentinels declared that they had not remarked anything
unusual. Besides, they had an excuse in the regulations; for in such
pouring rain they were permitted to take shelter in the sentry-boxes.
So it was not even known when the prisoner had escaped.

A warrant for his arrest was sent out, but in vain. Gunner Findeisen
had disappeared.

Later during the same morning on which Findeisen, avoiding all
frequented paths, had slipped away through undergrowth and thickets to
the frontier, Wolf, a prisoner awaiting trial, was removed to the house
of detention in the capital.

The train in which he and the soldier who guarded him travelled passed
another at an intermediate station. Reservists were looking out of
every carriage; men from every branch of the service were mixed
together, and all were alike in the wildness of their spirits.

The two trains started again at the same moment, and the reservists
began to sing:

"Reservists they may rest,
Reservists may rest,
And if reservists rest may have.
Then may reservists rest."

Wolf kept his eyes fixed on the dusty floor of the compart