ds, and
abandoned guns were numerous. Here and there were overturned wagons and
in one of them he found food.

After eating he sat down and considered. His momentary feeling of
revulsion had passed. He was heart and soul for the Franco-British
cause, and he meant to rejoin the army. If he could not find his own
company of the Strangers he would go with the British again. But the
direction in which he must go was obvious. To Paris. Everything was
going toward Paris now, because the German army was driving that way. He
resolved upon a great curve to the right which would take him around the
invading force, and then flight with the others to the capital.

He knew that he must act quickly, his decision once taken. German
reserves or bands of cavalry might come up at any moment. He found a
rifle beside one of the fallen soldiers, and cartridges in his belt. He
did not hesitate to appropriate them and he walked swiftly toward a
little wood on his right, where he drank at a brook and bathed his face
and wound.

He was never cooler, and his mind was never more acute. He calculated
that at the present rate of decrease his headache would all be gone by
night, and by that time also he would pass the right flank of the German
army. A man walking could not go so very fast, but at least he could go
as fast as an army, impeded by another army still intact.

Choosing his course he followed it without swerving for a long time,
keeping as well as he could in the shadow of woods and hedges. The day
was as beautiful as any that he had seen, flecks of white on a
background of blue and a pleasant coolness. The inhabitants of the
villages had fled, but several times he saw small bands of Uhlans. Then
he would drop down in the trampled grass, and wait until they passed out
of sight.

But he feared most the watchers of the sky. He saw monoplanes, biplanes,
Taubes, and every kind of flying machine soaring over the German army.
Once he heard the rattle of a Zeppelin, and he saw the monstrous thing,
a true dragon flying very close to the ground. Then he crept farther
under the hedge and lay flat, until it was miles away in the southwest.

In the afternoon he found a cottage in the forest, still occupied by a
sturdy couple who believed that France was not yet lost. They gave him
food, made up more for him, putting it in a knapsack which he could
carry on his back, and refused to take any pay.

"You are young, you are American, and you have