s from which, without being seen
himself, he could watch the door of the house, and there he crouched
down to wait. It was dull work, and, after he had once settled
himself, he was afraid to move lest unseen eyes be watching somewhere
in the neighborhood.

Meanwhile Paul was busy getting into the house. It was easier than he
had thought it likely to be. The catch on the window was simplicity
itself and he forced it with his penknife without any difficulty at all.

"I feel like a burglar," he thought to himself, as he climbed in. "But
I don't care. Even if there's nothing wrong in here, I've got the
right, in a time like this, to make sure. Every Belgian has to think
of his country first now."

And he was pretty sure that there was a decided connection between this
cottage, so strangely stout in its construction, and the unquestionably
threatening and sinister discovery he and Arthur had made in the field
only a stone's throw away.

Inside, he found himself in a large room that took up all save a very
small part of the ground floor of the cottage. To the left there was a
wall, and in it an open door--he could see that much through the very
faint light that filtered through the windows. Seemingly, he was in
luck. There was absolutely nothing to make him doubt that he was alone
in the house. Everything was still. There was not even the ticking of
a clock, the one sound he might reasonably have expected to hear even
in a temporarily deserted house. But he waited for quite a minute, to
make sure that no one was about. He felt certain that, had anyone been
there, he would have heard breathing, no matter how anxious the other
occupant of the house might be to conceal his presence.

Then he switched on the light, shielding it with his hand, so that no
reflection of its faint glow should betray him, by means of the
windows, to anyone approaching from outside.

About the big room in which he found himself there was nothing to
excite suspicion at first sight. The room seemed ordinary enough; the
usual living-room of a peasant. One thing was curious; he could see a
trap door, evidently leading to a cellar below. But that he reserved
for later inspection, preferring at first to look upstairs. He reached
the second floor by the stairs; there, too, there seemed at first
nothing out of the ordinary. But when he threw aside all scruples and
looked everywhere, he found something that confirmed some at least of
hi