What do you say to a try?'

'I've considered that,' I said, 'but it won't do. We're on a bigger
business than wrecking munition convoys. I want to know how you got
here.'

He smiled with that extraordinary Sunday-school docility of his.

'It was very simple, Cornelis. I was foolish in the cafe--but they
have told you of that. You see I was angry and did not reflect. They
had separated us, and I could see would treat me as dirt. Therefore, my
bad temper came out, for, as I have told you, I do not like Germans.'

Peter gazed lovingly at the little bleak farms which dotted the
Hungarian plain.

'All night I lay in _tronk_ with no food. In the morning they fed me,
and took me hundreds of miles in a train to a place which I think is
called Neuburg. It was a great prison, full of English officers ... I
asked myself many times on the journey what was the reason of this
treatment, for I could see no sense in it. If they wanted to punish me
for insulting them they had the chance to send me off to the trenches.
No one could have objected. If they thought me useless they could have
turned me back to Holland. I could not have stopped them. But they
treated me as if I were a dangerous man, whereas all their conduct
hitherto had shown that they thought me a fool. I could not understand
it.

'But I had not been one night in that Neuburg place before I thought of
the reason. They wanted to keep me under observation as a check upon
you, Cornelis. I figured it out this way. They had given you some
very important work which required them to let you into some big
secret. So far, good. They evidently thought much of you, even yon
Stumm man, though he was as rude as a buffalo. But they did not know
you fully, and they wanted to check on you. That check they found in
Peter Pienaar. Peter was a fool, and if there was anything to blab,
sooner or later Peter would blab it. Then they would stretch out a
long arm and nip you short, wherever you were. Therefore they must keep
old Peter under their eye.'

'That sounds likely enough,' I said.

'It was God's truth,' said Peter. 'And when it was all clear to me I
settled that I must escape. Partly because I am a free man and do not
like to be in prison, but mostly because I was not sure of myself.
Some day my temper would go again, and I might say foolish things for
which Cornelis would suffer. So it was very certain that I must escape.

'Now, Cornelis, I noticed pret