go by. For
later he learned that a heavy fine was imposed on these poor wretches if
they showed themselves before enemy prisoners, and he wondered where
they got the money to pay the fines.

The prison camp was in the form of a great oval and looked as if it
might formerly have been a "rice track," as the all-knowing Tennert had
said. It was entirely surrounded by a high barbed wire fence, the
vicious wire interwoven this way and that into a mesh, the very sight of
which must have been forbidding to the ambitious fugitive. It was not,
however, electrified as in the strictly military prisons and on the
frontiers. Tom was told that this was because it was chiefly a civilian
camp, but he later learned that it was because of a shortage of coal.

The buildings which had formerly been stables and open stalls had been
converted into living quarters, and odds and ends of lumber gathered
from the neighboring town had been used to throw up rough shacks for
additional quarters.

Straw was the only bedding and such food as the authorities supplied was
dumped onto rusty tin dishes held out by the hungry prisoners. Some of
these dishes had big holes in them and when such a plate became unusable
it behooved its possessor to make friends with someone whose dish was
not so far gone and share it with him. Some of the men carved wooden
dishes, for there was nothing much to do with one's time, until their
knives were taken from them. The life was one of grinding monotony and
utter squalor, and the time which Tom spent there was the nightmare of
his life.

Occasionally someone from the Spanish Embassy in Berlin would visit the
camp in the interest of the Americans, the effect of these visits
usually being to greatly anger the retired old German officer who was
commandant. He had a face like the sun at noon-day, a voice like a
cannon, and the mere asking of a question set him into a rage.

Many of the prisoners, of whom not a few were young Americans, received
packages from home, through neutral sources--food, games, tobacco--which
were always shared with their comrades. But Tom was slow in getting
acquainted and before he had reached the stage of intimacy with anyone,
something happened. He still retained his companionable status with
Tennert and Freddie, but they fell in with their own set from good old
"Blighty" and Tom saw little of them.

There was absolutely no rule of life in the prison camp. They were
simply kept from getting