e guard was too relieved to find us, when we stepped
out of the wood and picked up our shovels, to do more than betray a
purely personal annoyance. He asked where we had been and why we had
remained for so long a time. We gave the obvious excuse. He was too
well pleased at his own narrow escape from responsibility to be
critical, so that the affair ended in so far as he or his kind were
concerned. Which made what followed the harder to bear.

For it was not so with our own comrades. My prognostication had been a
correct one. A few of them had known that we were going; some had bade
us good-bye. They rested on their picks now and stared at us, lifting
their eyebrows, with a knowing smile for one another and a half-sneer
for us. My companion had already plumbed the depths of fear and so was
now lost to all shame. Myself, I found it very hard. Soldiers have,
outwardly at least, but little tenderness, except perhaps in bad
times, and they showed none now. Nor mercy. The situation would have
been ridiculous had it not been so utterly tragic--to have failed
without trying! Edwards's escape became camp offal. We became the butt
and the byword of the camp, so that I honestly regretted not having
pushed on alone. I felt sure that the almost certain capture and more
certain punishment would have been more bearable than this. There was
nothing that I could say in my own defense except at the other man's
expense--which would have been in questionable taste and would have
been deemed the resort of a weakling. So I kept my counsel and
brooded. The ignorance of the guards made the tragedy comic. It was
very humiliating. I gritted my teeth and swore that I at any rate
should go again in spite of their incredulous jeers. But it was all
terribly discouraging and made me most despondent.

And that finished that trip to Switzerland.

A few days later Simmons and Brumley disappeared. There was no
commotion. One day they were with us and the next--they were not. The
guards said nothing and we feared to ask. I longed ardently to be with
them.

In a few days the camp was thrown into a mild turmoil. The poor
fellows were escorted in under a heavy guard. And very dejected they
looked too--in rags, very wet and evidently short of food, sleep and a
shave. Nevertheless, I envied them.

They disappeared for a long time. We were told they got two weeks'
cells and six weeks of sitting on the stools in strafe barracks. I
remembered the Yorkshirem