had knit, but were
very fine and well made. We removed our socks the first thing each
morning, and rubbed our feet and put the socks in a tree to dry,
being careful not to have them so high they would be seen. We were
trying to take every precaution this time!

The first day we were near some farm-buildings, and as we lay in the
woods, pretty chilly and wet, we could hear the hens scolding and
cackling. Cackling hens always bring me back to the pleasant days
of childhood, and I was just enjoying a real heartsome visit to
the old home at Delmer... and was chasing Willie Fewster around a
straw-stack... when the farmer's dog, an interfering, vicious-looking
brute, came peering through the woods and gave us heart spasms,
barking at us for a few minutes. But we did not move a muscle, and,
seeing that he couldn't start a row with us, he went away, muttering
to himself about suspicious characters being around.

A woman passed through the wood, too, going over to one of the
neighbors--I think to borrow something, for she carried a plate. But
she did not see us, as we lay low in the scrub.

* * *

We certainly found plenty of unsettled country to travel through in
the first days of our journey, for we seemed to go through one marsh
after another, covered with coarse, long hay, which would have been
cut, no doubt, but for the soft bottoms which make it impossible
to use a mower. To drain this land would furnish more work for the
Russian prisoners! In one place we suddenly stepped down a couple of
feet into a bog filled with water, but with grass on the top. We
discovered that it was a place from which the peat had been removed,
and it was the only sign of human activity that we saw all night.

On the evening of August 23d, when we started out after a fairly good
day in a spruce thicket, we could see the lights of Bremen reflected
in the sky. The lights of a city, with its homes, its stores, its
eating-places, its baths, should be a welcome sight to wayfaring men
who have been living on oats and turnips, but not for us, to whom a
city meant only capture. So when we noticed the rosy glow in the
southern sky we steered our course farther west, but still taking
care to avoid the city, which we intended to pass on the south and
east side.

Our troubles were many that night. A good-sized river got in our way
and had to be crossed. There was no bridge in sight, and we had
determined to waste no time looking