But they trudged on doggedly, refusing to pay the slightest attention to the taunts or blows showered upon them, and in spite of everything, Ken used his eyes to take in every feature of the country through which they travelled.  Small hope as he had of ever seeing again his own lines, yet he missed nothing of importance, storing up each hill, valley, clump of trees, and track in his tenacious memory.

At last they came within sight of a group of squalid hovels in a valley.

‘That’s Keni,’ Ken told Roy.

The brutal corporal caught the word.

‘That’s Keni,’ he repeated in his own language, ’and, by the beard of the Prophet, you shall soon see how spies are dealt with.’

The village swarmed with soldiers, many of them wounded, who stared at the two British prisoners with lack-lustre eyes.  The narrow street of the place reeked with filth and foul odours, and swarmed with a pestilence of flies.  The two youngsters were thrust roughly into a dirty hovel, and with a final jeer from their brutal jailer, the door was locked behind them.

For a moment Roy stood straight, towering in the centre of the low-roofed room.  There was a very ugly light in his eyes.

‘Wait, my friend, wait!’ he said hoarsely.  ’I’ll be even with you before I’ve finished.’

‘Steady, old chap!’ said Ken quietly.  ’Steady!  Take it easy while you can.  Remember, we’ve got that little interview with Kemp before us.’

Roy flung himself down with a gasp.

’It’s all right, Ken.  I’ll calm down after a bit.  But heaven pity that black-moustached blighter if I ever get my hands on him.’

Ken tried to answer, but suddenly dropped flat on the bare earthen floor.  His eyes closed.  Instantly he was sound asleep.  Roy stared at him vaguely, yawned, and before he knew it had slipped down and followed his example.

So they lay, happily oblivious of their troubles, all through the blazing afternoon.  The sun was setting when the door was flung open and the sharp-faced corporal strode in.

He roused them with a kick apiece.

‘Get up, British dogs,’ he ordered.  ‘Captain Hartmann awaits you.’

The sleep had refreshed them, and though stiff and sore they were both in condition so fit and hard that they were little the worse for their trying experiences of the night and morning.

Under charge of a guard, they were marched rapidly up the street to where a few larger flat-topped houses stood on slightly higher ground.  Through an open door they were driven along a passage and out into a courtyard open to the sky, with a fountain in the centre.

At a table, under the shade of a grape arbour, sat two German officers, one of whom was a typical Prussian, fair, with hard blue eyes and close cropped hair, while the other was their old friend, the ex-steward Kemp, otherwise Hartmann.

An ugly light shone in his deep-set, narrow eyes as they fell on the two prisoners.