Closing his eyes, Dick slumbered again.  When he next opened his eyes he sat up.

“Good morning, comrade!” called one of the two between whom he had slept.

“Ah, good morning,” Prescott answered in French, and stood up.  “My, but the mattress in this bed is a beastly one.”

The officer who addressed him, a young man of twenty-five or so, laughed good-humoredly.

“What time is breakfast to be had here?” Dick asked.

“I fear, comrade, that we shall not have any this morning, for the news is that we are to be entrained to-day and sent away.”

“To Germany?”

“It must be.  And on embarkation mornings no food is served.”

“They start us away hungry?” Dick asked.

“Always, so I have been told.  But you are not missing much, comrade, for you are not yet accustomed to the food the Germans feed their prisoners, and no one eats much of it until he has been hungry for a few days.  Then something like an appetite for the stuff comes to one.”

Finding himself somewhat chilled and cramped Prescott began to go briskly through some of the Army setting-up exercises.

“That is a fine thing to warm the blood,” said one of the French officers, “but I warn you that it will make you hungry.”

The other French officers now came forward to make themselves known to the only American officer in this prison camp.

“We are moving to-day,” said one.  “Will it be better in the new prison than here, do you think?” Prescott asked.

“In some ways at least.  We shall undoubtedly be housed in a wooden building, and that should be warmer at night.  Besides, I hear we are permitted straw mattresses when in Germany.”

“That begins to sound like luxury,” laughed Dick.

“And there our friends can send us food through neutral agencies.”

“Do you suppose, if they do, we shall be allowed to have some of the food?” Dick asked.

“Some of it, at least, or our friends would quickly stop sending it to us when they heard from us that we did not get it.”

“It will be a dog’s life,” broke in another, “even with such better treatment as may be accorded to officers.”

Dick Prescott’s heart was as stout as any American’s heart could be, but as he listened to the talk of his French brothers in arms he could not help feeling glum.

For one thing, it was hardly for this that he had sailed from America to be taken at the outset and to be shut off from all service with the men of his own country!

A German under-officer who spoke French came to the wire to call out: 

“You officers will march from here soon.  Begin to get your packs ready.  There must be no delay.”

“It won’t take me long,” Dick told his new friends.  “When captured I had only my uniform and my pistol.  The latter was taken.”

He turned to, however, to help his French brothers who possessed blankets, water bottles and other small belongings, for some of them appeared almost too weak to prepare for the march.