We still kept west, thinking of the bulge in the German boundary to the south of us.  The road was smooth and hard, and we felt so good that we seemed to be able to go as fast as we liked.  Fatigue and hunger were forgotten.  A man on a bicycle rode past us and shouted a greeting to us, to which we replied with a good, honest English “Good-night,” instead of the sullen grunt we had hitherto been using to hide our nationality.

Cows were plentiful that night, and we got apples, too, from the orchards near the road.  The only thing that troubled us was that our road had turned southwest, and we were afraid that it might lead us into the little strip of Germany.  However, we went on a short distance.

Then we came to a place where there were many canals, some of them very large, and the straggling houses seemed to indicate a town.  Afterwards we knew it was the town called Nieuwstadskanaal.

We took a poor road, leading west, and followed it over a heather moor, which changed after a mile or two into a peat-bog with piles of peat recently cut.  We kept on going, until about five o’clock in the morning we came to a house.  It looked desolate and unoccupied, and when we got close to it we found that it had been badly damaged by fire.  But it made a good shelter for us, and we went into what had been the living-room, and lay down and slept.  The floor was even and dry; it was the best bed we had had for twenty nights, and, relieved as we were from the fear of detection, we slept for hours.

* * *

When we awakened, the sun was pouring in at the curtainless windows, and we were as hungry as bears.  “Now for a potato-feed,” Ted said, looking out of the window at a fine field of potatoes across the road.  The field had been reclaimed from the peat-bog, and some of the potatoes had already been dug and put into pits.

In looking around for material to light a fire, I saw scraps of newspapers, which I examined closely and found they were Dutch papers, one bearing the name of “Odoorn” and the other “Nieuwstadskanaal.”  This supported us in our belief that we were in Holland.

We got potatoes from the field and roasted them in the fire which we built in the fireplace.

A young Hollander, fired with curiosity, came to the door and looked in at us.  We hailed him with delight and asked him to come right in, and be one of us!  He came in rather gingerly, looking at us wide-eyed, and we were sorry to find he could not speak English.  There were certain things we wanted to know!

We were drying our matches by the fire, for they had become rather damp, and our supply was getting low.  Also our tobacco was done.  So we said, “Tabac,” showing him our empty pipes, and from the pocket of his coat he brought out a pouch, and we filled our pipes.  I don’t know whether he knew we had been prisoners or not.  He drifted out in a few minutes, but I think he told others about us, for after we had had our smoke, and had gone to the canal to fix up, we found some interested spectators.