We came out again and went on, breathing out our condemnation of all German dogs.  And we were not done with them yet!  For before we got out another cur flew at us and raised enough noise to alarm the town.  I believe the only thing that saved us was this dog’s bad character.  Nobody believed he had anything—­he had fooled them so often—­and so, although he pursued us until we slipped down an alley and got into a thick grove, there was not even a blind raised.  He ran back, yelping out his disappointment, and the bitterest part of it would be that no one would ever believe him—­but that is part of the liar’s punishment.

We got out of the town as soon as we could, and pushed on with all haste; we were afraid that news of our escape had been published, and that these people might be on the lookout for us.  The telephone poles along the roads we were travelling kept us reminded of the danger we were in.

Loaded apple-trees growing beside the road tempted us to stop and fill our pockets, and as we were doing so a man went by on a bicycle.  We stepped behind the tree just in time to avoid being seen, and although he slackened his pace and looked hard at the place where we were, he evidently thought it best to keep going.

We met two other men later in the night, but they apparently did not see us, and we went on.

We left the road after that, and plunged into the woods, for the daylight was coming.

During the day of October 7th we stayed close in the woods, for we knew we were in a thickly settled part of the country.  Lying on the ground, we could see a German farmer gathering in his sugar beets, ably assisted by his women-folk.  We could also hear the children from a school near by, playing “Ring-a-ring-a-roeselein.”

The rain that day was the hardest we had yet encountered, but in the afternoon the sun came out and we got some sleep.  At dusk we started out again, on a road which had forest on one side and open country on the other.  We could see the trains which ran on the main line from Hanau to Aschaffenburg.  The Main River was at our right.  Soon the forest ended abruptly, and we found ourselves in an open country, and with a railroad to cross.

As we drew near, the dog at the station gave the alarm.  We stepped into a clump of trees and “froze.”  The man at the station came rushing out and looked all around, but did not see us, and went back.  We then made a wide detour and crawled cautiously over the road on our hands and knees, for this road had rock ballast which would have crunched under our feet.

We then went on through the village, where another dog barked at us, but couldn’t get any support from his people, who slept on.  We were worried about the time, for neither of us had a watch, and we suspected that it was near morning.  We hurried along, hoping to find a shelter, but the country seemed to be open and treeless.  A thick mist covered the ground and helped to hide us, but it might lift at any minute.