“Here they are!” cried the corporal.  “Herr Hauptmann, here they are!”

A captain came up quickly, and at the sight of Fred exclaimed sharply in his surprise.

“You’re the boy I chose to help with the work in the house here!” he said.  His face darkened.  “He is a spy!  Take him into the guard room and lock him up.”  He barely glanced at Boris.  “Yes, that is the other.  See that he is taken back to his quarters, corporal, and that a sentry remains constantly on guard.”

“He is not a spy!  If he is one, then so am I!” Boris broke out in a sharp protest.  “He must be treated exactly like myself, or I must be used as he is!” throwing caution to the four winds.

“I am giving the orders here,” said the German, coldly.  “We have no desire to treat you harshly, Prince.  You and your father have won the liking and respect of all your neighbors here, and it is a matter of regret that we must detain you at all.  But you must be able to see for yourself that there is a great difference between an open enemy like yourself and one who pushes his way among us to get what information he can—­”

“I beg your pardon, captain,” Fred interrupted, thoroughly awake by this time to the danger in which he stood.  “It was by your orders, and against my own protest, that I came into the house here at all.”

“You will have an opportunity to explain all such matters at your trial,” said the captain.  “I can assure you that all will be done in a regular fashion, and that you will have every opportunity to defend yourself.  Colonel Goldapp will doubtless arrange for a quick hearing since we shall not be here much longer.”

Fred was quite cool and collected.  He was frightened, to be sure, and he was brave enough to admit that to himself.  He had good reason to be frightened.  There is no offence more serious than espionage in time of war, and by every rule of war he was a spy.  He had pretended to be a German, which he was not, and had been found within the German lines.  It was true, of course, that he had been ordered into headquarters, but that was a trifling point, and, though he had raised it, Fred knew very well that no technicality would save him if the truth about him came out.

Boris understood all this, undoubtedly, quite as well as Fred or the German captain, but he was beside himself.  He felt that Fred had run into this terrible danger because of him, in order to try to rescue him from an imprisonment that, though annoying, was by no means a serious matter.

“Take me instead of him!” he cried, forgetting that with every word he was really making Fred’s case worse.  “I—­”

“I’ll be all right,” said Fred, with a cheerfulness he certainly did not feel.  “All I want is a fair trial.  If I get that, I’ll be all right.”

Unwillingly enough, Boris let himself be led away.  Something in Fred’s look, or in his voice, had warned him not to say anything more.  So Fred saw him go, and was taken himself to the guard room, of which he was the only occupant save for the impassive Pomeranian sentry.  Fred guessed, somehow, that German soldiers in war time did not often do things that caused them to be put under arrest.  In the little he had seen of them he had come to understand what it was that made a German army so formidable.