The general laughed at the contempt in Boris’s tone.

“Of course he ran away!” he said.  “I only wonder how he knew we were coming!  That was bad luck—­because not once did we strike so much as a German patrol as we rode.”

“I can tell you,” said Fred.  “An aeroplane brought word.  Its pilot must have seen you as he flew overhead, and suspected that you were coming here.”

“So!” Suvaroff frowned.  “I did not think of that!  However, it is better than what we suspected at first.  It looked as if someone at headquarters must have betrayed the plan.  Well, it was too good to come true.  If we had caught him and his staff, we might have hastened the end of the war by a good many months.  Von Hindenburg is the ablest general in Germany, though he has been in disgrace for years.  They sent for him as soon as war came.  He’ll do good work.”

Fred was thinking.

“If that aeroplane saw you coming, general,” he said, “isn’t there danger that they may try to surround you here?”

“Yes, more than danger.  They are sure to try to do it!  But their cavalry is very slow, and I do not believe they have infantry enough near by to make any trouble for us.”  He frowned thoughtfully.  “There is something very peculiar about the whole situation around here!  If von Hindenburg is here, it means that their chief concentration on this front must be here.  And yet we get reports of an astonishingly small number of troops!  Not more than two corps.”

Boris looked eagerly at his father, and then at Fred. But before he could speak General Suvaroff went on, crisply.

“You can ride?” he asked Fred.  “Good!  I will see that you and Boris have horses.  Then we shall start.  We can be back in our own lines before daylight.”

Fred hesitated.  Then Boris took the words from his mouth.

“Father, I want to stay!” he said, eagerly.  “It will be safe.  I can get back to the house and they can never catch me there, you know!  They may not even search for me, but if they do, I can hide from them in the tunnel.  And you say the German movement about here is puzzling.  Would it not be well to have some way of sending word from here?  Ivan is at work.  But no matter what he discovers, if we are not at the house, it will do no good.  Let me stay!”

“I should like to stay, too,” said Fred.

“Impossible!” said General Suvaroff at once to that.  “You would be shot as soon as you were caught—­you are under sentence now.  They would not treat you as a prisoner of war, even if they caught you among my troopers.”

“But if they did not catch me—­”

“No!  I cannot let you take so great a risk.  You are of my kin, and I owe a duty to your mother.  I shall see that you get back safely to Russia and are sent home by sea from there.”

“But if I go into Russia, I shall be arrested—­those are Prince Mikail’s orders,” said Fred, quietly.  “I am sure to be caught there, and here there is a chance that I may not be found.  If you take Lieutenant Ernst with you as a prisoner, no one among the Germans will know me, except as I appear now.  If I change back to my own clothes, I shall be safe from anything worse than detention.  None of the officers of the court-martial escaped, did they?”