“Stop!” cried the soldier.  “Where are you going?”

Fred looked at him blankly.

“Stop!” said the German again, for Fred, after having looked at him, had moved on.  Still Fred paid no attention, and the man rode up to him and leaned over, dropping a heavy hand on his shoulder and shaking him in no gentle way.

“Where are you going, I say?  Answer!” roared the Uhlan.

But Fred only smiled and pointed first to his ears and then to his mouth.  By pantomime he pretended to be deaf and dumb.  And when the officer came up, Fred was still smiling—­and silent.  He knew he had never seen this officer before.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ESCAPE

“What’s the matter with him, Schmidt!” asked the officer.

Fred knew enough of German uniforms by this time to place him as a lieutenant of the lowest grade, and was thankful that he did not have an experienced man to deal with.

“Deaf and dumb, I think, Herr Lieutenant,” said the man.  “I rode up behind him, calling to him and making a good deal of noise, but he did not even know I was coming until I was on top of him.”

“Well, he can’t go this way!” said the lieutenant.  “How are we to make him understand that?”

“If I dismounted and turned him about, he might perhaps understand,” said the soldier.

“Try it!”

Fred had hard work to conceal his amusement but he managed it.  The soldier solemnly turned him about and pushed him in the direction whence he had come.  But Fred immediately turned around, walked a couple of paces as he had been going, and then stopped, smiling broadly.  Then he turned around, shook his head violently, and turned back.

“He’s trying to tell us he wants to keep on the way he was going,” said the lieutenant.

The two Germans seemed to be puzzled, but then the officer got an idea.  He produced paper and pencil and wrote hurriedly.

“Who are you?  Where are you going?” he wrote.  Then he handed the paper to Fred. Fred hesitated for a moment.  He understood German and could talk it very well.  But he was a little nervous about writing it, especially in the German script.  He could write it, but he was not sure that he could write it so well that it would seem like the work of a German.  However, he took the chance.

“My name is Gebhardt,” he wrote.  “I come from Munich, and I am visiting my uncle and aunt here at Gumbinnen.  My uncle sent me to Insterberg and then I found I could not go back by train.  Soldiers have made me turn around so many times that it has taken me all this time to get here.  Why can I not go to Gumbinnen?”

The officer took the paper and, when he had read it, told the soldier.  They seemed to find Fred’s explanation plausible, and his writing had passed muster.

“Here is a fine mess!” said the lieutenant.  “Poor boy!  I feel sorry for one with such an affliction!  And is he not between the devil and the deep blue sea?  In Gumbinnen there will be Russian cavalry by to-morrow—­and at Insterberg, I suppose, the first real battle will be fought!”