Marching across fields, by by-ways, through woods, they arrived by nightfall in the neighbourhood of the river Ourthe. Some few miles beyond that river they believed that the French army was in line. As they were passing a cluster of cottages a voice in German called upon them to halt. Pariset moved up to the front of the prisoners, and pointing his revolver threatened to shoot if any man spoke a word. Kenneth meanwhile, answering in German, had ridden a few paces ahead, and explained to the sentry who had challenged that he was escorting some Belgian civilians as prisoners to Erézée, and asked in his turn for news. To his surprise and alarm he learnt that the Germans were in force a few miles to the south, and expected next day to force the passage of the Ourthe. At the hamlet at which he had arrived a small infantry outpost had quartered itself that afternoon.
Getting from the sentry the direction of Erézée, he rode back and led the party away from the hamlet to the south-west.
"That was a near thing, Remi," he said. "We shall never be able to get these fellows to our own lines."
"Pity we didn’t let the farmer’s men shoot them," returned Pariset. "They’ll be our ruin."
"I vote we leave them at the next village we come to. They’ll be discovered by the Germans in their advance to-morrow."
"Not a man of them! The villagers would have put them out of sight by to-morrow. We must leave them on the road if you want to keep them alive."
They had still not determined what to do with their troublesome charges when they caught sight of lights twinkling mistily through the rain-laden darkness ahead. Kenneth slipped down from his saddle, and went forward on foot to reconnoitre, the rest halting. In a few minutes he returned.
"The place is evidently full of Germans," he said. "I heard the eternal ’Deutschland über Alles’; the bosches certainly sing well! We must make up our minds once for all what to do."
After a brief discussion they retreated some distance up the road, out of earshot from the village. On one side was an extensive plantation, probably the covert of some Belgian nobleman. Here they decided to leave their prisoners. The trees would give the men a certain protection from the rain. They could make themselves heard when their troops passed along the road in the morning. There accordingly the two young fellows placed the Uhlans, eking out the rope to bind their legs as well as their arms. Then they struck down a bridlepath that ran westward, the direction of the Ourthe.