Luckily it was growing dark and Tom had pulled Rabig's hat well down over his face, yet not so far as to make it appear that he was trying to evade scrutiny. He walked on briskly to a point where a sentry on duty before an opening in the wire fence was standing. "_Halt! Wer da?_" hailed the sentry. "_Ein Freund_," replied Tom. "_Losung._" "_Potsdam._" At the same time Tom carelessly extended the pass which the sentry glanced at and returned to him with a curt gesture, in which Tom thought he saw contempt. But it meant that he was free to pass, and he did so with an air of indifference. His heart was beating so fast that it seemed as if he would suffocate. At every step he feared to hear a shout behind him that would tell him that the ruse was discovered. But the fortune that had frowned upon him so many times of late this time was friendly. Behind him were the usual camp noises and nothing more. In a few minutes he had gotten out of sight of the lines and was in the woods at a point where the trees grew thickly and only a half-beaten trail led through the underbrush. Then he quickened his pace and soon found himself running. If he were pursued, he had fully made up his mind what he would do. He would never again see the inside of a German prison. He had the revolver and he would fight to the last breath. He might go down, probably would, considering the odds that there would be against him, but he would die fighting, and would take one or more of his enemies with him. He was racing along now at top speed and he only slackened his gait when he knew that he had put miles behind him. By that time it had grown wholly dark, and in the woods it was as black as pitch. He was safe for that night at least. His enemies could not have seen him if they had been within ten feet of him. And the darkness brought with it a word of warning. While in one sense it was a protection, on the other it had in it an element of danger. He could no longer know the direction in which he was traveling. He knew the danger there was of traveling in a circle. If he kept on he might swing around in the direction of the German lines. And it would be a sorry ending to his flight to have it finish at the very point from which he had started. He made up his mind that he would curl himself up in some thicket and snatch a few hours of sleep. At the first glimmer of dawn he would resume his journey. Then he could see, no doubt, the American lines, from which he knew he could not be very far away. The big guns, too, that had now settled down to their nightly muttering, would be in full cry at dawn, and sound as well as sight would help him. He found a heavy clump of bushes into which he crawled. He had no fear of oversleeping. He knew that his burdened mind would keep watch while his body slept, and that he would surely wake at the first streak of dawn.