Even that comparatively short walk did not appear attractive, but at this particular moment there came around a bend in the road an old Russian driving a familiar hay-rick. He readily consented to take me to the village, and after saying farewell to “Hickey,” and enjoining him to “keep smiling,” my aged saviour and I set out on our journey. A half hour later, in the village, I tried my best, with my still limited Russian vocabulary, to procure another hay-rick to drive me the fourteen versts remaining between me and the Lettish front. Out of the crowd of villagers that surrounded me there emerged a Lettish boy of perhaps fifteen years, who told me in German that he would take me across. When the villagers understood what I wanted, the peasant women insisted that I must have food before starting. I was taken into one of the dingy little homes, where I was served with good rye bread, butter, milk, and eggs, which I ate greedily, I am afraid, for I was very hungry. Not even the thousands of flies that I had to brush away before I could take a bite prevented my enjoyment of this food. At seven in the evening my boy rescuer and I reached the Lettish front, this time in a hay-rick _de luxe_, with straw and an old quilt on the slats of the floor. The Lettish officers examined me again, and told me that if I would take a hay-rick and drive twenty-two versts to the Kreisberg station I could take a train at two in the morning that would bring me to Riga early the next afternoon. They gave me food, produced a hay-rick, and, half frozen but safe, I reached Kreizberg and finally Riga, at one the next afternoon. Feeling secure at last, I left the station at Riga and proceeded up the street towards the De Rome Hotel. I noticed an aeroplane circling overhead, but I had grown so accustomed to war manœuvers that I disregarded it entirely. About two squares further on my way I heard a terrific crash and explosion and turned to see smoke rising from the station I had just left. A German aeroplane had bombed the station, killing seven people and injuring fourteen. Arrived at the hotel, I asked the proprietor what was wrong. He told me that the Germans were marching on the town, and shelling it as they marched, and that 60,000 of them were just across the river. My only thought was that I wanted to get out at once. “You can’t go,” he said. “There are no boats running and the German army[C] controls the railroad to Mitau.” Apparently it was as dangerous to come out to civilization as it had been to go into “barbarous” Soviet Russia. I recalled the peace and the kindness I had found inside that supposedly violent land with a great longing.