When I had gone some distance I looked back. The men were standing by some mounds which I guessed covered the remains of slain Russians, and were bareheaded and silently praying--a common custom in this country, where people more often address themselves to the Almighty in the open air than they do in houses. The road was over an undulating plain, with a few willow-trees along the courses of the streams, but practically no cover for a person wishing to hide himself. I hurried on as fast as I could walk. By the time the sun was well up I was so tired that I was glad to creep into a fairly dry ditch, where I slept soundly until nearly evening time. Before resuming my journey I ate a small loaf which the woman had put in my pocket when I left the cottage in the morning. Then I took a road running eastwards to Ostrolenka, with the object of reaching the railway, and also in the hope that I should find Russian soldiers to whom I was known. There is no railway at Przasnysz: and though I believed that the last-named place was still in the hands of the Russians, I was not sure of it, and feared that, in any case, I should run great danger of meeting parties of the enemy in that direction. It so happened, however, that I saw patrols or scouts of the enemy on the road I had decided to take. They consisted of small bands of Uhlans and dragoons, the strongest of them not more than twenty troopers in number. They were probably flying parties, at a great distance from a base; but that circumstance made them none the less dangerous to me; and I spent the greater part of the day lurking in cover. It is a fortunate event some of these men did not discover me; for I was compelled to be content with very incomplete concealment. I escaped notice, but I had several very narrow escapes; and if the soldiers had been as alert as they ought to have been I should have been discovered. One man nearly rode over me as I lay crouching in a patch of sedge by the side of a tiny brook; and a squad of eight dragoons passed within four or five yards of me, giving me a very unpleasant shock, as I had no weapon for defence, except a stick I had broken from a tree. The Germans had stripped me of everything I carried, my money excepted; and that, fortunately, I had successfully hidden by stitching it, sovereign by sovereign, under a black braid stripe down the seam of my trousers. CHAPTER XXV ADVENTURES DURING THE EFFORT TO ESCAPE