“It is plain to me,” said Gordon, “that you are not a hunter, and have never stalked deer as I have often done. If it had been a Boche instead of me, you would have been captured or shot, when you were so near me.” “But how,” I asked, “did you get away from them?” “When you were knocked overboard,” he answered, “there was a good deal of confusion. The sergeant commanding the guard made motions urging me to go to your rescue. None of them wanted to try it, and when I had made him understand that I could not swim, enough time had passed for any reasonable man to drown; and no real effort was made to rescue you or to retrieve your body. Then the guard who knocked you overboard was scolded by the sergeant, not particularly for striking you, but for making it hard for him to account for a missing prisoner. There was a rejoinder that there was one less American pig to feed, which caused a laugh. And just then, when attention was drawn from me, I softly slipped into the water and, swimming under for some distance, at last crawled upon the shore. “Apparently they did not discover my absence for some time. Then they came tramping back across the bridge, looking in the ends of the boats and then beneath the planking. When they got to this end of the bridge, I heard one of our officers suggest to the sergeant that you were not drowned but faking it.” “Did that fellow who was giving me away have a voice like the purr of a cat--too sweet to be honest?” I asked suddenly. “I reckon that’s him to a T. How did you happen to know him?” “I spotted him,” I answered, “the first hour I was in that Boche wire coop, and I wouldn’t trust him for a cent’s worth.” “I reckoned you felt it rather than reasoned it; didn’t you?” “That’s about it,” I replied. “I always did have ‘hunches’--and I wouldn’t have shaken hands with him with a pair of tongs.” “I reckon we are twins. I have that same feeling about some folks myself.” Gordon and I were glad of each other’s company, though neither of us said much about it; for between some folks there is no need to say things. That night we walked rapidly; for my comrade’s trained senses enabled him to see and travel in the dark without missing the right direction. Sometimes we kept the road in view for guidance, but he seemed never to have doubts of the right road. When daylight came, we found a hiding place in what, at first, we thought was a quarry, but soon saw excavations that told us it had been used by both the French and German soldiers for bomb proofs and other military service. We halted and made a breakfast from our tins and wheat bread, and lay there for most of the day, taking turns in standing guard, while the other slept.