“If it were not for our uniforms, chum,” said my comrade, “we would stand a better chance; but they are ‘a dead give away.’” We traveled slowly and warily--but at last, in some unexplainable way, we fell into a trap. We had stopped in a little depression of the ground in the outskirts of a wood near a little brook. Thinking it as good a place for concealment as we would find, we refreshed ourselves by bathing our hands and faces, after which Gordon began dressing my wound. He was rewinding the bandage, after washing it, when he stopped short and, in a whisper said, “What’s that?” But there was no need of an answer, for there came the sharp call: “Hande hoch!” And to enforce this order of “hands up” several rifle barrels pointed towards us from behind trees. We were caught. Our German captors were mostly young fellows who looked like students. With one exception, and that was an old grizzled sergeant, not one of them, I should judge, was over seventeen years of age. I learned through Gordon that they had but lately come in to the service, and they were greatly pleased to have captured us. The old sergeant spoke fair English. “Who are you?” he interrogated. “How came you inside our lines?” “We are Americans and escaping prisoners,” Gordon answered in German. “Ach!” he responded in English. “You gets avay?” “Yes.” He allowed Gordon to finish dressing my wound, and after taking a look at it himself, said, when he saw that Gordon had some clean bandages, “Verbande” and coolly took most of them, with the grim remark: “May need these myself.” From this I inferred that linen bandages were scarce with them. Then came the order: “Vorwart!” and we were hurried forward to their headquarters, where we were halted and turned over to a new guard. For a while but little attention was given us, and we were allowed to lie down while awaiting--we knew not what. “It is rather disheartening,” I said, “to be gobbled when we were so close to our lines.” “Yes,” replied Gordon coolly, “but that was the place where we were most likely to get caught. Don’t look so glum; never say die, chum, until you are dead, and then--you can’t.” “They will be marching us to prison soon, I suppose,” I said. “Very likely,” replied Gordon; “but I will do my best to vote in the negative, as we used to say in our debating club.” We were brought to our feet by a command, and conducted by a guard to a shattered house, where we found ourselves in the presence of a black-headed, blotch-faced, severe-looking officer, who began to question us in imperfect English. Then, as we were unable to understand his questions, and he equally unable to understand our replies, he spoke a few guttural words to an orderly, who saluted and went away. As I stood at attention looking the ill-natured officer in the face, I noticed some one stop at my side and brush my elbow never so slightly, as if in warning, and at the same time slip something into my side pocket.