"I happen to know that part of Belgium pretty well, and when it got light I took my bearings. Petersen had borne a little south of what we intended, which was all to the good--it gave me less walking; but it was just as well I found a sign-post almost at once, as I had no map, of course--far too dangerous; and I wasn't very clear on names of villages, though I'd memorized the map before leaving. I found I had landed somewhere south of Courtrai, and was about twelve kilometres due north of Tournai. "And it was just as I'd decided that little fact that I met a horrible Hun, a large and forbidding-looking man. Now, the one thing on which I'd been chancing my arm was the freedom allowed to the Belgians behind the German lines, and luck again stepped in. "Beyond grunting 'Guten Morgen' he betrayed no interest in me whatever. It was the same all along. I shambled past Uhlans, and officers and generals in motor-cars--Huns of all breeds and all varieties, and no one even noticed me. And after all, why on earth should they? "About midday I came to Tournai; and here again I was trusting to luck. I'd stopped there three years ago at a small estaminet near the station kept by the widow Demassiet. Now this old lady was, I knew, thoroughly French in sympathies; and I hoped that, in case of necessity, she would pass me off as her brother from Ghent, who was staying with her for a while. Some retreat of this sort was, of course, essential. A homeless vagabond would be bound to excite suspicion. "Dear old woman--she was splendid. After the war I shall search her out, and present her with an annuity, or a belle vache, or something dear to the Belgian heart. She never even hesitated. From that night I was her brother, though she knew it meant her death as well as mine if I was discovered. "'Ah, monsieur,' she said, when I pointed this out to her, 'it is in the hands of le bon Dieu. At the most I have another five years, and these Allemands--pah!' She spat with great accuracy. "She was good, was the old veuve Demassiet." Jim puffed steadily at his pipe in silence for a few moments. "I soon found out that the Germans frequented the estaminet; and, what was more to the point--luck again, mark you--that the gunners who ran the battery I was out after almost lived there. When the battery was at Tournai they had mighty little to do, and they did it, with some skill, round the beer in her big room.