Concealed behind some bushes, I watched the road, which gradually grew more indistinct. The roofs of the town, huddled in the hollow, lost their definite outlines. One after another lights sprang up behind the windows. The children’s voices became fewer, then ceased. Sound began to carry a great distance; the rumble of a railway train, the far-away barking of a dog. Twinkling stars came out in the heavens. It was time to start. At 8:30 I scrambled out of my hiding-place and gained the road, where I set my face toward the west after a last glance at Haltern with its points of light. Two farmhouses, perfectly dark even at this early hour of the night, soon lay behind me. Here the forest came down to the road on my left while fields bordered it on the right, and, perhaps eighty yards distant, the wooded hills arose. Whether it was a sort of sixth sense which gave me warning, I do not know, but a strong feeling that I was not safe on the road made me walk over the fields into the shadow of the trees, from where I could watch without being seen. My figure had hardly merged into this dark background, when silently a shadowy bicycle rider flitted along the road, going in my direction. He carried no lamp, and might have been a patrol. The going on the plowed fields being rather difficult, I soon grew impatient of my slow progress and returned to the road, proceeding along it in perfect serenity henceforth. It rose gradually. Checking its direction by a glance at the stars now and again, I soon noticed a decided turn to the northwest. This proved beyond doubt that it could not be the turnpike to Wesel, which throughout its length ran due west. After perhaps an hour of hard going, a sign-post loomed ghostly white through the darkness, to spring into sharp relief in the light from the torch. “Klein Recken 2½ hours,” it read. A consultation of the map then showed that I was on a far more favorable road than I had anticipated, and that a brook flowing close to the hither side of the village of Klein Recken might be reached at about midnight, if I kept my speed. I needed no further inducement. I was now ascending the last spur of the hills which had fronted me on coming out of Haltern. My way lay mostly through woods, with occasional clearings where the dark outlines of houses and barns showed against the sky. Only occasionally was a window feebly lit as if by a night-light. Often dogs gave warning of my approach and spread the alarm far and wide. It was a most glorious night, the sky a velvet black, the stars of a brilliancy seldom seen in western Europe. Their luster seemed increased when I found myself hedged in by a tall forest through which the road wound as through a cañon. A bright planet hung fairly low just in front of me, and in the exuberance of my feelings I regarded it as my guiding star.