We altered our course accordingly and proceeded in this new direction. Suddenly the ground disappeared from underneath my feet, and I fell headlong down the banks of a deep, hollow road. Wallace was saved by being last. Up the other side and across more fields we came to another road. Here we almost ran into a man, whom our sudden appearance frightened out of his wits, to judge by the way he hurried off toward the town. “Now, then, Haltern bears almost southwest now. Back we go to the cross-roads. Southeast will take us there in a straight line. Come along.” On the way back I noticed for the first time a change in my companion. His steps, all of a sudden, seemed to have lost their elasticity, while I grew stronger and more contented every minute. “What’s the matter with you?” I asked. “Nothing.” “Of course there is. I know it from the way you walk!” “I don’t feel extra well. Something wrong with my stomach. It’ll pass soon, I expect.” That was bad news. We came to a lonely wooden hut, like a very small barn. I stopped. “Tell me frankly if you think you can’t go on. In that case we’ll break in here. We’ll have a certain amount of shelter inside. There is no danger. To-morrow will be Sunday and nobody is likely to come near us. It is much better to stop in time, before you have drawn too much upon your reserve strength. The situation is not precarious enough for that. You’ll want that later on.” “No,” he insisted; “I can go on.” At last we turned into the road we were looking for. The rain had changed to sleet. The road was slippery with ice. Progress would have been slow under any circumstances, but it was slower on account of Wallace’s failing strength. He was plucky, however, and he kept going. The usual thirst began to trouble us. Fortunately we had filled our water-bottles at the hotel in Hanover. To husband our supply on Wallace’s behalf, I contented myself with sucking the ice which I peeled in lumps from my hat brim. In due course we came to the first clearing. The outlines of a barn on the right, and a house on the left, seemed familiar. “Let’s rest a bit,” I proposed to Wallace, for he seemed almost done. He propped himself in a sitting posture against the wall of the barn, while I scouted around. There was a farmyard behind the structure. The barn itself consisted of a loft, reared on strong uprights. Only half the space below was enclosed by boards, and filled with compressed straw. The other half was open, and contained a big farm wagon. Between its wheels and the straw a number of clumsy ladders were tightly wedged. In the gable of the loft an open door showed a black interior. “There will be straw up there,” I said to Wallace. “The cattle were given a fresh bed to-day, probably. Nobody will want to fetch straw on a Sunday. We’ll be quite safe.” And I went through the same argument as before.