Williamson’s prediction was right. My request, made a few days later, was refused. In the meantime Williamson had another fit of epilepsy. He was at that time in the cell of a Mr. Hall, another Englishman. It was between five and six o’clock in the afternoon. Non-commissioned officers hastened to the cell, and, frightened by the serious turn Williamson’s illness had taken, they made a joint report to the officer in charge, who at once interviewed Dr. Becker on the subject. The outcome was that Williamson was released from the jail. I never was able to ascertain where he was taken. I believe he was sent to an asylum for the insane, and from there he would be exchanged. One night we were awakened by a series of detonations coming from outside the jail. What could it be, we wondered. There we were right in the heart of Berlin, and there was unmistakably a serious disturbance of some kind. Was it a riot? Was it the noise of an encounter between the gendarmes and a band of workmen on strike? We could obtain no answer to these questions at the time, but soon afterwards I was informed of what had taken place. Shortly after hearing the noise of the first shots I was called from my cell to ascertain the cause of the death of a soldier who had been brought from the battle-front to Berlin to be locked up at Stadtvogtei pending trial before a court-martial. This refractory soldier, the guards reported, had behaved himself well all the way from Flanders to Berlin, but directly he reached the front of the jail he became unruly, broke from his guards, and escaped. The guards went in pursuit. There was an exciting chase around the walls of the jail, which are seventy-five feet high. The fugitive soldier was gaining on his pursuers when one of the latter fired on him. Thus it was a dead soldier, and not a live prisoner, that the guards brought into the jail. He had been struck by five bullets, and the only duty I was called to perform was to declare the man dead. I did this in the presence of the doorkeeper, the night watchman, and the two guards. Early the next morning, aroused by some commotion, we all stood on our chairs and stretched our necks in order to get a glimpse from the windows of what was going on below. The men had come to remove to the morgue the body of the soldier who had been killed by one of his former companions-in-arms. CHAPTER XIX INTERESTING PRISONERS