My heart stopped beating fast--for a moment, I believe, it stopped beating altogether! I can't attempt to describe my feelings. The thought that the jig was up, that all I had gone through and all I had escaped would now avail me nothing, mingled with a feeling of disgust with myself because of the foolish risk I had taken in going through the village, combined to take all the starch out of me, and I could feel myself wilting as the soldier advanced to the spot where I stood rooted in my tracks. I had a bottle of water in one pocket and a piece of bread in the other, and as the Hun advanced to search me I held the bottle up in one hand and the piece of bread in the other so that he could see that was all I had. It occurred to me that he would "frisk" me--that is, feel me over for arms or other weapons, then place me under arrest and march me off to the guard-house. I had not the slightest idea but that I was captured, and there didn't seem to be much use in resisting, unarmed as I was and with two other German soldiers within a few feet of us. Like a flash it suddenly dawned on me, however, that for all this soldier could have known I was only a Belgian peasant and that his object in searching me, which he proceeded to do, was to ascertain whether I had committed the common "crime" of smuggling potatoes! The Belgians are allowed only a certain amount of potatoes, and it is against the laws laid down by the Huns to deal in vegetables of any kind except under the rigid supervision of the authorities. Nevertheless, it was one of the principal vocations of the average poor Belgian to buy potatoes out in the country from the peasants and then smuggle them into the large cities and sell them clandestinely at a high price. To stop this traffic in potatoes the German soldiers were in the habit of subjecting the Belgians to frequent search, and I was being held up by this soldier for no other reason than that he thought I might be a potato-smuggler! He felt of my outside clothes and pockets, and, finding no potatoes, seemed to be quite satisfied. Had he but known who I was he could have earned an iron cross! Or perhaps, in view of the fact that I had a heavy water-bottle in my uplifted hand, it might have turned out to be a _wooden_ cross! He said something in German, which, of course, I did not understand, and then some Belgian peasants came along and seemed to distract his attention. Perhaps he had said, "It's all right, you may go on," or he may have been talking to the others in Flemish, but, at any rate, observing that he was more interested in the others than he was in me at the moment, I put the bottle in my pocket and walked on. After I walked a few steps I took a furtive glance backward and noticed the soldier who had searched me rejoin his comrades at the curb and then stop another fellow who had come along, and then I disappeared in the darkness.