The morning light gave her view over strange valleys with all the hills and mountain tops in new configuration. She stood up, stiff, and bruised, and weak; taking her direction from the sun, she started west, encountering cleared ground soon and a well-traveled road, which she dared not cross in the daylight. So she followed it north until a meeting road, with its cleared ground, halted her. At first she determined to wait until dark; but after a few hours of frightened waiting she risked the crossing in daylight and fled into the farther woods unseen. Again that afternoon she came into the open to cross a north and south road. Early in the evening she crossed a railroad, which she believed to be the road from Freiburg to Karlsruhe. She had seen many men, women, and children that day, as upon the previous day, passing on the roads, or busy about houses, or working in fields, or in the woodlands. Most of the people were Germans; but many, undoubtedly, were military prisoners or deported civilians. She had avoided all alike, not daring to approach any house or any person, though now she had been forty-eight hours without food except for the “stimulant” and the accompanying biscuit which Adler had sent her. That night, however, she found the shelter of a shed where was straw and at least a little more warmth than under the trees. Refuge there involved more risk, she knew; but she had reached almost the end of her strength; and, lying in the straw and covering herself with it, she slept dreamlessly at first, and then to reassuring, pleasant dreams. She was in a château--one of those white-gray, beautiful, undamaged buildings which she had seen far behind the battle lines in France; she was lying in a beautiful, soft bed, much like that which had been hers at Mrs. Mayhew’s apartment upon the Avenue Kléber. Then all shifted to a great hospital ward, like that in which she had visited Charles Gail; but she was in the same beautiful bed and an attendant--a man--had come to take her pulse. She stirred, it had become so real; she could feel gentle, but firm, and very real fingers upon her wrist. Now a man’s voice spoke, in French and soothingly. “It is well, Mademoiselle, I do not mean harm to you. I am only Antoine Fayal, a Frenchman from Amagne in the department of Ardennes, Mademoiselle. I----” Opening her eyes, Ruth saw a thin, hollow-cheeked, dark-haired man of middle age in the rags of blouse and trousers which had been, once, a French peasant’s attire. He quickly withdrew his hand, which had been upon Ruth’s wrist; and his bloodless lips smiled respectfully and reassuringly. “I am French, Mademoiselle,” he begged in a whisper. “Believe me! One of the deported; a prisoner. My duty here, a woodsman! Happening by here, Mademoiselle, I discovered you; but I alone! No one else. You will pardon; but you were so white; you barely breathed. I did not believe you dead, Mademoiselle; but faint, perhaps. So I sought to ascertain!”