So earnest and vital was the talk that none of the others had chanced to look down the ravine. They saw now that lights were moving in the upper rooms of the mill. Either Von Halwig had arrived before time, or some messenger had tried to find the commissariat officers, and had raised an alarm. Joos took charge straight away, like the masterful old fellow that he was. "This locality isn't good for our health," he said. "The night is young yet, but we must leg it to a safer place before we begin planning. Leave nothing behind. We may need all that food.--Come, Lise," and he grabbed his wife's arm, "you and I will lead the way to the Argenteau wood. The devil himself can't track me once I get there.--Trust me, monsieur, I'll pull you through. That lout, Jan Maertz, is all muscle and no brain. What Léontine sees in him I can't guess." For the time being, Dalroy believed that the miller might prove a resourceful guide. Before deciding the course he personally would pursue it was absolutely essential that he should learn the lay of the land and weigh the probabilities of success or failure attached to such alternatives as were suggested. "We had better go with our friends," he said to Irene. "They know the country, and I must have time for consideration before striking out a line of my own." "I think it would be fatal to separate," she agreed. "When all is said and done, what can they hope to accomplish without your help?" Joos's voice came to them in eager if subdued accents. He was telling his wife how accounts were squared with Busch. "I stuck him with the fork," he chortled, "and he squealed like a pig!" CHAPTER VII THE WOODMAN'S HUT The miller was cunning as a fox. He argued, subtly enough, that if a man just arrived from Argenteau was the first to discover the dead Prussians, the neighbourhood of Argenteau itself might be the last to undergo close search for the "criminals" who had dared punish these demi-gods. Following a cattle-path through a series of fields, he entered a country lane about a mile from Visé. It was a narrow, deep-rutted, winding way--a shallow trench cut into the soil by many generations of pack animals and heavy carts. The long interregnum between the solid pavement of Rome and the broken rubble of Macadam covered Europe with a network of such roads. An unchecked growth of briars, brambles, and every species of prolific weed made this particular track an ideal hiding-place. Gathering the party under the two irregular lines of pollard oaks which marked the otherwise hardly discernible hedgerows, Joos explained that, at a point nearly half-a-mile distant, the lane joined the main road which winds along the right bank of the Meuse. "That is our only real difficulty--the crossing of the road," he said. "It is sure to be full of Germans; but if we watch our chance we should contrive to scurry from one side to the other without being seen."