But months later the chums learnt that the letters had never been delivered. There was a good reason, for von Koenik took the first opportunity of destroying them. "There is some news for you," remarked the Colonel. "Yesterday our armies occupied Namur. The forts were helpless against our wonderful siege guns. Our Zeppelins have destroyed nearly the whole of Antwerp; our fleet has signally defeated the British in the North Sea. Your flagship, the _Iron Duke_, is sunk, together with seven Dreadnoughts. Jellicoe is slain, and the rest of the English fleet is bottled up in the Forth. Your little army in Belgium is already on the retreat; it will be hopelessly smashed before it reaches Maubeuge. Our troops will be in Paris within a week--and then?" The Colonel paused, expecting to see dismay painted on the faces of his listeners. Instead, Kenneth coolly raised his eyebrows. "Indeed?" he drawled. "Do you, Herr Colonel, really believe all that?" Von Koenik suppressed a gesture of annoyance. "Certainly," he replied. "It is in our official reports. If you possessed sufficient culture to be in a position to read and speak our language, you could see it with your own eyes. We are winning everywhere. Now, perhaps, to save further unpleasantness you will tell me the actual reason why you were in the Belgian service?" "Merely our inclination to help in a just cause. We happened to be on the spot, the opportunity occurred, and we took it." The Colonel bit his lips. He was confident that the prisoners were actually persons of military importance, sent over to Belgium by the British Government, and possessing valuable information concerning the Allies' plan of campaign. He considered it well worth his while to cajole or threaten them into surrendering their secret, but, up to the present, he was forced to admit that his attempts had met with very little success. Apart from the lax code of German military morals his procedure had been extremely irregular. The so-called trial was before an illegally constituted court. The proper authorities had not been informed of the Englishmen's arrest, trial, and sentence. Yet he considered that he was furthering the interests of the Kaiser and the German nation by wresting the secret of the object of the lads' presence in Belgium from them by the likeliest methods at his disposal. Colonel von Koenik was on his way to take up a staff appointment at Verviers, a strategically important Belgian town on the German frontier, and a few miles from Liége, and on the direct railway line between that city and Aix-la-Chapelle. Here he could keep his prisoners in safety, relying upon the wearing-down tactics, backed by the threat of what would happen when the victorious Germans entered Paris, to compel the two Englishmen to surrender their supposed important secret.