The laager was a twelve-foot-high barbed wire enclosure, eighty feet wide by three hundred long, with the hut occupying the greater part of the central space. There was sufficient room below the bottom wire to permit the trained camp dogs to get in and out at us. They patrolled the four-foot lane that enclosed the laager and wandered up and down it, their tongues out, always on the alert. They were as well confined as we were, since the outer wall of wire was built down close to the ground. They were very savage and seemed instinctively to regard us as enemies; as all good German dogs should. The sworn evidence of prisoners exchanged since my escape mentions that in one case an imbecile Belgian was daily led out to the fields, wrapped up in several layers of clothes and then set upon by the dogs under the guidance of their guards; this was for the better instruction of the dogs. At each corner of the laager there hung an arc light. The sphere of light from those at the end did not quite meet and so left a small shadow in the center of the end fence. As soon as night came we arranged that six other men should walk to and fro from the end of the hut to the shadow at the wire, as though for exercise. Others, ourselves included, clustered round the end of the hut. I watched my chance, and when the moment seemed favorable, fell into step beside the promenaders. We swung boldly out, intent apparently, on nothing. Our arrival at the inner wire synchronized with that of one of the guards beyond the outer wire. We turned about without appearing to have seen him. Still walking briskly, we reached the hut and turned again. The guard's back was now turned; he was walking away. At his present rate of travel he should be twenty yards off when we next reached the wire. We dared not chance suspicion by slackening our gait. My heart stopped. As we reached the shadow I fell prone and lay motionless. No dogs were in sight. Niagara pounded in at my ears but no hostile sound indicated that I had been observed. I dragged myself carefully through and under the clearance left for the dogs, until my cap brushed the lower wires of the main and outer fence. My feet still projected beyond the inner wire into the main enclosure so that on their next trip one of my comrades inadvertently touched my foot, startling me. [Illustration: RECORD OF SECOND ESCAPE AND RECAPTURE.] I held the strand in my left hand and fell to filing with my right so that at the snap there should be no noisy rebound of the spring-like wire. A post was at my right, and, the wire having been nailed to it, I was safe from this danger on that side. The sound of the tramp of those faithful feet receded but the sound of them came strongly back to me like a message of hope.