Once a dog helped us by his barking. It was night and we were crossing a very bad swamp, an old peat bog which was full of the ditches and holes that the peat had been taken from. These were full of black water which merged so naturally into the prevailing darkness that we repeatedly fell into them. We floundered out of one only to fall into another, uncertain where we were going and lost to all sense of direction. There was no vestige of track or road. It was then that the dog barked. We stopped to listen, conversing in low tones. Certainly, we thought, the dog must be near a house and that meant dry land and a footing. So we advanced in the direction of the sound, stopping to listen to each fresh outburst so as to make certain that we should not approach too closely. Apparently he had smelt us on the wind. Before we reached the dog we felt the solid ground under foot and were off once more at a tangent from the sound of his barking. The swamps were a great trouble to us, as were also some of the fields, so cut up by ditches and hedges were they, and yet, in order to avoid the roads and the wires, we frequently had to lay a circuitous route to avoid these obstacles or else chance the road, which we would not do. Often, when we could see our course lying straight ahead on the road, we put about and tacked off and away from it because a parallel course was impossible on account of the swampy nature of the ground. With these bad places passed we could perhaps pull back to our true course again, but only after double the travel that should have been necessary. However, we did not mind that so much. Nor did we greatly mind the short rations we were on. The other privations were too severe for us to notice these minor ones. The worst was the continual state of wetness and the resultant coldness of our bodies. It was not so bad at night when we were walking and so kept our blood circulating, but by day it was very bad. We used to pray for night and the end of our enforced rest. We were never dry or warm but were always very cold and miserable. The sun, on those rare occasions when it came forth, did not appear until ten or eleven in the morning. By mid-afternoon it was again a thing of the past. At best it was very weak and we had to hide in the bushes where it could not reach us. All we could do was to take off one garment at a time and thrust it cautiously out near the edge of our hiding-place to some spot on which the sun shone. Under these conditions we grew steadily weaker on our allowance of two biscuits a day; for the time of year precluded the possibility of there being any crops for us to fall back upon for food, and it was too risky a proceeding to attempt to steal from the householders. [Illustration: GERMAN PRISONERS MARCHING THROUGH GOOD NATURED ENGLISH CROWDS AT SOUTHAMPTON.] [Illustration: HIGH EXPLOSIVES BURSTING OVER GERMAN TRENCHES. BRITISH DEAD IN FOREGROUND.]