The situation was really far more serious than I had suspected and as though this were not enough, towards evening they brought me news that Maria Bottecchia, the sister of Giovannino, had also been arrested in Minelle, by a platoon of gendarmes. At last I fully realized the danger which threatened me, and I decided it was absolutely necessary to move from this region that the gendarmes might lose track of me. I still had two pigeons with me. I filled several pages with reports, made an appointment with the “Voisin” for the twenty-sixth and considered the danger which menaced me. As Bottecchia had been arrested and the gendarmes were almost at my heels I decided to leave for Sarone, and try to find lodging in the little isolated house at the top of the hill near which we had rested on the first day after our arrival. On a recent journey to the field where the aeroplane was supposed to come for us I recognized certain peasants who still had some food hidden and they were truly hospitable. They had fed me and would not accept any recompense. They were ignorant of my mission, that I was an Italian officer, and therefore, without offering them any explanation I would be able to return there and ask them for hospitality. While a terrible thunder-storm raged through the mountains and the rain fell in torrents I traversed the long stretch of road which separated me from Sarone. That terrible weather was really favorable because no gendarme would venture forth in such weather. When I reached the house on the top of the hill the welcome was not what I had expected. Recently the Austrians had seized all the food the peasants had hidden and a requisitioning commission had taken away the wheat and left them with barely enough to appease their hunger. Under such conditions the peasants could not be as generous as in the past. Furthermore, a gendarme was killed recently in the surrounding woods and the police wandered about continuously seeking traces of the assassin. The mistress of the house made me understand that it would be difficult for them to house me a long time and, for the present, so as not to arouse suspicion she preferred that I live in the wood. Every day the absence of Bottecchia became more painful and I tormented myself when I thought that I was indirectly the cause of his misfortune because I was the one who had invited him to essay this undertaking. I wished to share his lot with him, to comfort and sustain him in the sorrows and anguishes of prison life. This isolation oppressed me. The absolute lack of any news worried me. Our aeroplanes who undoubtedly came to photograph the signals, did not find any and from this, and my last message which announced I was in danger, they must infer that I had disappeared and who knows when I should be able to resume communications with them! I did not think it likely that the “Voisin” would come to Praterie Forcate on the twenty-sixth without first warning me with a smoke signal.