The helpless Russian _Gefangener_, however, already the most brutally treated of the prisoners, were from that day reduced to a more abject and wretched slavery than ever before. Cut off from all outside help and with no government at home capable of protesting, they were absolutely at the mercy of their German masters. They were overworked and whipped or slashed or imprisoned whenever it pleased any particular German to do so. In the camps and on the big working _Komandos_, they begged, thieved, waited on the other prisoners for their food, or else--starved. The repatriation clause keenly interested the Russians in Kossebade. The evening after the news came they gathered in joyous groups in the village square and sang songs and congratulated one another. A German farmer saw me watching them. “Don’t you wish England had made peace,” he asked, “so _you_ could go home, too!” For weeks afterward the Russians talked confidently of going home. “When are you going home?” was the usual greeting when we met one of them. “Don’t know, but soon!” was the reply. Some months later I met my old neighbor, Ivan, now nearly four years in captivity. We were ploughing two adjoining fields. “When are you going home, Ivan?” I asked jocularly. It was the first time that I had referred to it for a long time. “I don’t know,” he answered smiling sadly, “I think mine is a life sentence!” When at last the armistice was signed and the French and Belgians and all the rest of us were leaving, poor old Ivan was still there, and so were his thirty-four comrades--still going wearily through the routine of toil for their German masters, and playing _Einundzwanzig_ on Sundays! The day of departure had passed into that realm of sweet, but distant hope to which the Millennium belongs. CHAPTER X _German Lovers_ I was cleaning up in the stable one day when Miga rushed in with a telegram in her hand. “Ben, Ben!” she exclaimed, quaking with excitement. “Karl is coming today!” Who Karl was or what the matter had to do with me I couldn’t imagine. “Where is Warner?” she asked. I told her, and she rushed out to find him. Evidently it was something which everybody had to know. I was interested. I rather liked Miga. She had travelled a bit, and I put her down easily the most intelligent member of the household. But who was Karl? I soon had an opportunity of learning, for the boy August came in. “Don’t you know,” he said winking. “That’s her beau!”