Once, when a policeman asked about their passport, Johannes felt as if all were lost. Face to face with the harsh voice, the broad, brass-buttoned breast, and the positive demand for the immediate showing of the paper, Johannes felt as if he had in front of him the embodied might of the great German Empire, and as if, in default of the thing demanded, there remained for him no mercy. But, in astonishment, he heard Marjon whisper in Dutch: "Hey, boy! Don't be upset by that dunce!" To dare to say "that dunce," and of such an awe-inspiring personage, was, in his view, an heroic deed; and he was greatly ashamed of his own cowardice. And Marjon actually knew how, with her glib tongue and the exhibition of some gold-pieces, to win this representative of Germany's might to assume a softer tone, and to permit them to escape without an inspection. But it was another matter when Keesje, seated upon the arm of a chair, behind an unsuspecting lieutenant, took it into his little monkey-head to reach over the shining epaulet, and grasp the big cigar--probably with the idea of discovering what mysterious enjoyment lay hidden in such an object. Keesje missed the cigar, but caught hold of the upturned moustache, and then, perceiving he had missed his mark, he kept on pulling, spasmodically, from nervous fright. The lieutenant, frightened, tortured, and in the end roundly ridiculed, naturally became enraged; and an enraged German lieutenant was quite the most awful creature in human guise that Johannes had ever beheld. He expected nothing less than a beginning of the Judgment Day--the end of all things. The precise details of that scrimmage he was never able to recall with accuracy. There was a general fracas, a clatter of iron chairs and stands, and vehement screeching from Keesje, who behaved himself like murdered innocence. From the lieutenant's highly flushed face Johannes heard at first a word indicating that he was suspected of having vermin. That left him cold, for he had been so glad to know that up to this time he had escaped them. Then he saw that it was not the shrieking Keesje, but Marjon herself, who had been nabbed and was being severely pommeled. She had hurriedly caught up the monkey, and was trying to flee with him. Then his feelings underwent a sudden change, as if, in the theatre of his soul, "The Captivity" scene were suddenly shoved right and left to make place for "A Mountain View in a Thunder-storm." The next moment he found himself on the back of the tall lieutenant, pounding away with all his might; at first on something which offered rather too much resistance--a shining black helmet--afterward, on more tender things--ears and neck, presumably. At the same time he felt himself, for several seconds, uncommonly happy. In a trice there was another change in the situation, and he discovered himself in a grip of steel, to be flung down upon the dusty road in front of the terrace. Then he suddenly heard Marjon's voice: