The signposts made the journey easy after that. At 3 p.m. I had 18 kilometres to go to Lügumkloster. I turned off the road, lay down in some young fir trees, took off my boots, ate some chocolate, and had half an hour or more’s sleep. I started again towards dusk. I was feeling very fit now and full of hope. If only I didn’t muck it on the frontier.... The signposts did their duty nobly. There was a keen wind from the north and the road was good. I had been out just two complete days. In one village a soldier with a rifle came out of a house just as I passed it. He replied to my “_Guten Abend_” courteously. I reached Lügumkloster, I suppose, about half-past nine or ten. It is a big rambling village, and I made a bad mistake here on leaving it. I meant to take the Arrip-Arnum road, which runs roughly north-east. I took a road running north-east, but after about an hour’s walking I found it was leading me gradually more east than north—I had not noticed that the wind had shifted from north to east. I decided to leave the road and make due north on the compass, trusting to pick up the right road later on. Then began a trying time. The ground was terribly wet and intersected with continual wired ditches. I tore my clothes rather badly here and I don’t think my trousers at the end of my journey would have stood another rip. However, I kept due north, tacking as little as possible to avoid the ditches, and eventually reached the road. It was, I supposed, about 2 a.m. I estimated I was still quite ten miles from the frontier. There was a strong wind, and I had not enough matches to spare to look more than once or twice at my map. Added to this, the signposts, previously so well-behaved, became infuriating. They only mentioned names which I had never heard of, or at least had not committed to memory. _Slog! Slog! Slog!_ I was getting tired. A man passed me with a cart. What on earth did _he_ think he was doing at that time of night? There was lots of water about and I did not go thirsty. My cap made an effective cup. A light railway running parallel to the road—this was the _Klein Bahn_ (light railway) the fellow had told us of. _Slog! Slog! Sl—._ What on earth was that? A sentry box on the roadside, and in the box a sentry yawning and stretching himself. On each side of the road a belt of barbed wire running east and west. I took these things in vaguely, disconnectedly. Had I miscalculated and was I over the border after all? He hadn’t even challenged.... A mile later I crawled into a little hollow by the roadside to rest and get warm. I was getting strangely light-headed. I remember addressing myself as a separate entity. I pulled myself together and sat down to think. “I must go back and have another look at that wire. It can only be a protective belt for military purposes.” I went back. The wire was there sure enough. So was the sentry box, but I didn’t go up to it. The wire was like the rear defence lines one had seen in France.