For a while he kept to the road, his horse occasionally taking fright, as a truck passed clanking slowly in the opposite direction, or a staff car turned out to pass him like a fleeting, ghostly shadow. By following the trees which lined the road at regular intervals he was fairly sure to keep the road. He was very tired and soon began to feel sleepy, but the driving storm, which by this time had assumed the proportions of a tempest, stung him to wakefulness. Once, at a cross-roads a Military Police stopped and questioned him and gave him directions upon his saying that he was carrying dispatches. He went on. He dozed, only to be sharply awakened by a truck which almost ran him down. He must be more careful, he thought to himself, feeling utterly alone and miserable. But in spite of his resolution his eyes soon closed again. He was awakened, this time by his horse stumbling over some unseen obstacle. He could see nothing in any direction. The blackness and rain shut him in like a fog. He turned at right angles to find the trees which lined the road, but there were no trees. He swung his horse around and went in the other direction, but he found no trees—only an impenetrable darkness which pressed in upon him with a heaviness which might almost have been weighed. He was lost—utterly lost. He guided his steed in futile circles, hoping to regain the road, but all to no avail. Fear of the night fell upon him. He was wet to the skin and chilled to the bone. He shivered with cold and with fright. Dropping from his horse he pulled from his pocket an electric flashlight and began throwing its slender beam in widening arcs over the ground. The light revealed a stubble field. Surely there must be a path which would lead to the road, thought the boy. Backward and forward over the field he waved the light. His hands trembled so that he could not hold the switch steady, and the lamp blinked on and off. On the storm-swept, night-hidden hillside which overhung the field was established an anti-aircraft battery. The sound detectors had just registered the intermittent hum of an enemy plane. It was unusual that an enemy aviator should fight his way over the lines in the face of such a storm, but such things had occurred before and the Captain in charge of the battery searched the tempestuous skies for the intruder, waiting for the sound to grow until he should know that the searchlights had at least a chance of locating the venturesome plane instead of merely giving away their position.