"Why do you suggest such a roundabout way?" asked the surgeon. "The lad won't escape danger by making a circuit. Shells drop anywhere and everywhere. You can't dodge them by taking to the fields instead of the road." The reservist shook his head. "There you are wrong, Doctor," he said. "How many shells have fallen in Embourg Village? None. Yet we are but three-quarters of a mile from the fort. It is only in the immediate neighborhood of the fort that there is danger. Strange though it may seem to say so, I could wish that shells were dropping in the village." "Why?" asked the surgeon sharply. "Because," the master rejoined, "it would demonstrate that the Germans do not possess the exact range of the fort. Their very accuracy proves that they do. For that reason, at a distance of half a mile from the fort, the lad will be safe. Nevertheless, Monroe," he added, "if you should hear a wild shell coming in your direction, throw yourself flat on the ground. The burst of an explosion is always upwards." "I'll be careful, sir," answered the boy. "Will you please tell Mme. Maubin that I went on to Liége in the company of Dr. Mallorbes? Say that I do not wish her to come and see Deschamps, for I am sure she will wish to do so, and give as my reason that the road running below the fort is not safe." "I will tell her, sir," said Horace. "You will also inform the school to-morrow about Deschamps," the master continued. "It is a matter of pride to Beaufays, I feel, that Belgium's first wounded boy hero should be a lad from our own school. And so, good-bye!" "Good-bye, sir; good-bye, Dr. Mallorbes," responded Horace. He hesitated a moment, as though he would have said something more, then plunged across the fields, as the master had bidden him, back to the little village of Beaufays. The two men watched him for a moment, until his figure was lost in the shadows of the wood on the other side of the field, then set their faces for Liége and--it might be--death. "I am a good deal disturbed," the doctor began, as they swung out upon the road, "by your suggestion that the Germans possess the exact range of our forts. Where could they get the information?" "Spies," the master answered. "Belgium is honeycombed with them, has been for years. You know--all the world knows--that Germany spends millions of marks yearly on her secret service system and nearly all her agents are military spies. The exact location of our forts cannot be hidden. It is not a secret. They are plain to see. What is easier for a spy than to search the neighborhood of a fort thoroughly, perhaps on a Sunday morning walk, to find some well-hidden position for a gun of a certain caliber, and to calculate, to the last inch, the exact distance of that position from the fort? It is simplicity itself." "What of that," said the doctor, "when the gun itself is not there?"