His motor-cycle ate up the miles to Anthée and Rosée and he tore up to Florennes with a fine burst of speed. Just before reaching the village, the boy thought he caught a glimpse of spiked helmets at a farmhouse window and he slackened speed for caution. It was well that he did so. Trotting rapidly, straight for him, was a squadron of cavalry, and, on the slope of a hill beyond the town, Horace saw column after column of the iron-gray infantry. He stopped, jumped from the saddle before the wheels had ceased to turn, and whirled the heavy machine around as though it were a racing bicycle. Well he knew that on a narrow road, such a maneuver was far quicker than trying to make a turn. In a second he was in the saddle and had started off again, leaning low over the handle bars as he put on full speed. A volley of bullets followed him, but scattering and most of them wild, for the cavalry had been utterly unprepared for this sudden vision of a motor-cycle twisting around a bend of the road. No sooner, however, did it become clear that the boy was in full flight than the Uhlans realized he must be an enemy and started in pursuit. [Illustration: _Courtesy of "The Graphic."_ "WE'VE GOT THEM LICKED, BOYS!" Wounded sergeant-major being borne off the field by German prisoners, cheering the reservists going to the front.] If all went well, on his fast machine the boy could afford to laugh at the speed of a galloping horse, but he had a lurking fear of the spiked helmets he thought he had seen in the farmhouse. Was he ambushed? At the sound of the volley, two soldiers had run out of the farmhouse. Seeing the motor-cycle driving straight at them and the Uhlans galloping behind, the riflemen prepared to fire. Lacking an officer's direction and unaccustomed to judging the speed of an oncoming motor-cycle--that particular form of target not having been included in the German drill-book--the soldiers waited a second too long. Horace swerved to one side of the road as their rifles came up and, with the speed of the wind, he was between them. One of the soldiers put out his hand to grab the flying rider. Horace was conscious of a sudden desire to drive straight into his foe and scatter his brains on the road, but prudence reminded him that, in such case, he might not be able to control his machine. Ignoring vengeance, he shot between the soldiers like a thunderbolt and was half a mile or more ahead when the Uhlans reached the farmhouse. He turned off a side-road not marked on his map, and, seeing an old peasant working in his fields, halted to secure information as to a possible route. "Have any Germans passed here?" he asked. "Just before daybreak, they did," the old man answered. "Saxons, they were. They didn't do me any harm, though. They went over the fields that way," and he pointed to the left. "Is there any road from here to Walcourt?" the boy asked, studying his map, fearing that his road was cut off entirely.