I had kept well under cover, I thought, but before long I had the uncomfortable feeling that some one was following me; the crackling of the bushes, which ceased when I stopped, and began again when I went on, seemed very suspicious. I abruptly changed my course, making a wide circle, and was able to elude my pursuer and find my way back to Bromley. I had an uneasy feeling that I had been too careless, and that some one had seen me. However, I lay down to sleep, for I was dead tired, and we had a splendid hiding-place in the thick bush. I do not know how long I slept; it seemed only a few minutes when a bugle-call rang out. We wakened with a start, for it went through us like a knife. We heard loud commands, and knew there was a company of soldiers somewhere near, and I gathered from my recent observations that these sounds came from the hay meadow in front of us. We did not connect the demonstration with our presence until the soldiers began shouting and charging the wood where we lay. Then we knew we were what the society papers call the "raison d'être" for all this celebration. We lay close to the earth and hardly dared to breathe. The soldiers ran shouting and firing (probably blank cartridges) in every direction. Through the brush I saw their feet as they passed--not ten feet from where we lay. The noise they made was deafening; evidently they thought if they beat the bushes sufficiently hard, they could scare us out like rabbits, and I knew they were watching the paths and thin places in the woods. But we lay tight, knowing it was our only safety. Soon the noise grew fainter, and they passed on to try the woods we had just come through, and we, worn with fatigue, fell asleep. In the afternoon they gave our woods another combing. They seemed pretty sure we were somewhere near! But they did not come quite so close to us as they had in the morning. However, we had heard enough to convince us that this was a poor place to linger, and when it got real dark, we pushed on south across the hay meadow. This meadow was full of ditches which were a little too wide to jump and were too skwudgy in the bottom to make wading pleasant. They delayed us and tired us a great deal, for it was a tough climb getting out of them. At last we decided to take the road, for the night was dark enough to hide us, and by going slowly we thought we could avoid running into any one.