Before these fugitives were out of sight, Jacques Fontaine and his men flung themselves upon the loaded wagons. The two foremost wagons bore cartridges. They laid open the boxes with axe and bayonet; and they plunged in their hands. It was hopeless to attempt to make away with the wagons themselves. Thick forest lay on every hand. Therefore, by Jacques’ order, each man took all the cartridges he could bear, and raced back into the wood, and hid the precious things between rocks, and beneath logs, and in every cranny he could find; and when he had disposed of his burden he returned and took as many more as he could carry. The men filled their pockets, their belts, their pouches, their hats.... Some of them dropped the cartridges inside the legs of their trousers, so that the things hung heavy about their knees. And when this was done, of the two wagon loads, no cartridges remained. The men took also the rifles and revolvers of the fallen Germans; and they stripped their own few dead of weapons. And then they slipped into the forest, and scattered, and fled away. The hunt began within the hour; and for a week, the men were chivvied through the woods like hares. Dogs bayed upon their trails; they hid in caves, in trees, in the thick-growing underbrush; they lay for hours in the pools with only mouth and nose and eyes exposed above the water. And some of them were shot, and some were taken alive.... And some took Germans with them when they died. Lupec was one of those who was captured. On the fourth day, weary and utterly exhausted, he fell asleep in a crevice beneath two boulders; and a German stumbled on him. His captor took him, at gun point, back through the forest toward a cross-road where the Germans were encamped. When they came in sight of this place, his captor halted to stare, and Lupec also looked. The Germans were busy; they were engaged in hanging three Frenchmen by the necks to a beech tree beside the farmhouse there. Lupec had no desire to thrust his wry-neck into a noose. Therefore he turned, and plunged into the man who had captured him, and knocked the man down. Even then he found time to snatch up the German’s rifle and turn and fire; and he saw the German officer who was watching the hangings pitch drunkenly forward on his saddle. So that Lupec was grinning as he plunged into the forest again. He made good his escape; and thus he was able to bring to Jacques Fontaine, when the pursuit relaxed, the word of the hangings. The big farmer was displeased with this news; because you understand, my friends, he had reconstituted the regiment, so that he considered that he and his comrades were soldiers of France, and as such entitled to better treatment than a noose. He frowned blackly at Lupec’s report; and he sent out men to discover if there had been other hangings.