"Ashes! He has had a fire here, monsieur, but it was days ago." At the man's feet the Baas had discovered the remnants of a little fire. "Holy blue!" he added in astonishment, "he has eaten these!" A pile of small green twigs lay near the fire. The bark had been chewed from them! A buzzing swarm of flies, disturbed by our investigations, rotated in the air, and a faint, bad odor hung about the place, indescribably stale and filthy. At the end of our search we turned again to the man on the ground. "Who are you? What are you doing here?" I demanded again. There was no answer. "Baas, have you a flask?" The old man slowly drew a little leather-clad bottle from his breast pocket and passed it to me in silence. He offered it with obvious reluctance, and watched jealously as I knelt and dropped a little stream of liquid between the parted lips of the creature on the ground. The man's lips sucked inward, his throat choked at the raw liquor, he opened his mouth wide and gasped horribly for breath, his knees twitched, and his wrists trembled as if he were dying. Then the parched mouth tried to form words; it could only grimace. For a moment I felt a mad impulse to leap on that moving mouth and crush it into stillness; such an impulse as makes a hunter wring the neck of a wounded bird. Instead, I continued dropping the stinging liquor and listening. Then came the first word. "More!" the black lips begged, and I emptied the flask into them. The Baas sighed plaintively. "German?" the soldier whispered. "No. American," I answered. "The other one?" "Belgian." The frightened eyes closed in evident relief. The man seemed to sleep. "But you?" I asked. "I'm German--a soldier," he said. "Lost?" "Missing." He used the German word _vermisst_--the word employed in the official lists of losses to designate the wounded or dead who are not recovered, and those lost by capture or desertion. "You understand, Baas?" "No, monsieur." "He says he is a German soldier--a deserter, I suppose, trying to make his way over the frontier to Holland. And he is starving." The Baas's face became a battle-ground of emotions. His kindly eyes glared merrily, his lips twisted until his beard seemed to spread to twice its natural width. Instantly his face became grave again, then puzzled, even anxious. A stream of invective and imprecation in mingled French and Flemish poured from his troubled lips, and he stamped his feet vigorously. "He can't stay here," I concluded. "It is death to help him," said the Baas. "For you, yes; for me, no. The Germans can only disgrace me as a member of the Relief Commission. They cannot kill me." "He must not be left to die here, monsieur." "The Germans will probably search your house if we take him there." "He may betray us if we help him." "That is possible. But you see he is very weak--almost dead." "He may be a spy." "That again is possible. But see! He has eaten twigs!" "He is a damned pig of a German!"