The same dapper young lieutenant and grizzled old sergeant of five weeks before still held the station gate. Apparently neither of them recognized me as a former acquaintance. At any rate, they showed no curiosity to know how I had managed to spend that length of time on a little journey to Hamburg. Perhaps the stamp of the Foreign Office on my passport left them no choice but to hold their peace. The customs inspector was a bit more inquisitive. He rummaged through my hamper with the manner of one accustomed to do his duty to the letter, at the same time desiring to know how much German money the gentleman was carrying with him. A placard on the wall warned travelers that no gold, only three marks in silver, and not more than fifty marks in paper could be taken out of the country. Those who had more than that amount were the losers, for though the frontier guards gave French or Dutch paper in return for what they took away, it was at a far less advantageous rate of exchange than that in the open market. The inspector accepted my assertion of marklessness without question, but in the mean time he had brought to light the spiked helmet that had been given me in Schwerin. His face took on an expression of puzzled amusement. “_So!_ You are taking it with you?” he chuckled, in a tone implying the belief that it had decorated my own head during the war. “It was given me as a souvenir,” I replied. “I am an American.” “_So!_” he rumbled again, looking up at me with an air of surprise—“American!” He turned the helmet over several times in his hands, apparently deep in thought, then tucked it down into the hamper again and closed the lid. “We-ell,” he said, slowly, “take it along. We don’t need them any more.” There was but one barrier left between me and freedom. Judging from the disheveled appearance of the fat Hollanders who emerged, after long delay in every case, from the little wooden booths along the wall, the personal search that awaited me would be exacting and thorough. One could not expect them to take my word for it that I had no German money or other forbidden valuables concealed about my person. Yet that was exactly what they did. True, five weeks of knocking about in a “hand-me-down” that had been no fit costume for attending a court function in the first place had not left me the appearance of a walking treasury. But frontier officials commonly put less faith in the outward aspect of their victims than did the courteous German soldier who dropped his hands at his sides as I mentioned my nationality and opened the door again without laying a finger upon me. “Happy journey,” he smiled, as I turned away, “and—and when you get back to America tell them to send us more food.”