"I wish I could tell you. My rough idea is to make for a place called Lingen. There are two little dips in the Dutch frontier which come down close to it, and it looks like a fairly good jumping-off place. I'm out of it, if we don't run against some of the smuggling lot there, and the best plan I can think of is to try and join up with some of them and get across in that way."
"Looks all right. If we can get there, that is."
"Needn't worry about that, young 'un. We can tramp it at night, at the worst; but we're not likely to be interfered with. We can always be going to a job just a few miles farther on. I always thought of Osnabrück as the place where we might have to start our tramp, and I've a road map. What we want at the moment is a place where we can rest for an hour or two."
We plodded on steadily, avoiding the roads as much as possible, until we had left Osnabrück well in our rear, and then Nessa pointed to a cottage on the fringe of a wood, which appeared to be deserted.
"Looks like the very spot for us, young 'un. Stop here and I'll go and have a squint at it."
"Look sharp about it, boss, I'm getting a bit leggy and could do with a doss for an hour or two."
I reconnoitred the place cautiously from the back, where there was an untilled garden patch, and first made enough noise to rouse a dog, if there was one. All remained quiet; so I slipped along the garden and flashed my torch lamp through a broken pane of a back window. The room was quite bare, and I opened the window and went over the cottage.
It was deserted right enough. A four-roomed shanty, dirty and dilapidated, but good enough for a shelter; so I fetched Nessa. "A rough shop, young 'un, but better than none."
"Better quarters than those English swine get in the concentration camps, I'll bet," she said as we went up the ricketty stairs to an upper room.
"Bare boards only. It's a good thing you can rough it."