With the bundle tied by a fishline over his shoulder, and with his gun ready for use, the young lieutenant left the vicinity of the rowboat and toiled slowly and painfully along through the brushwood and then among the trees leading to the top of the hill. He had thus progressed about a hundred yards when he came out on a footpath which presently led into an old wood road, evidently used by the foresters of that vicinity.
An hour of hard trudging brought Dave at last to the top of the hill. As he advanced he heard a low rumble in the distance which gradually increased in intensity.
“It’s the artillery, all right enough!” he told himself with satisfaction. “I can’t be so very far from the fighting front after all. I must have come farther on that freight-train than I imagined.”
Getting to the very top of the hill, Dave took a careful look around, and, having assured himself that no one was in that vicinity, he dropped his bundle, his rifle, and the raincoat, and commenced to climb one of the tall trees growing close by.
Even when a boy on the farm Dave had been a good climber, and he went up branch after branch until he found himself at the very top of the tree.
Here a grand panorama, stretching for many miles, was spread out all around him. He could see the river he had left gleaming brightly in the sunshine, and the smoke from a number of villages and towns along its banks. But most of his attention was fastened on the landscape to the west. Here the rumble of the cannons had increased, and he could occasionally see a vast cloud of smoke arising and rolling southward.
“That’s the fighting front, all right enough,” he told himself. “Now the thing of it is to get there and then to get through to our side. I wonder if I can do it?”
Our hero was about to descend from the tree and continue his journey when a noise below reached his ears.
“I am quite sure he came this way,” said a voice, in German.
“Then he can’t be very far off,” was the reply.