“I can follow you,” Ruth assured.
“Then now, Mademoiselle!”
He stepped from the shed, and, motioning to her to imitate him, he slipped into the trees to the right. Evidently he considered her danger great; the peril to him, if caught aiding one who was attempting escape, must be as positive as her own; but the Frenchman was disregardful of that. He gained a gully, and, returning, aided her in descending. Someone approached. “Lie flat!” Fayal whispered. She obeyed; and, while she lay, she heard German voices shouting and the sounds of search.
When they had moved far away, Fayal led her to a dugout entrance, concealed by brush and with last year’s leaves scattered before it.
“Keep well back in there, Mademoiselle; until I come again for you!”
She went into a low and dark but fairly dry cavern under the hillside. She heard Fayal tossing about leaves to hide the entrance as before. Soon he was gone.
Many times during the day Ruth heard people passing through the woods. Once she was sure that a group of men were engaged in a search; but they failed to find the cavern. Only late in the afternoon someone, who stepped quickly and lightly—a child or a slight, active woman—ran close past the brush before the entrance, and, without halting, tossed a bundle into the bush.
Ruth had been obeying Fayal’s injunction to stay well back in the cavern; now, venturing to the bush, she found a paper package, within which was a chunk of blackish, hard bread and two boiled turnips. She thought, as she saw this food, that it had been Fayal’s perhaps; at least, it had been the ration of some prisoner or deported captive as ill fed, probably, as he. But she was ravenous; this had been given her, however little it could have been spared by the donor. She ate it all and was stronger.
Fayal did not return that day; but during the night someone visited the cavern, for, when morning came, she found food.
At night Fayal returned, and when he guided her out of the woods across fields and farms, she realized how essential were the precautions he had enjoined. He guided her half the night, and brought her to another concealment, where another French refugee took her in charge.