"To have some stray village dog chance upon our scent and bark itself hoarse over our heads, attracting the attention of any one who might be passing in the fields? No, thank you! Coming the way we did, there's no trail for a dog to scent, no track to follow. We can afford to sleep soundly. Even if the crippled bird croaks, it will only sound like one of the natural noises of the wood."
Thus reassured, Horace ate a good breakfast, and, wearied by the night's exertions and excitement, fell into a sound sleep. It was late in the afternoon before he woke, but, as he slowly came to wakefulness, a hand was put over his mouth.
The boy struggled, for the first dazed moment not realizing where he was, but the hunchback's grip would have held a lion. Then Croquier, seeing recognition in the lad's eyes, freed him, but laid a finger on his lip.
Horace repressed a yawn and listened. Voices could be heard close by, talking in German. The boy could only distinguish a word here and there. Evidently the men were strolling along the river bank, at the end of a day's march. Horace shivered to think how near they might have been to discovery had the hiding-place been less carefully chosen.
"Could you catch what they said?" the hunchback queried in a whisper, when the voices had receded into the distance.
"I only caught a word or two. The name 'Bomal' was repeated several times. They seemed to be going to camp there for the night."
Croquier nodded. Bomal, a railway station on the road from Liége to Jemelle and a junction of four high roads, was evidently a good place to avoid.
As evening came on, the fugitives ate heartily from the contents of their pockets and, as soon as the darkness favored, struck south and a little east to avoid Bomal and the main roads.
The flames of a burning village, sure evidence that the Germans were near, drove them west again. A wide road thronged with motor-lorries, one following upon another so that they almost touched, delayed them for two hours, but they crossed under a culvert near Odeigne.
The woods were filled with refugees from near by villages, and though these were loyal Belgians, Croquier would not allow himself to be seen by them, lest they should let a word slip. The two fugitives passed scores of bodies of women and children, murdered by the Germans and left unburied. Corpses were thrown into the wells, contaminating the water. Those who had been wounded were abandoned, without any attempt to relieve their sufferings. The men remaining had been commandeered to dig trenches and build defensive works against troops of their own country, in defiance of the laws of warfare, just as, in other places, women were herded together to walk in front of the German troops during the fighting, their living bodies being made to serve as a human shield against machine-gun fire. When they fell they were left to die.[9] Horace and the hunchback passed through this zone of misery and camped for the succeeding day on the Ourthe River, three quarters of a mile north of Laroche.