He turned on his heel.
Horace was bursting to reply that the soldier's confession was a worse indictment of Germany as a whole than if the outrages were merely due to a few brutal individuals in the soldiery, but he restrained himself.
A faint rustling told of Croquier's approach.
"That was a plucky thing to do," he whispered. "You meant it to cloak my being here."
"Of course."
"I'll not forget it," said the hunchback. "But we'd better move on a bit, even though it's daylight. That soldier might repent of his kindness or drop a word about having met an American. It's healthier for us to be somewhere else."
"I'm ready to go," said Horace. He was beginning to have an acute perception of the narrowness of his escape, for he saw that if there had been two soldiers instead of one, neither would have dared to trust the other, and, in all probability, he would have had a bayonet thrust through him before there was time for any explanations.
Next evening the two fugitives crossed ridge after ridge, on the high country to the south of the Lesse River, fortunately getting a midnight meal from a peasant who had a small farm between Hour and Pondrome. This man had picked up a great deal of information from a German transport corps which had commandeered all his grain and all his horses, leaving him poverty-stricken and unable to carry on the work of his farm. The information meant little to the peasant, but coupled with the items that Horace had been able to gather and that Croquier had found out, it gave a definite picture of the German Army's movements.
Thus they learned that, when leaving Liége, they had crossed the track of the army under Von Kluck (of which Von Emmich's army was only an advance guard). Soon after, they had crossed the path of the Second Army, under Von Buelow. The transport corps which had taken the horses, had come up from the south, from the Third Army, under the Duke of Würtemberg.