"Wait here," whispered the peasant, and was gone. He soon came back.
"There are no German soldiers about the place," the old man informed Dick. "I will take you into the house—-hide you. You shall have food and drink!"
Food and something to drink! To Dick Prescott, at that moment, this sounded like a promise of bliss.
To a rear door the old man led the American, and inside, closing and bolting the door after him. Here the man struck a light, and a candle shed its rays over a well-kept kitchen.
As Dick laid the axe down in a corner he heard a sobbing sound from a room nearby.
"It is the dear old wife," said the peasant, in an awed tone. "To-day the German monsters took our son and our daughter, and marched them off with other young people from the village. They have been taken to Germany to toil as slaves of the wild beasts. Do you wonder, monsieur, that the good wife sobs and that I haunted the road hoping to find a German soldier alone and to slay him? But I must hide you, for Germans might come here at any moment."
Throwing open a door the old man revealed a flight of stairs. He led the way to a room above. Here a door cunningly concealed behind a dresser was opened after the guide had moved the dresser. At a sign Dick entered the other room, only to find himself confronted by another man, whose face, revealed by the candle light, caused Captain Dick Prescott to recoil as though from a ghost.
CHAPTER XXII
CAN IT BE THE OLD CHUM?
"You know each other?" cried the old peasant, as he observed the amazement of two young men. "You are enemies?"