"Auf wiedersehen, Lieutenant Schmidt," he said, and whistling softly to himself he began his passage through the German lines, showing his passport more than a dozen times before he passed the last trench and rifle pit, and was alone among the hills behind the German lines. He might have reached the railroad and have gone by train to Metz, but he preferred, for the present at least, to cling to the country, even at the risk of much physical hardship and suffering.
He still carried his blankets, and he was traveling through a region which had been much fought over in the earlier stages of the war. Since the German lines were still in France some peasants had returned to their homes, but many houses were yet abandoned, their owners probably thinking that the tide of battle would roll back upon them, and that it was better to wait.
He turned presently from the hilly path into a good road, paved almost like a street, and breaking from a bush a stout stick, which he used peasant fashion as a cane, he walked briskly along the smooth surface, now almost clear of the snow which had fallen in much smaller quantities in the lowlands.
He met a battery of four twenty-one-centimeter guns with their numerous crews and an escort of cavalry, advancing to the front, and he stepped to one side of the road to let them pass. The leader of the cavalry hailed him and John's heart gave a sudden alarming throb as he recognized von Boehlen. But his courage came back when he saw that he would not have known the Prussian had he remained twenty feet away. Von Boehlen was deeply tanned and much thinner. There were lines in his face and he had all the appearance of a man who had been through almost unbearable hardships.
John had no doubt that a long life in the trenches and intense anxiety had made an equal change in himself. The glass had told him that he looked more mature, more like a man of thought and experience. Moreover, he was in the dress of a peasant. After the first painful heartbeat he awaited von Boehlen with confidence.
"Whence do you come?" asked the colonel of Uhlans—colonel he now was.
John pointed back over his shoulder and then produced his passport, which Colonel von Boehlen, after reading, handed carefully back to him.
"Did you see anything of the French?" he asked glancing again at John, but without a sign of recognition.
"No, sir," replied John in his new German with a French accent, "but I saw a most unpleasant messenger of theirs."
"A messenger? What kind of a messenger?"