THE FORGED PASSPORT PREPARED IN A BELGIAN CITY TO AID LIEUTENANT O'BRIEN'S ESCAPE INTO HOLLAND, BUT WHICH WAS NEVER USED

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Fortunately, however, Huyliger had half of a rubber stamp which had evidently been thrown away by the Germans, and he planned to construct the other half out of the cork from a wine bottle. He was very skilful with a penknife, and although he spoiled a score or more of corks before he succeeded in getting anything like the result he was after, the finished article was far better than our most sanguine expectations. Indeed, after we had pared it over here and there and removed whatever imperfections our repeated tests disclosed, we had a stamp which made an impression so closely resembling the original that, without a magnifying-glass, we were sure it would have been impossible to tell that it was a counterfeit.

Huyliger procured a camera and took a photograph of me to paste on the passport in the place provided for that purpose, and we then had a passport which was entirely satisfactory to both of us and would, we hoped, prove equally so to our friends the Huns.

It had taken two days to fix up the passport. In the mean while, Huyliger informed me that he had changed his plans about the convent, and that instead he would take me to an empty house where I could remain in safety until he told me it was advisable for me to proceed to the frontier.

This was quite agreeable to me, as I had had some misgivings as to the kind of a priest I would make, and it seemed to me to be safer to remain aloof from every one in a deserted house than to have to mingle with people or come in contact with them even with the best of disguises.

That night I accompanied Huyliger to a fashionable section of the city where the house in which I was to be concealed was located.

This house turned out to be a four-story structure of brick. Huyliger told me that it had been occupied by a wealthy Belgian before the war, but since 1914 it had been uninhabited save for the occasional habitation of some refugee whom Huyliger was befriending.

Huyliger had a key and let me in, but he did not enter the house with me, stating that he would visit me in the morning.