"Suppose they should be Gerrmans living therre?" Archer suggested. "I wouldn't risk it. Can't you see therre's a German flag on a flagpole?"
"That's just it," said Tom. "If I knew they were French people I could show them Frenchy's button. If I was sure this uniform, or whatever you call it, was all right, I'd take a chance."
"It's all right at a distance, anyway," Archer encouraged; "as long as nobody can see yourr face or speak to you."
It was a pretty risky business and both realized it. After three days of successful flight to run into the very jaws of recapture by an ill-considered move was not at all to Tom's liking, yet he felt sure that it would be equally risky to penetrate into that dark wilderness which stretched away toward the Swiss border without first ascertaining something of its extent and character, and what the prospect was of getting through it unseen. Moreover, they were hungry.
Yet it was twilight and the distant river had become a dark ribbon and the outlines of the poor houses below them blurred and indistinct in the gathering darkness before Tom could bring himself to re-enter the haunts of men.
"You stay here," he said, "and I'll go down and pike around. There's one thing, that house is very old and people don't move around here like they do in America. So if I see anything that makes me think the house is French then probably the people are French too."
It was a sensible thought, more dependable indeed than Tom imagined, for in poor Alsace and Lorraine, of all places, people who loved their homes enough to remain in them under foreign despotism would probably continue living in them generation after generation. There is no moving day in Europe.