"Good! then we can be off?"
"Aye—though we haven't fixed up where we are to go. We were too busy over the rescue to think about anything else."
"Well, we ought to give Liége a rest. Let us go for another trip into the Ardennes until this affair has blown over and we can return to the attack once more. We have earned a rest, and I for one feel I need it."
"Hear! hear! I've got my wind again, so let us make tracks before the Germans send out patrols to hunt about the countryside. It would be too bad to be captured after hoodwinking them so thoroughly."
"Not to mention killing and wounding an officer and several men."
Chatting gaily together, but nevertheless keeping a sharp look-out, the two friends strode along out into the open lands southward of the town, and then on towards the wide stretch of broken highlands known as the Ardennes. They had no clear idea of what they would do when they got there, the one thought in their minds being to find some quiet rural spot where they could remain in safety and quietude for a little while.
It was certainly as well for them to do so, for the daring and successful rescue of the prisoner under sentence of death stirred the city of Liége to its very depths. To the people it was an example of courage and self-sacrifice joined to determined and skilful leadership; to the Germans it was most exasperating evidence of their inability to crush this people notwithstanding their many and varied methods of repression. The affair was hushed up by the governor so far as he was able to do so, but it eventually became known that it had been the cause of a violent altercation between him and the manager of the Durend works, Herr von Schenkendorf, who was said to have made a strong complaint to the Imperial Government at the bungling of the military.
Be that as it may, it was certain that no stone was left unturned to recapture the prisoner and to find out who were the workmen participating in the rescue. Nothing was ever discovered, but the manager of the Durend works from that time forward refused to employ any Walloon workmen anywhere save in the Durend colleries, where they were supposed to be incapable of doing any serious damage.