The Boy Scouts In Russia | Page 6

soldier downstairs, and
found himself the prisoner in an impromptu sort of court-martial.
Really, it wasn't as bad as that. Considering that he had no passports
and nothing, in fact, to show who he was, and that no responsible
person could vouch for him, he was very lucky. It was because he was
a boy, and obviously an American boy, that he got off so easily. For
after he had answered a few questions, a major explained the situation
to him very punctiliously.
"You must be detained here for two or three days," said the major.
"This is an important concentration district, and many things will
happen that no foreigner can be allowed to see. We believe absolutely
that you are not unfriendly, and that you have no intention of reporting
anything you might chance to learn to an enemy. But in time of war we
may not take any risks, and you will, therefore, be required to remain in
this village under observation.
"Within the village limits you will be as free as if you were at home, in
your own country. You will not be allowed to pass them, however, and
if you try to do so a sentry will shoot you. As soon as certain
movements are completed, you will be at liberty to pass on, on your
way to Koenigsberg. I will add to Lieutenant Ernst's advice. When you
reach Koenigsberg, after you have reported yourself to the police, wait
there until a train can take you to Berlin. It will mean only a few days
of waiting, for at Koenigsberg there are already many refugees, and the
authorities want to get them to Berlin as soon as the movements of
troop trains allow the railway to be reopened for passenger traffic."
Fred agreed to all this. There was nothing else for him to do, for one
thing, and, for another, he was by no means unwilling to see whatever
there might be to be seen here. He could guess by this time that without
any design he had stumbled on a spot that was reckoned rather
important by the Germans, for the time being at least, and he had heard
enough about the wonderful efficiency of the German army to be
anxious to see that mighty machine in the act of getting ready to move.

He did see a good deal, as a matter of fact, that day and the next. It was
on the famous Saturday night of the first of August that he had left
Virballen. Sunday brought news of a clash with France, far away on the
western border, and of the German invasion of Belgium. Monday
brought word of a definite declaration of war between Germany and
France, and of the growing danger that England, too, might be
involved.
And all of Sunday and all of Monday supplies of all sorts poured
through the little village in an unceasing stream. Motor cars and trucks
were to be seen in abundance, and Fred caught his first glimpse, which
was not to be his last, of the wonderful German field kitchens, in the
mighty ovens of which huge loaves of bread were being baked even
while the whole clumsy looking apparatus was on the move. But it only
looked clumsy. Like everything else about the German army, this was a
practical and efficient, well tried device.
Then suddenly, early on Tuesday, he was told that he was free to go, or
would be by nightfall. And that day all signs of the German army, save
a small force of Uhlans, vanished from the village. That evening,
refreshed and ready for the road again, Fred set out. And that same
evening, though he did not know it until the next day, England entered
the war against Germany.
CHAPTER III
A STRANGE MEETING
As he walked west Fred noticed, even in the night, a change in the
country. It was not that he passed once in a while a solitary soldier
guarding a culvert, as he neared a railway, or a patrol, with its
twinkling fire, watching this spot or that that needed special guarding.
That was part of war, the part of war that he had been able to foresee. It
wasn't anything due to the war that made an impression on his mind so
much as a sort of thickening of the country. Though he had traveled so
short a distance from the Russian border, there seemed to be more
people about.

Great houses, rising on high ground, with small, contented looking
villages nestling, as it were, under their protection, were frequent. He
was, as a matter of fact, in a country of great aristocratic landholders,
the great nobles of Prussia, the men who are the real rulers of the
country, under the Prussian King,