The Boy Scouts In Russia | Page 7

who is also the German Kaiser. And
in many of these great houses lights were burning, even after midnight,
when all signs of life in the villages had ceased. The country was
stirring, and there was more of it to stir. Now from time to time he
heard the throbbing hum of an automobile motor. Only one or two of
these passed him, going in either direction, on the road along which he
was traveling. But there were parallel roads, and he could hear the
throbbing motors on these, and often see the pointing shafts of light
from their lights, searching out the road before them as they sped along.
Fred knew enough of Germany to understand something of what he
saw and heard. It was from these great houses that a great many
officers were contributed to the army. These young men had no real
career before them from their birth, almost, except in the army. So it
was easy to guess why the lights were burning in those mansions, and
why there was anxiety among them, and why the throbbing motor cars
were humming over the roads.
If Germany were beaten back in the beginning, if the task she had
undertaken proved too heavy, this was the province that was sure to
feel the first brunt of invasion. Behind him, to the east, Fred knew were
the great masses of Russia, moving slowly, but with a terrible, always
increasing force. No wonder these people were stirring, were sending
out all their men to drive back the huge power that lay so near them, a
constant menace!
But now, though he did not know it, Fred was approaching real danger
for the first time. Many of the motors he saw and heard were going
west. Though he could not guess it, they were carrying women and
children away from the old houses that were too much exposed, too
directly in the path of a possible invasion for the helpless ones to be left
in them when the men had gone to fight. All Germany had to be
defended. It happened to be the part of East Prussia to bear invasion, if

it came to that.
And so the people of the great houses were making their migration. The
men went to their regiments; the women to Berlin, and to the great
fortresses that lay nearer than Berlin--Koenigsberg, Danzig, Thorn.
This was historic country that Fred was traversing, the same country
that had trembled beneath the thundering march of Napoleon's grand
army more than a hundred years before, when the great Emperor had
launched the mad adventure against Russia that had sealed his fate.
But he didn't think of these things, except of Napoleon, as he trudged
along. Once more he traveled through the night. Once more, as the first
signs of morning came, he began to feel tired, and, despite the food he
had carried with him which he had stopped to eat about midnight, he
was hungry. And, as had been the case on the night of his tramp from
Virballen, the first rays of the rising sun showed him a village. It was in
a hollow, and above it the ground rose sharply to a large house,
evidently very old, built of a grey stone that had been weathered by the
winds and rains of centuries. It was a very old house, and strangely out
of tune, it seemed to Fred, with the country though not with the times.
It was so old that it showed some traces of fortification, and Fred knew
how long it was since private houses had been built with any view to
defence. It was a survivor of the days when this whole region had been
an outpost of civilization against hordes of barbarian invaders.
One curious thing he noticed at once about the great house. No flag was
flying from it, though it boasted a sort of turret from which a flag might
well have been flung out to the wind. All the other big houses he had
seen had had flags out and the absence of a standard here seemed
significant, somehow.
When he entered the village he found that there was no inn. He saw the
usual notice of mobilization and the proclamation of war, but the
people were not stirring yet. He had to wait for some time before he
found a house where people were up. They looked at him curiously, but
grudgingly consented to give him breakfast. There was an old man, and
another who was younger, but crippled. And this cripple was the one
who seemed most puzzled by Fred's appearance in the place. He

surveyed him closely and twice Fred caught him whispering, evidently
about him.
Then the cripple slipped away and came back, just as