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 which were not given to the remote chances of escape.

His bonds were tightly drawn—a rope tied with German thoroughness. He moved his hands behind him and tried to gain a little room for his present ease. If he was to be shot tomorrow morning it would have seemed indeed a small charity to have permitted him to pass his last night in some degree of comfort. Could it be that, after all, von Stromberg suspected the real object of his return? That hardly seemed possible; for his informant in Berlin, a woman close to those in high authority, had made every move with the utmost discretion and his own relations to Lindberg could not possibly be suspected.

Lindberg! Hammersley turned and looked at his guard who was standing motionless by the window, gazing out at the fading landscape. Lindberg was his one, his last desperate hope. Udo von Winden, his cousin—It was too much to hope that Udo would be of service to him. He had caught a glimpse of Udo’s face in the hallway downstairs when von Stromberg’s orders were given. He had gone pale and stared at him in pity and horror as Hammersley had gone up the stairs, but Hammersley knew that the ties of kinship, the memories of their boyhood together, were nothing beside the iron will and indomitable authority of the great man who had condemned him. Udo would suffer when Hammersley died, for there had been a time when the two had been much to each other, but he would do his duty, however painful, as a small unit of the relentless machine which Hammersley had had the temerity to oppose. What else could be expected?

A word, a sign, the slightest aid to such a prisoner, and he would be as guilty as his cousin. Hammersley knew that he did Udo no injustice in supposing that