Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/268

 you do not go,” she replied, with decision, “I must tell the soldiers that you are here. You cannot expect me to sacrifice myself and my children for you.”

There was more talk, but all in vain. We had no choice; we must leave the barn. But where to go? The woman showed us through the open door a ditch covered with high and thick shrubbery on the other side of the little yard, in which we might hide ourselves. Our situation became desperate. There we stood, all three in the military uniform of Baden, easily recognizable as the soldiers of the revolutionary army. Now we were to have no other refuge but some shrubbery covering a ditch in the midst of a town teeming with hostile troops! Of course, we hesitated to leave the barn, although it was a dangerous resting place for us, but at any rate it offered us a roof over our heads, and perhaps it might be possible to find in it some hiding corner. We still hoped that Adam's cousin would yield to our prayers. She went to the house, as she had to expect every moment the arrival of the cavalrymen. After about half an hour she came back and said the cavalrymen were there and were just sitting at their breakfast. Now was the moment for us to pass through the yard without being seen by them. She insisted on this with such determination that we had to submit. Then we ran across the yard to the ditch, which on the opposite side was separated from the street by a tall board fence. It again rained hard, and in the immediate vicinity nobody seemed to be stirring. Thus we could, with some assurance, explore our new refuge. We found that at the end of the ditch cord wood was heaped up in the form of a hollow square, open on the side toward us. We could slip through the brush into the square and were in that close space pretty well protected from the eyes of the passerby. There we sat down on blocks of wood.