Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/270

 cord wood and slip under the roof of the loft and lie down there. I will soon come back and bring you something to eat.”

We followed his advice, and succeeded in slipping into the little loft without being observed. The space we occupied was just large enough to permit us to lie side by side on our backs. We lay in a white dust, inches thick, which was, in view of the wet condition of our clothing, extremely disagreeable. But at least we felt secure for the time being. It was about one o'clock of the afternoon when we crawled into our new asylum. We waited quietly for our friend to bring us the necessary food, and would then consult with him about a plan of escape. But we heard the church clock strike two, three, and four, and our man did not return. Shortly after four o'clock a lively noise arose in the shed below. From the talk and the shouting and the rumbling we heard we concluded that a troop of cavalrymen must have arrived, and that they were now occupied in putting the shed in order for their horses. The horses came soon, and on all sides soldiers swarmed around us. Through the chinks of the wooden wall of our loft we could easily see them. Our situation became extremely critical. If it had occurred to one of those soldiers to investigate the compartment and to look into the loft, it would have been all over with us. Any kind of noise, a cough or a sneeze, would have betrayed us. We took the utmost pains to breathe softly, and longed for the night. The night came and we were still undiscovered, but the man on whose assistance we had counted had not yet shown himself.

We began to be very hungry and thirsty, and had neither a bit of bread nor a drop of water. What was left of our rum had been lost on the hasty run from the sewer to the house. Now we lay still like corpses. Gradually it became more quiet in the shed; soon we heard heavy snoring, and from time