"I start for Ostend to take winter garments for my two small daughters, which are there at school, and they arrest me--these Germans--and keep me two days in a cowshed, and then bring me back here and put me here in this so-terrible-a-place for two weeks; and all for nothing at all." "Didn't you have a pass to go through the lines ?" I asked.

"Perhaps that was it." "I have already a pass," he said; "but when they search me they find in my pockets letters which I am taking to people in Ostend.

I do not know what is in those letters.

People ask me to take them to friends of theirs in Ostend and I consent, not knowing it is against the rule.
They read these letters--the Germans--and say I am carrying news to their enemies; and they become very enrage at me and lock me up.

Never again will I take letters for anybody anywhere.
"Oh, sirs, if you could but see the food we eat here! For dinner we have a stew--oh, such a stew!--and for breakfast only bread and coffee who is not coffee!" And with both hands he combed his whiskers in a despair that was comic and yet pitiful.
He was standing there, still combing, as we came away..