I began pottering about the hollyhocks and sunflowers and dahlias the
very next morning, taking care to alternate my spells of gardening with
fairly lengthy rests, on the principle laid down by Sister Madeleine.
Not that they were altogether unnecessary in my still weak state.
However, my strength returned with remarkable rapidity, after the first
week of this light work, and every additional day found me more fit
to carry out my plan, the details of which I had ample opportunity of
working out. The garden was surrounded by a high wall of irregular
construction, thus affording a foothold to a skilful climber, whose
task could be made still easier if he chose--as I had determined to
do--that portion of the enclosure which was masked by the tool-shed,
between the back of which and the wall was a space of about a foot and
a half, providing an additional support for one's body. My resemblance
to Jean, the gardener, had, by the by, become more and more perfect,
thanks to work with spade and hoe, and perhaps, at times, owing to
rather too close contact with the soil. That it would be perfection
itself when I had donned his garb, at the close of an afternoon's work
just before turning-in time, I felt convinced.
There was another thing of which I was certain: that Sister Madeleine
instinctively knew the day and hour I had fixed for my flight. For she
was so unusually silent on that day in the last week of October, when,
according to my calculations, there would be no moon until late in
the night, she was so serious in her mien, and she left me with such
suddenness after advising me to come in, "now that the sun had set and
the evenings were getting chilly," that I felt sure she comprehended.
"Thank you, Sister Madeleine," I replied; and I could not refrain from
adding, in the hope that she would grasp my double meaning: "You have
_always_ given me such good advice. I shall never forget your kindness.
But before coming in I must put away my tools."
Without daring to look her in the face, I turned down the path in the
direction of the tool-shed. Five minutes later I left it, dressed in
the gardener's earth-stained clothes, passed like a shadow to the rear
of the building, and was over the wall in a trice.
I found myself in a field, and having not the slightest idea regarding
the geography of Erquelinnes, went straight ahead at full speed. A
quarter of an hour's steeplechasing across ditches and other natural
obstacles brought me to a high road, and confronted me with the dilemma
as to which way to turn. Without losing a moment's time, for I pictured
the hue and cry my disappearance would soon be causing, I made off to
the left. _Fausse route!_ In five minutes I came within sight of the
lights of the first house of a village, undoubtedly Erquelinnes itself.
With a vague idea at the back of my head of gaining the Franco-Belgian
frontier, and--avoiding all small places, where curiosity is most
rife--reaching Maubeuge, where I might find an asylum among my own
people until an opportunity presented itself of getting back to the
French lines, I struck off to the right, once more across open country.
The dark cloak of night had now fallen, making my progress necessarily
slow. On and on I crept in the darkness. How long I continued I
cannot say, but it must have been for several hours, for a great
weariness suddenly came over me and impelled me to seek sleep. What was
apparently a small wood lay in my path at that moment. Groping my way
from bole to bole, I divined, rather than saw, a dry and sheltered spot
under the trees, and, throwing myself down, quickly fell asleep, amidst
the calling of the night-jars.