A sergeant took him in charge, and all the rest of the day he rode on the tail of a baggage wagon with a guard upon either side of him.

First, though, he was searched and all his papers were taken from him.
Late in the afternoon the pack-train halted and as Stevens was stretching his legs in a field a first lieutenant, whom he described as being tall and nervous and highly excitable, ran up and, after berating the two guards for not having their rifles ready to fire, he poked a gun under Stevens' nose and went through the process of loading it, meanwhile telling him that if he moved an inch his brains would be blown out.

A sergeant gently edged Stevens back out of the danger belt, and, from behind the officer's back another man, so Stevens said, tapped himself gently upon the forehead to indicate that the Herr Lieutenant was cracked in the brain.
After this Stevens was taken into an improvised barracks in a deserted Belgian gendarmerie and locked in a room.

At nine o'clock the lieutenant came to him and told him in a mixture of French and German that he had by a court-martial been found guilty of being an English spy and that at six o'clock the following morning he would be shot.

"When you hear a bugle sound you may know that is the signal for your execution," the officer added.
While poor Stevens was still begging for an opportunity to be heard in his own defense the lieutenant dealt him a blow in the side which left him temporarily breathless.