neath our very horses' feet again a huge green
bottle cracking in the sun!

And with all this noise not a living soul to be seen! We had before us
as we slowly bumped down the hill a fair view. The river was hidden
from us, but there was a little hamlet guarded happily by a green
wood; there was a line of fair hills, fields of corn, and the long
dusty white road. Not a soul to be seen, only our bumping cart and,
now and then, against the burning sky those little curling circles of
smoke. The world slumbered....

Suddenly from the ditch at the side of the road a soldier appeared,
spoke to our driver and disappeared again.

"What did he say?" I asked.

"He says, your Honour, that we must hasten. We may be hit."

"Hit here--on this road?"

"_Tak totchno._"

"Well, hurry then."

I caught a little frightened sigh behind me from Andrey Vassilievitch,
whom the events of the day had frozen into horror-stricken silence. We
hurried, bumping along; at the bottom of the hill there was a
farmhouse. From behind it an officer appeared.

"What are you doing there? You're under fire.... Red Cross? Ah yes, we
had a message about you. Dr. Semyonov?... Yes. Please come this way.
Hurry, please!"

We were led across the farmyard and almost tumbled into a trench at
the farther end of it.

It wasn't until I felt some one touch my shoulder that I realised my
position. We were sitting, the three of us, in a slanting fashion with
our backs to the earthworks of the trench. To our right, under an
improvised round roof, a little dried-up man like a bee, with his
tunic open at the neck and a beard of some days on his chin, was
calling down a telephone.

Next to me on the left a smart young officer, of a perfect neatness
and even dandiness, was eating his supper, which his servant,
crouching in front of him, ladled with a spoon out of a tin can.
Beyond him again the soldiers in a long line under the farm wall were
sewing their clothes, eating, talking in whispers, and one of them
reading a newspaper aloud to himself.

A barn opposite us in ruins showed between its bare posts the green
fields beyond. Now and then a soldier would move across the yard to
the door of the farm, and he seemed to slide with something between
walking and running, his shoulders bent, his head down. The sun, low
now, showed just above the end of the farm roof and the lines of light
were orange between the shadows of the barn. All the batteries seemed
now very