tform. The Salvation Army soldiers' hands were embraced and
kissed; they were scarcely able to receive them all. The boys and
the old men praised God.

He who spoke continued. The words intoxicated him. He said to
himself: "I speak, I speak, at last I speak. I tell them my secret,
and yet I do not tell them." For the first time since he made the
great sacrifice he was free from care.

***

It was a Sunday afternoon in the height of the summer. The town
looked like a desert of stones, like a moon landscape. There was
not a cat to be seen, nor a sparrow, hardly a fly on the sunny
wall. Not a chimney smoked. There was not a breath of air in the
sultry streets. The whole was only a stony field, out of which grew
stone walls.

Where were the dogs and the people? Where were the young ladies in
narrow skirts and wide sleeves, long gloves and red sunshades?
Where were the soldiers and the fine people, the Salvation Army and
the street boys?

Whither had all those gay picnickers gone in the dewy cool of the
morning, all the baskets and accordions and bottles, which the
steamer landed? And what had happened to the procession of Good
Templars? Banners fluttered, drums thundered, boys swarmed,
stamped, and hurrahed. Or what had happened to the blue awnings
under which the little ones slept while father and mother pushed
them solemnly up the street.

All were on their way out to the wood. They complained of the long
streets. It seemed as if the stone houses followed them. At last,
at last they caught a glimpse of green. And just outside of the
town, where the road wound over flat, moist fields, where the song
of the lark sounded loudest, where the clover steamed with honey,
there lay the first of those left behind; heads in the moss, noses
in the grass. Bodies bathed in sunshine and fragrance, souls
refreshed with idleness and rest.

On the way to the wood toiled bicyclists and bearers of luncheon
baskets. Boys came with trowels and shiny knapsacks. Girls danced
in clouds of dust. Sky and banners and children and trumpets.
Mechanics and their families and crowds of laborers. The rearing
horses of an omnibus waved their forelegs over the crowd. A young
man, half drunk, jumped up on the wheel. He was pulled down, and
lay kicking on his back in the dust of the road.

In the wood a nightingale trilled and sang, piped and gurgled. The
birches were not thriving, their trunks were black. The beeches
built high temples, layer u