was dazzling white in the rays of the setting sun.
"What a pity," I thought, "that the peasant must depart from these
beautiful mountains and valleys to die in the slime of the
trenches."

The day was closing in quiet and grandeur, yet all the time the
shadow of death was darkening the peaceful valley of the Ammer. I
became aware of it first as I passed the silent churchyard with its
grey stones rising from the snow. For there, on the other side of
the old stone wall that marks the road, was a monument on which the
Reaper hacks the toll of death. The list for 1870 was small,
indeed, compared with that of _die grosse Zeit_. I looked for Lang
and found it, for Hans had died, as had also Richard.

I passed groups of men cutting wood and hauling ice and grading
roads, men with rounder faces and flatter noses than the Bavarians,
still wearing the yellowish-brown uniform of Russia. That is, most
of them wore it. Some, whose uniforms had long since gone to
tatters, were dressed in ordinary clothing, with flaming red R's
painted on trousers and jackets.

An old woman with a heavy basket on her back was trudging past a
group of these. "How do you like them?" I asked. "We shall really
miss them when they go," she said. "They seem part of the village
now. The poor fellows, it must be sad for them so far from home."

Evidently the spirit of new Germany had not saturated her.

I went through crooked streets, bordered with houses brightly
frescoed with biblical scenes, to the _Pension Dahein_, the home of
the man I wished to see. As he rose from his pottery bench to
welcome me, I felt that beneath his great blue apron and rough garb
of the working man was true nobility. I did not need to ask if he
was Anton Lang. I had seen his picture and had often been told
that his face was the image of His Who died on the Cross. I
expected much, but found infinitely more. I felt that life had
been breathed into a Rubens masterpiece. No photograph can do him
justice, for no lens can catch the wondrous light in his clear blue
eyes.

I was the only guest at the _Pension Daheim_; indeed, I was the
only stranger in Oberammergau. I sat beside Anton Lang in his work
room as his steady hands fashioned things of clay, I ate at table
with him, and in the evening we pulled up our chairs to the
comfortable fireside, where we talked of his country and of my
country, of the Passion Play and of the war.

I had been sceptical about him