es, and made soft droning music with
the wooden mill-wheel. And the music carried with it the wording of old
undying rhymes, and sang of the jolly, uncaring, uncared-for miller, of
the farmer who went riding upon his grey mare, of the mouse who lived
beneath the merry mill-pin, of the sweet music on yonder green hill and
the dancers all in yellow--the songs and fancies of a lingering olden
time, when men took life as children take a long summer day, and went to
bed at last with a simple trust in something they could not have
explained.

Yeovil watched the passing landscape with the intent hungry eyes of a man
who revisits a scene that holds high place in his affections. His
imagination raced even quicker than the train, following winding roads
and twisting valleys into unseen distances, picturing farms and hamlets,
hills and hollows, clattering inn yards and sleepy woodlands.

"A beautiful country," said his only fellow-traveller, who was also
gazing at the fleeting landscape; "surely a country worth fighting for."

He spoke in fairly correct English, but he was unmistakably a foreigner;
one could have allotted him with some certainty to the Eastern half of
Europe.

"A beautiful country, as you say," replied Yeovil; then he added the
question, "Are you German?"

"No, Hungarian," said the other; "and you, you are English?" he asked.

"I have been much in England, but I am from Russia," said Yeovil,
purposely misleading his companion on the subject of his nationality in
order to induce him to talk with greater freedom on a delicate topic.
While living among foreigners in a foreign land he had shrunk from
hearing his country's disaster discussed, or even alluded to; now he was
anxious to learn what unprejudiced foreigners thought of the catastrophe
and the causes which had led up to it.

"It is a strange spectacle, a wonder, is it not so?" resumed the other,
"a great nation such as this was, one of the greatest nations in modern
times, or of any time, carrying its flag and its language into all parts
of the world, and now, after one short campaign, it is--"

And he shrugged his shoulders many times and made clucking noises at the
roof of his voice, like a hen calling to a brood of roving chickens.

"They grew soft," he resumed; "great world-commerce brings great luxury,
and luxury brings softness. They had everything to warn them, things
happening in their own time and before their eyes, and they would not be