s so deep, lay buried in it, where it had drifted against the wall.
The Germans in a town so near the French lines were not likely to make a
diligent search for a single man, and he felt that he was safe if he did
not freeze to death.

Peeping above the snow he saw about fifty German infantrymen walk down
the road toward the river, their heavy boots crunching in the snow. They
were stalwart, ruddy fellows, boys of twenty-one or two--he knew now
that boys did most of the world's fighting--and he liked their simple,
honest faces. He felt anew that he did not hate the German people;
instead he felt friendship for them, but he did hate more intensely than
ever the medieval emperors and the little group of madmen about them
who, almost without warning, could devote millions to slaughter. An
intense democrat in the beginning and becoming more intense in the
furnace of war, he believed that the young German peasants coming down
the road would have much more chance before the Judgment Seat than the
princes and generals who so lightly sent them there.

The soldiers went on a little distance beyond the edge of the town. The
cessation of the snow and the brilliant moonlight enabled them to see
far into the plain below, where the hospital camp lay. John, looking in
the same direction, saw little wisps of smoke rising above the blur of
the camp, but the distance was too great for him to detect anything
else.

The low note of the trumpet called to the young troops, and they turned
back into the town. John rose from his covert, brushed the snow from his
clothing, beat his chest with his fists, and increased the circulation
which would warm his body anew. Then he stood against the wall
listening. He had no doubt that the Germans would go away
presently--there was nothing to keep them in Chastel--and he made a
sudden shift in his plans. He would go back to the Hotel de l'Europe,
and stay there until day. Lannes would surely come in the morning. He
had no doubt that at daybreak he would see the lithe and sinuous figure
of the _Arrow_ shooting down from the blue depths, and then he and her
brother would go away in search of Julie. Looking down from the air and
traveling at almost unbelievable speed, their chances of finding
Auersperg's party would be a hundred times better than if he merely
prowled along on the ground.

The thought was a happy one to him, and again there was a great uprising
of youth and hope. But the hosts of the air