for him to escape from
the regiment. It inclosed him. And there were iron laws of tradition
and law on four sides. He was in a moving box.

As he perceived this fact it occurred to him that he had never wished
to come to the war. He had not enlisted of his free will. He had been
dragged by the merciless government. And now they were taking him out
to be slaughtered.

The regiment slid down a bank and wallowed across a little stream. The
mournful current moved slowly on, and from the water, shaded black,
some white bubble eyes looked at the men.

As they climbed the hill on the farther side artillery began to boom.
Here the youth forgot many things as he felt a sudden impulse of
curiosity. He scrambled up the bank with a speed that could not be
exceeded by a bloodthirsty man.

He expected a battle scene.

There were some little fields girted and squeezed by a forest. Spread
over the grass and in among the tree trunks, he could see knots and
waving lines of skirmishers who were running hither and thither and
firing at the landscape. A dark battle line lay upon a sunstruck
clearing that gleamed orange color. A flag fluttered.

Other regiments floundered up the bank. The brigade was formed in line
of battle, and after a pause started slowly through the woods in the
rear of the receding skirmishers, who were continually melting into the
scene to appear again farther on. They were always busy as bees,
deeply absorbed in their little combats.

The youth tried to observe everything. He did not use care to avoid
trees and branches, and his forgotten feet were constantly knocking
against stones or getting entangled in briers. He was aware that these
battalions with their commotions were woven red and startling into the
gentle fabric of softened greens and browns. It looked to be a wrong
place for a battle field.

The skirmishers in advance fascinated him. Their shots into thickets
and at distant and prominent trees spoke to him of tragedies--hidden,
mysterious, solemn.

Once the line encountered the body of a dead soldier. He lay upon his
back staring at the sky. He was dressed in an awkward suit of
yellowish brown. The youth could see that the soles of his shoes had
been worn to the thinness of writing paper, and from a great rent in
one the dead foot projected piteously. And it was as if fate had
betrayed the soldier. In death it exposed to his enemies that poverty
which in life he had perhaps