me, so that I knew I
was alive. Yes, there was something to that.

"Sh-shh--" said I. Two others drew near, as if a bottle had been opened.
And Firthus, my closest friend, gripped my arm, leaving a blue welt
where his thumb had pressed.

"It's as bad to say 'sh-sh--' as to say what he said," Firthus
whispered.

Yes, even in the coldness, there was a thrill to that. Perhaps we thrill
at the first breath of that which is to come and change us over.

... For three days they had given our part of the line a different
and extraordinary resistance, so that for three nights we camped in
the same place. A valley was before us, and the infantry had tried
to cross again and again, always meeting at a certain place in the
hollows an enfilading fire from the forward low hills. We could not
get enough men across to charge the emplacements.... We were mid-west
of the west wing, it was said; and word came the third day that we were
holding up the whole line; that the east was ready to drive through,
in fact, was bending forward; that the west was marking time on our
account--and here we were keeping the whole Russian invasion from
spending the holidays in Budapest.

On that third day I was dispatching from brigade-headquarters to the
trenches. The General and his staff stood in a shepherd's house in the
midst of a circle of rocks. Waiting there I began to understand that
they were having difficulty in forcing the men forward in the later
charges. The lines could see their dead of former advances, black and
countless upon the valley snow. This was not good for the trenches.

... Now I realized that they were talking of Chautonville, the singer,
the master of our folk-songs. We had heard of him along the line--how
he had come running home to us out of Germany at the last moment in
July--literally pelted forth, changed from an idol into an enemy and
losing a priceless engagement-series on the Continent. He had not been
the least bewildered, as the story went, rather enjoying it all....
They had monopolized him at the central headquarters, so that we had
not heard him sing, but the gossip of it fired the whole line--a
baritone voice like a thick starry dusk, having to do with magnolias
and the south, and singing of the Russia that was to mean the world.
Somehow he had made us gossip to that extent. So I was interested now
to hear the name of Chautonville, and that he was coming.

He was to sing us forward again. There was a pang i