We glimpsed faces,
heard voices all about us. The change from solitude to this unbroken
procession was bewildering. But we did not long remain a part of it; we
turned again into narrower lanes.
The control was growing stricter. Four separate times we were halted,
and always I sat hunched in my corner as impassive as a stone. The
more deeply we penetrated toward the Front, the more uneasy grew my
companions. Each time that a sentry halted us they waited in more
anxiety for his verdict. The man beside me, it was true, still menaced
me with his pistol point; but the gesture had grown perfunctory. He did
not think I would attempt anything. He believed now that I was afraid.
Our road crossed a hilltop, and I saw beneath us a valley, streaked at
intervals with blinding signal-flashes of red and green. In my ears the
thunder of the guns was growing steadily. When we were stopped again,
the sentry warned us. The road we were traveling, he said, had been
intermittently under fire for two days.
It looked, indeed, as if devils had used it for a playground; the trees
were mere blackened stumps; the fields on each side stretched burnt and
bare.
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