In front of me I could bear the wheels of our heavy-laden hay-cart creaking as the big farm horse plodded on.  Its occupants were silent, and thanks to the moon and the lantern which hung up high behind, I could see Julie and Madame Guix nodding with sleep.

My own poor beast limped on and besides thinking of all that I had left undone at the chateau and planning how and where we could go, I had the constant vision of his silent suffering in front of me.  At every little incline I would get down and throwing the reins over the neck of Betsy, my bull dog, who occupied the seat beside me, I would give Cesar his head and take my place with the boys behind.  He seemed to be grateful.

Let it be said, however, that as our journey advanced the hoof, at first so tender from much poulticing, became firmer and firmer, and instead of increasing, the lameness rather grew less.

We crossed our little market town of Charly amid dead silence.  Not a light in a single window, not a sound anywhere.  We seemed to be the only souls astir, and the foolhardiness of this midnight departure when everyone else was tucked up snug in his bed, angered me.  I was seized with a mad desire to turn about and go home.

Just then George asked me which direction I intended taking, and remembering H.’s imperative “Go south,” we turned sharp and headed for the first bridge across the Marne.

High in front of me rose the dark wooded hills of Pavant, descending abruptly to that narrow strip of fertile plain which borders the river on both sides, but now half-veiled in a heavy blue mist.  Below me the swift current sped onward like a silver arrow, and before so impressive a spectacle I could not help thinking how meager is the art of the scene painter and dramatist which tries to depict a real battlefield.  For battlefield I felt this was, and my overstrained nerves no longer holding my imagination in check, I could already see human forms writhing in agony, and hear the moaning of souls on the brink of Eternity.  As though to vivify this hallucination, the dying moon suddenly plunged behind a cloud, lighting the landscape but by strange lugubrious streaks, and in the distance behind us a long low rumble warned me that my dream might soon be a terrible reality.

The Marne crossed, a weight was lifted from my shoulders, and settling back against the pile of blankets in my rig, I let the horse follow his own sweet will and we started to zig-zag up a steep incline.  At the end of five minutes’ time I was so benumbed by the cold that sleep was impossible, so I left my seat and joined the others who, all save Yvonne, had been obliged to descend to relieve their horse.  What a climb that was—­seven long kilometers from right to left, winding around that hill, as about a mountain, ever and again finding ourselves on a narrow ledge overlooking the valley.  The fog had spread until literally choked up between the bills and I could hardly persuade myself that it was not the sea that rolled below me.  Even the signal lamps on the distant railway line rose out of the labyrinth like a lighthouse in mid-ocean, making the illusion complete.