table lightly with doubled fist, “Mr. Loskiel,” he said, “I ask you — can we find recruits for our regiment in such a place as this? Damme, sir, but I think the entire land has lost its manhood.”

We sat staring out into the sunshine through a bullet-shattered window.

“And all this country here seems so fair and peaceful,” he murmured half to himself, “so sweet and still and kindly to me after the twilight of endless forests where men are done to death in the dusk. But hell in broad sunshine is the more horrible.”

“Look closer at this country,” I said. “The highways are deserted and silent, the very wagon ruts overgrown with grass. Not a scythe has swung in those hay fields; the