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Show THE DARK l7()lll§.\"l‘ THE SCHOOL-HOUSE tour or five Nikolais in our (ltriad. and he is to be noticed define exactly what it was that made this drive on this first evening something utterly distinct and apart from all that I had experienced during that earlier period. It is true that, before, I had been for almOst two months in one place and had seen nothing at all of actual warfare, except the feeding and bandaging 0f the wounded. But I had imagined then, nevertheless, that I was truly "in the thick of things," as indeed, in comparison with my Moscow or l'etrograd life, I was. We had not now driven through the quiet evening air for ten minutes before I knew, with assured certainty, that a new phase of life was, on this day, opening before me; the dark hedges, the thin fine dust on 42 in this history because he attached himsell from the verv beginning to Treuehard with that t'aitht'ul and utterlv un- questioning devotion of which the Russian soldier is so frequently capable. He must. I think. have seen something helpless and unhappy in 'l'renehard‘s appearance on this evening. Sancho to our Don Quixote he was from that first moment. "Yes, he's an English gentleman." I said when he had listened for a moment to 'l‘renehard‘s Iussian. "Like yourself," said Nikolai. "Yes, Nikolai. You must look after him. He'll be strange here at first." "Slusfiaiu. (I hearl." That was all he said. He got up on to his seat, his broad back was bent over his horses. "\Vell, and how have things been. Nikolai, busy ‘5" "Nikola nyet-not at all. Very quiet." "No wounded t" "Nothing at all, Ba rin, for two weeks now." "Have you liked that t" "Talc totclmo. Certainly yes." The faint satl'ron that lingered below the crests and peaks like the friendly smile of a happy day. The only human beings to be seen were the peasants driving home their cows: "Talc totchno, Barin." Then he turned and gave, for one swift instant, a glance at Trenchard, who was, very clumsily, climbing into the Nikolai looked at him gravely. the roads, the deep purple colour of the air, beat at my heart, as though they themselves were helping with quiet insistency to draw me into the drama. And yet nothing could have been more peaceful than was that lovely evening. The dark plum-colour in the evening sky soaked like wine into the hills, the fields, the thatched cottages, the streams and the little woods. of rosy cloud showed between, the stems of the silver birches "Xe, but have you t" carriage. 43 IIis round, red face was quite expressionless as he turned back and began to abjure his horses in that half-attectionate, half-abusive far on the horizon the Carpathian mountains were purple in the dusk, the snow on their highest ridges faintly silver. There was not a Sound in the world except the ringr of our horses" hoofs upon the road. And yet this sinister excite ment l'iannnered, from stanewhero, at me as I had never felt it before. It was as though the lovely evening were a and wholly human whispering exclamation that Russians use to their animals. we started. I have mentioned in these pages that I had already spent painted scene lowered to hide some atrocity. "This is scarcely what you expected a conquered country to look like, is it?" I said to 'l‘renchard. three months with our Otriad at the Front. I cannot now |