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A DAY AT ECLISFONTAINE 8i
and picturesque half-light. The grey-clad riders, with their
cloaks thrown over their shoulders, sit and dream on patient,
snorting horses and seem to spring up from nowhere out of
the fog as they come within the circle of our headlights. A
horse takes fright at the light and the buzz, his rider starts
and wakes up out of his reverie ; he pulls himself together
and settles down again in the saddle. The column goes on,
but new riders loom up one after the other. We hear the
tramping of innumerable hoofs against the road surface, and
the wagon wheels make a smacking and gurgling sound as
they move onward through the mire, which clings to them some
little way and then drops back in shapeless clods.
By the side of the road is a reddish light which, as we
approach, gains in strength and colour ; it is the camp fire
of a bivouac, against which the figures of the soldiers are
sharply silhouetted. They appear to be preparing something
over the fire, coffee no doubt, or tea. Here and there one of
them has already lit his early-morning pipe. As dark and as
mist-enshrouded as the night which still enfolds the earth,
is the fate that awaits them with the coming day. There
seems to be something fateful in the air. A new fight no doubt
is impending. To the soldiers there is nothing remarkable,
nothing unusual or exciting in this. To them it is all in the
day’s work—there is fighting at the front and their fate beckons
to them under the French fire. Maybe it is their turn to-day
to fall and add to the number of graves and wooden crosses
by the roadside. Maybe this dismal night has been the last
in their lives. But if so they have slept well for the last time,
and the flames of the bivouac fire give out a friendly and
agreeable warmth.
The gleam of fresh fires shows through the mist ; now clear,
now pale and dim, at some distance from the road. Every-
where are groups of soldiers, soldiers, soldiers. Once we stop a
moment, to allow a frightened horse to pass. The hushed voices
of the night then seem louder, and the creaking of wagons,
rattling of arms, tramping of the horses’ hoofs or the curt
orders of the officers strike our ears. The troops are moving
to the front. We are on one of the arteries of a fighting army.
Once more we pass through Dun, whose naked walls and
ruins present a desolate sight as they are lit up by our lamps.
We drive through Romagne, which lies wrapped in fog. At
the other end of the village a vast body of horsemen blocks
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