As we came down in the gathering gloom, over the shell-ravaged sides of the mountain, I was conscious of a deep, in some way sweet, feeling that I might be going to see, to _feel_, it all again. And, too, as is the way of the heart, it seemed then somewhat to belong to me. I was not as one who never more will pass. Everywhere in the brown, wet forest pale-blue forms stood aside to make way for us. As we reached Camp Wagram, where I re-exchanged the long, blue military cape for my coat, great shots began to echo through the hills, and the flare of guns illuminated the thin, dark, scraggly crests. It was still war. Near, so near, men were breathing out their souls, to be “scattered by winds and high, tempestuous gusts.” As we stood making our adieux, a radio was brought to Commandant Moreteaux, and we heard then and there that Foch had received the German Parlementaries, and given them seventy-two hours, from eleven o’clock of that day, Friday, to say “Yes” or to say “No.” Nobody spoke when he ceased reading. It seemed suddenly like the world’s end. And it’s a good, quick place to get one’s world-news, there in the Hartmannswillerkopf sector! Then we said another and quite hasty _au revoir_, fearing night would descend upon the valley before we could, for the motor had to go without lights, and there was many a turn and twist at which to take a skidding chance at fate. The forest got blacker and blacker, there was the sound of rushing waters, the rattle of munition-wagons, the stamp of hoofs, and voices of dimly outlined men whose tunics were quite white in the twilight. The odors, too, deepened with the coming darkness. I was chilled in body and soul, for were not they also there, those other tens of thousands, whose beds were dug in these damp hills, mingling in some way with the living? How close the two worlds are I never knew until this war, where death is ever near, and sometimes sweet, and often, often young. The hoary Reaper with his scythe has been replaced by a figure, lithe and strong, a bugle in his hand. As we reached the dark valley the cannon cracked again, again the night sky was illumined. The unnatural shapes of trees fallen one against the other at sharp angles were black in the twilight fog; the road was a loose, wet ribbon; more waters rushed. And who would see the Hartmannswillerkopf in sunshine? This damp, gray, afternoon robe of consecration, clasped with its clasp of emerald, carnelian, topaz, amethyst, like to the clasp of a high-priest, is its true garb. And the wide mantle of the November night was folding close over all its beauty and its grief. At Bitschwiller we call on Madame Jules Scheuer. She knows irremediable grief and bears it with a noble courage. One of her sons fell far from her in Champagne; the other, mortally wounded on the Hartmann, was brought down one winter night to die in her arms, and lies forever in the sweet, broad valley of the Thur, claiming so little of his vast inheritance....