Two days after this shambles of the snows, an officer and three men were met, on the forest runway to Zastrovia, by the fire of a large force of Bolsheviks, but until the day the Americans left Toulgas, there was no abatement of the perilous policy of patrols in this undefined war, where the loss of every life seemed sacrilegious sacrifice. And this amazing campaign so prodigal of men's lives continued through the lengthening winter days. At the end of March the sun had mounted high, and the snows were fields of myriad dazzling diamonds. A new fresh fragrance filled the air, and brought the promise of vague, perceptible hope. Spring was coming with the sun, and the renewal of youth would not be denied. Then the Headquarters of the American Expeditionary Force took cognizance of the war with Russia and sent a general officer to command the forces from Archangel. Then the Secretary of War announced that no more troops would be sent, and the units there withdrawn. This was the end, but the Americans did not know it. The Royal Scots came to take over the defenses, the old Category Bs, with their wound stripes, their traditional, cockney jauntiness and just a hint of superiority in their eyes for the Yanks who were leaving the show. It was strange how that night the winter's harshness relented in the gentle lulling wind, and in the luminous spell of the limpid moon, weary, war-worn Toulgas was at peace, sleeping, in unbroken white stillness. Far up the sloping hill the rude silhouette of the center village is etched against a starlighted sky. Forward the church, shell gashed and mutilated, with its grotesque minarets, and the moon, a pendulous globe of living fire. Clear in the lucid light is the hard contested bridge, that means so little and yet so much; beyond, the charred ruins of the sacrificed village, and, still farther, the somber, gloomy forest. Vividly white gleams the church beneath the steely mystic moon, but whiter than the church or moon are the endless wastes of immaculate, unmarred snows that reach across the great river to the lurking darkness of the distant shore and abroad to the sinister shadows of crested trees. This is Russia of the American soldier--a cluster of dirty huts, dominated by the severe white church, and, encircling all, fields and fields of spotless snows; Russia, terrible in the grasp of devastating Arctic cold; the squalor and fulsome filth of the villages; the moujik, his mild eyes, his patient bearded face--the gray drudgery and gaping ignorance of his starved life; the little shaggy pony, docile and uncomplaining in winds, icy as the breath of the sepulcher; Russia, her dread mystery, and that intangible quality of melodrama that throngs the air, and lingers in the air, persistently haunts the spirit, and is as consciously perceptible as the dirty villages, the white church, and the grief-laden skies.