The subaltern stood by his line of silent guns, watching the fight roll away from him. He felt atrociously hungry and thirsty. His water-bottle was empty. He felt for the biscuits in his pocket. There was not one. He wiped his hand across his mouth and there was biscuit-dust upon the back of it. Then he cursed in bitter disappointment. He could not forgive himself for having eaten those biscuits, as it were in his sleep. Presently an order came and he drew the remnant of his battery out of action. PRO PATRIA In the dark of the autumn evening the rearguard drew itself wearily through the silent village. To a column of infantrymen, dusty, dejected, haggard, with rifles held indifferently on the shoulder, at the trail, or tucked under the arm, succeeded a procession of miscellaneous vehicles--ambulances, army-wagons, brick-carts, gigs, anything that would roll on wheels it seemed. Some of these vehicles were loaded high with goods whose nature was hidden by the bulging tarpaulins stretched tightly over them, but the majority held only men who sat up listlessly, swaying with every jolt of the vehicle, dull-eyed, mournful, and silent. The faces of most of them were partially masked by bandages that passed at varying angles across their heads. Others nursed an arm in a sling; some were apparently undamaged. These were the slightly hurt. Here and there in the long train, a head, swathed like that of an antique corpse, raised itself from the depths of a wagon and peered over the side, striking a note of suffering which found no repercussion in the men, fatigued beyond sensibility, who marched by the wheels. After a longer or shorter space those heads relapsed again out of sight, sinking without murmur or gesture, in hopeless resignation. These vehicles bore the wreckage of the army, swept up by the retreating rearguard which cleared the road of everything that could afford an indication to the enemy of the nature of the force in front.