As we set out on this road it was growing dark. Turning in a southerly direction toward Kowahlen we began a ride through a vague, darkening country, peopled--except when our searchlight picked them up--with indistinct beings. Through the trees that fringe Goldap on the east, there gleamed a huge campfire that spread its yellow light on a ruined wall; as long as we could, we watched the black forms that must have been soldiers, passing across the flames. The motor rumbled on; signs of the retreat began to appear. In the ditch beside the road, I saw a dead horse, a second dead horse, a third dead horse. An abandoned Russian cannon leaned against the night, its long howitzer barrel pointing an angle of ruin into the sky. One thought of that as a symbol of the Russian rout. Along the road there commenced a strew of clothing, a trail of discarded hats and coats, the dirty brown of the Russian soldiery. I saw rifles, cartridge bones, single shoes and then a broken caisson, a hooped roofed transport, overturned in the ditch; and then even whiter in the failing light, the scarred trees torn with shrapnel and shell. "Did your artillery harass their retreat?" I asked Rittmeister Tzschirner. "Oh, yes," he replied. "It was very fine." And the strewn débris of war continued in a silent clutter of horror; and an inky darkness closed round shutting it all out; and we sat listening to the motor's rumble. Where were the dead? In the fields? We strained our eyes but the damp night was impassable; yet we felt they were there. "Rittmeister," I asked suddenly, "were many men killed here?" "Oh, yes. The losses of the Russians were very great. Our artillery shot very well. I cannot give you the exact number. We do not know. The Russians did not wish us to know the regiments engaged so they carried away their dead. I mean they carried away as many as they could; but our soldiers came very fast and the Russians had not always the time. Yes, they left many dead but we cleared the road of them." "And the fields too?" "Oh, no," he said quickly as if unwilling that I should make a mistake. "In the fields here are many Russian dead. We shall bury them." We were passing between the fields of the unburied dead.... It was when we had made the turn of Kowahlen, which is where the road strikes due east toward the frontier, that we saw silhouetted against the sky a man, a woman and a girl. Caught by our headlight, they stood beside the road, as if they had paused there to rest. The man in the heavy coat of an East Prussian farmer leaned on a cane, watching with suspicious eyes. The woman, stout and motherly, sat on a stone, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes blinking from an awakened sleep. And the girl seemed to draw a cheap shawl as if to hide her face but not so quickly but that I saw she was astonishingly pretty. This sudden protective movement had its origin perhaps in some horrible experience. Had the Cossacks--