At once we cease thinking of the church of Piculponen as Queen Louise's retreat. We are walking amid a charnel patch of opened graves and tombs that are the gaping craters of shells. "The Russians tried to hold a position here," remarks Tzschirner. We turn the corner of the church and see the Russian trenches dug between the graves. We see the great windowed walls shattered with shrapnel and shell. We gaze down into an awful hole where a _grenat_ has plunged into a grave. The fragments of the casket are blown into the black mud, and there are other fragments too, fragments a chalky white, for the grave is old; and fragments of brown Russian coats. Nearby stands a white marble cross. "_Ruhig sanft_," it says, "Rest in Peace." The plains of the Memel, as we leave the churchyard, brooding in the white peace of the snow and under the Engelsberg lies Tilsit, vaguely as in a mirage, its slender steepled churches, the spires of a dream. * * * * * 1:08 P. M. We are climbing a long brown slope of road that has been dug from out of the drifting snow. A kilometer from Piculponen we turn out to pass a clanking column of gray transports, plodding on toward the front. Noticing a wagon loaded with barbed wire, I said to Tzschirner: "What will you do, make this position at Tauroggen permanent? The entanglements are going up." "Ah, yes, for a time. It is best always to be prepared," and he smiles. In this clear, cold air our exhaust is barking in loud exaggeration, but as we crest the hill near the huddled houses of Kamstpauriken, we hear a foreign sound. Somewhere across the snows rifles are firing. "The Russian patrols are very active this morning," Tzschirner is saying. "How far off is that shooting?" I ask. "About a mile. On a road which is parallel to this." "How many in a patrol?" I was thinking that we were five--Gelbricke, who must drive the car; Seyring, the red-haired mechanician, who could use a carbine; Tzschirner, with his Browning automatic; Corey, with a fountain pen, and I with a camera. "They are very many, the Russians," Tzschirner was saying. "They never ride a patrol under twenty men. It is dangerous," continues Tzschirner with the air of one doing his duty by saying that, although I knew he was spoiling for a scrap. "We may be surrounded; but I do not think. _Naturlich_, there is the chance. You wish?" "Rittmeister, these Russians would have to use the road and we could see them coming in time." "Oh, no," Tzschirner says quickly. "They often ride over the fields; it is very good for patrol, the country here." "What grand little comforter," I murmur. Tzschirner looks around and grins. "I will protect you." I feel he has been quietly laughing at me, until from behind a distant snow capped ridge I see a black belch of smoke. "They have burned a village," exclaims Tzschirner.