As we pass between the houses a bullet goes snaggering off a roof. It would seem to be a last wild shot for as we turn up the road to the outpost, everything is still. In the little cemetery to the left of the barricade, I see soldiers, squatting behind the tombstones; the great wooden cross suggests an incongruous peace. Calling the sentries who but a time ago, we heard discussing Wagner and Strauss, the Ober-Lieutenant taxes them with questions. They salute and hurry behind the cart, which they have turned blocking the road. "Any wounded?" calls the Ober-Lieutenant down the trench. "_Nur Russlanders!_" The soldiers laugh and slip fresh clips into their guns. "_Alles ruhig_," the Ober-Lieutenant is saying as we walk along the line, apparently scornful of the Russians that the pines will not let him see. "Only nervousness, that shooting." "You do not believe there will be an attack?" He shakes his head. "I think not." But across the belt to the woods, I see the black winged birds, slowly flying and waddling over the ground. * * * * * 7:30 P. M. During dinner the Ober-Lieutenant has avoided all shop talk. No such food as in the West, here--just a stew of white beans and beef and thick bread, carved off a big black loaf. The thoughtful looking Colonel produces a flask of cognac, and we are finishing with cigarettes, when an under officer reports. "Both lights are in position," I heard the Colonel say and dismissing the under officer, he seems absorbed in the end of his cigarette. In this barren room, where the candles are scattering strange shadows on the unpainted walls you become conscious of an unspoken army. The Ober-Lieutenant who is talking Nietzsche with me; seems not to have his mind upon it; when appealed to, the Colonel joins in with monosyllables. The orderlies who this afternoon were making reports, are gone but in the corner by the window, a soldier sits with a field telephone in his lap; slowly he writes upon a pad. "In America," the Ober-Lieutenant is saying, "you have taken too seriously our academic thinkers. Will you believe it, that until we heard about the book from England, not a thousand of my countrymen had read Bernhardi. Suppose we were to judge America by some of the things published there?" I can see his point. A mad buzz from the telephone jerks us up with a start. With the air, of something expected, fulfilled, the Colonel rubs the fire off his cigarettes. "What is it?" he calls. The soldier's manner is decisive. "Patrols report men massing from the woods in the road."