This countryside was to his taste. He liked the contrast of rugged hills with fertile valley; of the primeval mountain growth of huge chestnut-oaks and laurel, with the luxuriant rhododendrons, tropical in their leafy richness; of the cold streams and rough roads with the formal orderliness of this well-kept summer place. He sensed something of this dramatic contrast in these people who had come so unexpectedly into his life. Bud and Roxie set against Howe and Wilmer heightened his interest in both. They stood for two different periods. And yet for all he knew the difference between them might not be as great as it seemed. That was the striking fact against which he was continually bumping during the war; the amazing likeness of peoples he had always considered so essentially different, and the amazing differences between those he thought identical. This held true even of different civilizations. It held true of different historical epochs. The past and the present were all jumbled together over there just as the dead and the living were. It was sometimes difficult to distinguish one from the other. And they were easily interchangeable. He remembered with particular vividness an old French town in which he had been billeted--a town dating back, not years like towns at home, but centuries. If anything might be thought to be deep-rooted and fixed in its associations with the past, it was this stone village, gray and heavy with age. And yet in a night Allston had seen a rude interruption of its traditions. The inhabitants had been hurried away to escape heavy gunfire when he and a few other officers entered the silent streets. Only the empty shell of this ancient town remained. Yet doors were open, tables set, beds in order. Even the old town clock was going. It made him jump when it struck out with leisurely resonance and indifferent concern each passing hour. But the population, boasting kinship back to Cæsar, had vanished in a day to give place to a few sprightly young officers bred in a country which three hundred years before had been savage. These soldier cubs ate at the time-stained tables, slept in the hallowed beds, while the night stars looked down undisturbed. It was not easy after this for Allston to believe that centuries counted for much towards stability. It was still more difficult when a little later he saw varying breeds of men tearing at each other’s throats like jungle beasts. He was one of them and tore as hard as any. And then--presto--this was over and the breeds became polite and civilized again, and the ancient townsfolk returned to their abodes and remade their beds and reset their tables and sent Allston and the others--such of them as were not buried with the dead centurions--back to their own young land.