disposal; when a few hours later another Ruthenian fugitive arrived, our last-found ally helped to make him feel comfortable, stroking his face and relieving his apprehensions, amid the broad smiles of the Russian soldiers. The day we spent under the fire of 180 bombs, which fell often along the line of the entrenchments, but only wounded some five or six men. It was very unpleasant for the infantry to have to sit under this alarming noise, and certainly the men would infinitely have preferred to attack. From the Austrian side no other sign was made, and there was no such mark as the Russian artillery or infantry think it worth while to fire at. In the evening I was coming back on horseback in the twilight when a shell fell on the road close in front of me. This was the last as far as I was concerned, and I slept in comfort at the first-aid point of the regiment. _January 29._ On my way to the H regiment I had to pass over a commanding plateau, and from hence, looking backward, I could see endless and intermingling lines of wooded hills with the main masses of the Carpathians in the far distance. I commented to my orderly on the beauty of the view, and as usual when I made any pointless remark, he replied courteously, "I understand," which meant "I don't." Shrapnel was falling by a fir-wood on the crest, and we took a lower road to the regimental staff. The Colonel was a soldier of an English type, with a grace which I have seldom seen in a man. Altogether, minds seem more at ease at the front than anywhere else in Russia; there is the fullest consciousness of heavy losses and of straining conditions, but all this seems only to make every-day life more simple. There was a strange incident after lunch: one of the regimental doctors had just gone out of the door when he was bitten by a mad dog that was running wild in the woods, and the place had to be burnt out with a hot iron. One comes on many "extras" of this kind, which have nothing to do with the war but seem to fit themselves into it. When twilight was come, I made another of these foot-pace rides over frozen fields and gullies to the lines of the regiment. Halfway, by some trees and a stream, we met a very young soldier who reported the presence of "Free Austrians" in a neighbouring hut. These turned out to be only the local peasants; and my orderly, who was an old soldier, was very outspoken with his rebuke. We soon reached a hut, containing two commanders of battalions, with a young officer who seemed to me a type of that fearlessness that I have seen everywhere in the Russian army. They wanted to give away all their chocolates and other luxuries, and sent guides to take me to the trenches.