On either side of you a wilderness of snow. Take your eyes off the road and you seem to be in the great forests of a new country. Look back on the road and turn sharply to avoid the first of a convoy of brand-new American tractors, or a maze of telephone wires with their red-and-white labels which have been pulled from their supports by the snow. The great rocks and banks resplendent with their coating of ice, the trees, the snow, the occasional deer, fox, or rabbit contrast strangely with the road--the narrow, winding, mountain road serving for almost all forms of traffic, save the railroad, known to man. Mules, mules, mules, always mules, with their drivers hanging on to the beasts' tails. H. DUDLEY HALE [Illustration] [Illustration] _Weeks of Quiet_ With the change of conductors N{o} 170 has fallen upon evil times. She has carried meat and bread for the Section, and even coal; she has run through miles of snowstorm to bring relief to those who were suffering from toothache, scarlatina, or mumps; and she has patiently borne _permissionnaires_ from hospital to railroad station; but the shriek of shot and shell has become entirely unfamiliar to her ears. At first it was the fault of the conductor, who had never conducted before reaching Bordeaux, and only some half-dozen times between leaving Bordeaux and arriving in Alsace. He was not adjudged capable of conducting up any mountain in general nor up the slopes adjoining Hartmannsweilerkopf in particular. He went up once or twice without 170, to inspect and experience, but it is an experience of which a little goes a long way when not prompted by duty. Afterward it was the fault of those who sit in the seats of the mighty, and still is, and apparently will remain so; but at no time was 170 to blame.