By the light of the moon we mounted our horses and took the road once more to Mou-tien-ling. The valley lay before us folded in the death-like slumber that precedes the dawn. Against the opalescent sky the mountains were dark shadows, and in the pearly mist willow and birch took the feathery shape of palm. There was a brooding expectancy about the scene that worked strongly on the imagination. Our mood was attuned to the mystery of the night and we rode on in silence. Twelve hours before we were looking across the graves of wasted days. For a whole month we had camped in the squalid hamlet of Lien-chen-kwan and counted ourselves among its oldest habitants. When the Japanese army halts it halts with an air of permanence. The place is swept, houses are cleaned, bridges are built, roads made and repaired, store houses erected, trenches dug and earthworks constructed. You feel that you are settled for life, and are beginning to reconcile yourself to irresistable fate when, presto! the order comes to march. [Illustration: Captured Russian Guns.] “Military _attachés_ and foreign correspondents will assemble at Head-Quarters at three o’clock in the morning.” Nothing more was said, but we knew that it meant another step in our deliberate progress to Liao-yang. How changed was the scene from that of two weeks before. Then the road swarmed with armed men hurrying to the front; horses and guns swept onward in a roaring cataract and the glowing hills echoed with the thunders of war. Now we were a solitary troop of horsemen riding through a deserted valley, whither and with what purpose we knew not. Yet the breathless quiet and the dimness of the enfolding mist were filled with vague portents that touched deeper chords than those vibrated by the tumult of battle. We were conscious of the brooding presence of some mighty force which would appear and change earth and sky like a tornado, leaving death and destruction in its path.