D'Artagnan stopped, took off his helmet, then walked slowly into the open. We took off our hats and followed him. The clearing was a military cemetery--it held the graves of d'Artagnan's dead. A tall white wooden cross at the top rose almost to the tops of the pines growing above it. On the cross-piece was written: "To our comrades of the --th Brigade, killed by the enemy." At the foot of the great cross, stretched in military alignment over the clearing were hundreds of graves headed by little crosses. So abrupt was the slope the dead soldiers stood almost erect--facing Germany. Narrow graveled walks separated them, and on each cross hung festoons of flowers kept always fresh by the comrades who remained. We followed d'Artagnan across the silent place and stood behind him as he faced, with bared head, the great cross. He made the sign of the cross upon his breast. There was not a bowed head: we all lifted them high to read the words written there. No one spoke; the wind rustled softly in the tops of the pines that pressed so densely about us. It was dark among the trees, but the clearing was still mellow with the fading sunlight. "The sun always comes here first in the morning," d'Artagnan said softly, "and this is the last place from which it goes." He swung around with his back to the great cross and flung out his alpenstock in a gesture that swept the valley before us. His voice rose harshly: "Over there is the enemy," he thundered. "Those who rest here look at them face to face!" His arm dropped; his voice sank. "They didn't get over there. But their souls remain here always to urge us and to point the way which we must go." He stopped and seemed to listen. The wind had died; even the tree tops were still. The sun had gone; the dark began to sweep up over the graves. D'Artagnan leaned upon his alpenstock; his eyes were closed. We did not stir, nor hardly breathe. D'Artagnan was in communion with the soul of his beloved France. PART FIVE THREE CHAPTERS IN CONCLUSION CHAPTER XX A REARPOST OF WAR After a year or more of war, even a latter-day war correspondent who gets a personally restricted war office Cook's tour to the front semi-occasionally, may yearn for peace. This is especially true in the case of a regular correspondent with the French army, because to France there come so many senators, statesmen and "molders of neutral opinion," bearing letters from President, King or Prelate, that the regular correspondent has hard work to edge in even his legitimate number of tours.