Meanwhile it had started to go dark. The dying light still glowed in trees and bushes while the sun went down among the dusky foothills of the Alps like a dead, sad and handsome man. The grim battle was over. The snow-white, pallid Alps let their fine, cold brows hang down and in the background was the world. Burial details gathered up the dead, went around quietly doing this, lifted up the fallen who were lying on the ground and took them to the mass grave that other men had dug. Standards and armour were piled up together till they formed an imposing heap. Money and treasure together. Everything was set down in a certain place. Most of these strong and simple men had grown silent and well-behaved. They were observing the captured valuables not without a melancholic contempt, walking up and down the meadows, looking at the faces of the slain and washing off the blood when it pleased them to see what the sullied facial features looked like. Two youths were found at the foot of some shrubs with young, bright faces, lips still smiling even in death and with their arms around each other as they lay on the ground. One of them had suffered a blow to the chest while the other had had his body ripped open. There was work for them to do till late at night. After that torches were used to find corpses. They came across the body of Arnold von Winkelried and beheld him with reverence. When the men buried him, they sang with deep voices one of their simple songs. There was no more pomp under the circumstances. There were no priests there. What would one have done with priests? Praying and thanking God for the hard-fought victory had to happen quietly without church candles. Then they went home. And after a few days they were scattered back again in their high valleys. They were working, serving, saving, looking after businesses, doing what needed to be done and still spoke occasionally of the battle they had lived through, though not much. They were not hailed as heroes (well, perhaps a little in Luzern on their triumphal entry to that town). No matter. The days glided over it, for the days, with their multiplicity of cares, were harsh and raw even then, in 1386. A great deed does not strike from the calendar the arduous sequence of days. Life does not stand still for long on the day of a battle. History just pauses a short while until it too, forced on by life's imperious demands, has to hasten forward. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Battle of Sempach, by Robert Walser