They're real enough and are probably somewhere now quietly studying, or teaching, or sleeping--I envy them.... A thing that happened this morning disturbed us all. Four soldiers came out of the Forest quite mad. They seemed rational enough at first and said that they'd been sent out of the first line trenches with contusion--one of them had a bleeding finger, but the others were untouched. Then one of them, a middle-aged man with a black beard, began quite gravely to tell us that the Forest was moving. They had seen it with their own eyes. They had watched all the trees march slowly forward like columns of soldiers and soon the whole Forest would move and would crush every one in it. It was all very well fighting Austrians, but whole forests was more than any one could expect of them. Then suddenly one of them cried out, pointing with his finger: "See, Your Honour--there it comes!... Ah! let us run! let us run!" One of them began to cry. It was very disagreeable. I saw Andrey Vassilievitch who was present glance anxiously through the window at the Forest and then gravely check himself and look at me nervously to see whether I had noticed. The men afterwards fell into a strange kind of apathy. We sent them off to Mittoevo in the afternoon. I want now to remember as exactly as possible a strange conversation I had this evening with Semyonov. I came up when it was getting dusk to the bedroom. One of the Austrian batteries was spitting away over the hill but we were not replying. Everything this afternoon has looked as though they were preparing for a heavy attack. Our little window was open and the sky beyond was a sort of very pale green, and against this you could see a flush of colour rising and falling like the opening and shutting of a door. Everything quite silent except the Austrian cannon and a soldier, delirious, downstairs, singing. The Forest was deep black, but you could see the soldiers' fires gleaming here and there like beasts' eyes. Our room was almost dark and I was very startled to find Semyonov sitting on his bed and staring in front of him. He looked like a wooden figure sitting there, and he didn't move as I came in. I'm glad that although I'm still awkward and clumsy with him (as I am, and always will be, I suppose, with every one) I'm not afraid of him any more. The room was so dark that he looked like a shadow. I had intended to fetch something and go away, but instead of that I sat down on my bed, feeling suddenly very tired and lethargic. "Well, Mr.," he said in the ironical voice he always uses to me. (I would wish now to repeat if I can every word of our conversation.) "Krylov has been again," I said. "He told Nikitin that we ought to go to-night. Nikitin asked him whether the Division had plenty of wagons and Krylov admitted that there weren't nearly enough. He agreed that it would make a lot of difference if we could keep this place going until to-morrow night--all the same he advised us to leave."