The usual story: abandoned by its inhabitants; houses shuttered and deserted; the whole town in darkness, except that along the walls of the houses, wherever space permitted, camp fires had been lighted, and refugees, women, children and old men, were crouched in groups, sleeping, or sitting in silence, waiting for the dawn. The fires illumined the faces of the fugitives and showed suffering not easy to forget. When the camp fires were left behind, the darkness was complete, and even objects immediately in front were only visible because they showed black against the shining mud. It was a world of shadows, and of dreariness, of wet and cold. And never for a moment had the sounds ceased, of the creaking of wagons, and the squish, squish of oxen-hoofs pressing glutinous mud. Sometimes my horse would stumble, in the dark, over a little flock of sheep that was being driven with a convoy for the purposes of food; or a scared and tiny shrew mouse, absorbed in its own affairs, would dart across the road and escape death by a miracle. I looked behind me, and saw, only darkness and sorrow, columns, and confusion. Thousands of unoffending people were suffering heartache, separation, desolation; and, as the guns reminded me, thousands of brave men were, a couple of miles away from us, facing at this moment, a murderous death. How could I help asking myself where, in all this hell, is God? And immediately the answer came. As if in purposeful response, the mountains in the east threw off the blackness of the night, and showed rich purple against the lightening sky. Over the mountains rose clouds of gold, and pink, and aerial blue, and as the rays of sunlight shot triumphantly into the sky, white mists, thick and soft, that had lain hidden, became, for a moment of pure joy, bathed in all the rainbow colours; and one daring cloud of brilliant gold spread itself in the shape of a great dragon across the dark sky. Glories and beauties everywhere, if we could only catch the meaning. But while I was wondering at it all, the glories vanished; the time for understanding had not yet come; the hills became commonplace, the prosaic light of day was with us, and I saw once more the nightmare picture of drab-dressed, mud-stained soldiers, splashing with their sandalled feet, in the sloppy mud; sometimes stumbling, then rising, smothered with mud, without a word; weren't there worse troubles than that? "Hleba!" (Bread!) "None for three days," were the first words I heard. I don't know whether I liked least trekking by day, or by night. By day nothing of the horrors by which one was surrounded, was left to the imagination, but by night there were added difficulties. For, apart from danger from the enemy, the roads, or tracks, were full of risks and hazards, even when by daylight these were visible in advance; but they were dangerous when one was dependent on the light of a small lantern, to reveal mud-holes, boulders, fallen trees, precipices, or broken bridges.