The footpath by the river, as the master had premised, was well protected. The Ourthe ran swiftly at the bottom of a wooded gully and the path closely followed the windings of the stream. The shells, Horace thought, would scarcely reach him there. The boy's mind, however, was not running on personal danger, but he was reviewing the tangled skein of circumstances which the master had explained to him as forming the cause of the war. Ah! From far away came a sound like the crushing of tissue-paper, which rapidly deepened and angered into a high droning hum suggestive of a hurricane of flying hornets. A shell! Facing it alone was a very different matter from when he had been with the master. In a flash the boy realized the value of companionship in peril. Choking suddenly in panic and with a prickling sense all over his body as though the blood had gone to sleep and would not run in his veins, Horace threw himself down on the soft ground. The shell seemed to be coming straight for where he lay. The air quivered like a violin-string across which a demon-bow was drawn. One--two seconds passed, each apparently an hour long. Then--a flash! The shell had fallen on the other side of the river. A frantic desire urged Horace to leap to his feet and run on, but his legs refused to obey. "My legs are cowards," said Horace, half aloud, "but I'm not. I'm going to get up." Yet he lay there, and lay there for some time. It was fear, and he recognized it, but the cool, moist earth of the forest was very welcome. His forehead was hot and he rested it against the mulch of the fallen leaves. Another shell buzzed in the distance. Again the soft swish, again the loud hum and again the deafening crash, this time within the little valley of the river itself. Stones and earth flew in every direction. The boy could hear them snitch through the trees. He flattened himself closer to the ground. With a certain tranquillity he watched the cloud of dust settling, not sure whether his inward quietness was the regaining of control or a certain numbness of the senses. Gradually he realized that it was the former. This was the fourth shell which had struck quite near him and he was still unhurt. [Illustration: _French Official Photograph._ THE MODERN OGRE OF THE FOREST. Mammoth French howitzer, well camouflaged in a dense wood.] A strange sense of safety took possession of the boy. If four shells had missed him, why not forty, why not four hundred? With that thought, the strange fiber of life which welds will and muscle into action resumed its course, like a wire when electric contact is made, and Horace, ere he was aware, leaped to his feet and found himself walking along the path again. Where the shell had struck, he stopped. The hole was twenty feet across. Dust was still sifting through the trees and the tearing radius of the steel splinters could be traced in the riven and mangled branches overhead.