The men stood about balancing first on one foot and then on the other, stamping to get warm. On the other side of the river an old man with an oxcart had stopped and was looking sadly at the train. “Say, where's the front?” somebody shouted to him. Everybody took up the cry; “Say, where's the front?” The old man waved his hand, shook his head and shouted to the oxen. The oxen took up again their quiet processional gait and the old man walked ahead of them, his eyes on the ground. “Say, ain't the frogs dumb?” “Say, Dan,” said Bill Grey, strolling away from a group of men he had been talking to. “These guys say we are going to the Third Army.” “Say, fellers,” shouted Fuselli. “They say we're going to the Third Army.” “Where's that?” “In the Oregon forest,” ventured somebody. “That's at the front, ain't it?” At that moment the lieutenant strode by. A long khaki muffler was thrown carelessly round his neck and hung down his back. “Look here, men,” he said severely, “the orders are to stay in the cars.” The men slunk back into the cars sullenly. A hospital train passed, clanking slowly over the cross-tracks. Fuselli looked fixedly at the dark enigmatic windows, at the red crosses, at the orderlies in white who leaned out of the doors, waving their hands. Somebody noticed that there were scars on the new green paint of the last car. “The Huns have been shooting at it.” “D'ye hear that? The Huns tried to shoot up that hospital train.” Fuselli remembered the pamphlet “German Atrocities” he had read one night in the Y. M. C. A. His mind became suddenly filled with pictures of children with their arms cut off, of babies spitted on bayonets, of women strapped on tables and violated by soldier after soldier. He thought of Mabe. He wished he were in a combatant service; he wanted to fight, fight. He pictured himself shooting dozens of men in green uniforms, and he thought of Mabe reading about it in the papers. He'd have to try to get into a combatant service. No, he couldn't stay in the medics. The train had started again. Misty russet fields slipped by and dark clumps of trees that gyrated slowly waving branches of yellow and brown leaves and patches of black lace-work against the reddish-grey sky. Fuselli was thinking of the good chance he had of getting to be corporal. At night. A dim-lighted station platform. The company waited in two lines, each man sitting on his pack. On the opposite platform crowds of little men in blue with mustaches and long, soiled overcoats that reached almost to their feet were shouting and singing. Fuselli watched them with a faint disgust. “Gee, they got funny lookin' helmets, ain't they?” “They're the best fighters in the world,” said Eisenstein, “not that that's sayin' much about a man.” “Say, that's an M. P.,” said Bill Grey, catching Fuselli's arm. “Let's go ask him how near the front we are. I thought I heard guns a minute ago.”