The Commandant stepped down from his watch tower by the railway tracks. This watch tower was a house that had been struck but not tumbled by the bombardment. It was black and gashed, and looked deserted. That was the merit of it, for every minute of the day and night, some watcher of the Belgians sat in the window, one flight up, by the two machine guns, gazing out over the flooded fields, and the thin white strip of road that led eastward to the enemy trenches. Once, fifteen mouse-colored uniforms had made a sortie down the road and toward the house, but the eye at the window had sighted them, and let them draw close till the aim was very sure. Since then, there had been no one coming down the road. But a watcher, turn by turn, was always waiting. The Commandant liked the post, for it was the key to the safety of Pervyse. He felt he was guarding the three women, when he sat there on the rear supports of a battered chair, and smoked and peered out into the east. He came slowly down the road,--old wounds were throbbing in his members--and, as always, turned into the half-shattered dwelling where the nurses were making their home and tending their wounded. "How is the sentry-box to-night?" asked Hilda. "Draughty," said the Commandant, with a shiver; "it rocks in the wind." "You must have some rag-time," prescribed Hilda, and seated herself at the piano. It was Pervyse's only piano, untouched by shell and shrapnel, and nightly it sounded the praise of things. The little group drew close about the American girl, as she led them in a "coon song." "I say," said Hilda, looking up from the keys, "would any one believe it?" "Believe what?" asked Mrs. Bracher. "The lot of us here, exchanging favorites, with war just outside our window. I tell you," repeated Hilda, "no one would believe it." "They don't have to," retorted Mrs. Bracher, sharply. She had grown weary of telling folks at home how matters stood, and then having them say, "Fancy now, really?" The methodical guns had pounded the humanity out of Pervyse, and, with the living, had gone music and art. There was nowhere in the wasted area for the tired soldiers to find relief from their monotony. War is a dreary thing. With one fixed idea in the mind--to wait, to watch for some careless head over the mounded earth, and then to kill--war is drearier than slave labor, more nagging than an imperfect marriage, more dispiriting than unsuccessful sin. The pretty brass utensils of the dwellings had been pillaged. Canvas, which had once contained bright faces, was in shreds. The figures of Christ and his friends that had stood high in the niches of the church, had fallen forward on their faces. All the little devices of beauty, cherished by the villagers, had been shattered.