hinges, an irregular oval hole, large enough to drive a motor-car
through, rose from the ground and came to a point just below the
overhang of the roof. The edges of the broken stone were clean and new
in contrast to the time-soiled outer wall of the dwelling.

A pile of this clean stone lay on the ground at the outer opening of the
orifice, mixed with fragments of red tiles.

"They killed two there yesterday," said the lieutenant, pointing out the
débris.

The village, a farming hamlet transformed by the vicinity of a great
foundry into something neither a village nor a town, was full of
soldiers; there were soldiers in the streets, soldiers standing in
doorways, soldiers cooking over wood fires, soldiers everywhere. And
looking at the muddy village-town full of men in uniforms of blue, old
uniforms of blue, muddy uniforms of blue, in blue that was blue-gray and
blue-green from wear and exposure to the weather, I realized that the
old days of beautiful, half-barbaric uniforms were gone forever, and
that, in place of the old romantic war of cavalry charges and great
battles in the open, a new, more terrible war had been created, a war
that had not the chivalric externals of the old.

After Dieulouard began the swathe of stillness.

Following the western bank of the canal of the Moselle the road made a
great curve round the base of a hill descending to the river, and then
mounted a little spur of the valley wall. Beyond the spur the road went
through lonely fields, in which were deserted farmhouses surrounded by
acres of neglected vines, now rank and Medusa-like in their weedy