were thick enough to protect him for the moment from bullets, and
flinging himself down in the deep snow he crouched in the shadow until
he could regain sufficient breath for further flight. He heard more
shots fired, but evidently random triggers only had been pulled, as no
bullet struck near him.

The fall of snow ceased almost entirely, and the moon grew brighter and
brighter. Chastel was a vast white ruin, tinted with silver, and as such
it had an uncanny beauty of its own. But John, thankful that the snow
was so deep, lay buried in it, where it had drifted against the wall.
The Germans in a town so near the French lines were not likely to make a
diligent search for a single man, and he felt that he was safe if he did
not freeze to death.

Peeping above the snow he saw about fifty German infantrymen walk down
the road toward the river, their heavy boots crunching in the snow. They
were stalwart, ruddy fellows, boys of twenty-one or two--he knew now
that boys did most of the world's fighting--and he liked their simple,
honest faces. He felt anew that he did not hate the German people;
instead he felt friendship for them, but he did hate more intensely than
ever the medieval emperors and the little group of madmen about them
who, almost without warning, could devote millions to slaughter. An
intense democrat in the beginning and becoming more intense in the
furnace of war, he believed that the young German peasants coming down
the road would have much more chance before the Judgment Seat than the
princes and generals who so lightly sent them there.

The soldiers went on a little distance beyond the edge of the town. The
cessation of the snow and the brilliant moonlight enabled them to see
far into the plain below, where the hospital camp lay. John, looking in