she said. "We have passed such a lot of them."

Carlton nodded.

"And did you notice that they all faced only one way?"

Carlton laughed, and nodded again. "Towards Germany," he said.

By the next day they had left the tall poplars and white roads
behind them, and were crossing the land of low shiny black
helmets and brass spikes. They had come into a country of low
mountains and black forests, with old fortified castles
topping the hills, and with red-roofed villages scattered
around the base.

"How very military it all is!" Mrs. Downs said. "Even the men
at the lonely little stations in the forests wear uniforms;
and do you notice how each of them rolls up his red flag and
holds it like a sword, and salutes the train as it passes?"

They spent the hour during which the train shifted from one
station in Vienna to the other driving about in an open
carriage, and stopped for a few moments in front of a cafe to
drink beer and to feel solid earth under them again, returning
to the train with a feeling which was almost that of getting
back to their own rooms. Then they came to great steppes
covered with long thick grass, and flooded in places with
little lakes of broken ice; great horned cattle stood
knee-deep in this grass, and at the villages and way-stations
were people wearing sheepskin jackets and waistcoats covered