seemed then to be communing with the viands.

He accepted new environment and circumstance with great coolness,
eating from his haversack at every opportunity. On the march he
went along with the stride of a hunter, objecting to neither
gait nor distance. And he had not raised his voice when he had
been ordered away from three little protective piles of earth
and stone, each of which had been an engineering feat worthy of
being made sacred to the name of his grandmother.

In the afternoon, the regiment went out over the same ground it
had taken in the morning. The landscape then ceased to threaten
the youth. He had been close to it and become familiar with it.

When, however, they began to pass into a new region, his old fears
of stupidity and incompetence reassailed him, but this time
he doggedly let them babble. He was occupied with his problem,
and in his deperation he concluded that the stupidity did not
greatly matter.

Once he thought he had concluded that it would be better to get
killed directly and end his troubles. Regarding death thus out
of the corner of his eye, he conceived it to be nothing but rest,
and he was filled with a momentary astonishment that he should have
made an extraordinary commotion over the mere matter of getting killed.
He would die; he would go to some place where he would be understood.
It was useless to expect appreciation of his profound and fine sense from
such men as the lieutenant. He must look to the grave for comprehension.

The skirmish fire increased to a long clattering sound. With it