They were grouped about the fireplace. A picture from an illustrated
weekly was upon the log walls, and three rifles were paralleled on pegs.
Equipments hung on handy projections, and some tin dishes lay upon
a small pile of firewood. A folded tent was serving as a roof.
The sunlight, without, beating upon it, made it glow a light yellow shade.
A small window shot an oblique square of whiter light upon the cluttered
floor. The smoke from the fire at times neglected the clay chimney and
wreathed into the room, and this flimsy chimney of clay and sticks
made endless threats to set ablaze the whole establishment.

The youth was in a little trance of astonishment. So they were
at last going to fight. On the morrow, perhaps, there would be a
battle, and he would be in it. For a time he was obliged to
labor to make himself believe. He could not accept with
assurance an omen that he was about to mingle in one of those
great affairs of the earth.

He had, of course, dreamed of battles all his life--of vague and
bloody conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire.
In visions he had seen himself in many struggles. He had
imagined peoples secure in the shadow of his eagle-eyed prowess.
But awake he had regarded battles as crimson blotches on the
pages of the past. He had put them as things of the bygone with
his thought-images of heavy crowns and high castles. There was a
portion of the world's history which he had regarded as the time
of wars, but it, he thought, had been long gone over the horizon
and had disappeared forever.

From his home his youthful eyes had looked upon the war in his
own country with distrust. It must be some sort of a play affair.