Large, widening, hideously distorted, his face, slowly swelling, rises
from the paper like the face of Jesus of the handkerchief.

It was just like this that the three war correspondents saw him lying at
the edge of the woods on that midsummer morning and--turned away
involuntarily with almost the military exactness of soldiers at a "right
about face." Their visit was meant for _me_! I was to furnish them
with carriage and horses because the automobile that was to have darted
them through the danger zone was lying on the road to Goerz with a
broken axle.

Charming gentlemen, in wonderfully well-cut breeches and traveling caps,
looking as if they had stepped out of a Sherlock Holmes motion picture.
They offered to carry letters back and deliver messages, and they found
everything on my place perfectly fascinating, and laughed heartily at my
mattress of willow twigs--and were particularly grateful when the
carriage stood ready to carry them off before the daily bombardment of
the Italians began.

On driving out of the woods they had to pass the wounded man again with
the hideously disfigured face. He was crouching on the meadow. But this
time they did not see him. As if at command they turned their heads the
other way and with animated gestures viewed the damage done by an air
raid the day before, as though they were already sitting over a table in
a coffee-house.

I lost my breath, as though I had run a long distance up-hill. The place
where I stood suddenly seemed strange and altered. Was that the same
piece of woods into which shells had so often come crashing, which the
huge Caproni planes had circled about with wide-spread wings like