AFTER the red round eye of the sun had stared at the little
plain and its burden, darkness, a sable mercy, came heavily upon
it, and the wan hands of the dead were no longer seen in strange
frozen gestures.
The heights in front of the plain shone with tiny camp-fires,
and from the town in the rear, small shimmerings ascended from the
blazes of the bivouac. The plain was a black expanse upon which,
from time to time, dots of light, lanterns, floated slowly here and
there. These fields were long steeped in grim mystery.
Suddenly, upon one dark spot, there was a resurrection. A
strange thing had been groaning there, prostrate. Then it suddenly
dragged itself to a sitting posture, and became a man.
The man stared stupidly for a moment at the lights on the
hill, then turned and contemplated the faint coloring over the
town. For some moments he remained thus, staring with dull eyes,
his face unemotional, wooden.
Finally he looked around him at the corpses dimly to be seen.
No change flashed into his face upon viewing these men. They
seemed to suggest merely that his information concerning himself
was not too complete. He ran his fingers over his arms and chest,
bearing always the air of an idiot upon a bench at an almshouse
door.
Finding no wound in his arms nor in his chest, he raised his
hand to his head, and the fingers came away with some dark liquid
upon them. Holding these fingers close to his eyes, he scanned
them in the same stupid fashion, while his body gently swayed.
The soldier rolled his eyes again toward the town. When he
arose, his clothing peeled from the frozen ground like wet paper.
Hearing the sound of it, he seemed to see reason for deliberation.
He paused and looked at the ground, then at his trousers, then at
the ground.
Finally he went slowly off toward the faint reflection,
holding his hands palm outward before him, and walking in the
manner of a blind man.
