ndly and
caressed her pretty colt.

"The colt must be tied in the stall or he will follow her." So said
the cavalrymen. They threw a rope about his neck and made him fast in
the stable. Petit-Poulain was very much surprised, and he remonstrated
vainly with his fierce little heels.

They put a halter upon old Felice. Justine, the farmer's wife, met
them in the yard, and reproached them wildly in French. They laughed
boisterously, and answered her in German. Then they rode away, leading
old Felice, who kept turning her head and whinnying pathetically, for
she was thinking of Petit-Poulain.

Of peace I know and can speak,--of peace, with its solace of love,
plenty, honor, fame, happiness, and its pathetic tragedy of poverty,
heartache, disappointment, tears, bereavement. Of war I know nothing,
and never shall know; it is not in my heart of for my hand to break
that law which God enjoined from Sinai and Christ confirmed in Galilee.
I do not know of war, nor can I tell you of that battle which men with
immortal souls fought one glorious day in a fertile country with
vineyard hills all round about. But when night fell there was
desolation everywhere and death. The Eden was a wilderness; the
winding river was choked with mangled corpses; shell and shot had mowed
down the acres of waving grain, the exuberant orchards, the gardens and
the hedgerows; black, charred ruins, gaunt and ghostlike, marked the
spots where homes had stood. The vines had been cut and torn away, and
the despoiled hills seemed to crouch down like bereaved mothers under
the pitiless gaze of the myriad eyes of heaven.

The victors went their way; a greater triumph was in store for them; a
mighty capital was to be besieged; more homes were to be
desolated,--more blood shed, more hearts broken. So the victors went
their way, their hands red and their immortal souls elated.

In the early dawn a horse came galloping homeward. It is Felice, old
Felice, riderless, splashed with mud, wild-eyed, sore with fatigue!
Felice, Felice, what horrors hast thou not seen! If thou couldst
speak, if that tongue of thine could be loosed, what would it say of
those who, forgetful of their souls, sink lower than the soulless
brutes! Better it is thou canst not speak; the anguish in thine eyes,
the despair in thy honest heart, the fear, the awful fear in thy mother
breast,--what tongue could utter them?

Adown the road she galloped,--the same road she had traver