illion pieces, to earth. The rifle-fire rose from horizon to
horizon like a living thing. Now the shrapnel rose, breaking on the
dark sky in flashes of fire. Suddenly some house was burning! The
flames rose in a column, breaking into tongues that advanced and
retreated, climbed and fell again. In the farthest distance other
houses had caught and their glow trembled in faint yellow light fading
into shadow when the projector found them. With a roar at our back
our own cannon began; the world bellowed and shook and trembled at our
feet.

We reached the top of the hill. I caught one final vision, the picture
seeming to sway with all its lights, its shadows, its giant eye that
governed it, its colours and its mist, like a tapestry blown by wind.
I saw in our wagon, their faces lighted by the fire, Semyonov and
Marie Ivanovna. Semyonov knelt on the wooden barrier of the cart, his
figure outlined square and strong. She was kneeling behind him, her
hands on his shoulders. Her face was exultant, victorious. She seemed
to me the inspirer of that scene, to have created it, to hold it now
with the authority of her gaze.

Behind her Trenchard was in shadow.

We were on the hill-top, the cannon, as it seemed, on every side of
us. We hung for a moment so, the sky flaming up to our feet. Then we
had fallen down between the woods, every step muffling the sounds.
Everything was dark as though a curtain had been dropped.

Semyonov turned round to me.

"Well," he said, "there's your battle.... You've been in the thick of
it to-day!"

I saw his eyes turned to Marie Ivanovna as though already he possessed
her.

I was suddenly tired, disappointed, exhausted.

"We've not been in the thick of it," I answered. "We have missed
it--all day we have missed it!"

I tried to settle down in my wagon. "I beg your pardon," I said
irritably to Trenchard, "but your boot is in my neck!"

CHAPTER IV

NIKITIN

But this is not my story. If I have hitherto taken the chief place it
is because, in some degree, the impressions of Trenchard, Marie
Ivanovna, Andrey Vassilievitch must, during those first days, have run
with my own. We had all been brought to the same point--that last
vision from the hill of the battle of S---- and from that day we were
no longer apprentices.

I now then retire. What happened to myself during the succeeding
months is of no matter. But two warnings may be offered. The first is
that it must not be supposed th