ed through a gate to the right, where in what
appeared to be a yard of some kind, the kitchen was
established and then, from out of the very earth as it
seemed, soldiers appeared, clustering around it with their
tin cans. The soldier who was in charge of the party said to
me in a confidential whisper: "There's plenty of _Kasha_,
your Honour, and the soup will last us, too."

"Very good," said I in a bewildered voice. At the strange
accent the soldier looked at me, and then I looked at the
soldier. The soldier was a stranger to me (a pleasant round
man with a huge smiling mouth and two chins) and I was a
stranger to the soldier.

"Well," said the soldier, looking, "I thought...."

"I thought--" said I, most uncomfortable.

The soldiers vanished back into the darknesses round the
kitchen. Voices, whispering, could be heard.

"Now, that's the end," thought I. "I'm shot as a German
spy."

I looked at the soldiers, clustered like bees round the
kitchen, then I slipped through the gate into the dark road.
I stood there listening. The battle seemed to have drawn
away, because I could hear rifles, machine-guns, cannon
muffled round a corner of the hill. Here there was now
silence, broken only by soldiers who hurried up the road or
went in and out at the villa gates. I felt abandoned. How
was I to discover Nikitin again? Before what gate had I
stood? I did not know; I seemed to know nothing.

I moved down the road, very miserable and very cold. I had
stupidly left my coat in one of the wagons. I walked on, my
boots knocking against one another, thinking to myself: "If
I'm not given something to do very soon I shall be just as I
was the other night at Nijnieff--and then I shall suddenly
take to my heels down this road as hard as I can go!"

It was then that I tumbled straight into the arms of
Nikitin, who was standing at the edge of the forest,
watching for me. I was so happy that I felt now afraid of
nothing. I held Nikitin's arm, babbling something about
kitchens and Germans.

"Well, I don't understand what you say," I remember Nikitin
replied; "but you must come and work. There's plenty of it."

We moved to a cottage on the very boundary of the forest,
where a little common ran down to the moonlight. Passing