maliciously. They crept from door to
door, stole up the stone steps and vanished, appeared, as it seemed,
right beneath our horses' feet and disappeared. If we caught them with
our eyes they bowed with a loathsome, trembling subservience. There
were many little Jewish children, with glittering eyes, naked feet,
bare scrubby heads and white faces. Nikolai at length caught an old
man and asked him where the soldiers were. The old man replied in very
tolerable Russian that all the soldiers had gone last night--not one
of them remained--but he believed that some more were shortly to
arrive. They were always coming and going, he said.

We stayed where we were, under the blazing sun, and held council. In
every doorway, in every shadow, there were eyes watching us. The whole
town was overweighted, overwhelmed by the brooding Forest. From where
we stood I could see it rising on every side of us like a trembling,
threatening green wave; in the furious heat of the sun the white ruins
seemed to jump and leap.

"Well," I said to Trenchard, "what's to be done?"

He pulled himself back from his thoughts.

He had been sitting in the cart, quite motionless, his face white and
hidden, as though he slept. He raised his tired, heavy eyes to my
face.

"Do?" he said.

"Yes," I answered impatiently. "Didn't you hear what Nikolai said?
There are no soldiers here. We can't find Maximoff because he isn't
here. We must go back, I suppose."

"Very well," he answered indifferently.

"I'm not going back," I said, "until I've had something to drink--tea
or coffee. I wonder whether there's anything here--any place we could
go to."

Nikolai inquired. Old Shylock pointed with his bony finger down the
street.

"Very fine restaurant there," he said.

"Will you come and see?" I asked Trenchard.

"Very well," said Trenchard.

I told Nikolai to stay there and wait for us. I walked down the
street, followed by Trenchard. I found on my left, at the top of a
little flight of steps, a house that was for the most part untouched
by the general havoc around and about it. The lower windows were
cracked and the door open and gaping, but there stood, quite bravely
with new paint, the word "_Restoration_" on the lintel and there were
even curtains about the upper windows. Passing through the door we
found a room decently clean, and behind the little bar a stout
red-faced Galician in white shirt and grey trousers, a citizen of the
normal world. We w