o time." He was a large clumsy creature, like an eager
overgrown puppy; he was one of the four or five Nikolais in our
Otriad, and he is to be noticed in this history because he attached
himself from the very beginning to Trenchard with that faithful and
utterly unquestioning devotion of which the Russian soldier is so
frequently capable. He must, I think, have seen something helpless and
unhappy in Trenchard's appearance on this evening. Sancho to our Don
Quixote he was from that first moment.

"Yes, he's an English gentleman," I said when he had listened for a
moment to Trenchard's Russian.

"Like yourself," said Nikolai.

"Yes, Nikolai. You must look after him. He'll be strange here at
first."

"_Slushaiu_ (I hear)."

That was all he said. He got up on to his seat, his broad back was
bent over his horses.

"Well, and how have things been, Nikolai, busy?"

"_Nikak nyet_--not at all. Very quiet."

"No wounded?"

"Nothing at all, _Barin_, for two weeks now."

"Have you liked that?"

"_Tak totchno._ Certainly yes."

"No, but have you?"

"_Tak totchno, Barin._"

Then he turned and gave, for one swift instant, a glance at Trenchard,
who was, very clumsily, climbing into the carriage. Nikolai looked at
him gravely. His round, red face was quite expressionless as he turned
back and began to abjure his horses in that half-affectionate,
half-abusive and wholly human whispering exclamation that Russians use
to their animals. We started.

I have mentioned in these pages that I had already spent three months
with our Otriad at the Front. I cannot now define exactly what it was
that made this drive on this first evening something utterly distinct
and apart from all that I had experienced during that earlier period.
It is true that, before, I had been for almost two months in one place
and had seen nothing at all of actual warfare, except the feeding and
bandaging of the wounded. But I had imagined then, nevertheless, that
I was truly "in the thick of things," as indeed, in comparison with my
Moscow or Petrograd life, I was. We had not now driven through the
quiet evening air for ten minutes before I knew, with assured
certainty, that a new phase of life was, on this day, opening before
me; the dark hedges, the thin fine dust on the roads, the deep purple
colour of the air, beat at my heart, as though they themselves were
helping with quiet insistency to draw me into the drama. And yet
nothing could have been