back, and for my very life could not hold myself from calling
out:

"Who's there?"

I waited, then called more loudly: "Trenchard! Trenchard!" I laughed
at myself, leant again on the trench and puffed at my cigarette. Then
once more I was absolutely assured that some one watched me.

I called again: "Who's there?"

Then quite suddenly and to my own absurd relief Trenchard appeared,
stumbling forward over some roughness in the ground almost into my
arms:

"I say, it's beastly here," he cried. "Let's go on--the frogs...."

He had caught my hand.

"Well," I said, "what did you find?"

"Nothing--only ... I don't know.... It's as though some one were
watching me. It's getting late, isn't it? The frogs...." he said
again--"I hate them. They seem to be triumphing."

We climbed into the trap and drove on in silence.

I was half asleep when at last we left the plain and dropped down into
the valley beyond. I was surprised to discover on looking at my watch
that it was only eleven o'clock; we had been, it seemed to me, hours
crossing that plain. "It's a silly thing," I said to Trenchard, "but
it would take quite a lot to get me to drive back over that again." He
nodded his head. We drove over a bridge, up a little hill and were in
the rough moonlit square of O----, our destination. Almost immediately
we were climbing the dark rickety stairs of our dwelling. There were
lights, shouts of welcome, Molozov our chief, sisters, doctors,
students, the room almost filled with a table covered with food--cold
meat, boiled eggs, sausage, jam, sweets, and of course a huge samovar.
I can only say that never once, during my earlier experience with the
Otriad, had I been so rejoiced to see lights and friendly faces. I
looked round for Trenchard. He had already discovered Marie Ivanovna
and was standing with her at the window.

I learned at breakfast the next morning that we were at once to move
to a house outside the village. The fantastic illusions that my drive
of the evening before had bred in me now in the clear light of morning
entirely deserted me. Moreover fantasy had slender opportunity of
encouragement in the presence of Molozov.

Molozov, I would wish to say once and for all, was the heart and soul
of our enterprise. Without him the whole organisation so admirably
supported by the energetic ladies and gentlemen in Petrograd, would
have tumbled instantly into a thousand pieces. In Molozov they had
discovered exactly th