sat at one end of it, his head bared to
catch the faint stir of air that sometimes dried his neck and
chin and saved him the trouble of pulling out a handkerchief. On
every side the wheat stubble stretched for miles and miles.
Lonely straw stacks stood up yellow in the sun and cast long
shadows. Claude peered anxiously along the distant locust hedges
which told where the road ran. Ernest Havel had promised to meet
him somewhere on the way home. He had not seen Ernest for a week:
since then Time had brought prodigies to birth.

At last he recognized the Havels' team along way off, and he
stopped and waited for Ernest beside a thorny hedge, looking
thoughtfully about him. The sun was already low. It hung above
the stubble, all milky and rosy with the heat, like the image of
a sun reflected in grey water. In the east the full moon had just
risen, and its thin silver surface was flushed with pink until it
looked exactly like the setting sun. Except for the place each
occupied in the heavens, Claude could not have told which was
which. They rested upon opposite rims of the world, two bright
shields, and regarded each other, as if they, too, had met by
appointment.

Claude and Ernest sprang to the ground at the same instant and
shook hands, feeling that they had not seen each other for a long
while.

"Well, what do you make of it, Ernest?"

The young man shook his head cautiously, but replied no further.
He patted his horses and eased the collars on their necks.

"I waited in town for the Hastings paper," Claude went on
impatiently. "England declared war last night."

"The Germans," said Ernest, "are at Liege. I know where that is.
I sailed from Antwerp when I came over here."

"Yes, I saw that. Can the Belgians do anything?"

"Nothing." Ernest leaned against the wagon wheel and drawing his
pipe from his pocket slowly filled it. "Nobody can do anything.
The German army will go where it pleases."

"If it's as bad as that, why are the Belgians putting up a fight?"

"I don't know. It's fine, but it will come to nothing in the end.
Let me tell you something about the German army, Claude."

Pacing up and down beside the locust hedge, Ernest rehearsed the
great argument; preparation, organization, concentration,
inexhaustible resources, inexhaustible men. While he talked the
sun disappeared, the moon contracted, solidified, and slowly
climbed the pale sky. The fields were still glimmering with the
bland reflection