promised to be of use to the enemy. Later by daylight a comrade making
the patrol came back with the joke on his buddie who in the darkness had
mistaken a huge snowshoe rabbit's tracks, made out of curiosity smelling
out the man's tracks. Often the patrol sled would travel for hours
through a fairy land. The snow-laden trees would be interlaced over the
trail, so that the sled travelled in a wonderful crystal, grey, green
and golden tunnel. Filtering beams of sunlight ahead of it. A mist of
disturbed snow behind it. No sound save from the lightly galloping pony,
the ooh-chee-chee of the driver or the bump of the sleigh against a
tree or a root, or the occasional thunder of a rabchik or wild turkey in
partridge-like flight. Beside the trail or crossing might be seen the
tracks of fox and wolf and in rare instances of reindeer.

Or on the open road in the night: solemn again the mood of the doughboy
as he recollects some of those lonely night rides. Here on his back in
the hay of the little sled he reclines muffled in blankets and robes,
his driver hidden in his great bearskin parki, or greatcoat, hidden all
but his two piercing eyes, his nose and whiskers that turned up to
shield his face. With a jerk the fiery little pony pulls out, sending
the two gleaming sled tracks to running rearward in distant meeting
points, the woods to flying past the sleigh and the snow to squealing
faintly under the runners; sending the great starry heavens to sweep
through the tops of the pine forest and sending the doughboy to long
thoughts and solemn as he looks up at the North Star right above him and
thinks of what his father said when he left home:

"Son, you look at the North Star and I'll look at it and every time we
will think of one another while you are away, and if you never come
back, I'll look at the North Star and know that it is looking down at
your grave where you went with a purpose as fixed as the great star and
a motive as pure as its white light." Oh, those wonderful night heavens
to the thoughtful man!

Every veteran at this point in the narrative thinks now of the wonderful
nights when the Northern Lights held him in their spell. Always the
sentry called to his mates to come and see. It cannot be pictured by
brush or pen, this Aurora Borealis. It has action, it has color, sheets
of light, spires, shafts, beams and broad finger-like spreadings, that
come and go, filmy veils of light winding and drifting in, weaving in