ame abreast of the faintly
gleaming ikon in the gate they let him go for a moment. His dazed eyes
wandered up to the shrine; he was already bareheaded, and with a
shaking, uncertain hand he crossed himself in the intricate Russian
fashion. The soldiers who guarded him, too--they shuffled their rifles
to a convenient hold to have a right hand free; they crossed themselves
and their lips moved. Then they were through the arch and out upon the
snow within the walls, and once again they had hold of their man and
were thrusting him along to the prison which for him was the antechamber
of death.

That was Russia then. Prisoner and captors, soldiers and
revolutionaries, blinded and bewildered by the rush and dazzle of
affairs, straining asunder yet linked, knitted into a unity of the
spirit which they neither understood nor questioned.

But a week ago, on those still, dreary lands which border the Prussian
frontier, there was evidence of a Russia that has been born or made
since those hectic days in Moscow. The Germans who had forced Gen.
Rennenkampf to withdraw to the border were making an attempt to envelop
his left wing. Their columns, issuing from the maze of lakes and hills
in Masurenland, came across the border on both banks of the little River
Amulew, and fell upon him. There is a road in those parts that drifts
south along the frontier, an unmade, unholy Russian road, ribbed with
outcrops of stone, a purgatory to travel upon till the snow clothes it
and one can go by sledge. Away to the southwest, beyond the patches of
firwood and the gray, steeply [Transcriber: original 'steply'] rolling
land, there toned the far diapason of artillery; strings of army
transport, Red Cross vehicles, and miscellaneous men straggled upon the
road.

From beyond the nearest shoulder of land sounded suddenly some gigantic
and hoarse whistle, an ear-shattering roar of warning and urgency. There
was shouting and a stir of movement; the wagons and Red Cross vans began
to pull out to one side; and over the brow of the hill, hurtling into
sight, huge, unbelievably swift, roaring upon its whistle, tore a great,
gray-painted motor lorry, packed with khaki-clad infantrymen. It was
going at a hideous speed, leaping its tons of weight insanely from rock
ridge to traffic-churned slough in the road; there was only time to note
its immensity and uproar and the ranked faces of the men swaying in
their places, and it was by, and another was bounding in