ed every word, but it all seemed futile
now. Then had come the impressive inspection of equipment, a careful
examination of gas-masks, rifles, knapsacks. After that the order to
march!

Dorn imagined that he had remembered little, but he had remembered all.
Perhaps the sense of strange unreality was only the twist in his mind.
Yet he did not know where he was--what part of France--how far north or
south on the front line--in what sector. Could not that account for the
sense of feeling lost?

Nevertheless, he was there at the end of all this incomprehensible
journey. He became possessed by an irresistible desire to hurry. Once
more Dorn attempted to control the far-flinging of his thoughts--to come
down to earth. The earth was there under his hand, soft, sticky, moldy,
smelling vilely. He dug his fingers into it, until the feel of something
like a bone made him jerk them out. Perhaps he had felt a stone. A tiny,
creeping, chilly shudder went up his back. Then he remembered, he felt,
he saw his little attic room, in the old home back among the wheat-hills
of the Northwest. Six thousand miles away! He would never see that room
again. What unaccountable vagary of memory had ever recalled it to him?
It faded out of his mind.

Some of his comrades whispered; now and then one rolled over; none
snored, for none of them slept. Dorn felt more aloof from them than
ever. How isolated each one was, locked in his own trouble! Every one of
them, like himself, had a lonely soul. Perhaps they were facing it. He
could not conceive of a careless, thoughtless, emotionless attitude
toward this first night in the front-line trench.

Dorn gradually grew more acutely sensitive to the many faint, rustling,
whispering sounds in and near the dugout.

A soldier came stooping into the opaque square of the dugout door. His
rifle, striking the framework, gave out a metallic clink. This fellow
expelled a sudden heavy breath as if throwing off an oppression.

"Is that you, Sanborn?" This whisper Dorn recognized as Dixon's. It was
full of suppressed excitement.

"Yes."

"Guess it's my turn next. How--how does it go?"

Sanborn's laugh had an odd little quaver. "Why, so far as I know, I
guess it's all right. Damn queer, though. I wish we'd got here in
daytime.... But maybe that wouldn't help."

"Humph!... Pretty quiet out there?"

"So Bob says, but what's he know--more than us? I heard guns up the
line, and rifle-fire not so far off."

"Ca