The night march over the unending roads, through the gloom and the spectral starlight, with the dull rumblings of cannon shocking his heart—­that Dorn lived over, finding strangely a minutest detail of observation and a singular veracity of feeling fixed in his memory.

Afternoon of that very day, at the reserve camp somewhere back there, had brought an officer’s address to the soldiers, a strong and emphatic appeal as well as order—­to obey, to do one’s duty, to take no chances, to be eternally vigilant, to believe that every man had advantage on his side, even in war, if he were not a fool or a daredevil.  Dorn had absorbed the speech, remembered 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.”