And the way I first knew it would easily fill a book if it were told as it should be, with every detail and its meaning unrolled and with every joy described:  as it is, I must put it in ten lines.  Garnon (a sergeant), three others, and I were sent out (one patrol out of fifty) to go round and see the reserve horses on the farms.  That was delight enough, to have a vigorous windy morning with the clouds large and white and in a clear sky, and to mix with the first grain of the year, “out of the loose-box.”

We took the round they gave us along the base of the high hills, we got our papers signed at the different stables, we noted the hoofs of the horses and their numbers; a good woman at a large farm gave us food of eggs and onions, and at noon we turned to get back to quarters for the grooming.  Everything then was very well—­to have ridden out alone without the second horse and with no horrible great pole to crush one’s leg, and be free—­though we missed it—­of the clank of the guns.  We felt like gentlemen at ease, and were speaking grandly to each other, when I heard Garnon say to the senior of us a word that made things seem better still, for he pointed out to a long blue line beyond Domremy and overhanging the house of Joan of Arc, saying that the town lay there.  “What town?” said I to my Ancient; and my Ancient, instead of answering simply, took five minutes to explain to me how a recruit could not know that the round of the reserve horses came next before camp, and that this town away on the western ridge was the first halting-place upon the road.  Then my mind filled with distances, and I was overjoyed, saving for this one thing, that I had but two francs and a few coppers left, and that I was not in reach of more.

When we had ridden in, saluted, and reported at the guard, we saw the guns drawn up in line at the end of the yard, and we went into grooming and ate and slept, hardly waiting for the morning and the long regimental call before the reveille; the notes that always mean the high road for an army, and that are as old as Fontenoy.

* * * * *

That next morning they woke us all before dawn—­long before dawn.  The sky was still keen, and there was not even a promise of morning in the air, nor the least faintness in the eastern stars.  They twinkled right on the edges of the world over the far woods of Lorraine, beyond the hollow wherein lay the town; it was even cold like winter as we harnessed; and I remember the night air catching me in the face as I staggered from the harness-room, with my campaign saddle and the traces and the girths and the saddle cloth, and all the great weight that I had to put upon my horses.