He turned presently from the hilly path into a good road, paved almost like a street, and breaking from a bush a stout stick, which he used peasant fashion as a cane, he walked briskly along the smooth surface, now almost clear of the snow which had fallen in much smaller quantities in the lowlands.

He met a battery of four twenty-one-centimeter guns with their numerous crews and an escort of cavalry, advancing to the front, and he stepped to one side of the road to let them pass.  The leader of the cavalry hailed him and John’s heart gave a sudden alarming throb as he recognized von Boehlen.  But his courage came back when he saw that he would not have known the Prussian had he remained twenty feet away.  Von Boehlen was deeply tanned and much thinner.  There were lines in his face and he had all the appearance of a man who had been through almost unbearable hardships.

John had no doubt that a long life in the trenches and intense anxiety had made an equal change in himself.  The glass had told him that he looked more mature, more like a man of thought and experience.  Moreover, he was in the dress of a peasant.  After the first painful heartbeat he awaited von Boehlen with confidence.

“Whence do you come?” asked the colonel of Uhlans—­colonel he now was.

John pointed back over his shoulder and then produced his passport, which Colonel von Boehlen, after reading, handed carefully back to him.

“Did you see anything of the French?” he asked glancing again at John, but without a sign of recognition.

“No, sir,” replied John in his new German with a French accent, “but I saw a most unpleasant messenger of theirs.”

“A messenger?  What kind of a messenger?”

“Long, round and made of steel.  It came over a mountain and then with a loud noise divided itself into many parts near the place where I stood.  One messenger turned itself into a thousand messengers, and they were all messengers of death.  Honored sir, I left that vicinity as soon as I could, and I have been traveling fast, directly away from there, ever since.”

Von Boehlen laughed, and then his strong jaws closed tighter.  After a moment’s silence, he said: 

“Many such messengers have been passing in recent months.  The air has been full of them.  If you don’t like battles, Castel, I don’t blame you for traveling in the direction you take.”

John, who had turned his face away for precautionary measures, looked him full in the eyes again, and he found in his heart a little liking for the Prussian.  Von Boehlen seemed to have lost something of his haughtiness and confidence since those swaggering days in Dresden, and the loss had improved him.  John saw some signs of a civilian’s sense of justice and reason beneath the military gloss.

“May I pass on, sir?” he asked.  “I wish to reach Metz, where I can obtain more horses for the army.”

“Why do you walk?”