“It is not so everywhere,” I said, “not yet, anyway.”

“It is so in the North.  And we have found it so since we entered the ‘Neutral Ground.’  Like our own people on the frontier, these Westchester folk fear everybody.  You yourself know how we have found them.  To every question they try to give an answer that may please; or if they despair of pleasing they answer cautiously, in order not to anger.  The only sentiment left alive in them seems to be fear; all else of human passion appears to be dead.  Why, Loskiel, the very power of will has deserted them; they are not civil to us, but obsequious; not obliging but subservient.  They yield with apathy and very quietly what you ask, and what they apparently suppose is impossible for them to retain.  If you treat them kindly they receive it coldly, not gratefully, but as though you were compensating them for evil done them by you.  Their countenances and motions have lost every trace of animation.  It is not serenity but apathy; every emotion, feeling, thought, passion, which is not merely instinctive has fled their minds forever.  And this is the greatest crime that Britain has wrought upon us.”  He struck the table lightly with doubled fist, “Mr. Loskiel,” he said, “I ask you—­ can we find recruits for our regiment in such a place as this?  Damme, sir, but I think the entire land has lost its manhood.”

We sat staring out into the sunshine through a bullet-shattered window.

“And all this country here seems so fair and peaceful,” he murmured half to himself, “so sweet and still and kindly to me after the twilight of endless forests where men are done to death in the dusk.  But hell in broad sunshine is the more horrible.”

“Look closer at this country,” I said.  “The highways are deserted and silent, the very wagon ruts overgrown with grass.  Not a scythe has swung in those hay fields; the gardens that lie in the sun are but tangles of weeds; no sheep stir on the hills, no cattle stand in these deep meadows, no wagons pass, no wayfarers.  It may be that the wild birds are moulting, but save at dawn and for a few moments at sundown they seem deathly silent to me.”

He had relapsed again into his moody, brooding attitude, elbows on the table, his handsome head supported by both hands.  And it was not like him to be downcast.  After a while he smiled.

“Egad,” he said, “it is too melancholy for me here in the open; and I begin to long for the dusk of trees and for the honest scalp yell to cheer me up.  One knows what to expect in county Tryon—­ but not here, Loskiel—­ not here.”

“Our business here is like to be ended tomorrow,” I remarked.

“Thank God for that,” he said heartily, rising and buckling on his war belt.  He added:  “As for any recruits we have been ordered to pick up en passant, I see small chance of that accomplishment hereabout.  Will you summon the landlord, Mr. Loskiel?”

I discovered the man standing at the open door, his warn hands clasped behind him, and staring stupidly at the cloudless sky.  He followed me back to the taproom, and we reckoned with him.  Somehow, I thought he had not expected to be paid a penny—­ yet he did not thank us.