CHAPTER X
FORTUNE FROWNS
One look at that disfigured countenance imprinted it indelibly on Stewart’s memory—the blue eyes staring horribly upward from under the shattered forehead, the hair matted with blood, the sprawling body, the gleaming knife caught up in what moment of desperation! Shaking with horror, he seized his companion’s hand and led her away out of the desecrated house, out of the silent yard, out into the narrow lane where they could breathe freely.
“The Uhlans have passed this way,” said the girl, staring up and down the road.
“But,” stammered Stewart, wiping his wet forehead, “but I don’t understand. Germany is a civilized nation—war is no longer the brutal thing it once was.”
“War is always brutal, I fear,” said the girl, sadly; “and of course, among a million men, there are certain to be some—like that! I am no longer hungry. Let us press on.”
Stewart, nodding, followed along beside her, across fields, over little streams, up and down stretches of rocky hillside, always westward. But he saw nothing; his mind was full of other things—of the gray-clad thousands singing as they marched; of the radiant face of the Crown Prince; of that poor murdered woman, who had risen happily this Sunday morning, glad of a day of rest, and looked up to see strange faces at the door——
And this was war. A thousand other women would suffer the same fate; thousands and thousands more would be thrown stripped and defenseless on the world, to live or die as chance might will; a hundred thousand children would be fatherless; a hundred thousand girls, now ripening into womanhood, would be denied their rightful destiny of marriage and children of their own——
Stewart shook the thought away. The picture his imagination painted was too horrible; it could never come true—not all the emperors on earth could make it come true!
He looked about him at the mellow landscape. Nowhere was there a sign of life. The yellow wheat stood ripe for the harvest. The pastures stretched lush and green—and empty. Here and there above the trees he caught a glimpse of farmhouse chimneys, but no reassuring smoke floated above them. A peaceful land, truly, so he told himself—peaceful as death!
Gradually the country grew rougher and more broken, and ahead of them they could see steep and rocky hillsides, cleft by deep valleys and covered by a thick growth of pine.