John was able to trace dimly the sleeping figures of Germans in the dusk, sunk down upon the ground and buried in the sleep or stupor of exhaustion. As they lay near him so they lay in the same way in hundreds of thousands along the vast line. Men and horses, strained to their last nerve and muscle, were too tired to move. It seemed as if more than a million men lay dead in the fields and woods of Northeastern France.
John, who had been wide awake, suddenly dropped on the ground where the others were stretched. He collapsed all in a moment, as if every drop of blood had been drained suddenly from his body. Keyed high throughout the day, his whole system now gave way before the accumulated impact of events so tremendous. The silence save for the distant moaning that succeeded the roar of a million men or more in battle was like a powerful drug, and he slept like one dead, never moving hand or foot.
He was roused shortly before morning by some one who shook him gently but persistently, and at last he sat up, looking around in the dim light for the person who had dragged him back from peace to a battle-mad world. He saw an unkempt, bearded man in a French uniform, one sleeve stained with blood, and he recognized Weber, the Alsatian.
"Why, Weber!" he exclaimed, "they've got you, too! This is bad! They may consider you, an Alsatian, a traitor, and execute you at once!"
Weber smiled in rather melancholy fashion, and said in a low tone:
"It's bad enough to be captured, but I won't be shot Nobody here knows that I'm an Alsatian, and consequently they will think I'm a Frenchman. If you call me anything, call me Fernand, which is my first name, but which they will take for the last."
"All right, Fernand. I'll practice on it now, so I'll make no slip. How did you happen to be taken?"
"I was in a motor car, a part of a train of about a hundred cars. There were seven in it besides myself. We were ordered to cross a field and join a line of advancing infantry. When we were in the middle of the field a masked German battery of rapid-firers opened on us at short range. It was an awful experience, like a stroke of lightning, and I don't think that more than a dozen of us escaped with our lives. I was wounded in the arm and taken before I could get out of the field. I was brought here with some other prisoners and I have been sleeping on the ground just beyond that hillock. I awoke early, and, walking the little distance our guards allow, I happened to recognize your figure lying here. I was sorry and yet glad to see you, sorry that you were a prisoner, and glad to find at least one whom I knew, a friend."
John gave Weber's hand a strong grasp.
"I can say the same about you," he said warmly. "We're both prisoners, but yesterday was a magnificent day for France and democracy."