When he came to himself, he was lying on the embankment among the twisted rails. On every side huddled men who cried out and cursed and fled away into the fog, and he staggered to his feet and followed them. Once he stopped to help a comrade with a bandaged jaw, who could not speak but clung to his arm for a time and then fell dead in the freezing mire; and again he aided another, who groaned: "Trent, c'est moi—Philippe," until a sudden volley in the midst relieved him of his charge.
An icy wind swept down from the heights, cutting the fog into shreds. For an instant, with an evil leer the sun peered through the n***d woods of Vincennes, sank like a blood-clot in the battery smoke, lower, lower, into the blood-soaked plain.
IV
When midnight sounded from the belfry of St. Sulpice the gat
