It wasn't an open fire, but a little iron stove that got so red that it trembled, and at could hardly contain the puttering of the pine; and there was a one-armed soldier, who spent the long forenoons cutting carefully and piling, until there was a wainscot half around the room, the drying breath of which was the purest in the world.... They petted the soldier until an officer came down.  
It was the hunting forest of a certain Count, and the hut they lived in was but the of one of his keepers; but it was far enough from the great (where wounded officers of royal blood and toppling rank healed or died in much the same fashion as other men) to afford the silence and they had dreamed of. And all about them the great trees pondered between the winds—pine and balsam, and fir. It had looked like a bit of an island from the Sondreig window, but proved a true forest when they reached there—an one to Berthe and Mowbray.
 
Twice Boylan came down for a day, bringing Moritz Abel the second time; but the Colonel, whose authority had done so much for them, required much of Big Belt, and there was a woman (some mystery about this) who would keep dinner waiting, he said. So both times he had started back while there remained light in the sky. And Peter had become thoughtful.
 
“Why, there are whole days I can't account for,” he muttered. “He must have had me to him for days at a time.”
 
He had asked for Poltneck, of whom she had seen the last in Judenbach. The Germans had loved his singing and made very much of him; and Peter had asked for Moritz Abel before the latter came for the day. Berthe had answered freely, but of Duke Fallows she had not spoken in a way to satisfy his questions. In fact, it was not until the day that Peter first crossed the little room alone that she seemed ready to speak. That afternoon he had called her from the window.
 
“Where is Fallows, Berthe?”
 
“Not far from here,” she said. “Not as far as Sondreig from here—a place you have never seen, but I watched it every day from the window of the shop until you were moved. He offered himself at once when he heard—the quarantine.... But he left a message for you to carry, Peter—gave it to me for you.
 
“I saw him for a few brief moments after he had volunteered. He talked of you and that other American boy of the other war. He said that the night he separated from that other—just after the battle of Liaoyang, the Russians in full retreat, he had written his story of the battle—the story of the Ploughman, and intrusted it to his friend to carry to America. He wants you to carry his story of this service—asked me to give it to you when you were better—to take to America with yours. 'Just a picture,' he said. 'It may be all wrong, but I see it so to-night, and I would like to have it come out in America some time.'
 
“He is very dear to us, Peter—that old burning exile. Some time we may understand his love for America.... It was hard to let him go. They fight day and night in the . They are trying to spare Sondreig.... I wish you might have been with him that last night before he went. It was before I found you—before I saw the big man in the street.... He was glad to go. There was no sense of sacrifice in it. His whole sense was of our sorrow and the wor............