and sigh for peace, but tonight they would dream of victory.




CHAPTER XXVI

IN THE DEEPENING SHADOW

A little, bent old woman, neat, shrivelled, with clear, healthy eye
and keen intelligence, was collecting acorns in the park outside
the great Schloss, the residence of von Oppen, a relative of the
Police President of Berlin.

I had walked long and was about to eat my picnic lunch, and stopped
and spoke with her. We soon came to the one topic in Germany--the
war. She was eighty-four years of age, she told me, and she worked
for twelve hours a day. Her mother had seen Napoleon pass through
the red-roofed village hard by. She well remembered what she
called "the Bismarck wars." She was of the old generation, for she
spoke of the Kaiser as "the King."

"No," she said, "this war is not going like the Bismarck wars--not
like the three that happened in 1864, 1866, 1870, within seven
years when I was a young woman." She was referring, of course, to
Denmark, Austria, and France. "We have lost many in our
village--food is hard to get." Here she pointed to the two thin
slices of black bread which were to form her mid-day meal. She did
not grumble at her twelve hours' day in the fields, which were in
addition to the work of her little house, but she wished that she