They must flee from there; they must begin another life, with hunger ever treading at their heels: they must leave behind them the ruin of their work, and the small body of one of their own, the poor little fellow who was rotting in the earth, an innocent victim of the mad battle.
And all of them, with Oriental resignation, seated themselves upon the bank, and there awaited the day, their shoulders chilled with cold, but toasted from the front by the bed of live coals, which tinged their stupefied faces with the reflection of blood; following with the unchangeable pa.s.sivity of fatalism the course of the fire, which was devouring all their efforts, and changing them into embers as fragile and tenuous as their old illusions of work and peace.
THE END