The men of the battalion could sing only together, could dance only together, and dancing gradually stopped and the singing expressed a longing for home. If he went alone to a woman, he disappeared and some snowdrift received his body. If he did, he disappeared, and some snowdrift received his body. Now it was that the conqueror was surrounded, the men of the battalion alone among silent enemies, and no man might relax his guard for even a moment. And the hatred was deep in the eyes of the people, beneath the surface. There was a point where food could not be withheld, for a starving man cannot mine coal, cannot lift and carry. The food supply was controlled – issued to the obedient and withheld from the disobedient – so that the whole population turned coldly obedient. The cold hatred grew with the winter, the silent, sullen hatred, the waiting hatred. And the English bombed the coal mine and did some damage and killed some of both their friends and their enemies. Now and then a group of young men escaped and went to England. People were shot in reprisal and it made no difference. No train could move unless the tracks were first inspected. Avalanches poured down on the tracks and rails were spread. Accidents happened on the railroad, which clung to the mountains and connected the little town with the rest of the nation. The men who had been traitors, who had helped the invaders – and many of them believed it was for a better state and an ideal way of life – found that the control they took was insecure, that the people they had known looked at them coldly and never spoke.Īnd there was death in the air, hovering and waiting. The people of the conquered country settled in a slow, silent, waiting revenge.

Machinery broke and took a long time to fix.

In the harbor the coal barges came empty and went away loaded, but the coal did not come out of the ground easily. The dark buildings of the little town wore bells and hats and eyebrows of white and there were trenches through the snow to the doorways. The snow fell and melted and fell and melted and finally fell and stuck. The days and the weeks dragged on, and the months dragged on.

The moon is down