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Steeds, men, cannon, eagles flowed on day and night; here and

there fires glowed in the sky; the earth trembled, in the

distance one could hear the rolling of thunder.-

War! war! There was no corner in the Lithuanian land to which its

roar did not reach; amid dark forests, the peasant, whose

grandfathers and kinsmen had died without seeing beyond the

boundaries of the wood, who understood no other cries in the sky

than those of the winds, and none on earth except the roaring of

beasts, who had seen no other guests than his fellow-woodsmen,

now beheld how a strange glare flamed in the sky-in the forest

there was a crash-that was a cannon ball that had wandered from

the battlefield and was seeking a path in the wood, tearing up

stumps and cutting through boughs.