pparent solitude does not destroy the
impression. There is no solitude so complete to the outward eye as that
which broods over the country when the armies face each other in the grips
of death. I have looked from the mountain of Rheims across just such a
valley as this. Twenty miles of battle front lay before me, and in all that
great field of vision there was not a moving thing visible. There were no
cattle in the fields and no ploughmen following their teams. Roads marched
across the landscape, but they were empty roads. It was as though life had
vanished from the earth. Yet I knew that all over that great valley the
earth was crawling with life and full of immense and sinister
secrecies--the galleries of the sappers, the trenches and redoubts, the
hiding-places of great guns, the concealed observations of the watchers.
Yes, it was just such a scene as this. The only difference was that you had
not to put your ear to the ground to catch the thunder of the guns.

But the voice of war that has broken in upon our peace fades when we are
once more on the move over the downs, and the visions it has brought with
it seem unreal and phantasmal in their serene and sunlit world. The shadows
turn to mere shadows again, and we tread the wild thyme and watch the
spiral of the lark with careless rapture. We dip down into a valley to a
village hidden among the trees, without fear or thought of bomb-proof
shelters and masked batteries, and there in a cottage with the roses over
the porch we take rest and counsel over the teacups. Then once more on to
the downs. The evening shadows are stretching across the valleys, but on
these spacious heights the sunshine still rests. Some one starts singing
that jolly old song, "The Farmer's Boy," and soon the air resounds to the
chorus:

"To plough and sow, to reap and mow,
And be a farmer's boy-o-o-o-oy,
And be a farmer's boy."

No one recalls the throbbing of the guns or stops to catch it from amidst
the murmurs of the air. This--this is the reality. That was only an echo
from a bad dream from which we have awakened.

And when an hour or two later we reach the little village by the sea we
rush for the letters that await us with eager curiosity. There is silence
in the room as each of us devours the budget of news awaiting us. I am
vaguely conscious as I read that some one has left the room with a sense of
haste. I go up to my bedroom, and when I return the sitting-room is empt