wadays where you could flee from all
this stupidity, from all this cant of governments, and this hideous
reiteration of hatred, this strangling hatred ..." he would say to
himself, and see himself working in the fields, copying parchments in
quaint letterings, drowsing his feverish desires to calm in the
deep-throated passionate chanting of the endless offices of the Church.

One afternoon towards evening as he lay on the tiled roof with his shirt
open so that the sun warmed his throat and chest, half asleep in the
beauty of the building and of the woods and the clouds that drifted
overhead, he heard a strain from the organ in the church: a few deep
notes in broken rhythm that filled him with wonder, as if he had
suddenly been transported back to the quiet days of the monks. The
rhythm changed in an instant, and through the squeakiness of shattered
pipes came a swirl of fake-oriental ragtime that resounded like mocking
laughter in the old vaults and arches. He went down into the church and
found Tom Randolph playing on the little organ, pumping desperately with
his feet.

"Hello! Impiety I call it; putting your lustful tunes into that pious
old organ."

"I bet the ole monks had a merry time, lecherous ole devils," said Tom,
playing away.

"If there were monasteries nowadays," said Martin, "I think I'd go into
one."

"But there are. I'll end up in one, most like, if they don't put me in
jail first. I reckon every living soul would be a candidate for either
one if it'd get them out of this God-damned war."

There was a shriek overhead that reverberated strangely in the vaults of
the church and made the swallows nesting there fly in and out through
the glassless windows. Tom Randolph stopped on a wild chord.

"Guess they don't like me playin'."

"That one didn't explode though."

"That one did, by gorry," said Randolph, getting up off the floor, where
he had thrown himself automatically. A shower of tiles came rattling off
the roof, and through the noise could be heard the frightened squeaking
of the swallows.

"I am afraid that winged somebody."

"They must have got wind of the ammunition dump in the cellar."

"Hell of a place to put a dressing-station--over an ammunition dump!"

The whitewashed room used as a dressing-station had a smell of blood
stronger than the chloride. A doctor was leaning over a stretcher on
which Martin caught a glimpse of two naked legs with flecks of blood on
the white skin, as