that takes place
in the streets.

There is a soldiers' cemetery to rear of the last block of buildings
where the dead have been shovelled out of earth by shell fire. In this
village the dead are out in the open whilst the quick are underground.

How fine it is to leave the trenches at night after days of (p. 306)
innumerable fatigues and make for a hamlet, well back, where beer is
good and where soups and salads are excellent. When the feet are sore
and swollen, and when the pack-straps cut the shoulder like a knife,
the journey may be tiring, but the glorious rest in a musty old barn,
with creaking stairs and cobwebbed rafters, amply compensates for all
the strain of getting there.

Lazily we drop into the straw, loosen our puttees and shoes and light
a soothing cigarette from our little candles. The whole barn is a
chamber of mysterious light and shade and strange rustlings. The
flames of the candles dance on the walls, the stars peep through the
roof. Eyes, strangely brilliant under the shadow of the brows, meet
one another inquiringly.

"Is this not a night?" they seem to ask. "The night of all the world?"

Apart from that, everybody is quiet, we lie still resting, resting.
Probably we shall fall asleep as we drop down, only to wake again when
the cigarettes burn to the fingers. We can take full advantage of a
rest, as a rest is known to the gloriously weary.

There is romance, there is joy in the life of a soldier.

THE END.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Red Horizon, by Patrick MacGill

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