lay
untenanted. But before many minutes were passed, the quiet of the autumn
noon began to be overscored by distant humming, faint at first, and then
quickly growing louder, and he saw far away a little brown speck coming
swiftly towards him. It turned out to be a dispatch-rider, mounted on a
motor-bicycle, who with a hoot of his horn roared westward through
the village. Immediately afterwards another humming, steadier and
more sonorous, grew louder, and Michael, recognising it, looked up
instinctively into the blue sky overhead, as an English aeroplane,
flying low, came from somewhere behind, and passed directly over him,
going eastwards. Before long it stopped its direct course, and began to
mount in spirals, and when at a sufficient height, it resumed its onward
journey towards the German lines. Then three or four privates, billeted
in the village, and now resting after duty in the trenches, strolled
along the road, laughing and talking. They sat down not a hundred yards
from Michael and one began to whistle "Tipperary." Another and another
took it up until all four were engaged on it. It was not precisely
in tune nor were the performers in unison, but it produced a vaguely
pleasant effect, and if not in tune with the notes as the composer wrote
them, the sight and sound of those four whistling and idle soldiers was
in tune with the air of security of Sunday morning.

Something far down the road caught Michael's eye, some moving line
of brown wagons. As they came nearer he saw that they were the
motor-ambulances of the Red Cross, moving slowly along the ruts and
holes which the traffic had worn, so that the occupants should suffer
as little jolting as was possible. They carried no doubt the wounded who
had been taken from the trenches last night, and now, after calling
for them at the first dressing station in the rear of the lines, were
removing them to hospital. As they passed the four men sitting by the
roadside, one of them shouted, "Cheer, oh, mates!" and then they fell
to whistling "Tipperary" again. Then, oh, blessed moment! the fat
Frenchwoman looked out of the kitchen window just above his head.

"Diner, m'sieu," she said, and Michael, without another thought of
ambulance or aeroplane, scrambled to his feet. Somewhere in the middle
distance of his mind he was sorry that this tranquil morning was over,
just as below in the darkness of it there ran those streams of yearning
and of horror, but all his ordinary