No. He sketched out
new endeavours in earth and stones and trees for the comfort
of his men on that populous mountain.
And there came a priest, who was a sub-lieutenant, out of a
wood of snuff-brown shadows and half-veiled trunks. Would it
please me to look at a chapel? It was all open to the
hillside, most tenderly and devoutly done in rustic work with
reedings of peeled branches and panels of moss and thatch--St.
Hubert's own shrine. I saw the hunters who passed before it,
going to the chase on the far side of the mountain where their
game lay.
. . . . . . .
A BOMBARDED TOWN
Alan carried me off to tea the same evening in a town where he
seemed to know everybody. He had spent the afternoon on
another mountain top, inspecting gun positions; whereby he had
been shelled a little--_marmite_ is the slang for it. There
had been no serious _marmitage,_ and he had spotted a Boche
position which was _marmitable._
"And we may get shelled now," he added, hopefully. "They
shell this town whenever they think of it. Perhaps they'll
shell us at tea."
It was a quaintly beautiful little place, with its mixture of
French and German ideas; its old bridge and gentle-minded
river, between the cultivated hills. The sand-bagged cellar
doors, the ruined houses, and the holes in the pavement looked
as unreal as the violences of a cinema against that soft and
simple setting.
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