"Wait here," said Martin, "I'll go round to the copé and get a bottle of fizzy. We'll drink to peace or war, as you like. Damn this rain!" * * * * * "It's a shame to bury those boots," said the sergeant of the stretcher-bearers. From the long roll of blanket on the ground beside the hastily-dug grave protruded a pair of high boots, new and well polished as if for parade. All about the earth was scarred with turned clay like raw wounds, and the tilting arms of little wooden crosses huddled together, with here and there a bent wreath or a faded bunch of flowers. Overhead in the stripped trees a bird was singing. "Shall we take them off? It's a shame to bury a pair of boots like that." "So many poor devils need boots." "Boots cost so dear." Already two men were lowering the long bundle into the grave. "Wait a minute; we've got a coffin for him." A white board coffin was brought. The boots thumped against the bottom as they put the big bundle in. An officer strode into the enclosure of the graveyard, flicking his knees with a twig. "Is this Lieutenant Dupont?" he asked of the sergeant. "Yes, my lieutenant." "Can you see his face?" The officer stooped and pulled apart the blanket where the head was. "Poor René," he said. "Thank you. Good-bye," and strode out of the graveyard. The yellowish clay fell in clots on the boards of the coffin. The sergeant bared his head and the aumonier came up, opening his book with a vaguely professional air. "It was a shame to bury those boots. Boots are so dear nowadays," said the sergeant, mumbling to himself as he walked back towards the little broad shanty they used as a morgue. * * * * * Of the house, a little pale salmon-coloured villa, only a shell remained, but the garden was quite untouched; fall roses and bunches of white and pink and violet phlox bloomed there among the long grass and the intruding nettles. In the centre the round concrete fountain was no longer full of water, but a few brownish-green toads still inhabited it. The place smelt of box and sweetbriar and yew, and when you lay down on the grass where it grew short under the old yew tree by the fountain, you could see nothing but placid sky and waving green leaves. Martin Howe and Tom Randolph would spend there the quiet afternoons when they were off duty, sleeping in the languid sunlight, or chatting lazily, pointing out to each other tiny things, the pattern of snail-shells, the glitter of insects' wings, colours, fragrances that made vivid for them suddenly beauty and life, all that the shells that shrieked overhead, to explode on the road behind them, threatened to wipe out. One afternoon Russell joined them, a tall young man with thin face and aquiline nose and unexpectedly light hair. "Chef says we may go en repos in three days," he said, throwing himself on the ground beside the other two.