The deep, bass note of a bursting explosive swept through the village, awaking myriad long-drawn echoes, and died away. "Shelling in front," said Flanagan in a trenchant whisper. "I hope it's not the road," said Bubb. "I don't think it's the road," said Bowdy Benners. "It sounded to the left a bit. But you can't tell with the echoes." But further conversation was then impossible; the battalion formed into two files and plodded ahead.... Round the next corner Frank Reynolds came in touch with the war. A limber lay in the middle of the street shattered to pieces, the two ponies and the driver dead, and a sluggish trail of something dark crawling away from the scene of the wreck. Instinctively the boy knew that he was looking on blood and a queer sensation gripped the pit of his stomach. At the same moment he thought of the woman who was trying to close the shutters two hundred yards away and a feeling of shame swept through his heart. "Am I afraid?" he asked himself. "And a woman going on with her work beside me just as if nothing was happening." The R.A.M.C. were already at work, not in the vicinity of the limber, for there all help was useless, but on the pavement under the shadow of the poplars where four or five men were lying down, wounded and groaning. Here the village had suffered, the houses were crumpled and shattered, the tiles had been flung off the rafters, the walls were smashed, the trees on the pavement were cut to splinters. Big holes showed in the streets and over all the ruin and destruction the moon shone calmly and the stars glimmered. But the atmosphere of the night had changed; a strange pungent odour filled the air, and Reynolds knew that he was smelling the battlefield. "I must not tell mother about this," he said. "If she knew she couldn't sleep a wink at night.... I never thought.... I suppose there will be worse sights" CHAPTER XVII YOUNG BLOOD Over the top is cold, matey; You lie on the field alone-- Didn't I love you of old, matey, Dearer than blood of my own? You were my dearest chum, matey, (Gawd, but your face is white) And now, though reliefs have come, matey, I'm going alone to-night. (_From "Soldier Songs."_) At one o'clock in the morning the London Irish were in occupation of the trenches; the battalion which they had relieved were just moving away. Reynolds' section were lucky enough to find a dug-out, and here they threw down their loaves and other luxuries which the Government had not supplied. "Now we must make ourselves as comfortable as we can," said Flanagan as he lit a cigarette. "I'm for a sleep until it's my turn for sentry." Snogger, who came to the dug-out door at that moment, heard the remark and chuckled. Having some work to do which needed volunteers, he saw scope for his peculiar type of humour.