The night grew colder; tap, tap, went broken iron.

And at last the traveller stopped in the lonely night and looked
round him attentively, and appeared to be satisfied that he had come
within sight of his journey's end, although to ordinary eyes the spot
to which he had come differed in no way from the rest of the waste.

He went no further, but turned round and round, peering piece by
piece at that weedy and cratered earth.

He was looking for the village where he was born.





The House With Two Storeys

I came again to Croisilles.

I looked for the sunken road that we used to hold in support, with
its row of little shelters in the bank and the carved oak saints
above them here and there that had survived the church in Croisilles.
I could have found it with my eyes shut. With my eyes open I could
not find it. I did not recognize the lonely metalled road down which
lorries were rushing for the little lane so full of life, whose
wheel-ruts were three years old.

As I gazed about me looking for our line, I passed an old French
civilian looking down at a slight mound of white stone that rose a