days. For six days the sky washed the earth and then washed it
again. The earth was softening and shifting, and filling up the
holes and making new ones."

"Same here--it only stopped raining this morning."

"It was just my luck. And everywhere there were swollen new streams,
washing away the borders of the fields as though they were lines on
paper. There were hills that ran with water from top to bottom.
Gusts of wind sent the rain in great clouds flying and whirling
about, and lashing our hands and faces and necks.

"So you bet, when I had tramped to the station, if some one had
pulled a really ugly face at me, it would have been enough to make
me turn back.

"But when we did get to the place, there were several of us--some
more men on leave--they weren't bound for Villers, but they had to
go through it to get somewhere else. So it happened that we got
there in a lump--five old cronies that didn't know each other.

"I could make out nothing of anything. They've been worse shelled
over there than here, and then there was the water everywhere, and
it was getting dark.

"I told you there are only four houses in the little place, only
they're a good bit off from each other. You come to the lower end of
a slope. I didn't know too well where I was, no more than my pals
did, though they belonged to the district and had some notion of the
lay of it--and all the less because of the rain falling in