that things were going to alter like that. Dick Cheeser was a plowboy:
long brown furrows over haughty, magnificent downs seemed to stretch
away into the future as far as his mind could see. No narrow outlook
either, for the life of nations depends upon those brown furrows. But
there are the bigger furrows that Mars makes, the long brown trenches
of war; the life of nations depends on these too; Dick Cheeser had
never pictured these. He had heard talk about a big navy and a lot of
Dreadnoughts; silly nonsense he called it. What did one want a big
navy for? To keep the Germans out, some people said. But the Germans
weren't coming. If they wanted to come, why didn't they come? Anybody
could see that they never did come. Some of Dick Cheeser's pals had
votes.

And so he had never pictured any change from plowing the great downs;
and here was war at last, and here was he. The Corporal showed him
where to stand, told him to keep a good lookout and left him.

And there was Dick Cheeser alone in the dark with an army in front of
him, eighty yards away: and, if all tales were true, a pretty horrible
army.

The night was awfully still. I use the adverb not as Dick Cheeser
would have used it. The stillness awed him. There had not been a shell
all night. He put his head up over the parapet and waited. Nobody
fired at him. He felt that the night was waiting for him. He heard
voices going along the trench: some one said it was a black night: the
voices died away. A mere phrase; the night wasn't black at all, it was
grey. Dick Cheeser was staring at it, and the night was staring back
at him, and seemed to be threatening him; it was grey, grey as an old
cat that they used to have at home, and as artful. Yes, thought Dick