Cheeser, it was an artful night; that was what was wrong with it. If
shells had come or the Germans, or anything at all, you would know how
to take it; but that quiet mist over huge valleys, and stillness!
Anything might happen. Dick waited and waited, and the night waited
too. He felt they were watching each other, the night and he. He felt
that each was crouching. His mind slipped back to the woods on hills
he knew. He was watching with eyes and ears and imagination to see
what would happen in No Man's Land under that ominous mist: but his
mind took a peep for all that at the old woods that he knew. He
pictured himself, he and a band of boys, chasing squirrels again in
the summer. They used to chase a squirrel from tree to tree, throwing
stones, till they tired it: and then they might hit it with a stone:
usually not. Sometimes the squirrel would hide, and a boy would have
to climb after it. It was great sport, thought Dick Cheeser. What a
pity he hadn't had a catapult in those days, he thought. Somehow the
years when he had not had a catapult seemed all to be wasted years.
With a catapult one might get the squirrel almost at once, with luck:
and what a great thing that would be. All the other boys would come
round to look at the squirrel, and to look at the catapult, and ask
him how he did it. He wouldn't have to say much, there would be the
squirrel; no boasting would be necessary with the squirrel lying dead.
It might spread to other things, even rabbits; almost anything, in
fact. He would certainly get a catapult first thing when he got home.
A little wind blew in the night, too cold for summer. It blew away, as
it were, the summer of Dick's memories; blew away hills and woods and
squirrel. It made for a moment a lane in the mist over No Man's Land.
Dick Cheeser peered down it, but it closed again. ``No,'' Night seemed
to say, ``you don't guess my secret.'' And the awful hush intensified.
``What would they do?'' thought the sentry. ``What were they planning
in all those miles of silence?'' Even the Verys were few. When one