and weedy. It lifted its green head and gazed round over No Man's
Land. Yes, man was gone, and it was the day of the swede.

The storms were tremendous. Sometimes pieces of iron sang through its
leaves. But man was gone and it was the day of the swede.

A man used to come there once, a great French farmer, an oppressor of
swedes. Legends were told of him and his herd of cattle, dark
traditions that passed down vegetable generations. It was somehow
known in those fields that the man ate swedes.

And now his house was gone and he would come no more.

The storms were terrible, but they were better than man. The swede
nodded to his companions: the years of freedom had come.

They had always known among them that these years would come. Man had
not been there always, but there had always been swedes. He would go
some day, suddenly, as he came. That was the faith of the swedes. And
when the trees went the swede believed that the day was come. When
hundreds of little weeds arrived that were never allowed before, and
grew unchecked, he knew it.

After that he grew without any care, in sunlight, moonlight and rain;
grew abundantly and luxuriantly in the freedom, and increased in
arrogance till he felt himself greater than man. And indeed in those
leaden storms that sang often over his foliage all living things
seemed equal.

There was little that the Germans left when they retreated from the