they began to talk of Daleswood. And then they thought that when all
of them were gone there would be nobody who would remember Daleswood
just as it used to be. For places alter a little, woods grow, and
changes come, trees get cut down, old people die; new houses are built
now and then in place of a yew tree, or any old thing, that used to be
there before; and one way or another the old things go; and all the
time you have people thinking that the old times were best, and the
old ways when they were young. And the Daleswood men were beginning to
say, `Who would there be to remember it just as it was?'

``There was no gas, the wind being wrong for it, so they were able to
talk, that is if they shouted, for the bullets alone made as much
noise as breaking up an old shed, crisper like, more like new timber
breaking; and the shells of course was howling all the time, that is
the barrage that was bursting far back. The trench still stank of
them.

``They said that one of them must go over and put his hands up, or run
away if he could, whichever he liked, and when the war was over he
would go to some writing fellow, one of those what makes a living by
it, and tell him all about Daleswood, just as it used to be, and he
would write it out proper and there it would be for always. They all
agreed to that. And then they talked a bit, as well as they could
above that awful screeching, to try and decide who it should be. The
eldest, they said, would know Daleswood best. But he said, and they
came to agree with him, that it would be a sort of waste to save the
life of a man what had had his good time, and they ought to send the
youngest, and they would tell him all they knew of Daleswood before
his time, and everything would be written down just the same and the
old time remembered.