messed up when you were hit; besides, the Boche had been using
thermite. Burns, that does.

``They'd one or two men that were handy at carving chalk; used to do
the regimental crest and pictures of Hindenburg, and all that. They
decided they'd do it in reliefs.

``They started smoothing the chalk. They had nothing more to do but
just to think what to write. It was a great big bowlder with plenty of
room on it. The Boche seemed not to know that they hadn't killed the
Daleswood men, just as the sea mightn't know that one stone stayed dry
at the coming in of the tide. A gap between two divisions probably.

``Harry wanted to tell of the woods more than anything. He was afraid
they might cut them down because of the war, and no one would know of
the larks they had had there as boys. Wonderful old woods they were,
with a lot of Spanish chestnut growing low, and tall old oaks over it.
Harry wanted them to write down what the foxgloves were like in the
wood at the end of summer, standing there in the evening, `Great
solemn rows,' he said, `all odd in the dusk. All odd in the evening,
going there after work; and makes you think of fairies.' There was
lots of things about those woods, he said, that ought to be put down
if people were to remember Daleswood as it used to be when they knew
it. What were the good old days without those woods? he said.

``But another wanted to tell of the time when they cut the hay with
scythes, working all those long days at the end of June; there would
be no more of that, he said, with machines come in and all.

``There was room to tell of all that and the woods too, said the