On this repast I jumped up merrily, lit a pipe, and began singing, and
heard, to my inexpressible joy, some way down the road, the sound of
other voices. They were singing that old song of the French infantry
which dates from Louis XIV, and is called 'Aupres de ma blonde'. I
answered their chorus, so that, by the time we met under the wood, we
were already acquainted. They told me they had had a forty-eight
hours' leave into Nancy, the four of them, and had to be in by
roll-call at a place called Villey the Dry. I remembered it after all
those years.

It is a village perched on the brow of one of these high hills above
the river, and it found itself one day surrounded by earthworks, and a
great fort raised just above the church. Then, before they knew where
they were, they learnt that (1) no one could go in or out between
sunset and sunrise without leave of the officer in command; (2) that
from being a village they had become the 'buildings situate within
Fort No. 18'; (3) that they were to be deluged with soldiers; and (4)
that they were liable to evacuate their tenements on mobilization.
They had become a fort unwittingly as they slept, and all their
streets were blocked with ramparts. A hard fate; but they should not
have built their village just on the brow of a round hill. They did
this in the old days, when men used stone instead of iron, because the
top of a hill was a good place to hold against enemies; and so now,
these 73,426 years after, they find the same advantage catching them
again to their hurt. And so things go the round.

Anyway Villey the Dry is a fort, and there my four brothers were
going. It was miles off, and they had to be in by sunrise, so I
offered them a pull of my wine, which, to my great joy, they refused,