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[Page 2]
landscape. There are no houses on the farms. The villages contain the farm houses each having its own farm-yard which is surrounded by the houses and barns. In this centre place there is usually a shallow pit dug of large size, into which is thrown dirty straw from the stables, scraps of food etc. The stench is better imagined than described.
The haystacks have a character of their own. The English ones are rectangular and substantial looking and thatched in a hip-roofed style. The French ones are round, thatched like a beehive, and have the appearance of staggering in any direction. Such was their appearance on this night, their queer tufted heads adding to the illusion of sentries.
At a distance of about ¾ mile, the road branched in two directions, behind the finger post being the usual crucifix of bent ironwork in the junction of the roads. Here I halted and sat down. Everything was still except the distant rumbling, never ceasing roar of the guns, which were perhaps 25 miles from where I was sitting. Daily it was my practice to attempt to recall what sounds familiar to you, I could best describe these different noises by. It is a very hard thing to do, but I think the distant roar of heavy surf breaking on the coast, heard from some distance. Some describe it as thunder, or as a train rumbling. The latter is too regular, the former too infrequent. However, I should not speak of the "roar" of the guns. They bark sharply like a most intensified rifle shot. Even the report of the largest calibre guns is sharp, that is when not far off; but at a great distance the noise of the guns becomes a kind of rumble. There is an order in their firing not to be confused with thunder and insistent salvos and cadences of larger and smaller calibre guns is not to be confused with the steady roar of a train.
At that distance it was almost a murmur, and I fell to thinking of what I had passed through. Though seemingly unaccountable it is a fact that the greatest of pain, physical and mental, can be deadened to memory by time. So I wonder now, could any suffering with my thumb have really been so bad, though I remember
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