228 ANCIENT SUSSEX GAME OF STOOLBALL 



grown with bushes, comes a creaking noise, as if a 

 wooden door were thrown back upon its hinges. 

 At once we are on the alert, and as I know every 

 inch of ground I steal cautiously towards the place 

 whence the noise rises. Again, it is my fate to 

 be disappointed, for two slender, dark figures 

 suddenly emerge from behind bushes and hurriedly 

 give the countersign which we, who are in the 

 secret, have previously arranged. To-night it is 

 11 The Labyrinth," for this is where fighting is 

 now in progress. 



Our little party, having been thus reinforced, 

 has to seek a fresh hiding-place, some better, darker 

 background that will conceal our whereabouts 

 until the next sound disturbs the silent Downland ; 

 and, strange to say, nothing from our own country 

 is carried to us by the wind, for now, distant but 

 continuous and clearly audible, comes the boom 

 of siege-guns away in Flanders. Angrily, deter- 

 minedly, with apparently lavish expenditure of 

 ammunition, does one follow the other, until it 

 seems almost as if we, in our dreams, were standing 

 close to those other men and women, brothers and 

 sisters maybe, who are fighting or rendering self- 

 sacrificing service some sixty miles away. We 

 wonder if they have time to interrupt for a few 

 brief seconds the work they are engaged upon and 

 look out over the beauty of this wonderful world, 

 drinking in the wealth of splendour that it offers, 

 which man alone mars with his unrestrained fight- 

 ing spirit. Even these great guns which carry all 

 before them for many miles and whose activity 

 can reduce cathedrals and towns to a mere heap of 



