xiv PROLOGUE 



ranked lines of imbhle-heap. All is unreal^ 

 fantastic, henumbed with world-pain. This 

 ghost-town has no house, only stark things of 

 stone and gaping beam that strike against 

 the sky. 



Our way lies through the main square. 

 There we must hear to the right. (You 

 remember the little barbers shop upon 

 the corner?) To-night there is no square, 

 but only desert space, marked out by 

 piles of battered masonry — no living 

 creature but one hungry cat, ivho slinks into 

 the shadows. 



We leave this place, passing between the 

 pock-marked hanks — by countless dug-outs, 

 blank, torn holes, where countless men have 

 suffered more than death. Dead are the trees 

 too, prone, lopped along the way with tangled 

 wire, rotting equipment, tattered camouflage, 

 and all the sordid wrack of war. Dim in 

 the starlight stands a little wooden cross. Its 

 top is roofed, just in the way that peasants 

 form their wayside calvaries in Southern 



