The sadness of the music, the gravity of the Scotsmen, the falling night, the homeliness of the place, and a certain indefinable flavour as of some pagan rite, stir one's heart strangely.
Meanwhile, the village street has become filled with soldiers.
Various detachments, just back from their work, fall in along the sides of the roadway. The men, with their steel helmets and leather coats, their breasts exposed to the wind, look like the legionaries of Rome. Nothing is lacking to this picture but the incense and the altar and the victims.
The short, sharp words of command and the clink of weapons mingle with the wailing of the pipes, while at their cottage doors the lonely wives of French soldiers look on calmly at all this bustle in their street. A little fair-headed girl beats time to the music with her left hand.
The night has been saluted by the armies of Britain.
The night may now come.
[CHAPTER VIII.]
Y GULLY.
Between Beaumont-Hamel and Beaucourt, near the bend which the Ancre makes where it turns to meet the Somme, there is a deep gully, about three hundred yards across, which the Tommies have christened—probably they were a trifle short of words that day—with the last letter but one of the alphabet. It is called Y Gully.