I do not believe that he remembered his vision when, after a week’s fruitless enquiry, we came one afternoon to the historic desert that had once been beautiful France. Certainly, he made no reference to his old experience; but he was almost senile. I noticed a difference in him, even in that one week.
But I remembered; and I had a fit of cold shivering that I could not control when we came out on to the awful plain that they now call The Plain of the Dead, and saw the figure of that one demented peasant, dressed in the grotesque relics of two nations’ uniforms.
He was digging feverishly with his pointed spade, and I heard the ring of it as it struck.
It was not a turnip that he wrenched up.
The thing rolled towards us....
Young Strickland’s head had always been a queer shape.