Some generations later a man of the same name was plowing the same hill. They still plowed the brown clay at the top and left the slope wild, though there were many changes. And the furrows were wonderfully straight still. And half he watched a thorn tree ahead as he plowed and half he took in the whole hill sloping south and the wide lands below it, far beyond which was the sea. They had a railway now down in the valley. The sunlight glittering near the end of winter shone on a train that was marked with great white squares and red crosses on them.
John Plowman stopped his horses and looked at the train. “An ambulance train,” he said, “coming up from the coast.” He thought of the lads he knew and wondered if any were there. He pitied the men in that train and envied them. And then there came to him the thought of England’s cause and of how those men had upheld it, at sea and in crumbling cities. He thought of the battle whose echoes reached sometimes to that field, whispering to furrows and thorn trees that had never heard them before. He thought of the accursed tyrant’s cruel might, and of the lads that had faced it. He saw the romantic splendour of England’s cause. He was old but had seen the glamour for which each generation looked. Satisfied in his heart and cheered with a new content he went on with his age-old task in the business of man with the hills.