“It’s like the shadow of war on a weary world,” the boy thought.
As his gaze turned to the left his face brightened. “The village,” he whispered. Never before, he thought, had there been such a village. With its winding street following the whimsical meandering of a narrow stream, with its houses set irregularly along hillsides that sloped away on either side, with gardens running back to the edge of a great grove of beech, oak and yew trees, it all seemed part of a picture-book dream.
“And yet,” he thought, “the people in that village are quite human. They are kind, simple and good. The baker, the blacksmith, the cobbler, and all the rest,—how really wonderful they are! And so kind to a stranger! And yet,”—He was thinking what it might be like tomorrow, or the day after—if the war lasted. And it would last!
As for Brand, he was thinking quite simply and steadfastly, “That’s my home down there. It’s always been my home—has been the home of my people for generations. And yet, if the purpose of one man, or perhaps two, had been carried out on this perfect autumn day, it would have been no home—only a pile of rocks. And beneath that pile would have been the crushed forms of three persons I love.”
“This,” he said aloud, “is war. Come on.” His voice was hoarse. “Let’s get on down.”
Chapter V
The Young Lord
The house in which the Ramseys lived was large. Its kitchen was immense—large as the entire first floor of a modern American home. Its fireplace took a five-foot log at its back. Walled round with two-foot thick stone, with flagstone floor and massive beamed ceiling, this room seemed the inside of a fort. And that, in days long gone bye, it might very well have been, for a moat—in these days dry and grown up to shrubs—ran round the house.
It was in this great room, when the day’s work was done and night had shut out both the beauty and the horror of the day, that the family gathered about the cheery fire.
Over the massive glowing logs a teakettle sang. By the hearth lay Flash, the golden collie. Back of him, on a rug, the two young girls played at jacks. Dave, who sat nearest to them, noted with approval that their hair was now neatly combed, their dresses clean, their faces shining—“That’s the part Alice plays,” he thought with approval.
As his eyes swept the circle, Alice knitting, Cherry smiling over a book, Jock and Brand talking about cattle that had strayed, he thought: “This is indeed a happy home.”