"Go after him and do what you can for him," said Dick to one of his men. "Bandage him and then go look for an M. O."
Dick hurried on toward the forward edge of the village, strengthening his following as he went. The shelling was still heavy and the noise deafening, but the hand-to-hand fighting among the houses had lessened. Dick led his men through one wall of a house that had been hit by a heavy shell and through the other wall into a little garden. There were bricks and tiles and iron shards in that garden; and in the middle of it, untouched, a little arbor of grapevines. Dick passed through the arbor on his way to the broken wall at the foot of the garden. There were two benches in it and a small round table.
Dick went through the arbor in a second, and then he sprang to the broken crest of the wall. He had scarcely mounted upon it before something red burst close in front of his eyes.
Dick was not astonished to find himself in the old garden at Beaver Dam. The lilacs were in flower and full of bees and butterflies. He still wore his shrapnel helmet. It felt very uncomfortable, and he tried to take it off—but it stuck fast to his head. Even that did not astonish him. He saw an arbor of grapevines and entered it and sat down on a bench with his elbows on a small round table. He recognized it as the arbor he had seen that evening in Courcelette—the evening of September 15.
"I must have brought it home with me," he reflected. "The war must be over."
Flora entered the arbor then and asked him why he was wearing an officer's jacket. He thought it queer that she had not heard about his commission.
"I was promoted on the Somme—no, it was before that," he began, and then everything became dark. "I can't see," he said.
"Don't worry about that," replied a voice that was not Flora's. "Your eyes are bandaged for the time being. They'll be as well as ever in a few days."
"I must have been dreaming. Where am I—and what is wrong with me?"