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.
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