The high-road, raised and embanked above the low-lying fields, ran eastwards in an undeviating straight line.  Just opposite the farm were the last outlying huts of the village, and from there onwards it lay untenanted.  But before many minutes were passed, the quiet of the autumn noon began to be overscored by distant humming, faint at first, and then quickly growing louder, and he saw far away a little brown speck coming swiftly towards him.  It turned out to be a dispatch-rider, mounted on a motor-bicycle, who with a hoot of his horn roared westward through the village.  Immediately afterwards another humming, steadier and more sonorous, grew louder, and Michael, recognising it, looked up instinctively into the blue sky overhead, as an English aeroplane, flying low, came from somewhere behind, and passed directly over him, going eastwards.  Before long it stopped its direct course, and began to mount in spirals, and when at a sufficient height, it resumed its onward journey towards the German lines.  Then three or four privates, billeted in the village, and now resting after duty in the trenches, strolled along the road, laughing and talking.  They sat down not a hundred yards from Michael and one began to whistle “Tipperary.”  Another and another took it up until all four were engaged on it.  It was not precisely in tune nor were the performers in unison, but it produced a vaguely pleasant effect, and if not in tune with the notes as the composer wrote them, the sight and sound of those four whistling and idle soldiers was in tune with the air of security of Sunday morning.

Something far down the road caught Michael’s eye, some moving line of brown wagons.  As they came nearer he saw that they were the motor-ambulances of the Red Cross, moving slowly along the ruts and holes which the traffic had worn, so that the occupants should suffer as little jolting as was possible.  They carried no doubt the wounded who had been taken from the trenches last night, and now, after calling for them at the first dressing station in the rear of the lines, were removing them to hospital.  As they passed the four men sitting by the roadside, one of them shouted, “Cheer, oh, mates!” and then they fell to whistling “Tipperary” again.  Then, oh, blessed moment! the fat Frenchwoman looked out of the kitchen window just above his head.

“Diner, m’sieu,” she said, and Michael, without another thought of ambulance or aeroplane, scrambled to his feet.  Somewhere in the middle distance of his mind he was sorry that this tranquil morning was over, just as below in the darkness of it there ran those streams of yearning and of horror, but all his ordinary work-a-day self was occupied with the immediate prospect of the stewpot.  It was some sort of a ragout, he knew, and he lusted for it.  Red wine of the country would be there, and cheese and new brown bread. . . .  It surprised him to find how completely his bodily needs and the pleasure of their gratification had possession of him.