Page:Frank Owen - Rare Earth, 1931.djvu/161

 beautiful it must be in Galvey. Enoch leaned against a tree and closed his eyes. He wondered what his mother was doing at that moment. Was she walking through the garden? Was she seated on the porch? Perhaps she was standing by the roadside talking to a neighbor. Or even writing him a letter. How he wished he could be home again only for a moment, to see his mother's face, to place his head on her bosom. Galvey, Galvey, thousands of miles away.

At Christmas time when all the world should have been gay Enoch was in the trenches somewhere in France. It was bitingly cold. A driving rain was crashing down against the men, boring into the flesh like chips of steel. The trenches were knee-deep with water in some places and beneath the water was mud. It was necessary to change positions continually to keep from slipping. For more than six hours the trenches had been too wet for the men to sit down. Morning dawned at last, dull, gray, not much brighter than the black pall of the night. A haze of