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The streets are all one sheet of frozen snow, and great care is taken to keep them in good repair, gangs of road-menders being always at hand to fill up ruts by the simple process of picking up the hard snow of the roadway and then sprinkling a little water on the top, which at once produces a solid surface.
As I stared out into the flame-pricked darkness there passed before me in imaginary review that endless stream of dauntless and determined men mud-caked infantrymen, gunners, despatch riders, sappers, pioneers, motor-drivers, road-menders, mechanics, railway-builders who form that wall of steel which Britain has thrown between Western Europe and the Hunnish hordes.
"We are only poor folk!" he went on, in a firmer voice. "Only gypsies, tinkers, road-menders, labourers, and the like! We cannot fight against the rich who ride us down! There's no law for us, because we can't pay for it. We can't fee the counsel or dine the judge! The rich can pay.
But when I'm well, I'll see him and make it clear, once for all." "You say that now. But I hope you'll never see him, or breathe the same air with him." "Once when I'm strong. I don't want him to go on living his life without knowing what I'm thinking of him. I don't want him to think he can pose as a decent man again. I want him to know that the road-menders and road-sweepers are high above him."
Of old time an unfortunate woman committed suicide, and according to the barbarous law of those days her body was buried at the cross-roads and a stake driven through it. That was the end so far as the brutal law of the land went. But the road-menders, with better hearts, from that day to this have always kept up the mound.
It had a woful look, all those garden elegances cast there, flung out upon the high-road, like discarded rubbish; pots of selected flowers, favorite seats, well-worn paths, carefully-tended beds, trailing climbers, torn and snapped branches, all lying to be shovelled away as fast as the road-menders could ply their pickaxes and spades.
If a chitty fails, he is driven out of the caste and becomes a pariah. The caste make up his losses. Dyaks from Borneo idle by. Parsee merchants in their tall, conical hats, Chinese rickshaw runners and cart coolies, Tamil road-menders, Bugis, Achinese, Siamese, Japanese, Madras serving-men, negro firemen, Lascar sailors, throng the little square, the agora of the commercial life of the city.
It was difficult to say, but long enough to become very cold. The snow was well beaten down by his heavy hunting-boots. He had evidently tried to keep warm by walking up and down. Then suddenly he must have remembered a little mud hut on the other side of the road, such as the road-menders build as a shelter against the rain. He had gone down the ditch and crossed the road.
A regiment of travailleurs is attached to every secteur of trenches. These soldiers, depending, I believe, on the Engineer Corps, are quartered just behind the lines, and go to them every day to put them in order, repair the roads, and do all the manual labor. Humble folk these, peasants, ditch-diggers, road-menders, and village carpenters. Those at Pont-
Among those who saluted us from time to time were several of the lesser townsmen to whom Cousin Egbert had presented me the evening before, and I now perceived that most of these were truly persons I must not know in my present station hodmen, road-menders, grooms, delivery-chaps, that sort.
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