"First we made a hole for the sap, and I was in at it. since I was
scooping more than the others I found myself in front. The others
were widening and making solid behind. But behold I find a jumble of
beams. I'd lit on an old trench, caved in, 'vidently; half caved
in--there was some space and room. In the middle of those stumps of
wood all mixed together that I was lifting away one by one from in
front of me, there was something like a big sandbag in height.
upright, and something on the top of it hanging down.
"And behold a plank gives way, and the queer sack falls on me, with
its weight on top. I was pegged down, and the smell of a corpse
filled my throat--on the top of the bundle there was a head, and it
was the hair that I'd seen hanging down.
"You understand, one couldn't see very well; but I recognized the
hair 'cause there isn't any other like it in the world, and then the
rest of the face, all stove in and moldy, the neck pulped, and all
the lot dead for a month perhaps. It was Eudoxie, I tell you.
"Yes, it was the woman I could never go near before, you know--that
I only saw a long way off and couldn't ever touch, same as diamonds.
She used to run about everywhere, you know. She used even to wander
in the lines. One day she must have stopped a bullet, and stayed
there, dead and lost, until the chance of this sap.
"You clinch the position? I was forced to hold her up with one arm
as well as I could, and work with the other.
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