were fishing along the far shore where it ran deep. The blown bridge was being repaired with a snarl of riveting hammers, and eight hundred yards away the smashed buildings and outbuildings of what was now a ruined country house once built by Longhena showed where the mediums had dropped their loads.
“Look at it,” the driver said. “In this country you find a bridge or a railway station. Then go half a mile from it in any direction and you find it like that.”
“I guess the lesson is,” the Colonel said, “don’t ever build yourself a country house, or a church, or hire Giotto to paint you any frescoes, if you’ve got a church, eight hundred yards away from any bridge.”
“I knew there must be a lesson in it, sir,” the driver said.
They were past the ruined villa now and onto the straight road with the willows growing by the ditches still dark with winter, and the fields full of mulberry trees. Ahead a man was pedalling a bicycle and using both his hands to read a paper.
“If there are heavies the lesson ought to say a mile,” the driver said. “Would that be about right, sir?”
“If it’s guided missiles,” the Colonel said. “Better make it two hundred and fifty miles. Better give that cyclist some horn.”
The driver did, and the man moved over to the side of the road without either looking up or touching his handlebars. As they passed him, the Colonel tried to see what paper he was reading, but it was folded over.
