’"I know it,” I says.  “That’s where the dead are always so damned unfair on the survivors.”

’"I see that too,” he says.  “But I’d have given a good deal if it hadn’t happened, poor chaps!”

‘"Amen!” says Lundie.  Then?  Oh, then we sorter walked back two an’ two to Flora’s Temple an’ lit matches to see we hadn’t left anything behind.  Walen, he had confiscated the note-books before they left.  There was the first man’s pistol which we’d forgot to return him, lyin’ on the stone bench.  Mankeltow puts his hand on it—­he never touched the trigger—­an’, bein’ an automatic, of course the blame thing jarred off—­spiteful as a rattler!

’"Look out!  They’ll have one of us yet,” says Walen in the dark.  But they didn’t—­the Lord hadn’t quit being our shepherd—­and we heard the bullet zip across the veldt—­quite like old times.  Ya-as!

’"Swine!” says Mankeltow.

’After that I didn’t hear any more “Poor chap” talk....  Me?  I never worried about killing my man.  I was too busy figurin’ how a British jury might regard the proposition.  I guess Lundie felt that way too.

‘Oh, but say!  We had an interestin’ time at dinner.  Folks was expected whose auto had hung up on the road.  They hadn’t wired, and Peters had laid two extra places.  We noticed ’em as soon as we sat down.  I’d hate to say how noticeable they were.  Mankeltow with his neck bandaged (he’d caught a relaxed throat golfin’) sent for Peters and told him to take those empty places away—­if you please.  It takes something to rattle Peters.  He was rattled that time.  Nobody else noticed anything.  And now...’

‘Where did they come down?’ I asked, as he rose.

’In the Channel, I guess.  There was nothing in the papers about ’em.  Shall we go into the drawin’-room, and see what these boys and girls are doin?’ But say, ain’t life in England inter_es_tin’?

REBIRTH

If any God should say
“I will restore
The world her yesterday
Whole as before
My Judgment blasted it”—­who would not lift
Heart, eye, and hand in passion o’er the gift?

If any God should will
To wipe from mind
The memory of this ill
Which is mankind
In soul and substance now—­who would not bless
Even to tears His loving-tenderness?

If any God should give
Us leave to fly
These present deaths we live,
And safely die
In those lost lives we lived ere we were born—­
What man but would not laugh the excuse to scorn?

For we are what we are—­
So broke to blood
And the strict works of war—­
So long subdued
To sacrifice, that threadbare Death commands
Hardly observance at our busier hands.

Yet we were what we were,
And, fashioned so,
It pleases us to stare
At the far show
Of unbelievable years and shapes that flit,
In our own likeness, on the edge of it.

The Horse Marines