“‘I took two prisoners,’ I said, and everybody I spoke to I told that.  I was fearfully proud of it.

“I thought that if I could take two prisoners in my first charge I was going to be some soldier.

“I had stood it all admirably.  I didn’t feel a bit shaken.  I was as tough as anything.  I’d seen death and killing, and it was all just hockey.

“And then that confounded Ortheris must needs go and get killed.

“The shell knocked me over, and didn’t hurt me a bit.  I was a little stunned, and some dirt was thrown over me, and when I got up on my knees I saw Jewell lying about six yards off—­and his legs were all smashed about.  Ugh!  Pulped!

“He looked amazed.  ‘Bloody,’ he said, ‘bloody.’  He fixed his eyes on me, and suddenly grinned.  You know we’d once had two fights about his saying ‘bloody,’ I think I told you at the time, a fight and a return match, he couldn’t box for nuts, but he stood up like a Briton, and it appealed now to his sense of humour that I should be standing there too dazed to protest at the old offence.  ‘I thought you was done in,’ he said.  ’I’m in a mess—­a bloody mess, ain’t I?  Like a stuck pig.  Bloody—­right enough.  Bloody!  I didn’t know I ‘ad it in me.’

“He looked at me and grinned with a sort of pale satisfaction in keeping up to the last—­dying good Ortheris to the finish.  I just stood up helpless in front of him, still rather dazed.

“He said something about having a thundering thirst on him.

“I really don’t believe he felt any pain.  He would have done if he had lived.

“And then while I was fumbling with my water-bottle, he collapsed.  He forgot all about Ortheris.  Suddenly he said something that cut me all to ribbons.  His face puckered up just like the face of a fretful child which refuses to go to bed.  ‘I didn’t want to be aut of it,’ he said petulantly.  ‘And I’m done!’ And then—­then he just looked discontented and miserable and died—­right off.  Turned his head a little way over.  As if he was impatient at everything.  Fainted—­and fluttered out.

“For a time I kept trying to get him to drink....

“I couldn’t believe he was dead....

“And suddenly it was all different.  I began to cry.  Like a baby.  I kept on with the water-bottle at his teeth long after I was convinced he was dead.  I didn’t want him to be aut of it!  God knows how I didn’t.  I wanted my dear little Cockney cad back.  Oh! most frightfully I wanted him back.

“I shook him.  I was like a scared child.  I blubbered and howled things....  It’s all different since he died.

“My dear, dear Father, I am grieving and grieving—­and it’s altogether nonsense.  And it’s all mixed up in my mind with the mess I trod on.  And it gets worse and worse.  So that I don’t seem to feel anything really, even for Teddy.

“It’s been just the last straw of all this hellish foolery....