As the end drew nearer, he turned more and more into a child.  After all, he had never come of age.  He spoke about his mother, sending her his love, and saying:  “I’m afraid, padre, that I led her a life—­but I’ll bet she’d rather have had me and my plagues than not.  Don’t you think so?”

He mentioned us with affection as “those two kids,” and sent the message that he hoped we at least should come through all right.

And then the lazy eyes closed in their last weariness, the impudent lips parted, and Penny was dead.  The War had beaten him.  It was too big a circumstance for him to tame.

Sec.6

The night we heard of it, Doe threw himself into a chair and said: 

“I’m miserable to-night, Rupert.”

“So’m I,” said I, looking out of the window over a moonlit sea.  “Poor old Penny.  I don’t know why it makes one feel a cur, but it does, doesn’t it?”

“Surely,” answered Doe.

For a time we smoked our pipes in silence.  I gazed at the long silver pathway that the light of the moon had laid on the sea.  Right on the horizon, where the pathway met the sky, a boat with a tall sail stood black against the light.  Fancifully I imagined that its dark shape resembled the outline of a man—­say, perhaps, the figure of Destiny—­walking down the sparkling pathway towards us.  I was in the mood to fancy such things.  Then Doe from his chair said: 

“Old Penny always took the lead with us, didn’t he?  He’s taken it again.”

“I don’t see what you mean,” answered I.

“Oh, it doesn’t matter what I mean.  I’m depressed to-night.”

We spoke of it with the Colonel the next afternoon, when we were having tea in his private room.

“It doesn’t seem fair,” complained Doe.  “He could have done anything with his life,” and he added rather tritely:  “Penny’s story which might have been monumental is now only a sort of broken pillar over a churchyard grave.”

“Nonsense,” snapped the Colonel.  “It was splendid, perfectly splendid.”  And he arose from his chair and took down from a shelf a little blue volume bearing the title “1914.”  With a pencil he underlined certain phrases in a sonnet, and handed the book to us.  Doe brought his head close to mine, and we leant over the marked page and read the lines together: 

“These laid the world away, poured out the red
Sweet wine of youth, gave up the years to be
Of hope and joy—­

Blow, bugles, blow—­
Nobleness walks in our ways again—­”

The Colonel—­how like him!—­saw the story of Pennybet, not as a broken pillar, but as a graceful, upright column, with a richly foliated capital.

Sec.7