“I got my commission in 1915 in K-1, Kitchener’s first hundred thousand, and I went off to the front in the second year of the war.  I had a scratch and was slightly gassed once, but nothing much happened for a long time.  And in 1916, in May, came the news that my godfather, the person closest to me on earth, was drowned at sea.  I was in London, just out of the hospital and about to go back to France.”

The old General stopped and stared down at the graveled path with its trim turf border lying at his feet.

“It was to me as if the world, seething in its troubles, was suddenly empty—­with that man gone.  I drifted with the crowd about London town, and the crowd appeared to be like myself, dazed.  The streets were full and there was continually a profound, sorrowful sound, like the groan of a nation; faces were blank and gray.  Those surging, mournful London streets, and the look of the posters with great letters on them—­his name—­that memory isn’t likely to leave me till I die.  Of course, I got hold of every detail and tried to picture the manner of it to myself, but I couldn’t get it that he was dead.  Kitchener, the heart of the nation; I couldn’t comprehend that he had stopped breathing.  I couldn’t get myself satisfied that I wasn’t to see him again.  It seemed there must be some way out.  You’ll remember, perhaps, that four boats were seen to put off from the Hampshire as she sank?  I tried to trace those boats.  I traveled up there and interviewed people who had seen them.  I got no good from it.  But it kept coming to me that it was not a mine that had sunk the ship, that it was a torpedo from a German submarine, and that Kitchener was on one of the boats that put off and that he had been taken prisoner by the enemy.  God knows why that thought persisted—­there were reasons against it—­it was a boy’s theory.  But it persisted; I couldn’t get it out of my head.  I was in St. Paul’s at the Memorial Service; I heard the ‘Last Post’ played for him, and I saw the King and Queen in tears; all that didn’t settle my mind.  I went back to the front, heavy-hearted, and tried to behave myself as I believed he’d have had me—­the Sirdar.  My people had called him the Sirdar always.  Luck was with me in France; I had chances, and did a bit of work, and got advancement.”

“I know,” I nodded.  “I’ve read history.  A few trifles like the rescue of the rifles and holding that trench and—­”

The old soldier interrupted, looking thunderous.  “It has a bearing on the episode I’m about to tell you.  That’s why I refer to it.”

I didn’t mind his haughtiness.  It was given me to see the boy’s shyness within that grim old hero.

“So that when I landed in London in 1917, having been stupid enough to get my right arm potted, it happened that my name was known.  They picked me out to make a doing over.  I was most uncommonly conspicuous for nothing more than thousands of other lads had done.  They’d given their lives like water, thousands of them—­it made me sick with shame, when I thought of those others, to have my name ringing through the land.  But so it was, and it served a purpose, right enough, I saw later.