A wonderful motto for a man to carry through life.  Bob had no thought of future or fame.  In keen solicitude for a fallen comrade he uttered words which mean more in these days of war and blood than do the words of poets.

“You’re in the right direction—­don’t turn round!”

Then the lad got up to go on.  He struggled to lift the box of ammunition.

I whispered to him hoarsely:  “You’re not going on—­you will never get there.  It is certain death.”

“Good-by, old boy,” was his answer.  “You don’t think because the rest of you have gone down that I am going to be a piker.  Say ‘Hello!’ to Mother for me should you see her before I do.”

I have never seen his mother.  I do not know her.  If she lives she has the memory of a son who, though a boy in years, was a soldier and a very gallant gentleman.  Bob tried to reach the trench, but a rain of bullets got him and he fell dead only a little way from me.

I lay where I had fallen for some time.  I don’t know how long, but long enough to see our boys captured by the enemy.  And in so dreadful a plight as I was I had to smile.  Those men who had boasted they would kill themselves, surrendered with the rest.  Life is very sweet.  There is always a chance of living, and always a chance of escape no matter how brutal the system in German prison camps.

Every man in that trench surrendered honorably.  Not a man had a bullet left.  They were hopelessly outnumbered, and it is hard to die when there is youth and love and strength.

As evening wore on I feared that I too might be captured, and I commenced a weary struggle to crawl back across the field.  It was while I was resting after such an effort that a wonderful moment came to me.  I saw the Lord Jesus upon His cross, and the compassion upon His face was marvelous to see.  He appeared to speak to me.

“I am dying,” I muttered, and then thought, “Shall I pray?”

Of outward praying I had done none.  I thought about it and wondered.  To pray now—­no, that was being a piker.  I had not prayed openly before, now when I was nearing death it was no time for a hurried repentance and a stammered prayer.  I watched the vision as it slowly faded, and a great comfort surrounded me.  I was happy.

I crawled on and reached a shell hole.  It must have been an hour later that a despatch rider came to me.  His motorcycle had been shot from under him, and he was striving to reach his destination on foot.  He spoke to me, and then placed me in a blanket, which he took from a dead soldier.  In this he dragged me to the shelter of an old tumbledown house.  It had been riddled with shot and shell, but the greater part of the outer walls were standing, and it was shelter.

I begged the despatch rider to give me his name.  I begged him to take some small things of mine to keep as a token for what he had done for me.  But he would have nothing.  He hurried away with the intention of sending help to me, and as he went I begged his name once more.  “Oh!  Johnnie Canuck!” said he.  And there it remains.  I do not know the name of the man who dragged me to comparative safety at such terrible risk to himself.