The “something” was revealed by Sergeant McGillicuddy, with a pale face, while he was shut up with the Colonel in his office.

“It’s partly my fault, sir,” said the Sergeant.  “The fellow has been doing his duty pretty well, and yesterday, on the aviation field, the aviation orficer was praisin’ him for his work.  You know, sir, how I likes the machines and studies ’em at odd times.  The flyin’ was over and there wasn’t anybody around the sheds but Lawrence and me.  I was lookup at his machine, and, no doubt, botherin’ him, an he says sharp-like: 

“’You can’t understand these machines.  It takes an educated man like me to understand ’em.  They’re more complicated than buggies.’  That made me mad, sir, and I says, ’That’s no way to speak to your Sergeant.’  ‘You go to the devil,’ says Lawrence.  ’You’ll get ten days in the guard house for that,’ I says.  Then Lawrence seemed to grow crazy, all at once.  ‘Yes,’ he shouts, like a lunatic, ’that’s a fit punishment for a gentleman.  You’ll see to it, Sergeant, that I get ten days in the guard house, and my wife breakin’ her heart with shame, and the other children tauntin’ my boy!’ With that, sir, he hit me on the side of the head with his fist.  I was so unprepared that it knocked me down, but I saw Lawrence runnin’ toward the station.  I picked myself up and went and sat down on the bench outside the sheds to think what I ought to do.  I knew, as well as I know now, that Lawrence was runnin’ away, and I had drove him to it.  But I swear, sir, before my Colonel and my God, that I didn’t mean to make Lawrence mad, or misuse him in any way.  You know my record, sir.”

“Yes,” answered Colonel Fortescue, his pity divided among Lawrence and his wife, and the honest, well-meaning McGillicuddy, who had brought about a catastrophe.

“For God’s sake, sir,” said McGillicuddy, “wiping his forehead, be as easy on Lawrence as you can, and give me a day—­two days—­leave to hunt him up.”

This the Colonel did, warning McGillicuddy not to repeat what had occurred on the aviation plain.

The Sergeant got his leave, and another two days, all spent in hunting for Lawrence.  There was nowhere for him to go except to the little collection of houses at the railway station.  No one had seen Lawrence board the train that passed once a day, but a man, even in uniform, can sometimes slip aboard a train without being seen.  The Sergeant came back, looking woe-begone, and Lawrence was published on the bulletin board as “absent without leave.”

The shock of Lawrence’s departure quite overcame his unhappy wife.  She took to her bed and had not strength to leave it.

Sergeant McGillicuddy begged that he might be allowed to tell to the chaplain the provocation he had given Lawrence, who might tell Mrs. Lawrence.  The blow struck by Lawrence was the act of a mad impulse, and having struck an officer, Lawrence might well fear to face the punishment.  This the Colonel permitted, and the chaplain, sitting by Mrs. Lawrence’s bed, told her of it, and of Sergeant McGillicuddy’s remorse.  Until then, Mrs. Lawrence, lying in her bed, had remained strangely tearless, although a faint moan sometimes escaped her lips.  At the chaplain’s words she suddenly burst into a rain of tears.