An old native on a donkey went by, piping a Soudanese melody on a little wooden Arab flute.  Pierson turned back into the hospital humming it.  A nurse met him there.

“The poor boy at the end of A ward is sinking fast, sir; I expect he’d like to see you,”

He went into A ward, and walked down between the beds to the west window end, where two screens had been put, to block off the cot.  Another nurse, who was sitting beside it, rose at once.

“He’s quite conscious,” she whispered; “he can still speak a little.  He’s such a dear.”  A tear rolled down her cheek, and she passed out behind the screens.  Pierson looked down at the boy; perhaps he was twenty, but the unshaven down on his cheeks was soft and almost colourless.  His eyes were closed.  He breathed regularly, and did not seem in pain; but there was about him that which told he was going; something resigned, already of the grave.  The window was wide open, covered by mosquito-netting, and a tiny line of sunlight, slanting through across the foot of the cot, crept slowly backwards over the sheets and the boy’s body, shortening as it crept.  In the grey whiteness of the walls; the bed, the boy’s face, just that pale yellow bar of sunlight, and one splash of red and blue from a little flag on the wall glowed out.  At this cooler hour, the ward behind the screens was almost empty, and few sounds broke the stillness; but from without came that intermittent rustle of dry palm-leaves.  Pierson waited in silence, watching the sun sink.  If the boy might pass like this, it would be God’s mercy.  Then he saw the boy’s eyes open, wonderfully clear eyes of the lighted grey which has dark rims; his lips moved, and Pierson bent down to hear.

“I’m goin’ West, zurr.”  The whisper had a little soft burr; the lips quivered; a pucker as of a child formed on his face, and passed.

Through Pierson’s mind there flashed the thought:  ’O God!  Let me be some help to him!’

“To God, my dear son!” he said.

A flicker of humour, of ironic question, passed over the boy’s lips.

Terribly moved, Pierson knelt down, and began softly, fervently praying.  His whispering mingled with the rustle of the palm-leaves, while the bar of sunlight crept up the body.  In the boy’s smile had been the whole of stoic doubt, of stoic acquiescence.  It had met him with an unconscious challenge; had seemed to know so much.  Pierson took his hand, which lay outside the sheet.  The boy’s lips moved, as though in thanks; he drew a long feeble breath, as if to suck in the thread of sunlight; and his eyes closed.  Pierson bent over the hand.  When he looked up the boy was dead.  He kissed his forehead and went quietly out.

The sun had set, and he walked away from the hospital to a hillock beyond the track on the desert’s edge, and stood looking at the afterglow.  The sun and the boy—­together they had gone West, into that wide glowing nothingness.