I spent some weary hours looking for Westwater.  He was not in the big clearing station, but I ran him to earth at last in the new hospital which had just been got going in the Ursuline convent.  He was the most sterling little man, in ordinary life rather dry and dogmatic, with a trick of taking you up sharply which didn’t make him popular.  Now he was lying very stiff and quiet in the hospital bed, and his blue eyes were solemn and pathetic like a sick dog’s.

‘There’s nothing much wrong with me,’ he said, in reply to my question.  ’A shell dropped beside me and damaged my foot.  They say they’ll have to cut it off . . .  I’ve an easier mind now you’re here, Hannay.  Of course you’ll take over from Masterton.  He’s a good man but not quite up to his job.  Poor Fraser—­you’ve heard about Fraser.  He was done in at the very start.  Yes, a shell.  And Lefroy.  If he’s alive and not too badly smashed the Hun has got a troublesome prisoner.’

He was too sick to talk, but he wouldn’t let me go.

’The division was all right.  Don’t you believe anyone who says we didn’t fight like heroes.  Our outpost line held up the Hun for six hours, and only about a dozen men came back.  We could have stuck it out in the battle-zone if both flanks hadn’t been turned.  They got through Crabbe’s left and came down the Verey ravine, and a big wave rushed Shropshire Wood . . .  We fought it out yard by yard and didn’t budge till we saw the Plessis dump blazing in our rear.  Then it was about time to go . . .  We haven’t many battalion commanders left.  Watson, Endicot, Crawshay . . .’  He stammered out a list of gallant fellows who had gone.

’Get back double quick, Hannay.  They want you.  I’m not happy about Masterton.  He’s too young for the job.’  And then a nurse drove me out, and I left him speaking in the strange forced voice of great weakness.

At the foot of the staircase stood Mary.

‘I saw you go in,’ she said, ‘so I waited for you.’

‘Oh, my dear,’ I cried, ’you should have been in Boulogne by now.  What madness brought you here?’

’They know me here and they’ve taken me on.  You couldn’t expect me to stay behind.  You said yourself everybody was wanted, and I’m in a Service like you.  Please don’t be angry, Dick.’

I wasn’t angry, I wasn’t even extra anxious.  The whole thing seemed to have been planned by fate since the creation of the world.  The game we had been engaged in wasn’t finished and it was right that we should play it out together.  With that feeling came a conviction, too, of ultimate victory.  Somehow or sometime we should get to the end of our pilgrimage.  But I remembered Mary’s forebodings about the sacrifice required.  The best of us.  That ruled me out, but what about her?

I caught her to my arms.  ’Goodbye, my very dearest.  Don’t worry about me, for mine’s a soft job and I can look after my skin.  But oh! take care of yourself, for you are all the world to me.’