o the other when Langton spoke behind him:

"It's no good now, padre," he said quietly; "it's all over."

And Peter saw that it was.

The planes did not come back. The officer in charge of the train came
down it with a lantern, and looked in. "That makes three," he said. "We
can do nothing now, but we'll be in the station in a bit. Don't show any
lights; they may come back. Where the hell were our machines, I'd like to
know?"

He went on, and Peter sat down in his corner. Langton picked up the rug,
and covered up the body. Then he glanced at Peter. "Here," he said,
holding out a flask, "have some of this."

Peter shook his head. Langton came over to him. "You must," he said;
"it'll pull you together. Don't go under now, Graham. You kept your nerve
just now--come on."

At that Peter took it, and drained the little cup the other poured out
for him. Then he handed it back, without a word.

"Feel better?" queried the other, a trifle curiously, staring at him.

"Yes, thanks," said Peter--"a damned sight better! Poor old Jenks! What
blasted luck that he should have got it!... Langton, I wish to God it had
been me!"

PART II

"And the Lord turned and looked upon Peter."

ST. LUKE'S GOSPEL.

CHAPTER I

The charm of the little towns of Northern France is very difficult to
imprison on paper. It is not exactly that they are old, although there is
scarcely one which has not a church or a chateau or a quaint medieval
street worth coming far to see; nor that they are particularly
picturesque, for the ground is fairly flat, and they are all but always
set among the fields, since it is by agriculture far more than by
manufacture that they live. But they are clean and cheerful; one thinks
of them under the sun; and they are very homely. In them the folk smile
simply at you, but not inquisitively as in England, for each bustles
gaily about his own affairs, and will let you do what you please, with a
shrug of the shoulders. Abbeville is very typical of all this. It has its
church, and from the bridge over the Somme the backs of ancient houses
can be seen leaning half over the river, which has sung beneath them for
five hundred years; and it is set in the midst of memories of stirring
days. Yet it is not for these that one would revisit the little town, but
rather that one might walk by the still canal under the high trees in
spring, or loiter in the market-place round what the Hun has left of the
statue of t