is spoken of by those who have known and loved him as one who
was and has been.

"He had relieved me at 10 a.m. He might have been up over an hour when it
happened. The orderly-sergeant had got his mouth at the speaking-tube, in
the act of sending down a message; he did not see him hit. It was a shell
from their Maxim-Nordenfelt. And when we got to him, the first glance told
us there was little hope."

"There is none at all," says Saxham curtly, as is his wont. "A splinter
has shattered the lower portion of the spine. The agony can be deadened
with an opiate, and the ruptured arteries ligatured. Beyond that there is
nothing else to do, though he may live till morning."

"He managed to ask for Wrynche before he swooned, so we 'phoned him at
Hotchkiss Outpost North. He got here ten minutes ago, badly cut up, but
there has been no recognition of him. Do what you can, Saxham, in the
case. Every moment may bring Wrynche's recall. There is another person I
should have expected the poor boy to ask for.... That young girl, Saxham,
whose heart has to be broken with the news, sooner or later. Perhaps about
nightfall, when it will be safe for her to venture. I ought to send an
escort for Miss Mildare?"

The slow, dusky colour rises in Saxham's set, pale face, and as slowly
sinks out again. He has been standing in low-toned colloquy with the Chief
outside the heavy plush curtains. He turns silently upon his heel and
vanishes behind them.

"_Ting--ting--ting!_"

The telephone-bell heralds an urgent recall from Hotchkiss Outpost North.
And a beckoning hand summons Captain Bingo from the bedside of his dying
friend ere ever the word of parting has been spoken.

"It is for you, Wrynche, as I expected."

"I am ready, sir. Orderly, get my damned brute out!"

The sorrow and love that swell the big man's heart to bursting find rather
absurd expression in his savage objurgation of the innocent brown charger.
But Captain Bingo, when he stoops over the camp-bed where lies Beauvayse,
kisses him solemnly and clumsily upon the forehead, and then goes heavily
striding out of the death-chamber with his bulldog jowl well down upon his
chest; and a moment later when he is seen bucketing the lean brown charger
through the thrashing hailstorm that is jagged across by the white-green
fires of bursting shell, is rather a tragic figure, or so it seems to me.

Meanwhile, what of the man who lies upon the bed? Since Bingo's face came
betw