s, and iridescent above, into the slowly deepening
blue. Pierson stood gazing at the mystery of the desert from under the
little group of palms and bougainvillea which formed the garden of the
hospital. Even-song was in full voice: From the far wing a gramophone
was grinding out a music-hall ditty; two aeroplanes, wheeling exactly
like the buzzards of the desert, were letting drip the faint whir of
their flight; metallic voices drifted from the Arab village; the wheels
of the water-wells creaked; and every now and then a dry rustle was
stirred from the palm-leaves by puffs of desert wind. On either hand an
old road ran out, whose line could be marked by the little old
watch-towers of another age. For how many hundred years had human life
passed along it to East and West; the brown men and their camels,
threading that immemorial track over the desert, which ever filled him
with wonder, so still it was, so wide, so desolate, and every evening so
beautiful! He sometimes felt that he could sit for ever looking at it;
as though its cruel mysterious loveliness were--home; and yet he never
looked at it without a spasm of homesickness.

So far his new work had brought him no nearer to the hearts of men. Or at
least he did not feel it had. Both at the regimental base, and now in
this hospital--an intermediate stage--waiting for the draft with which he
would be going into Palestine, all had been very nice to him, friendly,
and as it were indulgent; so might schoolboys have treated some
well-intentioned dreamy master, or business men a harmless idealistic
inventor who came visiting their offices. He had even the feeling that
they were glad to have him about, just as they were glad to have their
mascots and their regimental colours; but of heart-to-heart simple
comradeship--it seemed they neither wanted it of him nor expected him to
give it, so that he had a feeling that he would be forward and
impertinent to offer it. Moreover, he no longer knew how. He was very
lonely. 'When I come face to face with death,' he would think, 'it will
be different. Death makes us all brothers. I may be of real use to them
then.'

They brought him a letter while he stood there listening to that
even-song, gazing at the old desert road.
"DARLING DAD,

"I do hope this will reach you before you move on to Palestine. You said
in your last--at the end of September, so I hope you'll just get it.
There is one great piece of news, which I'm a