been told the secret of
the world. Yet when he first waked, it was not in his mind--only that
confusion out of which he had passed to nothingness with the vision of
the distracted springboks. Suddenly a torturing thirst came, and it
waked him fully to the reality of it all. He was lying in his own
blood, in the swath which the battle had cut.

His work was done. This came to him slowly, as the sun clears away the
mists of morning. Something--Some One--had reached out and touched him
on the shoulder, had summoned him.

When he left Brinkwort's Farm yesterday, it was with the desire to
live, to do large things. He and Rudyard had clasped hands, and Rudyard
had made a promise to him, which gave him hope that the broken
roof-tree would be mended, the shattered walls of home restored. It had
seemed to him then that his own mistake was not irreparable, and that
the way was open to peace, if not to happiness.

When he first came to this war he had said, "I will do this," and, "I
will do that," and he had thought it possible to do it in his own time
and because he willed it. He had put himself deliberately in the way of
the Scythe, and had thrown himself into its arc of death.

To have his own way by tricking Destiny into giving him release and
absolution without penalty--that had been his course. In the hour when
he had ceased to desire exit by breaking through the wall and not by
the predestined door, the reply of Destiny to him had been: "It is not
for you to choose." He had wished to drink the cup of release, had
reached out to take it, but presently had ceased to wish to drink it.
Then Destiny had said: "Here is the dish--drink it."

He closed his eyes to shut out the staring light, and he wished in a
vague way that he might shut out the sounds of the battle--the
everlasting boom and clatter, the tearing reverberations. But he smiled
too, for he realized that his being where he was alone meant that the
army had moved on over that last hill; and that there would soon be the
Relief for which England prayed.

There was that to the good; and he had taken part in it all. His
battery, a fragment of what it had been when it galloped out to do its
work in the early morning, had had its glorious share in the great
day's work.

He had had the most critical and dangerous task of this memorable day.
He had been on the left flank of the main body, and his battery had
suddenly faced a terrific fire from concealed riflemen who h