"You never know it's after you
until you've got it, and then you don't."

The letter was not to be sent unless he was killed. So he put in a
few anecdotes to let her know exactly how happy and contented he
was. Then he dropped the whole thing in the ten inches of mud and
water he was standing in, and had to copy it all over.

To Edith he wrote a different sort of letter. He told her that he
loved her. "It's almost more adoration than love," he wrote, while
two men next to him were roaring over a filthy story. "I mean by
that, that I feel every hour of every day how far above me you are.
It's like one of these _fusees_ the Germans are always throwing up
over us at night. It's perfectly dark, and then something bright and
clear and like a star, only nearer, is overhead. Everything looks
different while it floats there. And so, my dear, my dear,
everything has been different to me since I knew you."

Rather boyish, all of it, but terribly earnest. He said he had
wanted to ask her to marry him, but that the way he felt about it, a
fellow had no right to ask a girl such a thing when he was going to
a war. If he came back he would ask her. And he would love her all
his life.

The next day, at dawn, he went out with eighty men to an outpost
that had been an abandoned farm. It was rather a forlorn hope. They
had one machine gun. At nine o'clock the enemy opened fire on them
and followed it by an attack. The major in charge went down early.
At two Cecil was standing in the loft of the farmhouse, firing with
a revolver on men who beneath him, outside, were placing dynamite
under a corner of the building.

To add to the general hopelessness, their own artillery, believing
them all dead, opened fire on the building. They moved their wounded
to the cellar and kept on fighting.

At eight o'clock that night Cecil's right arm was hanging helpless,
and the building was burning merrily. There were five of them left.
They fixed bayonets and charged the open door.

* * * * *

When the boy opened his eyes he was lying in six inches of manure in
a box car. One of his men was standing over him, keeping him from
being trampled on. There was no air and no water. The ammonia fumes
from the manure were stifling.

The car lurched and jolted along. Cecil opened his eyes now and
then, and at first he begged for water. When he found there was none
he lay still. The men hammered on the door and called for ai