ded, from antecedent to consequent, rather than
backward. It is more difficult--leaving memory aside--to take present
conditions and discover the unknown which evolved these conditions, than
to take present conditions and show what will be evolved from them. Of
course, if we already know what preceded these conditions, there is no
discovery to be claimed--and that is what I am saying: that with our
knowledge of the present, the future is not a discovery; it is a mere
development naturally augured from the present. An incapable general
means defeat, but defeat does not imply an incapable general.

Now, I had been trying to begin with Jones on the bare hill where I had
seen him latest, and to go back, but my efforts had only proved the
truth of the foregoing. I had only jumped back a considerable distance,
and from the past had followed Jones forward as well as my imperfect
powers permitted; again I had jumped back and had followed him until he
met the Doctor in the night. The episode of lifting Willis into the
ambulance seemed a separate event of very short duration. My mind had
unconsciously appreciated the difficulty of working backward, and had in
reality endeavoured to avoid that almost impossible process by dividing
Jones into several periods and following the events of each period in
order of time and succession. I now, without having willed to think it,
became conscious of this difficulty, and I yielded at once to
suggestion. I would begin anew, and would help the natural process.

First I tried to sum up results. I found these: first, Jones, in blue,
helps another man in blue and I follow him until I lose him when he
reaches the Doctor. Second, Jones, in blue, and the Doctor come to
Willis again--and then I lose Jones and all of them. Third, Jones--alone
and in gray--is in the act of falling, with a shell bursting over him,
and I lose him.

I had no doubt of the order in which these events had occurred, and
none, whatever of the fact that all of Jones's life had been lost to me,
if not indeed to himself, when I saw him fall. Now I wanted to find
connecting events; I wanted to know how to join the Jones at the secret
place in the woods with the Jones that I had seen fall, and I set my
memory to work, but obtained nothing. The scene on the hill seemed
unrelated to that of Willis.

There was remembrance, it is true, of Jones walking through a forest at
night, but the scene was so indistinct that I could make noth