known in a vague way that he had talked about going
to the front, but I didn't believe she thought he would ever get there.

And he had lain low for a fortnight.

When we had got back to London at noon on Tuesday, which was the end of
Jimmy's fortnight, I found a wire from Amershott waiting for me. It had
been sent that morning. It said: "Leaving to-morrow. Must see you urgent
business. Can you come down this evening. JEVONS."

I knew that he wouldn't send a wire like that without good reason; so I
went.

* * * * *

A light rain was falling when I reached Midhurst. A hired dog-cart met me
at the station, so I gathered that Jimmy's mad passion for his motor-car
had survived the war.

And at Amershott everything seemed to have survived. If it had not been
for troops on the high road, and for the stillness of the coverts, and
for the recruiting posters stuck everywhere on the barn-doors, and for
the strange figure of old Perrott driving the mail-cart from Midhurst to
Amershott instead of his son, you wouldn't have known that the war had
anything to do with England. And I expected to find Jimmy in his old
Norfolk suit standing in the garage and looking with adoration at his
motor-car.

As I thought all this I smiled when Parker told me that Mr. Jevons was in
the garage. Parker, I noticed, didn't smile.

And in another minute it was Jevons who did all the smiling.

I found him in the garage--no, I can't say I found him, for I didn't
recognize him, but I heard his voice assuring me that it was he. He was
in khaki; from head to foot, from his peaked military cap to his puttees
he was in faultless, well-fitting khaki; even his shirt and his neck-tie
were khaki. Jimmy's colours showed up wonderfully out of all that
brownish, greyish, yellowish green. His flush fairly flamed, and his
eyes, his eyes looked enormous and very bright--great chunks of dark
sapphire his eyes were. They were twinkling at me.

"It's me all right, old man," he said, and turned from me in his deep
preoccupation. And as he turned I saw that he wore round his right arm a
white brassard with a red cross on it.

At the far end of the coach-house where the great black and white idol
used to stand there was a khaki car with a huge red cross on a white
square on its flank and on its khaki canvas hood. This was what his eyes
turned to.

"But--where's the black-and-white god?" I asked.

"There she is," he said, "you're