t by the time the eats were ready and I
left my bus in front of the church I spoke of. I'd wished myself on the
officers of a battery having mess in trees back of a ruined house. When
I went back to the bus, it was clean dark. But the sky was alight with
gun flashes from everywhere, a continuous flicker like summer lightning
with glares here and there like a sudden blaze from a factory chimney.
The rumbling gun thunder was without a break, punctuated by heavier
boomings; the near guns seemed an insane 4th of July. I looked in at my
load and I saw that my namesake was worse. We were still trapped in the
jam; no chance of breaking for hours maybe. I saw then that they'd
turned the church into a dressing station. There was straw on the stone
floors and two surgeons and some orderlies. Wounded were being carried
in on stretchers. Joe Barron and I lifted out John Donaldson and took
him in and cared for him as well as possible until we could corral an
overworked doctor. I thought I'd talk to him a bit to distract him, and
he seemed glad to have me."

The lad stopped; his big fingers pulled at the collar of his uniform.

"Little by little," he went on, "John Donaldson of Italy told his
story. He held tight to my hand as he told it." The boy halted again
and bit at his lower lip with strong white teeth. "I like to remember
that," he went on slowly. "He had lived nearly twenty years in Perugia.
He had run away from America. Because--he--took money. Quite a lot of
money. He--was supposed to be dead."

I sat forward, grasping the sides of my chair, pulling the thing out of
the boy with straining gaze.

"Uncle Bill," he spoke, and his dear voice shook, "you know who it was.
I found why his eyes looked familiar. They were exactly like my own.
The man I was helping to die was my father."

I heard my throat make a queer sound, but I said no word. The voice
flowed on, difficultly, determinedly.

"It's a strange thing to remember--a weird and unearthly bit of
living--that war-ruined church, strewn with straw, the wounded wrapped
like mummies in dark blankets, their white bandages making high spots
in the wavering, irregular lights of lanterns and pocket flashes moving
about. I sat on the pavement by his side, hand in hand. A big crucifix
hung above, and the Christ seemed to be looking--at him."

The voice stopped. I heard my own as a sound from beyond me asking a
question. "How did you find out?" I asked.

"Why, you see, Uncle