ket-book, and
showed me a photograph.

"My wife and Pat--you've never seen Pat, I think? We christened her
Patricia, you know?"

It was the photograph of a laughing child, with an aureole of curls,
aged, I should say, about two.

"Pat sent me this," the Major said, producing a large woollen comforter.
She had sent it for Daddy to wear during the cold nights with the Field
Ambulance. I handed back the photograph, and B---- studied it intently
for some minutes before replacing it in his pocket-book. Suddenly he
leaned forward in a rather shamefaced way. "I say, old chap, write to my
wife!"

"But, my dear fellow, I've never met her except once. She must have
quite forgotten who I am."

"I know. But write and tell her you saw me off, and that I was at the
top of my form. Merry and bright, you know."

We looked at each other for a moment; and I promised.

There was the loud hoot of a horn and a lurch of the couplings, as
C---- sprang in. I grasped B----'s hand, and jumped on to the footboard
of the moving train.

"Good-bye, old chap."

"Good-bye, old man."

B---- had gone to the front. I never saw him again.

* * * * *

Three weeks later I was sitting at _dejeuner_ in the Metropole, when a
ragamuffin came in with the London papers, which had just arrived by the
leave-boat. I took up the _Times_ and looked, as one always looks
nowadays, at the obituary column. I looked again. In the same column,
one succeeding the other, I read the following:

Killed in action on 8th inst., near Givenchy, Arthur Hamilton C----
of the ---- Guards, 3rd Battalion, only child of the late Arthur C.
and of Mrs. C. of the Red House, Little Twickenham, aged 19.

Behold! I take away the desire of thine eyes with a stroke.

Killed in action on the 8th inst., while dressing a wounded soldier
under fire, Major Ronald B----, D.S.O., of the Royal Army Medical
Corps, aged 42.

Greater love hath no man than this.

II

THE FRONT

VII

THE TWO RICHEBOURGS

We had business with the _maire_ of the commune of Richebourg St. Vaast.
Any one who looks at a staff map of North-West France will see that
there are two Richebourgs; there is Richebourg St. Vaast, but there is
also Richebourg l'Avoue, and although those two communes are separated
by a bare three or four kilometres there was in point of climate a
considerable difference between the two.