ous to
see. He appeared to speak to me.

"I am dying," I muttered, and then thought, "Shall I pray?"

Of outward praying I had done none. I thought about it and wondered. To
pray now--no, that was being a piker. I had not prayed openly before, now
when I was nearing death it was no time for a hurried repentance and a
stammered prayer. I watched the vision as it slowly faded, and a great
comfort surrounded me. I was happy.

I crawled on and reached a shell hole. It must have been an hour later that
a despatch rider came to me. His motorcycle had been shot from under him,
and he was striving to reach his destination on foot. He spoke to me, and
then placed me in a blanket, which he took from a dead soldier. In this he
dragged me to the shelter of an old tumbledown house. It had been riddled
with shot and shell, but the greater part of the outer walls were standing,
and it was shelter.

I begged the despatch rider to give me his name. I begged him to take some
small things of mine to keep as a token for what he had done for me. But he
would have nothing. He hurried away with the intention of sending help to
me, and as he went I begged his name once more. "Oh! Johnnie Canuck!" said
he. And there it remains. I do not know the name of the man who dragged me
to comparative safety at such terrible risk to himself.

Behind the old house where I lay there was a battery of British guns,
4.7's. After a while the enemy found the range, and their shells commenced
bursting round me. God in Heaven! I died a hundred deaths in that old ruin.
Once a shell hit what roof there was and a score of bricks came crashing
about me. Not one touched. I seemed charmed. I could hear the shells
screeching through the air a second before they burst near where I lay. Of
bodily pain I had little. The discomfort was great; the thirst was
appalling. I thought I should bleed to death before help reached me.
But there was nothing to compare with the mental strain of
waiting--waiting--waiting for a shell to burst. Where would it drop? Would
the next get me?

I hoped and longed and waited, but help did not come. I never lost
consciousness. Darkness came and dawn. Another day went by and the shelling
went on as before. Another night, another dawn and then two Highland
stretcher-bearers came in. They raised me gently. The bleeding had stopped,
but that journey on the stretcher was too much. I had been found and I let
myself drift into the land of unknown t