of the table, "against the
awful failure you were grousing about this morning."

"Ah! you mean when I tried to frighten some Sisters of Mercy into leaving
the town by painting them a luridly-coloured verbal picture of the perils
of the present situation," said the Colonel. His keen hazel eyes twinkled,
though his mouth was grave. "I ought to have remembered that you can't
scare a religious, be he or she Roman Catholic, Buddhist, or Mohammedan,
by pointing to the King of Terrors. He does to frighten lay-folk, but for
the others Death's grisly skeleton-hand holds out the Keys of Heaven."

"What will it hold for some of us others, I wonder," said one of the
dinner-guests, a moody-looking civilian, of Semitic features, whose
evening clothes made a dull contrast with the mess-dress of the Staff
officers gathered about their Chief's table in his quarters at Nixey's
Hotel on the Market Square, "before this month is out?"

The host leaned forward to reply:

"My dear Mr. Levison ... special mention in Despatches Above, with honours
and promotion for those of us who have been approved worthy. For others,
who have tried and failed, a merciful overlooking of blunders, a generous
acceptance of the intention where the performance came short.... And for
the rest ... a grave on the yellow veld in the shadow of a rock or
thorn-bush, with the turquoise sky of day overhead, shimmering in the
white-hot sunshine; or an ocean of purple ether, ridden by what old Lucian
called 'the golden galley of the regnant Moon.' That in South Africa; and
at home in England, one's memory kept warm and living in, say, three
hearts that recognised the best in one, and loved it. A mother's heart,
the heart of a friend--and _hers_!"

There was no insincerity of flattery in the hum of applauding comment that
ensued. All earnest original thought has beauty; and this man could not
only think, but clothe his thoughts in direct and simple language, and add
to it the charm of well-modulated and musical utterance.

"I call that good enough," said the senior Staff Officer, a dark,
handsome, eagle-faced Guardsman, who bore a great historic name, "for you
or me or any other fellow here--we're not taking into account the living
dead ones."

The Chief leaned forward in his characteristic attitude, and spoke, a
long, lean brown forefinger emphasising the sentences, his hawk-keen
glance driving them home. "I tell you, Leighbury, that some of those, the
rottenest cor