uously boasting that it was the handiest place of all, and if it
didn't get him he'd be the only perfect specimen invalided home.

"Parley-voo," the only one of them who essayed French, had wounds many but
inconspicuous. He was given to counting a hypothetical fortune that might
be his if the Empire would give him a shilling for every time he had been
hit. Joseph Daly and "Gospel" Smith, the one Methodist, carried head
wounds, while "Granny" Sullivan, the oldest, wisest, and most comforting
of the company, had one smashed hip and a hole through the other, "the
devil of a combination." Never had the atmosphere of 7-A been keener or
spicier. Jamie alone sat still and silent.

Jamie was the last to be dressed, and because there was little to do the
chief slipped away and left him to Sheila. As the nurse passed from Mat's
cot to the wheel-chair, eleven pairs of eyes and an odd one followed her.
A hush fell suddenly on the ward. The lads never intended this should
happen, but somehow, at the same time everyday, the silence gripped them,
and they seemed powerless to stay it. It was "Granny" Sullivan who first
threw it off.

"'Tis a grand day outside, Jamie. Maybe ye're feeling the sun, now, comin'
through the window?"

The nurse had lifted the bandage from the eyes. There was nothing there
but empty sockets, almost healed. One could hear the quick intake of
breath from the watching twelve, while every face registered an agony it
had scorned to show for its own disablement. But for Jamie, "the singing
lad from Derry" as they lovingly called him, it was different. They could
face their own conditions with amazing jocularity, but they writhed daily
under the torment of Jamie's. They could brave it no better than could
he. For to put eternal darkness on the lad who loved the light, who would
sit spellbound before the play of colors in the east at dawn or the flash
of moonlight across troubled water, who could make a song out of the smile
of a child or the rhythm of flying birds in the sky, that was damnable. An
arch-fiend might have conceived it, but where was God to let it happen? A
crippled Jamie without an arm or a leg was endurable--that cried out for
no blasphemy--but a Jamie without eyes--God in heaven, how could it be!

The face of the singing lad was the face of a dreamer, as exquisite as a
piece of marble that might have been fashioned by Praxiteles for a sun
god. Since the battle on the Scheldt it had become a white