dulged in since Jamie had been wheeled out. "Aye, what are we goin' to
do? That's what every man of us has been askin' himself since--since he
knew."

"We act like a crowd o' half-wits, a-thryin' to boost his spirits a bit,
an' all the time he grows whiter an' quieter." Patsy turned his head away;
his lips were twitching.

"Aye, that's God's truth." "Bertha's" hoarse croak was heavy with despair.
"Ye can see for yourself, miss, it's noways nat'ral for Jamie--that's the
worst of it. It's been Jamie, just, that always put heart back in us when
things went blackest. Wasn't it him that made it easy goin' for them that
went west? Can one of us mind the time he wasn't ready with a song to
fetch us over the top, or through the mud--or straight to death, if them
was the orders? No matter how loud the guns screeched, we could always
hear Jamie above them."

"We could hear him when we couldn't have heard another sound," Culmullen
mumbled.

"Gospel" Smith raised a bandaged head and leveled piercing eyes at Sheila.
"You know what the Gospel says about the stars singing in the morning--all
together like? Well, Jamie was the lad who could outsing them. You know
how it feels at that gray, creepy hour o' dawn, when a man's heart jumps
to his throat and sticks there, and his hands shake like a girl's? Often's
the time we'd be waiting orders to attack just like that. The stars might
have shouted themselves clear o' the sky, for all the good they'd have
done us; but Jamie was different. He'd make us a couplet or a verse to
sing low under our breath, something you could put your teeth into. And
when the orders came our hearts were always back where the Lord had put
them."

"Granny" Sullivan plucked nervously at his blanket. "An' now, when we want
to hearten him, we're hurtin' instead. Seems as if the devil took hold of
our tongues an' spilled the wrong words off."

"Shall I tell you what I would try to do, if I were one of you Irish lads
who had fought with him?" Sheila's face was as drawn as any of the twelve.

"In God's name tell us!" Johnnie, the piper, spoke as reverently as if he
were at mass.

"You heard what he said just now about seeing nothing but mud and dying
men? Well, that's the trouble. He can't see any longer things he loves,
the things he has always carried in his heart. All the beautiful memories
have been lost, and all he has left are the horrors of those last days.
He's got nothing left to make into songs any mo