member of his flock, who for many years had been good
enough to keep him in touch with his doings in far lands. The old vicar
had heard that the "young scoundrel," as he called him, had joined a
volunteer regiment, and was in the thick of the fighting around Ypres.
The letter was written in pencil on leaves torn from a note-book. The
portion that will interest the reader of this story most is here quoted.

"On Monday I came across an old friend (?) of ours--Hilaire O'Hagan. We
had a brush with about five thousand Huns, and we had under-estimated
their strength. They rushed us in the dawning--a living, greenish-grey
wave rolled over our trenches, shooting and hacking at the heart of
what had once been a regiment of British Infantry. When the second wave
lapped over, our men were overborne but they were trying, by common
instinct, to reach the second line trenches where they could re-form.
Then I saw O'Hagan who had dropped from God knows where, standing
silhouetted against the red of dawn on the front line trench. He was
waving a brass cross and the bullets were pattering around him and
making a noise like rats skipping about an empty house. My God! Pluck! I
never thought O'Hagan had it in him. I tell you, he hurled himself down
on the rifles of a thousand Huns, and 'drove them hence' with his mighty
brass cross. Our men were soon rallying on the lost trench. The
stragglers clutched at each other, and pointed to where the cross
flashed and reeled in the seething mass. Under cover of night our bearer
party brought in O'Hagan stone dead with over twenty bullet wounds in
him. I know, vicar, when you read this, it will flash into your mind
that poor O'Hagan had been drinking again. You may banish any such
thought ... there was a different look in O'Hagan's eyes. He had seen
the 'immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed,
million-coloured, as on the first morning.' We carried him and his cross
over to an old monastery where we found one of those quaint lead
coffins--like the one in the crypt in _our_ old church--and laid him at
rest beneath the cool blue flagstones outside the chancel door. One of
our men, a stone-mason in times of peace, roughly graved his name on the
slab above him. As I walked back to the trenches I turned back to have a
last look at the grave. A priest was standing over it with hands
outstretched to bless...."

THE END

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