y lad with a dirty bandage round his head, who had
tossed in pain all day on the chancel steps, turned to the window to
greet the daily miracle of the sunset.

"Worf waiting for, all the day, that is!" he muttered. The
restlessness left him, and his eyes closed, presently, in sleep.

Slowly the glory died away, and as it passed a little figure in a
rusty black cassock came in, making his way among the men on the
straw. It was the French priest, who had refused to leave his broken
church: a little, fat man, not in the least like a hero, but with as
knightly a soul as was ever found in armour and with lance in rest.
He passed from man to man, speaking in quaint English, occasionally
dropping gladly into French when he found some one able to answer him
in his own language. He had nothing to give them but water; but that
he carried tirelessly many times a day. His little store of bandages
and ointment had gone long ago, but he bathed wounds, helped cramped
men to change their position, and did the best he could to make the
evil straw into the semblance of a comfortable bed. To the helpless
men on the floor of the church his coming meant something akin to
Paradise.

He paused near a little Irishman with a broken leg, a man of the
Dublin Fusiliers, whose pain had not been able to destroy his good
temper.

"How are you to-night, _mon garcon?_"

"Yerra, not too bad, Father," said the Irishman. "If I could have
just a taste of water, now?" He drank deeply as the priest lifted his
head, and sank back with a word of thanks.

"This feather pillow of mine is apt to slip if I don't watch it," he
said, wriggling the back of his head against the cold stone of the
floor, from which the straw had worked away. "I dunno could you
gather it up a bit, Father." He grinned. "I'd ask you to put me
boots under me for a pillow, but if them thieving guards found them
loose, they'd shweep them from me."

"Ss-h, my son!" the priest whispered warningly. He shook up a handful
of straw and made it as firm as he could under the man's head. "It is
not prudent to speak so loud. Remember you cannot see who may be
behind you."

"Indeed and I cannot," returned Denny Callaghan. "I'll remember,
Father. That's great!" He settled his head thankfully on the straw
pillow. "I'll sleep aisier to-night for that."

"And _Monsieur le Capitaine_--has he moved yet?" The priest glanced
at a motionless form near them.

"Well, indeed he did,