ns were so busy storming it that they couldn't
attend to you, and quite another thing to be alone with Jimmy on that
horrid grey road with the Germans coming every minute round the turn of
it.

Jimmy explained that there was a wounded man hiding in a ditch about a
mile from Lokeren, and he'd got to fetch him.

We fetched him and another car-load without any misadventure.

When we got back to our village we found a Field Ambulance there. Jimmy
said, "I believe that's _my_ Field Ambulance." Presently he gave a start
that made the car swerve as if he had run over a dog.

"Well, I'm damned if there isn't Viola."

Yes, there she was. She had come out with the Field Ambulance. And it
_was_ Jimmy's Field Ambulance, the one that had been sent out without
him. It had come on into Ghent from Antwerp yesterday, and Viola had
found it.

"This is too bad," said Jevons. "You ought to be looking after Charlie.
Why _aren't_ you looking after him?"

"Charlie," she said, "died three hours ago--at twelve o'clock."

It wasn't five hours since we had left her with him in the nun's cell
under the crucifix. I don't think I had realized it before, but now it
came over me as a new and strange thing, how little he had mattered. Then
it struck me that Jevons must have known it all the time.

"I've done everything," she said, "that had to be done. And I've written
to Aunt Matty and Uncle George--and Mildred."

"Mildred?" I wondered.

"Well--_yes_."

Jevons and I had forgotten Mildred. We had forgotten her engagement to
Charlie, though I suppose nobody knew better than we did why it had been
broken off.

To his father and mother and Mildred he _did_ matter.

And perhaps he mattered to Viola, in a way; for she said she would have
given anything to have saved him. He must have mattered to Jevons when he
brought him from Antwerp and when we buried him in Ghent.

And the cross on his grave reproves me, reminding me that to his country
he mattered supremely, after all.

* * * * *

After Lokeren Jevons and I tried to come to terms with Viola.

The conference took place upstairs in their bedroom, where we had
withdrawn for greater privacy. Viola sat on the one chair and Jimmy and
I on the bed. Jimmy did most of the talking.

He said, "Look here, my dear child, if there wasn't a war on, I wouldn't
stand in the way of your amusement for the world. And there's a great
deal to be said for you. _I_ think y