-he was blown to pieces in
the morning....

"They found he had L60 to his credit. It wouldn't have been there a
week, if the young spendthrift had known."

It was now dark enough for the stars and the lights of England and
the glow in our pipe-bowls to be the most visible things.

"Go on," said Doe. "You're thrilling me."

"I remember another coming to me just before the assault, and
handing me a sealed letter addressed to his mother. What he said was
a lyric poem, but, as usual, he didn't know it. He just muttered:
'Padre, you might look after this: I may not get an opportunity of
posting it.' So English that! A Frenchman would have put his hand on
his heart and exclaimed: 'I die for France and humanity.' This
reserved English child said: 'I may not get an opportunity of
posting it.' My God, they're wonderful!"

Monty stared across the stream at the thousand lights of Devonport
and Plymouth. He was listening to the voices in the lounge singing:
"When you come to the end of a perfect day"; and he waited to hear
the song through, before he pursued:

"There was one youngster who, the morning of an attack, gave me a
long envelope. He said: 'I'll leave this with you, padre. It's
my--it's my--' And he laughed. Laughed, mind you. You see, he was
shy of the word 'will'; it seemed so silly...."

Monty stopped; and finally added:

"Neither did that boy know he was a Poem."

"Go on," said Doe, "I could listen all night."

"It's a lovely night, isn't it?" admitted Monty. "Inspires one to
see only the Beauty there is in everything. Isn't there Beauty in
Major Hardy's black eye?"

"It's a Poem--_what_," laughed Doe.

"You may laugh, but that's just what it is. He said that his heart
beat at one with the heart of a junior subaltern; and it does that
because it's the heart of a boy. And the heart of a boy is matter
for a poem."

"By Jove," said Doe, "you seem to be in love with all the world."

"So I am," Monty conceded, pleased with Doe's poetic phrase; "and
with the young world in particular."

"I think I could be that too," began Doe--

Doe was carrying on the conversation with ease. I left it to him,
for these words were winning eternity in my memory: "I could forgive
them everything." With a sense of loneliness, and that I had lost my
anchor in those last days of the old world, I felt that one day I
would unburden myself to Monty. I would like an anchor again, I
thought. The same idea must have been possessi