"No. Because I'm in the right place. It's my duty to be there. I should hate myself if I were not there. You wouldn't have me anywhere else, would you?" "No, Little Yeogh Wough, I wouldn't have you anywhere else. I couldn't have the boy who has been the pride of my life anywhere else now but in the fighting line. I am so proud of you, because I know you are a splendid soldier. To be adjutant at your age--why, it's wonderful!" He glanced half backward at me, smiling. Something in his eye startled me. "Roland! Do you know that you looked almost wild at that moment?" "Did I? I'm sorry. I'm afraid I've unlearned a lot of civilisation. I've thrown over a lot of prejudices, too. I've come to have a great respect for the Colonials. I always did think a heap of the Canadians, but still not enough. And I used to think the Australians a touchy people, but now I know they're not. Oh, I'm a different boy in some ways from the boy who went out, Big Yeogh Wough!... What have you been writing out those lines of Laurence Binyon's for?" He had caught sight of my large black handwriting on a sheet of paper lying on his table. "Oh, those lines from the 'Dirge for the Dead'? I copied them out of your book this morning to send in to Mrs. Orme, to comfort her about poor Harry. I forgot them." Little Yeogh Wough read the lines aloud, very softly: "They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old, Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. At the going down of the sun and in the morning We will remember them----" I slipped to my knees beside him and laid my head against his shoulder. "Would they comfort you if I were to be killed?" he asked. "Yes, they would--as much as anything could." His eyes looked into mine curiously. "What will you think in the years to come if I go down in this war, Big Yeogh Wough?" "What shall I think? Well, first of all, I shall be proud. I shall honour you very much--more than if you had lived to make yourself a king. But, just because you are you, I shall think it is a waste unless you get your death in doing a little more than an ordinary man would do. Look at your muscular body! I've thought of the wonder of it ever since the day when I first saw you boxing. What's the good of it in this war? It's no more good to resist flying bullets or shell splinters than an old tottering man's body. That's where I should feel bitter. These times are women's times and this war of machinery might as well be carried on by women, for all the good that male muscle can do in it. And yet they go and take the pick of the boys and let a stray bit of shell finish off in a second a splendid human creature whose mind might have been the driving force of the nation in a few years to come! That's where the pity of it would be if anything happened to you." "But nothing is going to happen to me. You forget my lucky lock."