He lifted my hand and guided it to the curious little white patch at the side of his cropped head. "You forget, too, that the fellow at school who knew all about palmistry told me he was sure I was not going to get killed till I was close on sixty. So, you see, I shall be quite safe in this war. They're not likely to add one more to the noonday strokes of the old School bell for me." "The strokes of the old School bell? What do you mean?" "Oh! Haven't you heard? The School bell tolls once at noon every day for every Old Boy who has lost his life in this war. They've got up to fifty-two strokes already and it's sure to go mounting up now by leaps and bounds. There are so many of us out there fighting." Again I was struck by his tired-out look. I drew myself from his hold and got up from my knees. "You must go to bed now," I told him. "I will go away for ten minutes and when I come back I must find you in bed." He obeyed me as he had obeyed me when he was a child. I heard a great noise of shutting doors and drawers and box lids, and when I went in, exactly at the end of the ten minutes, he was lying between the sheets, luxuriously stretched out. "Oh, the joy of being in a real bed again! I expect I shall sleep till eleven or twelve o'clock to-morrow. Then I shall have the rest of the day with you and shall go up to town and meet Vera Brennan next day; that is, if she can come up from her home. I want to buy a dagger, too, for hand-to-hand work in the trenches, and a few other things." "Oughtn't you to have sent Vera a telegram to-night?" "No. To-morrow will do. Oh, by the way, Big Yeogh Wough, have you got any new clothes to show me?" "No." I laughed as I shook my head. "I couldn't have afforded them now in war time, even if I'd wanted them--and I haven't felt I wanted them with you away and in danger." He drew my hand into his, and I stayed beside him with my head resting on his pillow, until he had fallen into a heavy sleep. How boyish his face looked as he slept! and as I drew my hand from his and moved away from his bedside, turning off the electric light and leaving him in a full flood of August moon radiance, I could have fancied that I heard voices singing softly in the air around me: "They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old"-- I stole back and kissed his hair. Oh, human love! why must it be always pain--pain--pain? He was his old bright self again next day, when, having walked with us all, he lay across my bed and laughed as he read me little French fairy stories while I put things straight in the room.