“Then, I think, I volunteered for Dearlove, who ’ad a sore toe, for a front-line message. I had to keep movin’, you see, because I hadn’t anything to hold _on_ to. Whilst up there, Grant informed me how he’d found Uncle John with the door wedged an’ sand-bags stuffed in the cracks. I hadn’t waited for that. The knockin’ when ’e wedged up was enough for me. ’Like Dad’s coffin.” “No one told _me_ the door had been wedged,” Keede spoke severely. “No need to black a dead man’s name, sir.” “What made Grant go to Butcher’s Row?” “Because he’d noticed Uncle John had been pinchin’ charcoal for a week past an’ layin’ it up behind the old barricade there. So when the ’unt began, he went that way straight as a string, an’ when he saw the door shut, he knew. He told me he picked the sand-bags out of the cracks an’ shoved ’is hand through and shifted the wedges before any one come along. It looked all right. You said yourself, sir, the door must ’ave blown to.” “Grant knew what Godsoe meant, then?” Keede snapped. “Grant knew Godsoe was for it; an’ nothin’ earthly could ’elp or ’inder. He told me so.” “And then what did you do?” “I expect I must ’ave kept on carryin’ on, till Headquarters give me that wire from Ma--about Auntie Armine dyin’.” “When had your Aunt died?” “On the mornin’ of the twenty-first. The mornin’ of the 21st! That tore it, d’ye see? As long as I could think, I had kep’ tellin’ myself it was like those things you lectured about at Arras when we was billeted in the cellars--the Angels of Mons, and so on. But that wire tore it.” “Oh! Hallucinations! I remember. And that wire tore it?” said Keede. “Yes! You see”--he half lifted himself off the sofa--“there wasn’t a single gor-dam thing left abidin’ for me to take hold of, here or hereafter. If the dead _do_ rise and I saw ’em--why--why _anything_ can ’appen. Don’t you understand?” He was on his feet now, gesticulating stiffly. “For I saw ’er,” he repeated. “I saw ’im an’ ’er--she dead since mornin’ time, an’ he killin’ ’imself before my livin’ eyes so’s to carry on with ’er for all Eternity--an’ she ’oldin’ out ’er arms for it! I want to know where I’m _at_! Look ’ere, you two--why stand _we_ in jeopardy every hour?” “God knows,” said Keede to himself. “Hadn’t we better ring for some one?” I suggested. “He’ll go off the handle in a second.” “No he won’t. It’s the last kick-up before it takes hold. I know how the stuff works. Hul-lo.” Strangwick, his hands behind his back and his eyes set, gave tongue in the strained, cracked voice of a boy reciting. “Not twice in the world shall the Gods do thus,” he cried again and again.