ground again,” said the driver cheerfully, and Kentucky realized--then and afterwards--just how little it looked like it, and quoted softly to himself, from the Battle Hymn again--“He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat.” As the light grew and the car passed back to where the road was less damaged or better repaired their speed increased and they ran spattering in the roadside to meet more long columns of men with the brown rifle barrels sloped and swaying evenly above the yellow ranks--”... a fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished steel,” murmured Kentucky. “Wot say?” questioned the driver. “Nothing,” said Kentucky. “That’s the clearin’ station ahead there,” said the driver. “You’ll soon be tucked up safe in a bed now, or pushin’ on to the ambulance train and a straight run ’ome to Blighty.” So Kentucky came out of the battle, and stepping down from the ambulance, with an alert orderly attentive at his elbow to help him, took the first step into the swift stages of the journey home, and the long vista of kindness, gentleness, and thoughtful care for which the hospital service is only another name. From here he had nothing to do but sleep, eat, and get well. He was done with battle, and quit of the firing line. But as he came away the war had one more word for his ear, and as he was carried on board the hospital train, the distant guns growled and muttered their last same message to him--“grapes of wrath, of wrath, of wrath.” And after he had lost the last dull rumble of the guns he still bore the memory of their message with him, carried it down to the edge of France, and across the Narrow Seas, and into the sheltered calm of England. He had been strangely impressed by the fitting of his half-forgotten verses to all he had come through, and their chance but clear coincidence worked oddly on him, and came in the end to be a vital influence in picking the path of his immediate future and leading it utterly away from other plans. CHAPTER XVI PLAY OUT THE GAME Kentucky thought often over the Battle Hymn in the long waking hours of pain and the listless time of convalescence, and since his thoughts came in time to crystallize into words and words are easier to set down than thoughts, here is a talk that he had, many weeks after, when he was almost well again--or rather as well as he would ever be. The talk was with Larry, with the broken wreck of a Larry who would never, as the doctors told him, walk or stand upright again. Kentucky had finished his convalescing at Larry’s home, and the talk came one night when they were alone together in the big dining-room, Larry, thin-faced and claw-handed, on a couch before the fire, Kentucky in a deep armchair. They had chatted idly and in broken snatches of old days, and of those last desperate days in “the Push,” and on a chance mention of Pug both had fallen silent for a space.