"It was to me as if the world, seething in its troubles, was suddenly empty--with that man gone. I drifted with the crowd about London town, and the crowd appeared to be like myself, dazed. The streets were full and there was continually a profound, sorrowful sound, like the groan of a nation; faces were blank and gray. Those surging, mournful London streets, and the look of the posters with great letters on them--his name--that memory isn't likely to leave me till I die. Of course, I got hold of every detail and tried to picture the manner of it to myself, but I couldn't get it that he was dead. Kitchener, the heart of the nation; I couldn't comprehend that he had stopped breathing. I couldn't get myself satisfied that I wasn't to see him again. It seemed there must be some way out. You'll remember, perhaps, that four boats were seen to put off from the _Hampshire_ as she sank? I tried to trace those boats. I traveled up there and interviewed people who had seen them. I got no good from it. But it kept coming to me that it was not a mine that had sunk the ship, that it was a torpedo from a German submarine, and that Kitchener was on one of the boats that put off and that he had been taken prisoner by the enemy. God knows why that thought persisted--there were reasons against it--it was a boy's theory. But it persisted; I couldn't get it out of my head. I was in St. Paul's at the Memorial Service; I heard the 'Last Post' played for him, and I saw the King and Queen in tears; all that didn't settle my mind. I went back to the front, heavy-hearted, and tried to behave myself as I believed he'd have had me--the Sirdar. My people had called him the Sirdar always. Luck was with me in France; I had chances, and did a bit of work, and got advancement." "I know," I nodded. "I've read history. A few trifles like the rescue of the rifles and holding that trench and--" The old soldier interrupted, looking thunderous. "It has a bearing on the episode I'm about to tell you. That's why I refer to it." I didn't mind his haughtiness. It was given me to see the boy's shyness within that grim old hero. "So that when I landed in London in 1917, having been stupid enough to get my right arm potted, it happened that my name was known. They picked me out to make a doing over. I was most uncommonly conspicuous for nothing more than thousands of other lads had done. They'd given their lives like water, thousands of them--it made me sick with shame, when I thought of those others, to have my name ringing through the land. But so it was, and it served a purpose, right enough, I saw later. "Then, as I began to crawl about, came the crisis of the war. Ill news piled on ill news; the army in France was down with an epidemic; each day's news was worse than the last; to top all, the Germans found the fleet. It was in letters a foot long about London--newsboys crying awful words: "'Fleet discovered--German submarines and Zeppelins approaching.'