Jamie was the last to be dressed, and because there was little to do the chief slipped away and left him to Sheila. As the nurse passed from Mat's cot to the wheel-chair, eleven pairs of eyes and an odd one followed her. A hush fell suddenly on the ward. The lads never intended this should happen, but somehow, at the same time everyday, the silence gripped them, and they seemed powerless to stay it. It was "Granny" Sullivan who first threw it off. "'Tis a grand day outside, Jamie. Maybe ye're feeling the sun, now, comin' through the window?" The nurse had lifted the bandage from the eyes. There was nothing there but empty sockets, almost healed. One could hear the quick intake of breath from the watching twelve, while every face registered an agony it had scorned to show for its own disablement. But for Jamie, "the singing lad from Derry" as they lovingly called him, it was different. They could face their own conditions with amazing jocularity, but they writhed daily under the torment of Jamie's. They could brave it no better than could he. For to put eternal darkness on the lad who loved the light, who would sit spellbound before the play of colors in the east at dawn or the flash of moonlight across troubled water, who could make a song out of the smile of a child or the rhythm of flying birds in the sky, that was damnable. An arch-fiend might have conceived it, but where was God to let it happen? A crippled Jamie without an arm or a leg was endurable--that cried out for no blasphemy--but a Jamie without eyes--God in heaven, how could it be! The face of the singing lad was the face of a dreamer, as exquisite as a piece of marble that might have been fashioned by Praxiteles for a sun god. Since the battle on the Scheldt it had become a white mask, shorn of all dreams. Almost it might have been a death-mask for the soul of Jamie O'Hara. It showed no response now when "Granny" spoke; only the lad's hands fluttered a moment toward the window, then dropped heavily back into his lap. "Aye, maybe I feel it." The voice was colorless and tired. "I can't be remembering clear sunlight any more. The last days of the fighting, smoke was too thick in the sky, or the rains fell." Eleven pairs of eyes and one odd one cast about for some inspiration. "Sure, think o' somethin' pleasanter nor cannon smoke an' rain. Think o'--" "Granny" floundered for a moment, then gave up in despair. "That's all I see when I look up. When I look down, it's worse--an everlasting earth, covered with mud and dying men!" Jamie shivered. Larry struggled out of his torment. "I say, Jamie, don't ye mind the song ye were makin' for us the day we fell back from Cambrai? 'Twas an Irish one, full o' the sun an' the singin' birds of Donegal. Wi' the Fritzies risin' like a murdtherous tide behind us, 'twas all that kept the heart in us that day. Ye say it for Miss O'Leary. Sure, ye've never said a song for her yet."