When I awoke in the morning I gathered my wits together and recalled what had taken place. Marigold entered on tiptoe and found me already aroused. "I'm sorry to tell you, sir," said he, "that an accident happened to Colonel Boyce after he left last night." "An accident?" "I suppose so, sir," said Marigold. "That's what his chauffeur says. He got out of the car in order to sit by the side of the canal--by the lock gates. He fell in, sir. He's drowned." CHAPTER XXIV It is Christmas morning, 1916, the third Christmas of the war. The tragedy of Boyce's death happened six months ago. Since then I have been very ill. The shock, too great for my silly heart, nearly killed me. By all the rules of the game I ought to have died. But I suppose, like a brother officer long since defunct, also a Major, one Joe Bagstock, I am devilish tough. Cliffe told me this morning that, apart from a direct hit by a 42-centimetre shell, he saw no reason, after what I had gone through, why I should not live for another hundred years. "I wash my hands of you," said he. Which indeed is pleasant hearing. I don't mind dying a bit, if it is my Maker's pleasure; if it would serve any useful purpose; if it would help my country a myriadth part of a millimetre on towards victory. But if it would not matter to the world any more than the demise of a daddy-long-legs, I prefer to live. In fact, I want to live. I have never wanted to live more in all my life. I want to see this fight out. I want to see the Light that is coming after the Darkness. For, by God! it will come. And I want to live, too, for personal and private reasons. If I could regard myself merely as a helpless incumbrance, a useless jellyfish, absorbing for my maintenance human effort that should be beneficially exerted elsewhere, I think I should be the first to bid them take me out and bury me. But it is my wonderful privilege to look around and see great and beautiful human souls coming to me for guidance and consolation. Why this should be I do not rightly know. Perhaps my very infirmity has taught me many lessons.... You see, in the years past, my life was not without its lonelinesses. It was so natural for the lusty and joyous to disregard, through mere thoughtlessness, the little weather-beaten cripple in his wheelchair. But when one of these sacrificed an hour's glad life in order to sit by the dull chair in a corner, the cripple did not forget it. He learned in its terrible intensity the meaning of human kindness. And, in his course through the years, or as the years coursed by him, he realised that a pair of gollywog legs was not the worst disability which a human being might suffer. There were gollywog hearts, brains, nerves, temperaments, destinies. Perhaps, in this way, he came to the knowledge that in every human being lies the spark of immortal beauty, to be fanned into flame by one little rightly directed breath. At any rate, he learned to love his kind.