General Sir Douglas Haig, commanding the British Expeditionary Forces, is said to have objected to the sending out of men of middle age. He wants young men of from eighteen to twenty-five. After the latter year, it is said, the fighting value of the human unit shows a rapid and steady decline.... The older men have their place; but, generally speaking, it is said now to be in “the army behind the army”--the men back of the line, in the supply and transport divisions, where the strain is not so great. These older men are too susceptible to trench diseases to be of great use on the firing line. England already is registering boys born in 1899, preparatory to calling them up when they attain their eighteenth year. So I sat down and I wrote this story. CHAPTER V. THE CURE FOR LONESOMENESS THEY were on their way back from Father Minor's funeral. Going to the graveyard the horses had ambled slowly; coming home they trotted along briskly so that from under their feet the gravel grit sprang up, to blow out behind in little squills and pennons of yellow dust. The black plumes in the headstalls of the white span that drew the empty hearse nodded briskly. It was only their colour which kept those plumes from being downright cheerful. Also, en route to the cemetery, the pallbearers, both honorary and active, had marched in double file at the head of the procession. Now, returning, they rode in carriages especially provided for them. The first carriage--that is to say, the first one following the hearse--held four passengers: firstly, the widowed sister of the dead man, from up state somewhere; secondly and thirdly, two strange priests who had come over from Hopkinsburg to conduct the services; finally and fourthly, the late Father Minor's housekeeper, a lean and elderly spinster whose devoutness made her dour; indeed, a person whom piety beset almost as a physical affliction. Seeing her any time at all, the observer went away filled with the belief that in her particular case the more certain this woman might be of blessedness hereafter, the more miserable she would feel in the meantime. Now, as her grief-drawn face and reddened eyes looked forth from the carriage window upon the familiar panorama of Buckner Street, all about her bespoke the profound conviction that this world, already lost in sin, was doubly lost since Father Minor had gone to take his reward. In the second carriage rode four of the honorary pallbearers, and each of them was a veteran, as the dead priest had been: Circuit Judge Priest, Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, Doctor Lake, and Mr. Peter J. Galloway, our leading blacksmith and horseshoer. Of these four Mr. Galloway was the only one who worshipped according to the faith the dead man had preached. But all of them were members in good standing of the Gideon K. Irons Camp.