'Mum told me about that,' said Jerry in an awed whisper. 'His name was Gerald, same as mine,'--he paused to look doubtfully at the face above him--'she said it was an eggsample to me. But I'm not goin' to be blowed up first. My shells'll always burst just in the vewy wightest places, bang in the middle of the enemy, so I can laugh at 'em before I dead.' Jack Raymond, passing on, felt a pang. 'Always in the very rightest places!' That had been the dream of another boyhood. The sky was as a pearl overhead; a pearl set in a darkening tracery of trees. The moon began to stretch faint fingers of shadow after the retreating day, and still those two, man and boy, passed from one immemorial deed to another, while the small hand sent its thrill to the big one, so that Jack Raymond wondered at the tremor in his voice as he said, pointing through the trees-- 'And there's the general's house with the English flag flying still!' Jerry stiffened like a young pointer on its first covey, every inch of him centred on the grey tower, its flagstaff draped dimly with the royal ensign, which rose against the sky. Then, standing square, head up, he saluted. 'Mum told me to do that always when I saw it,' he explained, 'because it's the only place in all the wide, wide world where the flag flies day and night, to show, you know, that it never was hauled down--never--never.' He heaved another sigh of satisfaction, but his face took a puzzled expression. 'Only, you know, I've been here before. I weally have. I wemember it quite, quite well. An' the guns was booming, an' they was wanting to pull down the flag, an' I wouldn't let them.' Jack Raymond looked down at the child and smiled. 'You, or some one of your sort, dear old chap; and I'll bet you'd do it again, wouldn't you, Jerry?' Jerry pulled himself together from the mysterious inheritance of the past. 'I'm goin' to, some day,' he said succinctly. 'An' now, please, I want where they buried 'em after dark. All pwoper wif surplices an' "Safe, safe home in port," and all that; but torches and crack-bang firings over the walls--though they was deaders already.' The description, confused though it was by excess of picturesqueness, sent Jack Raymond unerringly towards the little cemetery where so many heroes rest. But ere they reached the gate, a woman's figure showed upon a side-path. 'There's Miss Drummond; you'll have to go home now, young man,' remarked Jack Raymond, feeling that though Jerrys enthusiasm did not bore him, Lesley's might. But Jerry would have no excuse. 'Oh!' he said confidentially, '_she_ is only a woman. You tell her to come, and she'll come all wight. Jack Raymond looked towards the springy step and determined pose of the head which was approaching him with alarm; but Jerry had already run forward, slipped his hand into the girl's, and said-- 'He says you're to come too, because he is going to tell us all about the gwaves.'