"All right, I’ll get it off, I’ll help you. You were good to me giving me a drink, so I’ll stay and help you. Otherwise I oughtn’t to wait, not a minute—you see, I must look for my wife. My first duty is to her—she’s my wife and I don’t know where she is. But I won’t leave you like this because of what you did for me this afternoon." He wrenched and tugged at the shattered and entangled wreckage till the boy shrieked aloud in his torment—the cry terrified William and he desisted, wringing his hands. "I’m sorry, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it. God knows I didn’t mean to hurt you and if I could be gentler I would, but it’s so damnably, damnably heavy. Oh God, if some one would come and help me, if someone would only come! You see it’s so heavy I can’t move it without hurting you." He explained and apologized to ears that heard not for the boy had fainted in his pain; his deep unconsciousness made extrication easier and William tugged again at the lumber until he had tugged it away. One of the wounded man’s leg’s was a wrenched and bloody mass; William shuddered at the sight, looked down stupidly at the dead white face and wondered what was to be done—then, feeling that something must at least be tried, put his arms round the inert body and strove to lift it from the ground. The only results were breathlessness on his part and a groan from the unconscious German. William dropped him instantly on hearing the groan, trembling at the idea of inflicting yet more suffering, torn by the thought of Griselda, longing to go and yet ashamed to leave the boy-soldier without aid. He might have hesitated longer but a for fresh explosion and crash of falling masonry; it was followed by a long-drawn screaming intolerable to hear—an Aie, Aie, Aie of unspeakable bodily pain. With a sudden sense of being hunted, being driven beyond endurance, William turned and shook his impotent fists in the direction of the unseen guns. "Can’t you stop one moment?" he screamed idiotically, hating them and dancing with rage. "Can’t you stop, you devils—you devils! Don’t you see I’m only trying to help him?" If he had ever made any distinction between friend and enemy artillery, he had lost all idea of it now; the guns for the moment were a private persecution of himself, and he was conscious only of being foully and brutally bullied by monstrous forces with whom he argued and at whom he cursed and spat. It was the sight of what had once been a horse that brought him again to his senses. His eye fell on it as he danced in his mad ineptitude at the side of the helpless German; it had been one of the team that galloped a gun down the by-road and was now a pulp of raw flesh, crushed bone, and most hideously scattered entrail. He stared for a moment at the horror, incredulous and frozen—then sickened, turned and ran from it in a passion of physical loathing.