it was all part of my Special Correspondent's job.

And when you think that it was just touch and go--Why, if I hadn't bucked
up and taken that job when he told me to I might have missed him. No
amount of hearing about him would have been the same thing. I had to see
him.

What I wrote then doesn't count. I had to tell what I saw just after I
had seen it. I had to take it as I saw it, a fragment snapped off from
the rest of him, and dated October 11th, 1914, as if it didn't belong to
him; as if he were only another splendid instance. And of course I had
to leave _her_ out.

Told like that, it didn't amount to much.

This is the real telling.

I must get away from the end, right back to the beginning.

I suppose, to be accurate, the very beginning was the day I first met him
in nineteen-six--no, nineteen-five it must have been. It was at
Blackheath Football Ground, the last match of the season, when Woolwich
Arsenal played East Kent and beat them by two goals and a try. He was
there as a representative of the Press, "doing" the match for some
sporting paper.

He held me up at the barrier (yes, he held me up in the first moment of
our acquaintance) while he fumbled for his pass. He had given the word
"Press" with an exaggerated aplomb that showed he was young to his job,
and the gate-keeper challenged him. It was, in fact, the exquisite