all."

The boy turned from the window and sat down heavily in a deep armchair,
his hands covering his face. His heart was still sick with the ache
that had smitten it that day in front of Amiens when the Colonel,
his father's friend, had sent for him and read him the wire which had
brought the terrible message of his mother's death. The long months of
days and nights heavy with watching, toiling, praying, agonising, for
her twin sons, and for the many boys who had gone out from the little
town wore out her none too robust strength. Then, the sniper's bullet
that had pierced the heart of her boy seemed to reach to her heart as
well. After that, the home that once had been to its dwellers the most
completely heart-satisfying spot in all the world became a place of
dread, of haunting ghosts, of acutely poignant memories. They used the
house for sleeping in and for eating in, but there was no living in it
longer. To them it was a tomb, though neither would acknowledge it and
each bore with it for the other's sake.

"Honestly, Dad, I wish I could make it go, for your sake--"

"For my sake, boy? Why, I have all of it I care for. Not for my sake.
But what else can we do but stick it?"

"I suppose so--but for Heaven's sake give me something worth a man's
doing. If I could tackle a job such as you and"--the boy winced--"you
and mother took on I believe I'd try it. But that office! Any fool could
sit in my place and carry on. It is like the job they used to give to
the crocks or the slackers at the base to do. Give me a man's job."

The father's keen blue eyes looked his son over.