themselves more and more from the obsessions of worldly life.
Serenity is the path by which the thoughts of God travel to us; and
Faith is the invitation which brings them to the table of our souls."




--ON THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS.



I

IN THE TRENCHES

Strange tales reached us in the trenches. Rumours raced up and down
that three-hundred-mile line from Switzerland to the sea. We knew
neither the source of them nor the truth of them. They came quickly,
and they went quickly. Yet somehow I remember the very hour when
George Casey turned to me with a queer look in his blue eyes, and
asked if I had seen the Friend of the Wounded.

And then he told me all he knew. After many a hot engagement a man
in white had been seen bending over the wounded. Snipers sniped at
him. Shells fell all around. Nothing had power to touch him. He was
either heroic beyond all heroes, or he was something greater still.
This mysterious one, whom the French called _The Comrade in White_,
seemed to be everywhere at once. At Nancy, in the Argonne, at
Soissons and Ypres, everywhere men were talking of him with hushed
voices.