'Let's tear it up,' he said, and rent the horrid news in pieces. 'Let's only remember the boy did the right thing, and died like a man.'
He found himself comforting the girl who had come to comfort him. She found herself telling him with streaming eyes how she had loved his boy and thought of him, even though at the time he asked her she had said, 'No.'
'If only he could have known!' she sobbed. 'Perhaps, perhaps he was thinking of me part of that night when he—was cold.'
The next day there was another cable about the affair.
'The trooper who saved General Strong's life at Krug's Spruit was Private Mark Stevenson, of the Queensland Contingent, not Mortimer Stevenson of the New South Wales, as reported yesterday.'
Hermie tore along the road to Coolooli to rejoice with the old man, since before she had gone to grieve with him.
He was sitting on the verandah looking very shaken and bewildered, and reading the third cable as often as he had read the first.
'I—hardly understand,' he said feebly.
Hermie had seized his two hands, and was shaking them joyously.
'He is alive—alive!' she cried.