"You are back, my children," he shouted. "It is well, for my poor soul desires rest.... Aye, rest indeed!"
A great peace settled on O'Hagan's face, as he slowly collapsed and lay very still.
Not long after this a country parson received a letter from a hare-brained member of his flock, who for many years had been good enough to keep him in touch with his doings in far lands. The old vicar had heard that the "young scoundrel," as he called him, had joined a volunteer regiment, and was in the thick of the fighting around Ypres. The letter was written in pencil on leaves torn from a note-book. The portion that will interest the reader of this story most is here quoted.
"On Monday I came across an old friend (?) of ours—Hilaire O'Hagan. We had a brush with about five thousand Huns, and we had under-estimated their strength. They rushed us in the dawning—a living, greenish-grey wave rolled over our trenches, shooting and hacking at the heart of what had once been a regiment of British Infantry. When the second wave lapped over, our men were overborne but they were trying, by common instinct, to reach the second line trenches where they could re-form. Then I saw O'Hagan who had dropped from God knows where, standing silhouetted against the red of dawn on the front line trench. He was waving a brass cross and the bullets were pattering around him and making a noise like rats skipping about an empty house. My God! Pluck! I never thought O'Hagan had it in him. I tell you, he hurled himself down on the rifles of a thousand Huns, and 'drove them hence' with his mighty brass cross. Our men were soon rallying on the lost trench. The stragglers clutched at each other, and pointed to where the cross flashed and reeled in the seething mass. Under cover of night our bearer party brought in O'Hagan stone dead with over twenty bullet wounds in him. I know, vicar, when you read this, it will flash into your mind that poor O'Hagan had been drinking again. You may banish any such thought ... there was a different look in O'Hagan's eyes. He had seen the 'immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-coloured, as on the first morning.' We carried him and his cross over to an old monastery where we found one of those quaint lead coffins—like the one in the crypt in our old church—and laid him at rest beneath the cool blue flagstones outside the chancel door. One of our men, a stone-mason in times of peace, roughly graved his name on the slab above him. As I walked back to the trenches I turned back to have a last look at the grave. A priest was standing over it with hands outstretched to bless...."
THE END
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