He held up the little wooden cross before his eyes. A smile of joy and surprise transfigured the dying face.
“I see it!—I see—it!” he whispered, and made a movement with his lips. Barry laid the cross upon them, and with that symbol of the Divine love and of the Divine sacrifice pressed to the dying lips, he prayed in words such as a child might use.
For some time after the prayer McCuaig lay with his eyes shut, then with a sudden accession of strength, he opened them and looking up into Barry's eyes, said:
“Barry, I'm all right now. . . . You helped me again.”
The long thin hands, once of such iron strength, began to wander weakly over the blanket, until touching Barry's they closed upon it, and held it fast.
“I—won't—forget—you—ever—” he whispered. The nerveless fingers with difficulty lifted Barry's hand to the cold lips. “Good—bye—Bar—ry—” he said.
“Good-bye, dear old comrade. Good-bye, dear old friend,” said Barry in a clear quiet voice, gazing through his falling tears straight into the dying eyes.
“Good—night—” The whisper faded into silence. A quiet smile lay on the white face. The eyes closed, there was a little tired sigh, and the brave tender spirit passed on to join that noble company of immortals who abide in the Presence of the Eternal God of Truth and Love, and “go no more out forever,” because they are akin to Him.
In the sorely tortured graveyard, beside the little shell-wrecked Zillebeck church, in a hole made by an enemy shell, they laid McCuaig—a fitting resting place for one who had lived his days in the free wild spaces of the Canadian west, a fitting tomb for as gallant a soldier as Canada ever sent forth to war to make the world free.
That night the battalion was relieved. Worn, spent, but with spirit unbroken, they crawled out from under that matted mass of tangled trunks, sending out their wounded before them, and leaving their buried dead behind them, to hold with other Canadian dead the line which from St. Julien, by Hooge, Sanctuary Wood, and Maple Copse, and Mount Sorel, and Hill 60, and on to St. Eloi, guards the way to Ypres and to the sea. To Canada every foot of her great domain, from sea to sea, is dear, but while time shall last Canada will hold dear as her own that bloodsoaked sacred soil which her dead battalions hold for Honour, Faith and Freedom.