“You run it, too.”
“I hope so. I am very—tired.”
“I am sorry,” he said, reddening.
She said fiercely: “I wish it were over.... Life is cruel.... I suppose we must move on. Will you come, please?”
“Yes—my dark messenger,” he said under his breath, and smiled.
A priest passed them in the smoke; her prisoner raised his hand to the visor of his cap.
“Father Corby, their chaplain,” she murmured.
“Attention! Attention!” a far voice cried, and the warning ran from rank to rank, taken up in turn by officer after officer. Father Corby was climbing to the summit of a mound close by; an order rang out, bugles repeated it, and the blue ranks faced their chaplain.
Then the priest from his rocky pulpit raised his ringing voice in explanation. He told the three regiments of the Irish Brigade—now scarcely more than three battalions of two companies each—that every soldier there could receive the benefit of absolution by making a sincere act of contrition and resolving, on first opportunity, to confess.
He told them that they were going to be sent into battle; he urged them to do their duty; reminded them of the high and sacred nature of their trust as soldiers of the Republic, and ended by warning them that the Catholic Church refuses Christian burial to him who deserts his flag.