—Fisher Ames, Jr.
IX—THE COWARD
We will call him Albert Lloyd. That wasn’t his name, but it will do:
Albert Lloyd was what the world terms a coward.
In London they called him a slacker.
His country had been at war nearly eighteen months, and still he was not in khaki.
He had no good reason for not enlisting, being alone in the world, having been educated in an Orphan Asylum, and there being no one dependent upon him for support. He had no good position to lose, and there was no sweetheart to tell him with her lips to go, while her eyes pleaded for him to stay.
Every time he saw a recruiting sergeant, he’d slink around the corner out of sight, with a terrible fear gnawing at his heart. When passing the big recruiting posters, and on his way to business and back he passed many, he would pull down his cap and look the other way, to get away from that awful finger pointing at him, under the caption, “Your King and Country Need You”; or the boring eyes of Kitchener, which burned into his very soul, causing him to shudder.
Then the Zeppelin raids—during them, he used to crouch in a corner of his boarding-house cellar, whimpering like a whipped puppy and calling upon the Lord to protect him.
Even his landlady despised him, although she had to admit that he was “good pay.”