The church was half in ruins. Great portions of the roof had been torn away by shell-fire, and there were gaping holes in the walls through which could be caught glimpses of sentries going backwards and forwards. Sometimes a grey battalion swung by; sometimes a German officer peered in curiously, with a sneer on his lips. The drone of aircraft came from above, through the holes where the rafters showed black against the sky. Ever the guns boomed savagely from beyond.

There were no longer any seats in the church. They had all been broken up for camp-fires—even the oaken pulpit had gone. The great empty space had been roughly cleared of fallen masonry, which had been flung in heaps against the wall; on the stone floor filthy straw was thinly spread. On the straw lay row upon row of wounded men—very quiet for the most part; they had found that it did not pay to make noise enough to annoy the guards who smoked and played cards in a corner.

The long day—how long only the men on the straw knew—was drawing to a close. The sun sank behind the western window, which the guns had spared; and the stained glass turned to a glory of scarlet and gold and blue. The shafts of colour lay across the broken altar, whence everything had been stripped; they bathed the shattered walls in a beauty that was like a cloak over the nakedness of their ruin. Slowly they crept over the floor, as the sun sank lower, touching the straw with rosy fingers, falling gently on broken bodies and pain-drawn faces; and weary eyes looked gratefully up to the window where a figure of Christ with a child in His arms stood glorious in the light, and blessed them with the infinite pity of His smile.

A little Cockney lad with a dirty bandage round his head, who had tossed in pain all day on the chancel steps, turned to the window to greet the daily miracle of the sunset.

"Worf waiting for, all the day, that is!" he muttered. The restlessness left him, and his eyes closed, presently, in sleep.

Slowly the glory died away, and as it passed a little figure in a rusty black cassock came in, making his way among the men on the straw. It was the French priest, who had refused to leave his broken church: a little, fat man, not in the least like a hero, but with as knightly a soul as was ever found in armour and with lance in rest. He passed from man to man, speaking in quaint English, occasionally dropping gladly into French when he found some one able to answer him in his own language. He had nothing to give them but water; but that he carried tirelessly many times a day. His little store of bandages and ointment had gone long ago, but he bathed wounds, helped cramped men to change their position, and did the best he could to make the evil straw into the semblance of a comfortable bed. To the helpless men on the floor of the church his coming meant something akin to Paradise.

He paused near a little Irishman with a broken leg, a man of the Dublin Fusiliers, whose pain had not been able to destroy his good temper.

"How are you to-night, mon garcon?"

"Yerra, not too bad, Father," said the Irishman. "If I could have just a taste of water, now?" He drank deeply as the priest lifted his head, and sank back with a word of thanks.

"This feather pillow of mine is apt to slip if I don't watch it," he said, wriggling the back of his head against the cold stone of the floor, from which the straw had worked away. "I dunno could you gather it up a bit, Father." He grinned. "I'd ask you to put me boots under me for a pillow, but if them thieving guards found them loose, they'd shweep them from me."

"Ss-h, my son!" the priest whispered warningly. He shook up a handful of straw and made it as firm as he could under the man's head. "It is not prudent to speak so loud. Remember you cannot see who may be behind you."

"Indeed and I cannot," returned Denny Callaghan. "I'll remember, Father. That's great!" He settled his head thankfully on the straw pillow. "I'll sleep aisier to-night for that."

"And Monsieur le Capitaine—has he moved yet?" The priest glanced at a motionless form near them.

"Well, indeed he did, Father, this afternoon. He gev a turn, an' he said something like 'Tired People.' I thought there was great sense in that, if he was talkin' to us, so I was cheered up about him—but not a word have I got out of him since. But it's something that he spoke at all."

The cure bent over the quiet figure. Two dark eyes opened, as if with difficulty, and met his.

"Norah," said Jim Linton. "Are you there, Norah?"

"I am a friend, my son," said the cure. "Are you in pain?"

The dark eyes looked at him uncomprehendingly. Then he murmured,
"Water!"

"It is here." The little priest held the heavy head, and Jim managed to drink a little. Something like a shadow of a smile came into his eyes as the priest wiped his lips. Then they closed again.

"If they would send us a doctor!" muttered the cure, in his own language, longingly. "Ma joi, what a lad!" He looked down in admiration at the splendid helpless body.

"He won't die, Father, will he?"

"I do not know, my son. I can find no wound, except the one on his head—nothing seems broken. Perhaps he will be better to-morrow." He gave the little Irishman his blessing and moved away. There were many eager eyes awaiting him.

Jim was restless during the night; Denny Callaghan, himself unable to sleep, watched him muttering and trying to turn, but unable to move.

"I doubt but his back's broken," said the little man ruefully. "Yerra, what a pity!" He tried to soothe the boy with kind words; and towards the dawn Jim slept heavily.

He woke when the sun was shining upon him through a rift in the wall. The church was full of smothered sounds—stifled groans from helpless men, stiffened by lying still, and trying to move. Jim managed to raise himself a little, at which Denny Callaghan gave an exclamation of relief.

"Hurroo! Are you better, sir?"

"Where am I?" Jim asked thickly.

"'Tis in a church you are, sir, though it's not much like it," said the little man. "The Germans call it a hospital. 'Tis all I wish they may have the like themselves, and they wounded. Are you better, sir?"

"I . . . think I'm all right," Jim said. He was trying to regain his scattered faculties. "So they've got me!" He tried to look at Callaghan. "What's your regiment?"

"The Dubs, sir. 'Tis hard luck; I kem back wounded from Suvla Bay and they sent me out to the battalion here; and I'd not been with them a week before I got landed again. Now 'tis a German prison ahead—and by all one hears they're not rest-camps."

"No," said Jim. He tried to move, but failed, sinking back with a stifled groan. "I wish I knew if I was damaged much. Are there any doctors here?"

"There was two, a while back. They fixed us up somehow, and we haven't seen a hair of them since. The guards throw rations—of a sort—at us twice a day. 'Tis badly off we'd be, if it weren't for the priest."

"Is he French?"

"He is—and a saint, if there ever was one. There he comes now."
Callaghan crossed himself reverently.

A hush had come over the church. The cure, in his vestments, had entered, going slowly to the altar.

Jim struggled up on his elbow. There was perfect silence in the church; men who had been talking ceased suddenly, men who moaned in their pain bit back their cries. So they lay while the little priest celebrated Mass, as he had done every morning since the Germans swept over his village: at first alone, and, since the first few days to a silent congregation of helpless men. They were of all creeds and some of no creed at all: but they prayed after him as men learn to pray when they are at grips with things too big for them. He blessed them, at the end, with uplifted hand; and dim eyes followed him as he went slowly from the church.

He was back among them, presently, in the rusty black cassock. The guards had brought in the men's breakfast—great cans of soup and loaves of hard, dark bread. They put them down near the door, tramping out with complete disregard of the helpless prisoners. The priest would see to them, aided by the few prisoners who could move about, wounded though they were. In any case the guard had no order to feed prisoners; they were not nurse-maids, they said.

"Ah, my son! You are awake!"

Jim smiled up at the cure.

"Have I been asleep long, sir?"

"Three days. They brought you in last Friday night. Do you not remember?"

"No," said Jim. "I don't remember coming here." He drank some soup eagerly, but shook his head at the horrible bread. The food cleared his head, and when the little cure had gone away, promising to return as soon as possible, he lay quietly piecing matters together in his mind. Callaghan helped him: the Dublins had been in the line next his own regiment when they had gone "over the top" on that last morning.

"Oh, I remember all that well enough," Jim said. "We took two lines of trench, and then they came at us like a wall; the ground was grey with them. And I was up on a smashed traverse, trying to keep the men together, when it went up too."

"A shell was it?"

Jim shook his head.

"A shell did burst near us, but it wasn't that. No, the trench was mined, and the mine went off a shade too late. They delayed, somehow; it should have gone off if we took the trench, before they counter-attacked. As it was, it must have killed as many of their men as ours. They told me about it afterwards."

"Afterwards?" said Callaghan, curiously. He looked at Jim, a little doubtful as to whether he really knew what he was talking about. "Did ye not come straight here then, sir?"

"I did not; I was buried," said Jim grimly. "The old mine went up right under me, and I went up too. I came down with what seemed like tons of earth on top of me; I was covered right in, I tell you, only I managed to get some of the earth away in front of my nose and mouth. I was lying on my side, near the edge of a big heap of dirt, with my hands near my face. If I'd been six inches further back there wouldn't have been the ghost of a chance for me. I got some of the earth and mud away, and found I could breathe, just as I was choking. But I was buried for all that. All our chaps were fighting on top of me!"

"D'ye tell me!" gasped Callaghan incredulously.

"I could feel the boots," Jim said. "I'm bruised with them yet. What time did we go over that morning?—nine o'clock, wasn't it?"

"It was, sir."

"Well, it was twelve or one o'clock when they dug me out. They re-took the trench, and started to dig themselves in, and they found me; I've a spade-cut on my hand. My Aunt, that was a long three hours!"

"Did they treat you decent, sir?"

"They weren't too bad," Jim said. "I couldn't move; I suppose it was the weight on me, and the bruising—at least, I hope so. They felt me all over—there was a rather decent lieutenant there, who gave me some brandy. He told me he didn't think there was anything broken. But I couldn't stir, and it hurt like fury when they touched me."

"And how long were you there, sir?"

"They had to keep me until night—there was no way of sending back prisoners. So I lay on a mud-heap, and the officer-boy talked to me—he had been to school in England."

"That's where they larned him any decency he had," said Callaghan.

"It might be. But he wasn't a bad sort. He looked after me well enough. Then, after nightfall, they sent a stretcher party over with me. The German boy shook hands with me when we were starting, and said he was afraid he wouldn't see me again, as we were pretty sure to be shelled by the British."

"And were you, sir?"

"Rather. The first thing I knew was a bit of shrapnel through the sleeve of my coat; I looked for the hole this morning, to see if I was remembering rightly, and sure enough, here it is." He held up his arm, and showed a jagged tear in his tunic. "But that's where I stop remembering anything. I suppose I must have caught something else then. Why is my head tied up? It was all right when they began to carry me over."

"Ye have a lump the size of an egg low down on the back of your head, sir," said Callaghan. "And a nasty little cut near your temple."

"H'm!" said Jim. "I wondered why it ached! Well I must have got those from our side on the way across. I hope they got a Boche or two as well."

"I dunno," Callaghan said. "The fellas that dumped you down said something in their own haythin tongue. I didn't understand it, but it sounded as if they were glad to be rid of you."

"Well, I wouldn't blame them," Jim said. "I'm not exactly a featherweight, and it can't be much fun to be killed carrying the enemy about, whether you're a Boche or not."

He lay for a while silently, thinking. Did they know at home yet? he wondered anxiously. And then he suddenly realized that his fall must have looked like certain death: that if they had heard anything it would be that he had been killed. He turned cold at the thought. What had they heard—his father, Norah? And Wally—what did he think? Was Wally himself alive? He might even be a prisoner. He turned at that thought to Callaghan, his sudden move bringing a stifled cry to his lips.

"Did they—are there any other officers of my regiment here?"

"There are not," said Callaghan. "I got the priest to look at your badges, sir, the way he could find out if there was anny more of ye. But there is not. Them that's here is mostly Dublins and Munsters, with a sprinkling of Canadians. There's not an officer or man of the Blankshires here at all, barring yourself."

"Will the Germans let us communicate with our people?"

"Communicate, is it?" said the Irishman. "Yerra, they'll not let anyone send so much as a scratch on a post-card." He dropped his voice. "Whisht now, sir: the priest's taking all our addresses, and he'll do his best to send word to every one at home."

"But can he depend on getting through?"

"Faith, he cannot. But 'tis the only chance we've got. The poor man's nothing but a prisoner himself; he's watched if he goes tin yards from the church. So I dunno, at all, will he ever manage it, with the suspicions they have of him."

Jim sighed impatiently. He could do nothing, then, nothing to keep the blow from falling on the two dear ones at home. He thought of trying to bribe the German guards, and felt for his pocket-book, but it was gone; some careful Boche had managed to relieve him of it while he had been unconscious. And he was helpless, a log—while over in England Norah and his father were, perhaps, already mourning him as dead. His thoughts travelled to Billabong, where Brownie and Murty O'Toole and the others kept the home ready for them all, working with the love that makes nothing a toil, and planning always for the great day that should bring them all back. He pictured the news arriving—saw Brownie's dismayed old face, and heard her cry of incredulous pain. And there was nothing he could do. It seemed unbelievable that such things could be, in a sane world. But then, the world was no longer sane; it had gone mad nearly two years before, and he was only one of the myriad atoms caught into the swirl of its madness.

The cure came again, presently, and saw his troubled face. "You are in pain, my son?"

"No—I'm all right if I keep quiet," Jim answered. "But it's my people. Callaghan says you will try to let them know, Father."

"I am learning you all," said the priest, "names, regiments, and numbers is it not? I dare not put them on paper: I have been searched three times already, even to my shoes. But I hope that my chance will come before long. Then I will send them to your War Office." He beamed down on Jim so hopefully that it seemed rather likely that he would find a private telegraph office of his own, suddenly. "Now I will learn your name and regiment." He repeated them several times, nodding his head.

"Yes, that is an easy one," he said. "Some of them are very terrible, to a Frenchman; our friend here"—he looked quaintly at Callaghan—"has a name which it twists the tongue to say. And now, my son, I would like to examine you, since you are conscious. I am the only doctor—a poor one, I fear. But perhaps we will find out together that there is nothing to be uneasy about."

That, indeed, was what they did find out, after a rather agonizing half-hour. Jim was quite unable to move his legs, being so bruised that there was scarcely a square inch of him that was not green and blue and purple. One hip bore the complete impress of a foot, livid and angry.

"Yes, that chap jumped on me from a good height," Jim said when the cure exclaimed at it. "I thought he had smashed my leg."

"He went near it," said the cure. "Indeed, my son, you are beaten to a jelly. But that will recover itself. You can breathe without pain? That is well. Now we will look at the head." He unwrapped the bandages and felt the lump tenderly. "Ah, that is better; a little concussion, I think, mon brave; it is that which kept you so quiet when you stayed with us at first. And the cut heals well; that comes of being young and strong, with clean, healthy blood." He bathed the head, and replaced the bandages, sighing that he had no clean ones. "But with you it matters little; you will not need them in a few days. Then perhaps we will wash these and they will be ready for the next poor boy." He smiled at Jim. "Move those legs as much as you can, my son, and rub them." He trotted away.

"And that same is good advice," said Callaghan. "It will hurt to move, sir, and you beaten to a pulp first and then stiffening for the three days you're after lying here; 'tis all I wish I could rub you, with a good bottle of Elliman's to do it with. But if them Huns move you 'twill hurt a mighty lot more than if you move yourself. Themselves is the boys for that; they think they've got a feather in their caps if they get an extra yelp out of annywan. So do the best you can, sir."

"I will," said Jim—and did his best, for long hours every day. It was weary work, with each movement torture, and for a time very little encouragement came in the shape of improvement: then, slowly, with rubbing and exercise, the stiffened muscles began to relax. Callaghan cheered him on, forgetting his own aching leg in his sympathy for the boy in his silent torment. In the intervals of "physical jerks," Jim talked to his little neighbour, whose delight knew no bounds when he heard that Jim knew and cared for his country. He himself was a Cork man, with a wife and two sons; Jim gathered that their equal was not to be found in any town in Ireland. Callaghan occasionally lamented the "foolishness" that had kept him in the Army, when he had a right to be home looking after Hughie and Larry. "'Tis not much the Army gives you, and you giving it the best years of your life," he said. "I'd be better out of it, and home with me boys."

"Then you wouldn't let them go to the war, if they were old enough?"
Jim asked.

"If they were old enough 'twould not be asking my liberty they'd be," rejoined Mr. Callaghan proudly. "Is it my sons that 'ud shtand out of a fight like this?" He glared at Jim, loftily unconscious of any inconsistency in his remarks.

"Well, there's plenty of your fellow-countrymen that won't go and fight, Cally!" said the man beyond him—a big Yorkshireman.

"There's that in all countries," said Callaghan calmly. "They didn't all go in your part of the country, did they, till they were made? Faith, I'm towld there's a few there yet in odd corners—and likely to be till after the war." The men round roared joyfully, at the expense of the Yorkshireman.

"And 'tis not in Ireland we have that quare baste the con-sci-en-tious objector," went on Callaghan, rolling the syllables lovingly on his tongue. "That's an animal a man wouldn't like to meet, now! Whatever our objectors are in Ireland, they're surely never con-sci-en-tious!"

Jim gave a crack of laughter that brought the roving grey eye squarely upon him.

"Even in Australia, that's the Captain's country," said the soft Irish voice, "I've heard tell there's a boy or two there out of khaki—maybe they're holding back for conscription too. But wherever the boys are that don't go, none of them have a song and dance made about them, barring only the Irish."

"What about your Sinn Feiners?" some one sang out. Callaghan's face fell.

"Yerra, they have the country destroyed," he admitted. "And nine out of every ten don't know annything about politics or annything else at all, only they get talked over, and towld that they're patriots if they'll get howld of a gun and do a little drilling at night—an' where's the country boy that wouldn't give his ears for a gun! An' the English Gov'mint, that could stop it all with the stroke of a pen, hasn't the pluck to bring in conscription in Ireland."

"You're right there, Cally," said some one.

"I know well I'm right. But the thousands and tens of thousands of Irish boys that went to the war and fought till they died—they'll be forgotten, and the Sinn Fein scum'll be remembered. If the Gov'mint had the pluck of a mouse they'd be all right. I tell you, boys, 'twill be the Gov'mint's own fault if we see the haythin Turks parading the fair fields of Ireland, with their long tails held up by the Sinn Feiners!" Callaghan relapsed into gloomy contemplation of this awful possibility, and refused to be drawn further. Even when Jim, desiring to be tactful, mentioned a famous Irish V.C. who had, single-handed, slain eight Germans, he declined to show any enthusiasm.

"Ah, what V.C.!" he said sourly. "Sure, his owld father wouldn't make a fuss of him. 'Why didn't he do more?' says he. 'I often laid out twenty men myself with a stick, and I coming from Macroom Fair. It is a bad trial of Mick that he could kill only eight, and he having a rifle and bayonet!' he says. Cock him up with a V.C.!" After which Jim ceased to be consoling and began to exercise his worst leg—knowing well that the sight of his torments would speedily melt Denny's heart and make him forget the sorrows of Ireland.

The guards did not trouble them much; they kept a strict watch, which was not difficult, as all the prisoners were partially disabled; and then considered their duty discharged by bringing twice a day the invariable meal of soup and bread. No one liked to speculate on what had gone to the making of the soup; it was a pale, greasy liquid, with strange lumps in it, and tasted as dish-water may be supposed to taste. Jim learned to eat the sour bread by soaking it in the soup. He had no inclination to eat, but he forced himself to swallow the disgusting meals, so that he might keep up his strength, just as he worked his stiff limbs and rubbed them most of the day. For there was but one idea in Jim Linton's mind—escape.

Gradually he became able to sit up, and then to move a little, hobbling painfully on a stick which had been part of a broken pew, and endeavouring to take part in looking after the helpless prisoners, and in keeping the church clean, since the guards laughed at the idea of helping at either. Jim had seen something of the treatment given to wounded German soldiers in England, and he writhed to think of them, tended as though they were our own sick, while British prisoners lay and starved in filthy holes. But the little cure rebuked him.

"But what would you, my son? They are canaille—without breeding, without decency, without hearts. Are we to put ourselves on that level?"

"I suppose not—but it's a big difference, Father," Jim muttered.

"The bigger the difference, the more honour on our side," said the little priest. "And things pass. Long after you and I and all these poor lads are forgotten it will be remembered that we came out of this war with our heads up. But they——!" Suddenly fierce scorn filled his quiet eyes. "They will be the outcasts of the world!"

Wherefore Jim worked on, and tried to take comfort by the cure's philosophy; although there were many times when he found it hard to digest. It was all very well to be cheerful about the verdict of the future, but difficult to forget the insistent present, with the heel of the Hun on his neck. It was sometimes easier to be philosophic by dreaming of days when the positions should be reversed.

He was able to walk a little when the order came to move. The guards became suddenly busy; officers whom the prisoners had not seen before came in and out, and one evening the helpless were put roughly into farm carts and taken to the station, while those able to move by themselves were marched after them—marched quickly, with bayonet points ready behind them to prod stragglers. It was nearly dark when they were thrust roughly into closed trucks, looking back for the last time on the little cure, who had marched beside them, with an arm for two sick men, and now stood on the platform, looking wistfully at them. He put up his hand solemnly.

"God keep you, my sons!"

A German soldier elbowed him roughly aside. The doors of the trucks were clashed together, leaving them in darkness; and presently, with straining and rattling and clanging, the train moved out of the station.

"Next stop, Germany!" said Denny Callaghan from the corner where he had been put down. "And not a ticket between the lot of us!"