The Comrade in White | Page 3

me into his arms--me, the biggest man in the regiment--and
carried me as if I had been a child.
I must have fainted again, for I woke to consciousness in a little cave
by a stream, and The Comrade in White was washing my wounds and
binding them up. It seems foolish to say it, for I was in terrible pain, but
I was happier at that moment than ever I remember to have been in all
my life before. I can't explain it, but it seemed as if all my days I had
been waiting for this without knowing it. As long as that hand touched
me and those eyes pitied me, I did not seem to care any more about
sickness or health, about life or death. And while he swiftly removed
every trace of blood and mire I felt as if my whole nature were being
washed, as if all the grime and soil of sin were going, and as if I were
once more a little child.
I suppose I slept, for when I awoke this feeling was gone. I was a man,
and I wanted to know what I could do for my friend to help him or to
serve him. He was looking towards the stream, and his hands were
clasped in prayer; and then I saw that he too had been wounded. I could
see, as it were, a shot-wound in his hand, and as he prayed a drop of
blood gathered and fell to the ground. I cried out. I could not help it, for
that wound of his seemed to me a more awful thing than any that bitter
war had shown me. "You are wounded too," I said faintly. Perhaps he
heard me, perhaps it was the look on my face, but he answered gently,
"This is an old wound, but it has troubled me of late." And then I
noticed sorrowfully that the same cruel mark was on his feet. You will
wonder that I did not know sooner. I wonder myself. But it was only
when I saw His feet that I knew Him.
"The Living Christ"--I had heard the Chaplain speak of Him a few
weeks before, but now I knew that He had come to me--to me who had
put Him out of my life in the hot fever of my youth. I was longing to

speak and to thank Him, but no words came. And then He rose swiftly
and said, "Lie here to-day by the water. I will come for you tomorrow. I
have work for you to do, and you will do it for me."
In a moment He was gone. And while I wait for Him I write this down
that I may not lose the memory of it. I feel weak and lonely and my
pain increases, but I have His promise. I know that He will come for
me to-morrow.

II
THE MESSENGER
"And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and
saith unto them, Peace be unto you."
--THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE, chap. xxiv: 36.
"The War has powerfully changed the 'psychological atmosphere,' and
the thoughts of a great multitude are turned towards the spiritual aspect
of existence. In this vast but connected universe we are not the only
self-conscious beings. Life is working here as elsewhere, for some
sublime purpose. The day is at hand when we shall turn from the
child-like amusements and excitements of physical science to the
unimaginable adventures of super-physical discovery; and in that day
we shall not only flash our messages to the stars, but hold communion
with our dead."
--HAROLD BEGBIE.

II
THE MESSENGER
The Parish Church stood high perched in the Glen, and through its clear
windows we could see the white, winding road that was our one link

with the great world beyond the mountains. Perhaps our eyes strayed
from the preacher's face more than was seemly, and in spring time we
had this excuse, that the fresh green of the larches against the dark
rocks made a picture fairer to the eye than our plain old Church and its
high pulpit.
But that Sunday in the spring of the Great War the minister had us all,
even the young and thoughtless, in the hollow of his hand. It was the
18th chapter of Second Samuel that he had read earlier in the Service,
and now he was opening its meaning to us with deep-felt realisation of
those great dramatic episodes.
We saw the young man Absalom die. We saw Cushi start to bear his
tidings to the king. We watched Ahimaaz swift on his track. We
marked the king's anxious waiting, and the fixed gaze of the watchman
on the city walls. We