SACRIFICE.
" WHEN I think of Ned Homing— ! Before Thy Throne and Heaven, 0 God 1 Before Thy Throne---." • Kerning was a poor unhappy blighter. He had been track- riding in the States, and had licked Joe Bludwin on the Pittsburg track in the wildest race the world had ever seen. But he was a poor unhappy blighter all the same. He wasn't a German- American at all, though when he came to England the moment that the war broke out and 'listed as a despatch-rider, the Daily Hooter included his name in a list of "enemies in the camp." It was gall and wormwood to him, I knew that, though he said but little. By George ! how mad I felt. This damnable reading of the surface of things, and dashing wildly into print I As a matter of fact, Ned's people came over the water with William of Orange, and had become genuine British heart-of-oak after the third generation. The two dots over the " o " wero dropped out in the process. Korning was one of the truest men I ever knew ; if anything, he had too tender a heart, and he was as fearless as a lion.
I know him better than ever his mother had done, and whenever I heard a word against him I never failed to get in the last say.
He and I had been at school and through the shops together ; we had attended the Vicar's classes; and we had gone through a Nonconformist phase of " conversion " together after that. Ned was first and I followed him. That was after we had played the devil for a year or two, when the world had got hold of us as it does of most There was a sympathy between us that I can't describe. Then he went over to the States to teach them how to use a motor-cycle. They knew pretty well, but Ned Koming knew better. His record was an open one to all who cared to look, and there wasn't any difficulty put in the way when he applied for a despatch-rider s job. His main trouble was his sensitiveness. He had passed through religious experiences that some whose eyes never look above the horizontal call "hysteria." But it wasn't hysteria or anything like it. I watched him all the time, and I have even cried at night in bed in my anxiety for him. When he was in the States he wrote to me twice a week, and it was always the same tale, that he was the most unhappy wretch alive, and that he couldn't find what he was searching for. Then the war broke out, and, suddenly, he found it ! He became another man. His being underwent a change as marked as the transformation from chrysalis to butterfly, and I looked on, fairly amazed, for he had found something higher and sweeter than anything I had ever known.
We went out together with the — Division. We were in and through the awful agony of the Great Retreat ; and we were together in the flushing excitement of the sudden reflex of advance. Wo rarely had a billet ; it was a most racking life, but we stood it better than did our machines 1 One night, one great and glorious night, we had together. We were in a barn, and as comfortable on the straw as in the featheriest bed at home. It was then that he opened his heart out to me. I couldn't dare to put on paper an account of that night's talk. I can only sum it up in this, that Ned had found what his heart had longed for through the years, the meaning and the glory of—The Sacrifice 1 Next morning he had to take a despatch to Ypres, a tremendously urgent ono. The road through Bailleul was safe enough, but he decided for the shorter Kemmel road. He didn't stop to think, but just decided and was off. He should have boon back by eleven o'clock, but midday passed, and one o'clock, and two, and yet never a word of him came through. Rumours, however, came that made me anxious. They said that a large body of German cavalry had been through in the night, and that they had only just been driven back. They wanted Kemmel Hill again ; they were wild at having let it fall into our hands. We had held it for two days. This was another desperate bid for it, but it had failed. I got the next despatch and off I dashed—up through Neuve Eglise, and down the steep, narrow street, and then up through the lovely little village of Kemmel itself. It was full of alarm ; the Huns were shelling it for all they were worth. Two poor women had just been killed, and the church was the bull's-eye of their target as I passed it by, steering through the debris of stones and paving- blocks. There was no stopping. I dashed through and down the hill, ecling my way through guns and limbers. I found the open road, and sped on and round the bend at the bottom of the hill. A wood skirts the road just there, and there is or was a wide strip of green with long grasses and with flowers waving in the gentle wind. I was revelling in the exhilaration of the ride when I saw ahead of me, sticking out of the green grass beside the road, some long, thin props. I don't know what fixed my eyes upon them, but fixed I knew they were.
I closed my throttle as I drew nearer, and saw that the props were lances ! Then in the ditch I saw a Triumph motor-bike. I pulled up suddenly. I saw its number. It was Ned Korning's motor- bike. Then I saw between the lances a body lying. It was Ned, with a smile on his lips and his glassy eyes looking through the trees to Heaven. Two lances pierced the palms of his hands, and two were driven through his feet The devils had crucified him there upon the ground I 0 Lord God in Heaven ! I closed his eyes, and knelt beside him. I opened his jacket and vest and took off his identity disc. That was all those devils had left him. I knelt a minute and cried. My tears fell on his face, and I wiped them off and kissed his cold forehead. Then the voice of Duty called, and I got up, mounted, and was off. The wind wailed in my ears, and a feeling of grief inexpressible surged up in my heart. It was so strong and full that I longed to draw up and throw myself down in the roadside grass and sob my spirit to rest. But Duty eaid with firm insistence, " Carry on I carry on I carry on 1 " and I obeyed and got through in safety. That night I lay in the same barn, alone, and my pent-up feelings flooded out in tears and prayer. flay awake, and as I watched the night go by I communed with the spirit of Ned, sleeping his last long sleep ; and when the sun brought forth another day I knew that a subtle change, intangible as the rising of a breeze upon the waters, was being wrought in me. Then when Duty sent me on a long errand towards the South the wind that had wailed with my great grief of yesterday sang songs of Heaven in my ears. The skies had softened, and in my heart I knew that the secret of Ned Kerning had been imparted to ma
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