Collapse 
frighten, but filled one with shame, so that it was 
no longer decent to look upon the decencies of 
human nature. Such an attitude, so unlike John 
Smith’s own, would have made it unseemly to 
listen to his old talk of comparatively kindly life, 
even if he had cared to tell; but he did not care. 
He sat quiet, low-spirited; as if feeling that his 
life had been a failure, that the world was foul. 
He went back home the next day; back to his 
sick-bed soon; and to the best of my belief he 
never got about again. 
Now and then I went to see him. I had tea 
with him once upstairs in his bedroom, looking 
down across the quiet fields he had once farmed, 
and watching the unquiet aeroplanes that were 
now circling about over them. At my next 
visit his bed had been brought downstairs—it 
was easier for him and for everybody that he 
should be there. There he lay till the summer 
came round again, and flies from the farm-yard 
across the road were tiresome—lay in almost 
constant pain, but with serenity and humorous 
good-temper almost as constantly with him. 
His old acquaintances sometimes dropped in 
for a chat; for still it was worth while to listen 
to him. He had a laugh left. 
It was with a laugh he told of a certain colonel 
he had known, retired colonels being thick as 
blackberries in that district, and well-nigh as 
161 iv 
