Page:Armistice Day.djvu/436

414 (innocently). No; you said quite the opposite.

(dogmatically). Anyhow, ghosts don't tramp!

(gently bantering). Not even a ghostly tramp? They clank chains, I am told. Why shouldn't their steps have a sound? A sort of a hollow, ghostly sound?

Bah! Are you sure the bullet struck him after he saw the—the angels?

So he says.

Hm! And you take his word for it! (He walks over to the door.} Dying, you say?

Three quarters dead already.

And young?

Nineteen—one of thousands. Oh, it's not romantic in the least. He's barely conscious; and he's waiting to go back to the front. He thinks he's going to get well.

They all think that, don't they? He won't?

Never in this world. Queer, isn't it? Shot clean through the body; suffering like the devil, and all he's thinking of is when he's to go back—when he's to rejoin his regiment!

Like an animal trying to return to the slaughter pen.