As it happened, however, I did not cross to England for several days, but stayed at a base hospital until, in the opinion of the M.O., I was fit to be removed. Meanwhile the carnage went on, and the great battle of the Somme developed according to the plans we had made, although there were some drawbacks. At length the day came when I was to go back to England, and no sooner had I stepped on board the boat than, to my delight, I saw Edgecumbe.
'A mere nothing, sir. Just a bruised arm. In a few days I shall be as right as ever.'
It was a beautiful day, and as it happened the boat was not crowded. I looked for a quiet spot where we could talk.
'You didn't finish telling me your story when we met last,' I said presently. 'I want to hear it badly.'
'I want you to hear it,' was his reply, and I noted that bright look in his eyes which had so struck me before.
'After all, it's nothing that one can talk much about,' he continued. 'I've become a Christian, that's all. But it's changed everything, _everything_!'
'I find it difficult to tell you, sir; but after I'd got back from the Y.M.C.A. meeting I got hold of a New Testament, and for days I did nothing but read it. You see it was a new book to me.'
He hesitated a few seconds and then went on. 'Loss of memory is a curious thing, isn't it? I suppose I must have read it as a boy, just as nearly all other English boys have, but it was a strange book to me. I had not forgotten how to read, but I had forgotten what I had read. I seemed to remember having heard of some one called Jesus Christ, but He meant nothing to me. That was why the reading of the New Testament was such a revelation.'
'Presently I began to pray,' and his voice quivered as he spoke. 'It was something new to me, but I did it almost unconsciously. You see, when I left the Y.M.C.A. hut, I had a consciousness that there was a God, but after I'd read the New Testament----; no I can't explain, I can't find words! But I prayed, and I felt that God was listening to me, and presently something new came into my life! It seemed to me as though some part of my nature which had been lying dormant leapt into life. I looked at things from a new standpoint. I saw new meanings in everything. I knew that I was no longer an orphan in the world, but that an Almighty, All-pervading God was my Father. That He cared for me, that nothing was outside the realm of His love. I saw what God was like, too. As I read that story of Jesus, and opened my life to Him, my whole being was flooded with the consciousness that He cared for me, that He watched me, and protected me. I saw, too, that there was no death to the man in whom Christ lived. That the death of the body was nothing because the man, the essential man lived on,--where I did not know, did not care, because God was.'