Men dying in the trenches! Women weeping at home
for them! Others suffering and bleeding to death out in the open, the
cold or the storm! How could God let it all be? His wondering soul cried
out, "Lord, if Thou hadst been here!"
It was the old question that used to come up in the class-room, yet now,
strangely enough, he began to feel there was an answer to it somewhere;
an answer wherewith he would be satisfied when he found it.
It seemed an eternity of thought through which he passed as he crossed
and recrossed the street and was back in the tiny room where life waited
on death. It was another eternity while the doctor worked again over the
boy. But at last he stood back, shaking his head and blinking the tears
from his kind, tired, blue eyes.
"It's no use," he said, gruffly, turning his head away. "He's gone!"
It was then the girl brushed him aside and sank to her knees beside the
little cot.
"Aleck! Aleck! Darling brother! Can't you speak to your Bonnie just once
more before you go?" she called, clearly, distinctly, as if to a child
who was far on his way hence. And then once again pitifully:
"Oh, darling brother! You're all I had left! Let me hear you call me
Bonnie just once more before you go to mother!"
But the childish lips lay still and white, and the lips of the girl
looking down upon the little quiet form grew whiter also as she looked.
"Oh, my darling! You have gone! You will never call me any more! And you
were all I had! Good-by!" And she stooped and kissed the boy's lips with
a finality that wrung the hearts of the onlookers.
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