Page:Restless Earth.djvu/204

“My home is here, Roy,” Harley had replied in a lifeless tone. “All that is left of it. As for my heart —it is there.”

He waved his hand in the direction of the hill and moved away.

Roy watched him go, and, when he was hidden by the intervening trees, followed him.

There was something dog-like in the manner in which Roy chose to attach himself to a master. During the war he had attached himself to a burly, good-natured, profane captain, and had been immensely gratified when his master, in moments of expansion, had patted his head and called him Fido. When his hero had thrown himself upon a Mills bomb, which a nervous bomber had dropped at his feet, and had died to save his men, Roy had been inconsolable—until, in the confusion of an advance, he had taken the opportunity to shoot the nervous bomber in the back.

Now, he had a desire to shoot somebody else in the back; but, in this senseless affair, there seemed none responsible for the wreck of his new brother’s life.

Exactly how much of Roy’s new attachment was due to hope of ultimate reward it is impossible to say. He himself would have angrily scouted the idea that he looked after Harley for the sake of the money that might be in it. He would have argued that, although he were only a taxi-driver—a pretty hard-bitten one at that, and not much to look at—he was possessed of a larger proportion of common decency than many of the “flash” people who hired him. He had known Harley for years; had often had him as a fare. Harley was a gentleman, for all his education, and he, Roy, wasn’t the sort to desert a man like that at a time like this.

He would have pointed out that, in his earnest desire to wangle creature comforts for Harley, he had even encouraged the co-operation of a parson!