They turned a shaded flash light into the face and looked: "Pat, it's Cammie!" The guard was sobbing.
At sound of the dear old name the inert mass roused to action.
"Tell Cap--they're planning to slip away at five in the morning. Tell him if he wants to catch them he must do it now! Don't mind me! Go quick!"
The voice died away and the head dropped back.
With a last wistful look Pat was off to the captain, but the guard gathered Cameron up in his arms tenderly and nursed him like a baby, crooning over him in the sleet and dark, till Pat came back with a stretcher and some men who bore him to the dressing station lying inert between them.
While men worked over his silent form his message was flashing to headquarters and back over the lines to all the posts along that front. The time had come for the big drive. In a short time a great company of dark forms stole forth across No Man's Land till they seemed like a wide dark sea creeping on to engulf the enemy.
Next morning the newspapers of the world set forth in monstrous type the glorious victory and how the Americans had stolen upon the enemy and cut them off from the rest of their army, wiping out a whole salient.
But while the world was rejoicing, John Cameron lay on his little hard stretcher in the tent and barely breathed. He had not opened his eyes nor spoken again.