Part 24

Private Hilaire O'Hagan, the deserter, stood beside him holding a massive brass altar cross above his head. From that moment O'Hagan behaved like one possessed. He hurled himself over the traverse into the "green" of the German regiment, and started hacking and stabbing with the pointed end of the cross. The Huns did not like the look of such a wild apparition and refused to face him. Bit by bit they retired and O'Hagan took advantage of a moment to take a green silk Irish flag, with a crownless harp, from his pocket, and attach it to the spike of the cross. Then, roaring like a lion and brandishing his strange weapon, he fell on them once more--and as they broke he saw the hooded priest driving them before him with his flaming sword. A great joy seemed to burn up in his soul. Men who watched him said he ran amok. His great voice rose high above the chattering machine guns in a beautiful Franciscan chant and the voice of the priest joined in. What O'Hagan, bearing his mighty cross, must have looked like in the eerie dawn mist, Heaven knows. But seeing such an apparition and hearing the strange chant, it is possible the Huns thought the devil had joined in the fight. Then a man in the rear trench pointed to the west, where a great image of the cross was shining against a blood red sky, and a voice cried "Forward." It passed from man to man, and the regiment advanced, howling, with O'Hagan. They drove the Germans before them like chaff before a fan, and fell back, in triumph, to their lost trenches. They saw O'Hagan stagger a little and then turn round to where the regiment boiled with joy in the trenches.

"You are back, my children," he shouted. "It is well, for my poor soul desires rest.... Aye, rest indeed!"

A great peace settled on O'Hagan's face, as he slowly collapsed and lay very still.

Not long after this a country parson received a letter from a hare-brained member of his flock, who for many years had been good enough to keep him in touch with his doings in far lands. The old vicar had heard that the "young scoundrel," as he called him, had joined a volunteer regiment, and was in the thick of the fighting around Ypres. The letter was written in pencil on leaves torn from a note-book. The portion that will interest the reader of this story most is here quoted.

"On Monday I came across an old friend (?) of ours--Hilaire O'Hagan. We had a brush with about five thousand Huns, and we had under-estimated their strength. They rushed us in the dawning--a living, greenish-grey wave rolled over our trenches, shooting and hacking at the heart of what had once been a regiment of British Infantry. When the second wave lapped over, our men were overborne but they were trying, by common instinct, to reach the second line trenches where they could re-form. Then I saw O'Hagan who had dropped from God knows where, standing silhouetted against the red of dawn on the front line trench. He was waving a brass cross and the bullets were pattering around him and making a noise like rats skipping about an empty house. My God! Pluck! I never thought O'Hagan had it in him. I tell you, he hurled himself down on the rifles of a thousand Huns, and 'drove them hence' with his mighty brass cross. Our men were soon rallying on the lost trench. The stragglers clutched at each other, and pointed to where the cross flashed and reeled in the seething mass. Under cover of night our bearer party brought in O'Hagan stone dead with over twenty bullet wounds in him. I know, vicar, when you read this, it will flash into your mind that poor O'Hagan had been drinking again. You may banish any such thought ... there was a different look in O'Hagan's eyes. He had seen the 'immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-coloured, as on the first morning.' We carried him and his cross over to an old monastery where we found one of those quaint lead coffins--like the one in the crypt in our old church--and laid him at rest beneath the cool blue flagstones outside the chancel door. One of our men, a stone-mason in times of peace, roughly graved his name on the slab above him. As I walked back to the trenches I turned back to have a last look at the grave. A priest was standing over it with hands outstretched to bless...."

THE END

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