The Able McLaughlins
whisky in his hand which his father had just poured out. There on the bed sat his great gaunt brother in blue, one trouser leg rolled up to his hairy knee. There on a strip of carpet in front of the bed knelt his mother with a strange white face, soaking bloody rags away from evil-looking sores on that precious foot. There by the cupboard stood Mary, tearing something white into bandages, with the children huddled around her, awed by the sight of their mother.
Andy saw all that the moment that Wully, taking up one of the children's old jokes, cried out to him, in a voice that belied his foot, a greeting that the young ones had loved deriding.
"Lang may your lum reek, Andy!" There wasn't really anything wrong with Wully, it seemed. That wasn't a wound, he affirmed. It was only a scratch. He really couldn't say just how it had happened. It wasn't anything! It might not be anything to a soldier, but to his mother it was the mark of imminent death for her dearest son. She began rubbing it gently with lambs' fat. Wully, bethinking himself, pulled from a pocket a paper-wrapped bundle of sweeties for the children, who saw such things but seldom. They were intent upon the contents of that, and the stranger was talking to his father, when Andy, still standing awkwardly in the door, saw a thing happen which was a landmark in his understanding. He saw his mother, who had made fast the last bandage, and was carefully pulling down the trouser leg, sud-
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