“This is my very good friend, Robert Grant. If it hadn’t been for him I should never have seen any of you again.” And they turned on Robert Grant and put him to confusion with the volume and warmth of their welcome, and then they all went on into the parlour. Grant was for eliminating himself again, but they would not have it. Mrs Dare took him by the arm and led him in, murmuring her gratitude again for his care of their boy. Auntie Mitt went off to see the chauffeur properly provided for. And when they were inside the room Con turned quietly and said, with a little break in his voice, which was deeper than they had known it, and that new strange look in his eyes, “It’s good to be home again, but ... Alma dear, they’ve sent me back a cripple. They cut off my hands.” And if there had been some lurking fear, born of the long months of suffering and brooding, that that would make any difference in her love for him, it fled on the instant. She understood it all in a moment,--his doubts as to the wisdom of their hasty marriage,--his fears for the future,--all the black clouds that had weighed on him during these bitter months of pain and exile. But if there had been in him one smallest doubt as to her love for him, she scattered it and all the rest by the feel of her arms about his neck and the cry that came right out of her heart. “Oh, my love! My love! You are dearer to me than ever. I thank God for His great goodness in giving you back to me!” And Con, who had suffered more than most, both in mind and body, without wincing, though he could not hide the effects, hid his face on her breast and shook with sobs that he could not choke down. Their faces all showed the shock and strain of the distressing news, except Robert Grant’s. His shock had come five months before and he had had time to get over it. “Tell them how it was, Bob,” said Con, in a muffled voice, as he lifted himself again. “You know more about it than I do. And give me a cigarette before you begin.” Grant pulled out a cigarette-case and put a cigarette into his lips and lit it, and started on his story. “Well, it was like this. We were up near Landrecies--in the retirement from Mons, you know,”--his north-country speech, with its sympathetic inflections and ringing r’s, admitted him right into Mrs Dare’s heart.--“It was bad times for our men and our hands were overfull, trying to pick up the wounded, for the Germans were rolling along after us ten to our one. It was said they were behaving very badly to any who fell into their hands. But, you must remember, things were moving so quickly that they really hadn’t much time for anything but the fighting. It was life and death all round, and a man who went down was out of it and not of much account.