“Sorry to have missed a mail or two, as I know it will have made you anxious,” Ray wrote, “but there was no help for it. We had a rather rough scrap with the Boches, the other night, and I got it at last in the arm,--the left fortunately, as you see. They attacked in force and we held them with the help of some brick-kilns and finally drove them off. One line in the papers, I expect,--if that!--but it was tolerably hot work. It was afterwards that I got my little jag. We were picking up wounded and came on an officer--a Prussian captain. He was under a pile of his own dead, and as we released him he pulled out an automatic and gave it me in the shoulder. Took off a bit of my ear also, but that’s a trifle----” “The horrid brute!” raged Lois. “--He didn’t get much satisfaction out of it, however,”--said the letter--“for Sergeant Mac who was with me picked up a rifle and brained him on the spot.” “Served him right!” said Lois, and then remembered that two minutes ago she was on her knees thanking God for Ray’s safety. “It’s horrible. It makes one blood-thirsty to think of it.” “It must be awful to be in it,” said Mrs Dare. “No wonder they do dreadful things at times, when simply hearing of a treachery like this makes our blood boil because it happens to come so close home to us.” “It seems to me things are getting worse in war instead of better,” said Auntie Mitt plaintively. “--They got me to the dressing station and tied me up, and eventually sent me down on the ambulance train to Boulogne, where I now am,--being very nicely attended to and as comfortable as can be. It is heavenly to be clean again and between clean sheets. It is not easy to know how we stood the trenches so well;--now that I’m out of them the conditions seem perfectly horrible. And yet we lived--and ‘for God’s sake smiled!’ They are saying that our stand that night saved a critical position. Several top-notties have called to congratulate me, and it’s said both Mac and I are to have the V.C. You see, we were lucky enough to bring in quite a respectable bag of wounded from the trench,--and so if I come back with only one arm _and_ the V.C., you’ll have to try and put up with me as best you can.” “Won’t I?” said Lois rapturously. “--Don’t think of coming out, dear. I know that would be your first thought----” “Of course it was!” “--Everything is being done for me excellently well, and as soon as I am fit again, and properly rested, I shall be sent over. Your minds may be quite easy on my account.” “Thank God, it is no worse!” said Mrs Dare fervently. “Amen!” said Lois. * * * * * And there this brief glimpse into the home-side of the war-clouds may very well stop for the time being. In this six short months, Life and Death have been busier among us all than ever before in the history of the world.