He was walking up and down the room restlessly. His fine dark eyes--so much too beautiful to have an eagle's sight--were sadder than ever in their wistful mortification. "You poor boy! You've always had everything so much your own way in life that you can't understand being beaten back anywhere. But, you know, you always say that you've never got anything important yet the very first time you've tried for it." "Oh, but this is different! And if I can't get into the Army, what am I going to do? I can't go to Oxford. There'll be nobody there except cripples. I should feel it a disgrace to be seen there. Just fancy my walking about there, looking as fit as I do, when every other decent fellow is fighting! What do you think people would think of me--yes, and even say to me? Nobody would ever believe I've got anything the matter with me, eyes or anything else, unless I wore a label round my neck. Oh, Big Yeogh Wough, what am I going to do? You've no idea what it felt like to-day to have to go out from among them--those officers who'd been quite eager to have me with them." He flung himself down heavily into a chair. He had not yet taken off his overcoat and I could see that he was very tired. I bent over him and kissed him. "You dear big boy! I suppose it's just because of your strength that you're always so piteous when anything doesn't go quite right with you. You can always move mountains yourself and so it breaks you down to find a mountain in your path that you haven't the right to try to move. Never mind. Things will work themselves out all right." "And to think that Edward has been passed!" he burst out. "He's sure of his commission now. He's only got to wait for it. And I----! Look here, I'll go and have another try to-morrow at a different place and if I'm rejected again I'll go over and join the French army." "Better offer to help Colonel Crompton here with the recruiting," put in his father, quietly. "You'd be wearing your O.T.C. uniform and doing useful work and through it you might get your chance." It was a good idea, and the Boy saw it. "Yes, I think I'll do that. I'll have a try at Bury St. Edmunds to-morrow, and if the doctor there doesn't slip me through the eyesight test I'll go round and help the dear old colonel and work my way in sideways. After all, if I'm a good soldier and strong and healthy, what on earth does it matter that I can't see the enemy coming behind bushes five miles off? When it comes to that, one uses field glasses."