CARRY ON I OTTAWA, July 16th, 1916. DEAREST ALL: So much has happened since last I saw you that it's difficult to know where to start. On Thursday, after lunch, I got the news that we were to entrain from Petewawa next Friday morning. I at once put in for leave to go to Ottawa the next day until the following Thursday at reveille. We came here with a lot of the other officers who are going over and have been having a very full time. I am sailing from a port unknown on board the _Olympic_ with 6,000 troops--there is to be a big convoy. I feel more than ever I did--and I'm sure it's a feeling that you share since visiting the camp--that I am setting out on a Crusade from which it would have been impossible to withhold myself with honour. I go quite gladly and contentedly, and pray that in God's good time we may all sit again in the little shack at Kootenay and listen to the rustling of the orchard outside. It will be of those summer days that I shall be thinking all the time. Yours, with very much love, CON. II HALIFAX, July 23rd. MY DEAR ONES: We've spent all morning on the dock, seeing to our baggage, and have just got leave ashore for two hours. We have had letters handed to us saying that on no account are we to mention anything concerning our passage overseas, neither are we allowed to cable our arrival from the other side until four clear days have elapsed. You are thinking of me this quiet Sunday morning at the ranch, and I of you. And I am wishing--As I wish, I stop and ask myself, "Would I be there if I could have my choice?" And I remember those lines of Emerson's which you quoted: "Though love repine and reason chafe, There comes a voice without reply, 'Twere man's perdition to be safe, When for the Truth he ought to die." I wouldn't turn back if I could, but my heart cries out against "the voice which speaks without reply."