“There was nothin’ to give away--we was too busy--but his letters about me were a great comfort to Ma. I’m no good at writin’. I saved it all up for my leafs. I got me fourteen days every six months an’ one over.... I was luckier than most, that way.” “And when you came home, used you to bring ’em news about the Sergeant?” said Keede. “I expect I must have; but I didn’t think much of it at the time. I was took up with me own affairs--naturally. Uncle John always wrote to me once each leaf, tellin’ me what was doin’ an’ what I was li’ble to expect on return, an’ Ma ’ud ’ave that read to her. Then o’ course I had to slip over to his wife an’ pass her the news. An’ then there was the young lady that I’d thought of marryin’ if I came through. We’d got as far as pricin’ things in the windows together.” “And you didn’t marry her--after all?” Another tremor shook the boy. “_No!_” he cried. “’Fore it ended, I knew what reel things reelly mean! I--I never dreamed such things could be!... An’ she nearer fifty than forty an’ me own Aunt!... But there wasn’t a sign nor a hint from first to last, so ’ow _could_ I tell? Don’t you _see_ it? All she said to me after me Christmas leaf in ’18, when I come to say good-bye--all Auntie Armine said to me was: ‘You’ll be seein’ Mister Godsoe soon?’ ‘Too soon for my likings,’ I says. ‘Well then, tell ’im from me,’ she says, ‘that I expect to be through with my little trouble by the twenty-first of next month, an’ I’m dyin’ to see him as soon as possible after that date.’” “What sort of trouble was it?” Keede turned professional at once. “She’d ’ad a bit of a gatherin’ in ’er breast, I believe. But she never talked of ’er body much to any one.” “_I_ see,” said Keede. “And she said to you?” Strangwick repeated: “‘Tell Uncle John I hope to be finished of my drawback by the twenty-first, an’ I’m dying to see ’im as soon as ’e can after that date.’ An’ then she says, laughin’: ‘But you’ve a head like a sieve. I’ll write it down, an’ you can give it him when you see ’im.’ So she wrote it on a bit o’ paper an’ I kissed ’er good-bye--I was always her favourite, you see--an’ I went back to Sampoux. The thing hardly stayed in my mind at all, d’you see. But the next time I was up in the front line--I was a Runner, d’ye see--our platoon was in North Bay Trench an’ I was up with a message to the Trench Mortar there that Corporal Grant was in charge of. Followin’ on receipt of it, he borrowed a couple of men off the platoon, to slue ’er round or somethin’. I give Uncle John Auntie Armine’s paper, an’ I give Grant a fag, an’ we warmed up a bit over a brazier. Then Grant says to me: ‘I don’t like it’; an’ he jerks ’is thumb at Uncle John in the bay studyin’ Auntie’s message. Well, _you_ know, sir, you had to speak to Grant about ’is way of prophesyin’ things--after Rankine shot himself with the Very light.”