Very reluctantly I took leave of the T.B. and her genial Commander, and went on board the armed liner, where I found most of the survivors from my old ship. Alas! they were tragically few, for out of a ship’s company of 760, only 160 men and 20 officers had been saved. The _Carmania_, which still bore scars resulting from her tremendous battle with the Cap Trafalgar earlier in the war, weighed anchor on the following day, and four days later reached Malta, where she coaled. Here I went ashore and managed to buy a ready-made reefer suit and other necessary garments; and I was uncommonly glad to feel once more respectably clad. Our voyage was uneventful. Now that there was no duty to be performed I think most of us began to feel a bit slack, but our spirits rose as they turned homewards. We had not seen our people for nearly thirteen months, and the necessarily strict censorship of all our letters had of course increased the sense of separation. On June 12 we arrived at Devonport, and our Commander went ashore and shortly afterwards returned with the welcome information that we had all been granted a fortnight’s leave. Leave! Cheer-o! We wasted no time in getting ashore, and I at once wired to my home telling my mother that I had arrived, and was going straight to London to the house of some cousins who had offered me hospitality whenever I might need it, and that I would there await instructions as I did not know where she might be. A fast train landed us at Paddington about 5 o’clock, and I took a taxi to S—— Place. * * * * * _The Admiralty had informed me that he had sailed for England on the 2nd, and I knew he would go to London according to instruction, so I was able to be there to meet him._ _I had not seen him since he left for Dartmouth, nearly fourteen months before. Then he was a round-faced, rosy boy...._ _Up the steps, dragging a seaman’s canvas kit-bag, came a tall, thin figure, white of face, drawn, haggard—incredibly old. I had not quite realised_ this. _For a second my heart stood still—— Where was my boy?_ _Then he saw me waiting in the hall, and his face lighted with half-incredulous joyous wonder: “Mother!_ You here!” * * * * * _My_ boy _was gone for ever—but my_ son _had come home._ Te Deum Laudamus. PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED, BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK. SOLDIERS’ TALES OF THE GREAT WAR _Each Volume Cr. 8vo, Cloth, 3s. 6d. net._ I. WITH MY REGIMENT. By “Platoon Commander.” “To read it is to share every experience (almost) in the life of a lieutenant on active service.”—_Punch._ II. DIXMUDE. A chapter in the history of the Naval Brigade, Oct.-Nov., 1914. By Charles le Goffic.