This, of course, was soon forgotten in the interest of the war itself. Our parish, so near to Aldershot, sent out perhaps a disproportionate number of its young men to the front, men whom Bettesworth knew, whose fathers and mothers were his good friends, and at whose deaths, now and then announced, he would grimly shut his lips. Morning after morning he asked, "Any news of the war, sir?" and listened gravely to what could be told. But he did not so much think as feel about it all. He knew nothing, cared nothing, about the policy which had led up to hostilities; he was too ill-informed to be infected by the raw imperialism of the day; his attitude was simply "national." "Our country"--that was his expression--was in difficulties, and he longed to see the difficulties overcome. Such was his simple instinctive position, and it excused in him some feelings which would have been less pardonable in a more enlightened man. At the close he would have liked to shoot without pity President Kruger and the Boer Generals, as the enemies of "our country." But how ignorant of the facts he was at the beginning of the war! Of our many talks on the subject I seem to have preserved only one, but that is so strange that now I can hardly believe in its accuracy. _December 16, 1899._--Dated the 16th of December, 1899, it states that Bettesworth had heard the week's disastrous news from the seat of war, and was letting off his dismay in exclamatory fashion. "Six hundred missin'! Look at that. What do that _missin'_ mean?" His tone implied that he knew only too well. I said, "Most likely it means that they are prisoners." And then he said, "Ah, prisoners--or else burnt." It was my turn to exclaim. "Burnt? No, no! They are prisoners." "But they burns 'em, some says." Heaven only knows where he could have picked up such an idea. As the war proceeded, he kept himself fairly up to date with its main events by listening to other men's talk. He used, as we know, to go to the public-house on Sunday evenings "to get enlightenment to the mind;" and there is mention in the next fragment of another source of information which he valued. To reach that, however, we have to enter another year--the year 1900. V _February 13, 1900._--The winter was passing by, with the war, indeed, to make it memorable to us, but uneventfully at home. January, like December, had been mild--too mild, some people said, of whom, however, Bettesworth was not one. February set in with more severity of weather. On the third we had snow, and in the succeeding days frost followed, and the roads grew slippery. These things no doubt provided Bettesworth with topics for many little chats I must have enjoyed with him, although I saved no reminder of any of them. But about the middle of the month a circumstance came to my knowledge which made his good-tempered gossip seem rather remarkable. I could not but admire that a man so situated should be able to talk with such urbanity.