Soon after this I went to Belgium to illustrate a book on Reconstruction, and found such subjects that I was not back in Town till the late summer of 1919. Going into my Club one day I came on Harburn in the smoking-room. The curse had not done him much harm, it seemed, for he looked the picture of health. "Well, how are you?" I said. "You look at the top of your form." "Never better," he replied. "Do you remember our last evening together?" He uttered a sort of gusty grunt, and did not answer. "That boy recovered," I said. "What's happened to him and his mother, since?" "The ironical young brute! I've just had this from him." And he handed me a letter with the Hanover post mark. "Dear Mr. Harburn, It was only on meeting my mother here yesterday that I learned of her visit to you one evening last December. I wish to apologise for it, since it was my illness which caused her to so forget herself. I owe you a deep debt of gratitude for having been at least part means of giving me the most wonderful experience of my life. In that camp of sorrow--where there was sickness of mind and body such as I am sure you have never seen or realised, such endless hopeless mental anguish of poor huddled creatures turning and turning on themselves year after year--I learned to forget myself, and to do my little best for them. And I learned, and I hope I shall never forget it, that feeling for one's fellow creatures is all that stands between man and death; I was going fast the other way before I was sent there. I thank you from my heart, and beg to remain, Very faithfully yours HAROLD HOLSTEIG." I put it down, and said: "That's not ironical. He means it." "Bosh!" said Harburn, with the old spark and smoulder in his eyes. "He's pulling my leg--the swinelet Hun!" "He is not, Harburn; I assure you." Harburn got up. "He _is_; I tell you he _is_. Ah! Those brutes! Well! I haven't done with them yet." And I heard the snap of his jaw, and saw his eyes fixed fiercely on some imaginary object. I changed the subject hurriedly, and soon took my departure. But going down the steps, an old jingle came into my head, and has hardly left it since: "The man recovered from the bite, The dog it was that died." 1919. X IN HEAVEN AND EARTH We were yarning after dinner, and, whether because three of us were fishermen, or simply that we were all English, our yarns were taking a competitive turn. The queerest thing seen during the War was the subject of our tongues, and it was not till after several tit-bits had been digested that Mallinson, the painter, ill and ironical, blue-eyed, and with a fair pointed beard, took his pipe out of his mouth, and said: