It is with the deepest regret that I have to inform you that Captain Perry-Hennington was killed on the 5th inst. His loss falls very heavily indeed upon his brother officers and the men of his Regiment. I will not attempt to say how much he meant to all ranks, for no man could have been more looked up to, or more generally beloved. All knew him for what he was, a good soldier, a true Christian, a great gentleman. He was in the act of writing you a letter (which I inclose) when word was brought to him that a man of another battalion, mortally hit, had asked for Captain Perry-Hennington. He went out at once, across the danger zone to a communication trench, where the poor fellow lay, but half way he was caught by a shell and killed instantly. If it was his turn, it was the end he would have asked for, and the end those who loved him would have asked for him. Assuring you of the Regiment’s deepest sympathy in your great loss, I am, very sincerely yours, G. H. ARBUTHNOT, Lieutenant Colonel. Inclosed in the letter was a scrap of paper on which was written: DEAREST DAD: “I fear the will is going. For nearly three years it has been my continual prayer to Our Father in Heaven that the mind be not taken before the soul is released, but if----” As soon as the vicar had read these strange words he rose unsteadily from the table, went into the study and locked the door. Then kneeling under a favorite portrait of the boy’s mother, he offered a humble prayer of thanks. A little afterward, unable to bear the restraint of four walls, he went out, hatless, into the sunlight of a very perfect day. Very slowly, yet hardly knowing what he did, he passed through the vicarage gate, and turned into the steep and narrow path leading to the village green. Half way up some familiar lines of Milton began to ring oddly in his ears: Methought I saw my late espousèd saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave. And they were accompanied by an odd phrase he had once heard on the lips of Gervase Brandon. In the height of a forgotten controversy, Brandon had said that “for him the image of the spectrum had altered.” As the phrase now came to the vicar he caught a glimpse of its meaning. Somehow he perceived a change of mental vision. At that moment he seemed to walk closer with God than he had ever walked; at that moment he was in more intimate communion with an adored wife, a beloved son. Even the sweet upland air and the flow of the sun through the leaves had a new quality. The feeling of personal loss was yielding to praise and thanksgiving; never had the vicar been so sure of that loving mercy upon which his boy had implicitly relied.