It was in the spacious grounds of an old French chateau not far from Beauvais on the river Andelle that Pen's battalion camped for their period of rest and recuperation. There were long, sunshiny days, nights of undisturbed and refreshing sleep, recreation and entertainment sufficient to divert tired brains, and a freedom from undue restraint that was most welcome. Moreover there were letters and parcels from home, with plenty of time to read them and to re-read them, to dwell upon them and to enjoy them. If the loved ones back in the quiet cities and villages and countryside could only realize how much letters and parcels from home mean to the tired bodies and strained nerves of the war-worn boys at the front, there would never be a lack of these comforts and enjoyments that go farther than anything else to brighten the lives and hearten the spirits of the soldier-heroes in the trenches and the camps. Pen had his full share of these pleasures. His mother, his Aunt Millicent, Colonel Butler, and even Grandpa Walker from Cobb's Corners, kept him supplied with news, admonition, encouragement and affection. And these little waves of love and commendation, rolling up to him at irregular intervals, were like sweet and fragrant draughts of life-giving air to one who for months had breathed only the smoke of battle and the foulness of the trenches. At the end of August, orders came for the battalion to return to the front. There were two days of bustling preparation, and then the troops entrained and were carried back to where the noise of the seventy-fives on the one side and the seventy-sevens on the other, came rumbling and thundering again to their ears, and the pall of smoke along the horizon marked the location of the firing line. But their destination this time was farther to the south, on the British right wing, where French and English soldiers touched elbows with each other, and Canadian and Australian fraternized in a common enterprise. Here again the old trench life was resumed; sentinel duty, daring adventures, wild charges, the shock and din of constant battle, brief periods of rest and recuperation. But the process of attrition was going on, the enemy was being pushed back, inch by inch it seemed, but always, eventually, back. As for Pen, he led a charmed life. Men fell to right of him and to left of him, and were torn into shreds at his back; but, save for superficial wounds, for temporary strangulation from gas, for momentary insensibility from shock, he was unharmed.