The events I have been writing about took place towards the end of May, 1916, and, as I have before stated, we were at this time making huge preparations for the Great Advance. As fortune would have it, moreover, I was, two days after my parting with Edgecumbe, given a job five miles further south, and then life became such a rush, that to make anything like satisfactory inquiries about a missing soldier was absolutely impossible. I imagine that few newspaper readers at home, when they read the first accounts of the battle of the Somme, and noted that we took a few villages and a few thousand prisoners on the first days of the battle, little realized the tremendous preparations which had to be made. So hardly were we kept at it, that oftimes we had scarce time for food or rest. During the month of June, I received a letter from Lorna Bolivick, in reply to the one I had sent her informing her of my meeting with Paul Edgecumbe. It was so characteristic of her that I will insert it here. 'Now please confess at once,' she wrote, 'that it was because I witnessed your promise to tell me all about him, that you sent that letter, otherwise you wouldn't have thought of writing to a poor silly girl. And wasn't it interesting! I told you he was a wonderful man, and you see how he has paid you already for the little kindness you showed him. Why, in all probability he saved your life! And now I want you to do something else for me; I want you to send me his photograph. I have conjured up a picture of what I think he is like, and I am anxious to see if I am right. Aren't I taking a lot of liberties with you! But you see I like you,--I do really. I fell in love with you when you came to Granitelands with Sir Roger Granville that day. Oh, no, there's nothing romantic about it, I can assure you! But you looked so kind, and trustworthy, and strong, that I took to you from the very first moment. Father tells me I am wrong to take violent likes and dislikes to people at a first meeting; but I can't help it, I am made that way. Of course you are not a bit attractive in the ordinary way. You don't say sharp, clever things, and you don't flatter. Besides, you're old. Now don't be angry. Every girl looks upon a man who is getting on for forty as old. But I am fond of you all the same. There's a sense of security about you; I am sure I could trust you, just the same as I trust my father. 'Send me that photograph of your friend as soon as you can, I am anxious to get it. I am awfully busy here in this hospital, and there are such a lot of wounded men, many of them with a limb shot off. Do you know, I am tremendously interested in a poor Tommy who has lost both his legs. Horrible, isn't it! But he's the most cheerful man in the place, and keeps us laughing all day long. 'He wrote a letter to his mother yesterday, and told her to get him a pair of patent-leather dancing shoes.