Sitting on the grass, she told me the difficulty. A wounded soldier, discharged from some distant hospital, and home now on sick furlough before rejoining his depot, had been brought into the hospital with a broken head. The modern improvements on vinegar and brown paper having been applied, the man was now ready to leave. I interrupted with the obvious question. Why couldn't he go to his own home? It appeared that the prospect terrified him. On his arrival, at midday, after eight months' absence in France, he found that his wife had sold or pawned practically everything in the place, and that the lady herself was in the violent phase of intoxication. His natural remonstrances not being received with due meekness, a quarrel arose from which the lady emerged victorious. She laid her poor husband out with a poker. They could not keep him in hospital. He shied at an immediate renewal of conjugal life. He had no relations or intimate friends in Wellingsford. Where was the poor devil to go? "I thought I might bring him along here and let the Marigolds look after him for a week or two." "Indeed," said I. "I admire your airy ways." "I know you do," she replied, "and that's why I've brought him." "Is that the fellow?" She laughed. "You're right first time. How did you guess?" She scrambled to her feet. "I'll fetch him in." She fetched him in, a haggard, broad-shouldered man with a back like a sloping plank of wood. He wore corporal's stripes. He saluted and stood at rigid attention. "This is Tufton," said Betty. I despatched her in search of Marigold. To Tufton I said, regarding him with what, without vanity, I may term an expert eye: "You're an old soldier." "Yes, sir." "Guards?" His eyes brightened. "Yes, sir. Seven years in the Grenadiers. Then two years out. Rejoined on outbreak of war, sir." I rubbed my hands together in satisfaction. "I'm an old soldier too," said I. "So Sister told me, sir." A delicate shade in the man's tone and manner caught at my heart. Perhaps it was the remotest fraction of a glance at my rug-covered legs, the pleased recognition of my recognition, ... perhaps some queer freemasonry of the old Army. "You seem to be in trouble, boy," said I. "Tell me all about it and I'll do what I can to help you."