"'I am sorry that Tommy is killed for he had a cheery face and I liked him. But it can't be helped. He will be quite comfortable with God and I hope that someone is being kind to old Pepper for he liked him too.--Your aff. friend David Stuart Seton. "'P.S.--I'm not allowed to draw riligus pictures now or I would have shown you God being very glad to see Tommy.' "'Old Pepper' is a mongrel that Tommy rescued and was kind to, and it was so like Buff to think of the feelings of the dumb animal. "Tommy's mother held the letter in her hand very tenderly, and the only tears I saw her shed dropped on it. Then 'Let us go out and look for old Pepper,' she said, 'for "he liked him too."' "I came home very heavy-hearted, trying to comfort myself concerning those splendid boys. "To die for one's country is a great privilege--God knows I don't say that lightly, for any day I may hear that you or Alan have died that death--and to those boys the honour has been given in the very springtime of their days. "Most of us part from our lives reluctantly: they are taken from us, and we go with shivering, shrinking feet down to the brink of the River, but those sons of the morning throw their lives from them and _spring_ across. I think God will look very kindly at our little boys. "And smug, middle-aged people say, 'Poor lads!' They dare to pity the rich dead. Oh! the dull people dragging out their span of years without ever finding out what living means! "But it breaks one's heart, the thought of the buried hopes. I have been thinking of the father, the man in business who was keeping things going until his boy would be through and ready to help him. There are so many of them in Glasgow, and I used to like to listen to them talking to each other in the car coming out from business. They boasted so innocently of their boys, of this one's skill at cricket, that one's prowess in the football field. "And now this cheery business man has no boy, only a room with a little bed in the corner, a bookshelf full of adventure--stories and battered school-books, a cricket bat and a bag of golf clubs; a wardrobe full of clothes, and a most vivid selection of ties and socks, for the boy who lies in France was very smart in his nice boyish way, and brushed his hair until it shone. Oh! I wonder had anybody time to stroke just once that shining head before it was laid away in the earth? remembering that over the water hearts would break with yearning to see it again. "It isn't so bad when doleful people get sorrow, they at least have the miserable satisfaction of saying they had always known it would come, but when happy hearts are broken, when blythe people fall silent--the sadness of it haunts one.