He had made his farewells—in the offhand, jocular fashion affected by our race in cases where the probability of return is more than doubtful. His father had shaken hands with him, and shaken his own head at the same time. Tom Birnie’s heart was not in the war: he persisted in his belief that it was started by the Jingoes. His friends—and Roy had friends in every walk of life—had loaded him with messages to fathers, brothers and sweethearts who were gone before into the pillar of cloud. Mr. Gillespie, the bank manager, entrusted him with a small package (on behalf of Mesdames Spot and Plain), containing mysterious comforts for son Robert. Jamie Leslie, the organ-blower of the parish church, buttonholed him in the street. "Mr. Roy," he said wistfully, "you’ll tell the boys oot there that I have tried, and _tried_, for to get ower; but they winna hae me! It’s because I’m no quite richt in the heid," he added, with a candour which might well have been imitated by others occupying more exalted official positions than his own. "You’ll tell them? I wouldna like them for tae think—" Roy supplied the necessary assurance, and passed on to receive a message from old Mrs. Rorison, whose son John, a giant of six feet four inches, had abandoned the service of the post office in order to join the Scots Guards. "Tell oor John," said the old lady—it was universally assumed that Roy would encounter the entire Craigfoot contingent, regardless of rank or unit, immediately upon landing—"tae keep his heid doon in they trenches. I ken him! And dinna go keeking ower the top yourself, Mr. Roy!" This, on the whole, was the most practical valediction that Roy received. Lord Eskerley’s farewell was quite characteristic. "Good-bye! Don’t give away any military news when you write to her. It has done a lot of harm already." There was no one left now to say good-bye to but Marjorie. Like the young sentimentalist that he was, Roy was reserving her for the last. He wanted to bid her farewell at the very final moment—and, if possible, clandestinely. There existed no obstacle whatever to his driving openly to Netherby and delivering his farewell speech on the hearthrug in the library, or among the raspberry-canes in the kitchen garden. But war sharpens our romantic appetites to a surprising degree. At the most ordinary times lovers are accustomed to bid one another good night with an expenditure of time and intensity which takes no account of the fact that they are going to meet again directly after breakfast to-morrow morning. How much more pardonable and ecstatic, then, must that exercise be when it really is good night—when it is more than probable that before the time for reunion comes round again, one of the participants may have blown out his little candle for good.