“I wonder if you two people have any idea of what I’m feeling. To-day I learnt the wonderful news that I’ve got a son—a splendid fellow, a man and a scholar. An hour afterwards you tell me that he’s a one-legged cripple. Neither of you seem to care a hang. I haven’t heard a word of sympathy, of pity——” The white-headed, gold-spectacled senior tutor rushed towards him, in some agitation, with outspread hands. “My dear J. B., we must observe a sense of proportion. You really ought to go on your knees and thank God that your son is preserved to you. He’s out of that hell for ever.” “My boy—my only son—was killed last December,” said Dr. Crosby. Baltazar stared for a moment at the short, bearded man and sought for words, even the most conventional words; but they would not come. Then, memory flashing on him, he stretched out his open hand about three feet from the ground, and said, in a voice which sounded queer in his own ears: “That little chap?” “Yes. That little chap,” said Dr. Crosby. CHAPTER XII A DAY or two afterwards Godfrey Baltazar, still tied by his maimed leg to Churton Towers, received a letter which caused him to frown and rub his head. It was type-written save for the signature, and was addressed, care of a firm of solicitors in Bedford Row. As soon as Marcelle came to do his morning dressing he handed it to her. “What do you make of this?” Before replying, she read it through without remark. It ran: Dear Sir, _I have just been visiting Cambridge after many years’ absence abroad, and have learned that the son of my old college friend, John Baltazar, is lying wounded at Churton Towers Convalescent Home. I am writing to you, therefore, to enquire whether one who was very intimately connected with your father in the old days might venture to run down to Godalming and see you, with the double purpose of making the acquaintance of John Baltazar’s son, of whose brilliant academic beginnings the University authorities have informed me, and of paying a stranger Englishman’s tribute to a gallant fellow who has shed his blood for his country. My time being, at your disposal, I shall be happy to keep any appointment you may care to make._ _Yours very faithfully_, James Burden “Seems rather nice of him,” said Marcelle. “I suppose it is. But who is the old fossil?” Marcelle smiled. “Probably what he claims to be. An old college friend of your father.” “He must have been a don of sorts. Not merely an undergraduate friend. Otherwise how could he have got straight to the people who knew all about me? You ever heard of James Burden?” “No,” replied Marcelle, shaking her head. “How could I know all the fellows of your father’s college? Newnham students in my day were kept far from the madding crowd of dons.”