as getting such a deadly range on the enemy. Chet's
costume was so devised that even through field glasses (made in Germany)
you couldn't tell where tree left off and Chet began.

Then, quite suddenly, the Germans got the range. The tree in which Chet
was hidden came down with a crash, and Chet lay there, more than ever
indiscernible among its tender foliage.

Which brings us back to the English garden, the yellow chicken, Miss
Kate, and the letter.

His shattered leg was mended by one of those miracles of modern war
surgery, though he never again would dig his spurred heels into the pine
of a G.L. & P. Company pole. But the other thing--they put it down
under the broad general head of shell shock. In the lovely English
garden they set him to weaving and painting, as a means of soothing the
shattered nerves. He had made everything from pottery jars to bead
chains; from baskets to rugs. Slowly the tortured nerves healed. But the
doctors, when they stopped at Chet's cot or chair, talked always of "the
memory centre." Chet seemed satisfied to go on placidly painting toys or
weaving chains with his great, square-tipped fingers--the fingers that
had wielded the pliers so cleverly in his pole-climbing days.

"It's just something that only luck or an accident can mend," said the
nerve specialist. "Time may do it--but I doubt it. Sometimes just a
word--the right word--will set the thing in motion again. Does he get
any letters?"

"His girl writes to him. Fine letters. But she doesn't know yet
about--about this. I've written his letters for him. She knows now that
his leg is healed and she wonders--"

That had been a month ago. To-day Miss Kate slit the envelope postmarked
Chicago. Chet was fingering the yellow wooden chicken, pride in his
eyes. In Miss Kate's eyes there was a troubled, baffled look as she
began to read:

Chet, dear, it's raining in Chicago. And you know when it
rains in Chicago, it's wetter, and muddier, and rainier than
any place in the world. Except maybe this Flanders we're
reading so much about. They say for rain and mud that place
takes the prize.

I don't know what I'm going on about rain and mud for, Chet
darling, when it's you I'm thinking of. Nothing else and
nobody else. Chet, I got a funny feeling there's something
you're keeping back from me. You're hurt worse than just the
leg. Boy, dear, don't you know it won't make any difference
w