ch reference is made in later letters. Some of the
happiest days of our lives were spent in these lovely surroundings, and
the memory of those blue summer days, amid the fragrance of miles of
pine-forest, often recurs to Coningsby as he writes from the mud-wastes
of the Somme.

We left Petewawa to go to the ranch before Coningsby sailed for England,
that we might get our other two sons ready for their journey to England.
They left us on August 21st, and the ranch was sub-let to Chinamen in
the end of September, when we returned to Newark, New Jersey.

CARRY ON

I

OTTAWA, July 16th, 1916.

DEAREST ALL:

So much has happened since last I saw you that it's difficult to know
where to start. On Thursday, after lunch, I got the news that we were to
entrain from Petewawa next Friday morning. I at once put in for leave to
go to Ottawa the next day until the following Thursday at reveille. We
came here with a lot of the other officers who are going over and have
been having a very full time.

I am sailing from a port unknown on board the _Olympic_ with 6,000
troops--there is to be a big convoy. I feel more than ever I did--and
I'm sure it's a feeling that you share since visiting the camp--that I
am setting out on a Crusade from which it would have been impossible to
withhold myself with honour. I go quite gladly and contentedly, and pray
that in God's good time we may all sit again in the little shack at
Kootenay and listen to the rustling of the orchard outside. It will be
of those summer days that I shall be thinking all the time.

Yours, with very much love,

CON.

II

HALIFAX, July 23rd.

MY DEAR ONES:

We've spent all morning on the dock, seeing to our baggage, and have
just got leave ashore for two hours. We have had letters handed to us
saying that on no account are we to mention anything concerning our
passage overseas, neither are we allowed to cable our arrival from the
other side until four clear days have elapsed.

You are thinking of me this quiet Sunday morning at the ranch, and I of
you. And I am wishing--As I wish, I stop and ask myself, "Would I be
there if I could have my choice?" And I remember those lines of
Emerson's which you quoted:

"Though love repine and reason chafe,
There comes a voice without reply,
'Twere man's perdition to be safe,
When for the Truth he ought to die."

I