on't worry! I'm not going to fight. I did try to get into the
Foreign Legion but had no chance. I'm all right. Think of me as a nice
little Red Cross boy and the Wise Willie on the gas wagon. And won't I
have the hot stuff to make old Luke's eyes pop out! Hope Paw's legs are
better. And Maw have a kiss on me. Mebbe you folks think I don't
appreciate you. If I was any good at writing I'd tell you different.

"Your Son and Brother,
"NAT HAYNES."

The worst of it all was about Maw's not crying--just sitting there
staring at the fire, or where the fire had been when the wood had died
out of neglect. It's not in reason that a woman shouldn't cry, Luke
felt. He tried some words of comfort:

"He's safe, anyhow, Maw--'member that! That's a whole lot too. Didn't
always know that, times he was rollin' round so over here. You worried a
whole lot about him, you know."

But Maw didn't answer. She seldom spoke at all--moved about as little as
possible. When she had put out food for him and Tom she always went back
to her corner and stared into the fire. Luke had to bring a plate to her
and coax her to eat. Even the day Uncle Clem and Aunt Mollie came up
she did not notice them. Only once she spoke of Nat to Luke.

"You loved him the most, didn't ye, Maw?" he asked timidly one dreary
evening.

She answered in a sort of dull surprise.

"Why, lad, he was my first!" she said; and after a bit as though to
herself: "His head was that round and shiny when he was a little fellow
it was like to a little round apple. I mind, before he ever come, I
bought me a cap fur him over to Rockville, with a blue bow onto it. He
looked awful smart an' pretty in it."

Sometimes in the night Luke, sleeping ill and thinking long, lay and
listened for possible sounds from Maw's room. Perhaps she cried in the
nights. If she only would--it would help break the tension for them all.
But he never heard anything but the rain--steadily, miserably beating on
the sodden shingles overhead.

* * *

It was only Luke who watched the mail box now. One morning his journey
to it bore fruit. No sting any longer; no fear in the thick foreign
letter he carried.

"It'll tell ye all's to it, I bet!" he said eagerly.

Maw seemed scarcely interested. It was Luke who broke the seal and read
it aloud.

It was written from the Ambulance Headquarters, in Paris--written by a
man of rare insight, of fine and delicate perception. All that Nat's
family might have wished