o
make me both ashamed and happy. I had always banked on old Peter, and
here he was behaving like an early Christian martyr--never a word of
complaint, and just as cheery as if it were a winter morning on the
high veld and we were off to ride down springbok. I knew what the loss
of a leg must mean to him, for bodily fitness had always been his
pride. The rest of life must have unrolled itself before him very drab
and dusty to the grave. But he wrote as if he were on the top of his
form and kept commiserating me on the discomforts of my job. The
picture of that patient, gentle old fellow, hobbling about his compound
and puzzling over his _Pilgrim's Progress_, a cripple for life after
five months of blazing glory, would have stiffened the back of a
jellyfish.

This last letter was horribly touching, for summer had come and the
smell of the woods behind his prison reminded Peter of a place in the
Woodbush, and one could read in every sentence the ache of exile. I sat
on that stone wall and considered how trifling were the crumpled leaves
in my bed of life compared with the thorns Peter and Blaikie had to lie
on. I thought of Sandy far off in Mesopotamia, and old Blenkiron
groaning with dyspepsia somewhere in America, and I considered that
they were the kind of fellows who did their jobs without complaining.
The result was that when I got up to go on I had recovered a manlier
temper. I wasn't going to shame my friends or pick and choose my duty.
I would trust myself to Providence, for, as Blenkiron used to say,
Providence was all right if you gave him a chance.

It was not only Peter's letter that steadied and calmed me. Isham stood
high up in a fold of the hills away from the main valley, and the road
I was taking brought me over the ridge and back to the stream-side. I
climbed through great beechwoods, which seemed in the twilight like
some green place far below the sea, and then over a short stretch of
hill pasture to the rim of the vale. All about me were little fields
enclosed with walls of grey stone and full of dim sheep. Below were
dusky woods around what I took to be Fosse Manor, for the great Roman
Fosse Way, straight as an arrow, passed over the hills to the south and
skirted its grounds. I could see the stream slipping among its
water-meadows and could hear the plash of the weir. A tiny village
settled in a crook of the hill, and its church-tower sounded seven with
a curiously sweet chime. Otherwise there was