ting the issue of their passports. As chairman of his local
military tribunal, the colonel could not be absent from England for any
long time on end, but they were proposing tentatively and subject to
Jack's condition of health to take a villa and to stay with him by
turns. Agnes and her father expected to come back after a week or ten
days, leaving Mrs. Waring in charge until Christmas.

As they chatted artificially by the carriage door, there was radiance in
the faces of all three; the colonel seemed more upright, Mrs. Waring had
shed her set, stoical calm and, with it, about ten years.

"You won't forget to write, Agnes," said Eric, as the guard bustled
along the platform, breaking up the little groups like a sheep-dog.

"It may be only a line, but I'll tell you everything when we get back,"
she promised.

A week passed before her letter reached him.

"_We got here after the most impossible journey_," Agnes wrote from
Chateau d'Oex, "_and Jack came to us yesterday. You can't imagine what
it was like, seeing him again when we'd NEARLY given up hope! He's very
bad--but I suppose I'd better start at the beginning. When he was taken
prisoner, he'd been wounded in the head and slightly gassed. The gassing
doesn't matter, except that he will always have to take care of his
lungs; the head wound has left a scar and a bald place, but he can cover
that up. At present he gets the most awful head-aches if he tries to do
any work. The Germans let him go because he was simply wasting away on
the horrible food they gave him to eat, and he's like a skeleton now.
But we're going to feed him up and put that right, and then it'll just
be a question how much work and what kind of work he'll be able to do
when he's well._

"_He's alive, Eric, and that's the great thing. And he's well and strong
compared with some of the ghastly wrecks that you see here. I must wait
till we meet before I give you a full account of all he's been through,
but Major Britwell's story was quite true so far as it went. He DID
insult the guard and he WAS carried off to solitary confinement for nine
months. He won't talk much about that, though, but he had a most awful
time; I honestly wonder that he came through it alive and in his right
mind. I could cry when I look at the men here and think what they've
suffered. But they CAN'T go through it again, Eric; that's one of the
terms of their release, of course. They're out of the war for good; and
it may be