d that
my luck held; that I was dealing with a man as honest as Hales and
keen as either of us. With half a dozen cable messages, to and from
Farrell in London, we had everything fixed, and our company as good
as a going concern, when the Chilian Government interposed a long,
vexatious delay which, at one point, appeared to hint at an intention
to repudiate the bargain.

Back I travelled; this time with Renton in company, and Renton mad as
fire. It all turned out to be a bungle by some clerk that had taken
to drink and forgetfulness; but it cost us a month or two before the
Government of Senor Orrego, having no case, decided to do us justice
without troubling the Courts. Renton and I returned in triumph
through the grilling heats of July, and reached New York to find the
papers announcing this war for a certainty: whereupon, without
unpacking, I pelted for home.

From Southampton I made for London, and had two short interviews with
Farrell amid the rush of rejoining the H.A.C., collecting kit, and
the rest of it. Our talk was entirely about business, and was
conducted at the National Liberal Club--the hostelry to which I had
addressed all my letters and cables. I gathered that he used it
almost as a permanent residence, having sold or given up his house at
Wimbledon. He said nothing of Foe, and I forbore to ask questions.

From the H.A.C., in the general catch-as-catch-can of those early
weeks of the war, I found myself on one and the same day pushed into
a temporary Commission in the R.F.A., commanded down to Warwickshire
to recruit for it; and met at my lodge-gate with a telegram ordering
me off to Preston to collect a draft there and report its delivery at
Aldershot. Funny sort of home-coming for a man returning after two
years' absence! But there it was. I had just time by smart driving
to catch the next down train at our local station: so, without even a
glimpse of the ancestral roof, I put the dog-cart about and posted
back.

For the next week or so, as Jimmy put it of his own very similar
experience (he had joined up in the Special Reserve as a gunner three
years before the war), I didn't spend a night out of my train.
Then came a morning--I had rolled up with my latest draft, from
Berwick at 4.30 a.m.--when the Colonel sent for me to come to the
orderly-room some ten minutes before he opened business, and then and
there asked me if it was to my liking to come out to France with the
division then m