there was small change of progress. John would
come downstairs about the middle of the day, moving slowly and
painfully. And he was listless; there was no life in him; no
resiliency or spring.

"How did you rest, son?" I would ask him. He always smiled when he
answered.

"Oh, fairly well," he'd tell me. "I fought three or four battles
though, before I dropped off to sleep."

He had come to the right place to be cured, though, and his mother
was the nurse he needed. It was quiet in the hills of the Clyde, and
there was rest and healing in the heather about Dunoon. Soon his
sleep became better and less troubled by dreams. He could eat more,
too, and they saw to it, at home, that he ate all they could stuff
into him.

So it was a surprisingly short time, considering how bad he had
looked when he first came back to Dunoon, before he was in good
health and spirits again. There was a bonnie, wee lassie who was to
become Mrs. John Lauder ere so long--she helped our boy, too, to get
back his strength.

Soon he was ordered from home. For a time he had only light duties
with the Home Reserve. Then he went to school. I laughed when he told
me he had been ordered to school, but he didna crack a smile.

"You needn't be laughing," he said. "It's a bombing school I'm going
to now-a-days. If you're away from the front for a few weeks, you
find everything changed when you get back. Bombing is going to be
important."

John did so well in the bombing school that he was made an instructor
and assigned, for a while, to teach others. But he was impatient to
be back with his own men, and they were clamoring for him. And so, on
September 16, 1916, his mother and I bade him good-by again, and he
went back to France and the men his heart was wrapped up in.

"Yon's where the men are, Dad!" he said to me, just before he started.

CHAPTER VII

John's mother, his sweetheart and I all saw him off at Glasgow. The
fear was in all our hearts, and I think it must have been in all our
eyes, as well--the fear that every father and mother and sweetheart
in Britain shared with us in these days whenever they saw a boy off
for France and the trenches. Was it for the last time? Were we seeing
him now so strong and hale and hearty, only to have to go the rest of
our lives with no more than a memory of him to keep?

Aweel, we could not be telling that! We could only hope and pray! And
we had learned again to pray, long since. I have wondered,