roof.
"You know I'm not an absolute idiot. Fancy the poor dear coming home
all over bandages and sticking-plaster. 'Where's your V. C?' 'I haven't
got it.' 'Then go back at once and get it or I shan't love you.' Poor
darling!" Suddenly the laughter in her eyes quickened into something
very bright and beautiful. "There's not a woman in England prouder of
her husband than I am. No V.C. could possibly reward him for what he
has done. But I want it for myself. I'd like my babies to cut their
teeth on it."

When I went out to the Boer War, the most wonderful woman on earth said
to me on parting:

"Wherever you are, dear, remember that I am always with you in spirit
and soul and heart and almost in body."

And God knows she was. And when I returned a helpless cripple she
gathered me in her brave arms on the open quay at Southampton, and
after a moment or two of foolishness, she said:

"Do you know, when I die, what you'll find engraven on my heart?"

"No," said I.

"Your D.S.O. ribbon."

So when Betty talked about her babies and the little bronze cross, my
eyes grew moist and I felt ridiculously sentimental.

Not a word, of course, was spoken before Betty of the new light, or the
new darkness, whichsoever you will, that had been cast on the tragedy
of Althea. I could not do otherwise than agree with the direct-spoken
old lady who had at once correlated the adventure in Carlisle with the
plunge into the Wellingsford Canal. And so did Sir Anthony. They were
very brave, however, the little man and Edith, in their dinner-talk
with Betty. But I saw that the past fortnight had aged them both by a
year or more. They had been stabbed in their honour, their trust, and
their faith. It was a secret terror that stalked at their side by day
and lay stark at their side by night. It was only when the ladies had
left us that Sir Anthony referred to the subject.

"I suppose you know that young Randall Holmes has bolted."

"So his mother informed me to-day."

He pricked his ears. "Does she know where he has gone to?"

"No," said I.

"What did I tell you?" said Sir Anthony.

I held up my glass of port to the light and looked through it.

"A lot of damfoolishness, my dear old friend," said I.

He grew angry. A man doesn't like to be coldly called a damfool at his
own table. He rose on his spurs, in his little red bantam way. Was I
too much of an idiot to see the connection? As soon as the Carlisle
business became known, th