ght
months' absence in France, he found that his wife had sold or pawned
practically everything in the place, and that the lady herself was in
the violent phase of intoxication. His natural remonstrances not being
received with due meekness, a quarrel arose from which the lady emerged
victorious. She laid her poor husband out with a poker. They could not
keep him in hospital. He shied at an immediate renewal of conjugal
life. He had no relations or intimate friends in Wellingsford. Where
was the poor devil to go?

"I thought I might bring him along here and let the Marigolds look
after him for a week or two."

"Indeed," said I. "I admire your airy ways."

"I know you do," she replied, "and that's why I've brought him."

"Is that the fellow?"

She laughed. "You're right first time. How did you guess?" She
scrambled to her feet. "I'll fetch him in."

She fetched him in, a haggard, broad-shouldered man with a back like a
sloping plank of wood. He wore corporal's stripes. He saluted and stood
at rigid attention.

"This is Tufton," said Betty.

I despatched her in search of Marigold. To Tufton I said, regarding him
with what, without vanity, I may term an expert eye:

"You're an old soldier."

"Yes, sir."

"Guards?"

His eyes brightened. "Yes, sir. Seven years in the Grenadiers. Then two
years out. Rejoined on outbreak of war, sir."

I rubbed my hands together in satisfaction. "I'm an old soldier too,"
said I.

"So Sister told me, sir."

A delicate shade in the man's tone and manner caught at my heart.
Perhaps it was the remotest fraction of a glance at my rug-covered
legs, the pleased recognition of my recognition, ... perhaps some queer
freemasonry of the old Army.

"You seem to be in trouble, boy," said I. "Tell me all about it and
I'll do what I can to help you."

So he told his story. After his discharge from the Army he had looked
about for a job and found one at the mills in Wellingsford, where he
had met the woman, a mill-hand, older than himself, whom he had
married. She had been a bit extravagant and fond of her glass, but when
he left her to rejoin the regiment, he had had no anxieties. She did
not write often, not being very well educated and finding difficult the
composition of letters. A machine gun bullet had gone through his
chest, just missing his lung. He had been two months in hospital. He
had written to her announcing his arrival. She had not met him at the
station. He had tramped