It
was not an act of red-hot heroism. It was done in cold blood, a
deliberate gamble with death on a thousand to one chance. It was
staggeringly brave.

I told the story to Mrs. Boyce. Her comment was characteristic:

"But surely they would have to surrender if called upon by a British
Officer."

To the Day of Judgment I don't think she will understand what Leonard
did. Leonard himself, coming home slightly wounded two or three weeks
afterwards, pooh-poohed the story as one of no account and only further
confused the dear lady's ill-conceived notions.

In the meanwhile life at Wellingsford flowed uneventfully. Now and
again a regiment or a brigade, having finished its training,
disappeared in a night, and the next day fresh troops arrived to fill
its place. And this great, silent movement of men went on all over the
country. Sometimes our hearts sank. A reserve Howitzer Territorial
Brigade turned up in Wellings Park with dummy wooden guns. The officers
told us that they had been expecting proper guns daily for the past two
months. Marigold shook a sad head. But all things, even six-inch
howitzers, come to him who waits.

Little more was heard of Randall Holmes. He corresponded with his
mother through a firm of London solicitors, and his address and his
doings remained a mystery. He was alive, he professed robust health,
and in reply to Mrs. Holmes's frantically expressed hope that he was
adopting no course that might discredit his father's name, he twitted
her with intellectual volte-face to the views of Philistia, but at the
same time assured her that he was doing nothing which the most
self-righteous bourgeois would consider discreditable.

"But it IS discreditable for him to go away like this and not let his
own mother know where he is," cried the poor woman.

And of course I agreed with her. I find it best always to agree with
mothers; also with wives.

After her own lapse from what Mrs. Boyce would have called
"Spartianism," Betty kept up her brave face. When Willie Connor's kit
came home she told me tearlessly about the heartrending consignment.
Now and then she spoke of him--with a proud look in her eyes. She was
one of the women of England who had the privilege of being the wife of
a hero. In this world one must pay for everything worth having. Her
widowhood was the price. All the tears of a lifetime could not bring
him back. All the storms of fate could not destroy the glory of those
few wonderful m