wife, his mother, and Aunt Jane as they sat later in the day
mingling their tears in the "parlour"--that apartment sacred to Sundays,
funerals, and weddings. "Poor boy, what'll he do without his comfortable
bed?" moaned his mother.

But by May there came news that David was in France. By June he was in the
trenches, and woe sat heavy on the three women to whom the world without
David was an empty place.

Then came silence. The postman comes up the lane on his bicycle to our
straggling hamlet on the hillside twice a day, and after David had gone his
visits to the cottages of the three women had been frequent. Sometimes he
put his bicycle at the mother's gate, sometimes at David's gate, less often
at Aunt Jane's gate. For David was an industrious correspondent, even
though his letters were a laborious compromise between crosses and "hoping
you are well as it leaves me at present."

But in August the postman ceased to call. Long before his hour you could
see the three women watching for his coming. I think the postman got to
dread turning the corner and facing the expectant women with empty hands.
He could not help feeling that somehow he was to blame. At first he would
stop and point out elaborately the reasons for delay in the post. Then,
when this had become thin with time, he adopted the expedient of riding
past the cottages very hard with eyes staring far ahead, as though he was
going to a fire or was the bearer of an important dispatch.

But at the end of a fortnight or so he came round the corner one morning
more in the old style. The women observed the change and went out to meet
him. But their faces fell as they looked at the letter and saw that the
handwriting was not David's. And the contents were as bad as they could be.
The letter was from a lad in the valley who had "joined up" with David. He
wrote from a hospital asking for news of his comrade, whom he had seen
"knocked over" in the advance in which he himself had been wounded.

For the rest of the day, it was observed, the cottage doors were never
opened. Nor did any one venture to break in on the misery of the women
inside. The parson's wife came up in her gig from the valley, having heard
the news, but she did not call. She only talked to the neighbours, who had
had the details from the postman. Every one felt the news like a personal
blow, and even the widow Wigley, who lives down in the valley, was full of
sympathy. She had never quite got over her r