the same gift and just the same ideals. That could not
be destroyed--these could suffer no eclipse. The personality that had
expressed itself in that last letter, written on the eve of
Courcelette, could not be snuffed out by a German bullet. It must carry
on, though the earthly link with things of earth were broken.

"We're going over the top tomorrow, Rilla-my-Rilla," wrote Walter. "I
wrote mother and Di yesterday, but somehow I feel as if I must write
you tonight. I hadn't intended to do any writing tonight--but I've got
to. Do you remember old Mrs. Tom Crawford over-harbour, who was always
saying that it was 'laid on her' to do such and such a thing? Well,
that is just how I feel. It's 'laid on me' to write you tonight--you,
sister and chum of mine. There are some things I want to say
before--well, before tomorrow.

"You and Ingleside seem strangely near me tonight. It's the first time
I've felt this since I came. Always home has seemed so far away--so
hopelessly far away from this hideous welter of filth and blood. But
tonight it is quite close to me--it seems to me I can almost see
you--hear you speak. And I can see the moonlight shining white and
still on the old hills of home. It has seemed to me ever since I came
here that it was impossible that there could be calm gentle nights and
unshattered moonlight anywhere in the world. But tonight somehow, all
the beautiful things I have always loved seem to have become possible
again--and this is good, and makes me feel a deep, certain, exquisite
happiness. It must be autumn at home now--the harbour is a-dream and
the old Glen hills blue with haze, and Rainbow Valley a haunt of
delight with wild asters blowing all over it--our old
"farewell-summers." I always liked that name better than 'aster'--it
was a poem in itself.

"Rilla, you know I've always had premonitions. You remember the Pied
Piper--but no, of course you wouldn't--you were too young. One evening
long ago when Nan and Di and Jem and the Merediths and I were together
in Rainbow Valley I had a queer vision or presentiment--whatever you
like to call it. Rilla, I saw the Piper coming down the Valley with a
shadowy host behind him. The others thought I was only pretending--but
I saw him for just one moment. And Rilla, last night I saw him again. I
was doing sentry-go and I saw him marching across No-man's-land from
our trenches to the German trenches--the same tall shadowy form, piping
weirdly--and behind him