ecame matters of intense interest and expectation.
Albert wrote regularly and of course well and entertainingly. He
described the life at the camp where he and the other recruits were
training, a camp vastly different from the enormous military towns built
later on for housing and training the drafted men. He liked the life
pretty well, he wrote, although it was hard and a fellow had precious
little opportunity to be lazy. Mistakes, too, were unprofitable for the
maker. Captain Lote's eye twinkled when he read that.

Later on he wrote that he had been made a corporal and his grandmother,
to whom a major general and a corporal were of equal rank, rejoiced much
both at home and in church after meeting was over and friends came to
hear the news. Mrs. Ellis declared herself not surprised. It was the
Robert Penfold in him coming out, so she said.

A month or two later one of Albert's letters contained an interesting
item of news. In the little spare time which military life afforded him
he continued to write verse and stories. Now a New York publisher, not
one of the most prominent but a reputable and enterprising one, had
written him suggesting the collecting of his poems and their publication
in book form. The poet himself was, naturally, elated.

"Isn't it splendid!" he wrote. "The best part of it, of course, is that
he asked to publish, I did not ask him. Please send me my scrapbook and
all loose manuscript. When the book will come out I'm sure I don't know.
In fact it may never come out, we have not gotten as far as terms and
contracts yet, but I feel we shall. Send the scrapbook and manuscript
right away, PLEASE."

They were sent. In his next letter Albert was still enthusiastic.

"I have been looking over my stuff," he wrote, "and some of it is pretty
good, if you don't mind my saying so. Tell Grandfather that when this
book of mine is out and selling I may be able to show him that poetry
making isn't a pauper's job, after all. Of course I don't know how much
it will sell--perhaps not more than five or ten thousand at first--but
even at ten thousand at, say, twenty-five cents royalty each, would be
twenty-five hundred dollars, and that's something. Why, Ben Hur, the
novel, you know, has sold a million, I believe."

Mrs. Snow and Rachel were duly impressed by this prophecy of affluence,
but Captain Zelotes still played the skeptic.

"A million at twenty-five cents a piece!" exclaimed Olive. "Why,
Zelotes, that's