r daughter were on their way to embrace him for the last time.

The Belgian soldier was just getting about after an attack of typhoid
fever, and the motherly person on my left was travelling towards her
husband, a territorial of ripe years whose long nights of vigil beneath
bridges and in the mud of the Somme had brought him down with
inflammatory rheumatism. Their son, they prayed, was prisoner--having
been reported missing since the 30th of August, 1914. This coarse,
heavy featured woman of the working classes, cherished her offspring
much as a lioness does her young. She told us she had written to the
President of the Republic, to her Congressman, her Senator, to the King
of Spain, the Norwegian Ambassador, to the Colonel of the Regiment, as
well as to all the friends of her son on whose address she had been
able to lay hand; and she would keep right on writing until she
obtained some result, some information. She could not, would not,
admit that her boy was lost; and scarcely stopping to take breath she
would ramble on at length, telling of her hopes and her disappointments
to which all the compartment listened religiously while slowly the
train rolled along through the smiling, undulating Norman country.

Each one did what he could to buoy up the mother's hopes.

The little Southerner seemed to possess a countless number of stories
about prisoners, and he presently proceeded to go into minute detail
about the parcels he sent to his own son, explaining the regulation as
to contents, measures and weights, with so much volubility that the
good soul already saw herself preparing a package to be forwarded to
her long lost darling.

"You can just believe that he'll never want for anything--if clothes
and food will do him any good. There's nothing on earth he can't have
if only we can find him, if only he comes back to us."

And growing bolder as she felt the wealth of sympathy surrounding her,
she looked over and addressed the woman in mourning, who at that moment
smiled gently at her.

"We thought we knew how much we loved them, didn't we, Madame? But
we'd never have realised how really deep it was if it hadn't been for
this war, would we?"

The woman continued to smile sadly.

"More than likely you've got somebody in it too," persisted the stout
Auvergnate, whose voice suddenly became very gentle and trembled a
trifle.

"I _had_ three sons. We have just buried the last one this morning."

All the fac