old man creeping up-stairs to catch them; but they never went back into the night nursery until they had stopped being afraid, because they knew they must n't be cowards. They knew that as soon as they knew anything.

Tom's room was at the end of the passage nearest the stables, because Tom loved to hear the grooms hiss over the horses early in the morning. Anthony felt that he must go to Tom's room and find him. It was n't any use waiting any longer; only Tom could drive away the weight of this delusive ghost.

Everything was in order, and except that the order was a little too perfect, it looked as it used to look when Tom was in it. There were his boating-cups and sport trophies on the mantelpiece; a cricket-bat stood in the corner, and Tom's school cap with colors hung over his fishing-rod.

There was a row of pipes over the writing-table by the window, and a series of sporting prints decorated the walls.

Nothing had been changed; the familiar smell of good leather, a great deal used, lingered over all the furniture. Anthony went to the writing-table and picked up a small, shabby red book. It was called "My Friends' Opinions," and had been given to Tom by Daphne on his sixteenth birthday.

It contained a series of printed questions on one page, with blank spaces for answers upon the opposite side, and would probably, as far as Tom was concerned, have remained blank if he had not been overtaken by influenza and a rainy day.

This unfortunate combination had produced Tom's opinions, written in a round school-boy hand, and as he had not changed them since his sixteenth birthday, they remained the sole expression of his unexpressive personality.

Anthony read it slowly, as if he were listening to Tom's voice.

"What is your favorite flower?" the inquisition began.

Tom had written, "A rose," because he felt that he was safe with roses. You could not catch him out there; most people preferred roses.

"What is your favourite Christian name?"

Tom had felt this to be a snare, and had confused the issue. He had put "Bluebell" and "Eleanore." Bluebell was Tom's sole excursion into prose fancy. He had never met a "Bluebell," and the name corresponded to Anthony's Burne-Jones ladies. Eleanore was supported by fact; she was Tom's favourite mare.

"What character do you admire most in fiction?"

"Hereward the Wake."

Hereward was n't really a character at all, but all that fighting had made him sound like one to Tom, and his battle-cry was worth many austerer virtues.

"In history?"

"Richard Cœur de Lion." Richard, too, has escaped the strictest moral elevation, but his title and the Holy Land preserved him.

"In real life?"

"My father." There was nothing to be said to this statement except that in the day of calamity the squire had come across it and had been enabled to hold up his head.

"Your favourite book?"

"Black Beauty' and 'Tom Brown's School Days.' Besides, these are the only ones I have read through by myself except when I had to."

Hunting was, of course, Tom's chief pastime.

The questions did not go very deeply into religious matters. Tom had got out of them neatly by mentioning "the Church of England" and "the Bible."

The inquiry ended romantically with, "What is your favorite quotation?"

This surprised Anthony, for Tom had written "Those friends thou hast and their adoption tried, grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel." Of course this was what Tom would do, but Anthony had not known that he read Shakspere, and Tom had added another line, though he was obviously unaware that it did not belong to the quotation above it: "For truth is truth to the end of the reckoning."

Anthony put the book down. He felt as if Tom could n't haunt him any more. Tom had got to the end of the

reckoning first; that was all there was to it.

The night before Tom's regiment had left England, Anthony had asked Tom what he thought about death. He had not put it like that, of course, because Tom would not have known how to deal with an abstraction. He had said: "What do you feel about things, old chap? D' you mind awfully the idea of going out?" And Tom had answered after a pause, as if the question was not wholly new to him: "Oh, I don't know. It seems simple enough. Look at rabbits-you know what I mean. You 're awfully alive one moment, and then just a little bit of limp fur the next. I've often thought it funny, but never particularly terrible. What do you feel about it yourself?"

"You must n't judge by my feelings," Anthony had answered. "You see, it's my profession to fight death. Frankly, I hate it. I 've tried to get the better of it for years, but beyond a certain point you can't. Nobody ever has. It downs you. I dare say I sha'n't mind extinction for myself. The act of death is generally unconscious, and if it is n't, it is so disagreeable that no sane man would wish to prolong it. I never have believed there was the ghost of a life afterward."

This had shocked Tom considerably. He had said:

"Oh, well, you know, I believe in the church and all that up to a certain point, of course; and then there 's the Bible. I'm not a clever chap like you, but I honestly feel as if it must be all right somehow, if one does the best one can, you know, and all that. There must be something in it."

Anthony smiled at this remembrance; then he shivered as he went to his room. He was wondering again if death had come to Tom quickly, like the shot rabbit, one moment all alive, and next a little bit of limp flesh and blood, funny, but not terrible?

"For truth is truth to the end of the reckoning." That was the only enigmatical statement that Anthony had ever known Tom indorse; for it was enigmatic to any one else but Tom.

It was all very well for Tom to talk as if truth was the next door neighbor's pig, but how was Anthony to find it so ascertainable? And how could he bear not to find it, when it included, as it included now, the possibility of Tom's own immortality?

There was a tentative scratch at the door. Max had waited to find Anthony gone and tracked him methodically down the passage. Truth was not enigmatical to Max. He had only to follow his instincts, which led him unerringly in the direction of his master.

CHAPTER V

ANTHONY'S breakfast was sent up to his room on a tray. He felt an absurd inclination to cry at the sight of the delicate linen, the golden creaminess of the butter, the liquid sunshine of a honeycomb, and the thin eggshell china, white with a green sprig, which had been one of his mother's wedding presents.

He wished he could get used to the physical beauty of inanimate things. Beauty struck raw against his strained and awakened senses, like the piercing music of a violin.

After breakfast Anthony found his mother in the morning-room. She was always to be found there at the same time, interviewing servants, going over household accounts, or writing her family letters. Her even, blameless existence was full of little cares and arrangements for her family's comfort.

Nothing had ever broken into Mrs. Arden's habits. She was always willing to assist poor people if they had anything usual the matter with them; and if what they had the matter with them was unusual, she referred it to the squire.

The room looked south on to the terrace, fronting the downs. It was full of sunshine. On the table by the window stood a bowl of early daffodils. Mrs. Arden turned as Anthony came in. "I hoped you 'd come here, dear," she

said as he kissed her. "I rather wanted you all to myself this morning. The girls are in the garden, and your father had to go out. While we are alone together, I want to show you all the wonderful letters about dear Tom. You would hardly believe people could be so kind; every one wrote to us."

Anthony sat down on the windowseat, and Mrs. Arden took out the letters.

They were kept in a long, open box on her writing-table, and labeled in her exquisite, neat hand-writing: "From Tom's friends." "From his relations." "From the people on the estate." "From his regiment." "From the clergy." "From public people."

"I think I like his friends' letters best," Mrs. Arden explained quietly. "They sound more like him, and some of the villagers wrote about when he was a child. It is such a comfort to know how well he was understood and loved. What I like best is to think of him being remembered. I don't know how to put it quite, but when people live a very long time, they are connected with so many things and events, are n't they? Even if they 're quite dull people, they don't drop out so easily; but short lives. like Tom's might disappear and be lost, -I mean humanly speaking,-might n't they, if people were n't specially kind about remembering? Dear Mr. Mallard is so good to me! He preached a wonderful sermon on purpose to reassure me about the remembrances of God. I think that was what he called it. But of course one believes that God remembers only sometimes. People forget. Perhaps you'll understand what I mean better than Mr. Mallard did. One wants to think the earth remembered Tom as well. He did so much for it, did n't he, here at Pannell?"

Anthony nodded. He knew exactly what his mother meant. He, too, had the same feeling. He wanted the earth to remember Tom-the earth which he had tended with such care and had slipped out of at the last so unobtrusively.

Anthony read the letters out loud to his mother. She sat beside him, with her hand on his arm, and every now and then she cried a little, because it was

such a comfort having Anthony read the letters out loud to her.

Anthony read packet after packet, holding on to himself and keeping his voice even. When he had finished them all, Mrs. Arden said:

"Now, then, if you would n't mind telling me all about Germany before your father comes in, then I should really understand what you have been through."

Mrs. Arden could say "Germany" better than Mr. Arden could, but she could n't for the life of her say "prison."

"I tried to read all that the newspapers said about it, you know, Anthony," she explained, "and all the books that came out on the subject. I am sure they were wonderfully written, and no doubt their authors knew all about their subjects; only, you see, they never said any of the things I particularly wanted to know. I dare say it was my fault. I am so stupid at understanding descriptions in books; I always wish people would just tell you what happened."

Anthony cleared cleared his throat and looked at the daffodils.

"Perhaps," he said, "you had better ask me just what you do want to know." Anthony expected to get off rather cheaply with his mother. She was, as a rule, very easy to get off cheaply from. She never saw points very clearly, her own or any one else's. He had not counted on her asking questions, which, if he had n't been very careful, would have told her far too much. He did not know how the most ignorant fears, if they come direct from the heart, hit at truth.

Of course he was intensely careful. He got round all her questions, he evaded the sharp issues of her fears, and he told her the strictest minimum of painful things. The Ardens never frightened women except by reassuring them.

Mrs. Arden listened anxiously to Anthony's answers. She did not press her points. She saw after a few moments that Anthony was sparing her, and that it made it easier for him to spare her. Once she sighed a little, and at the end she said:

"People's hair is n't usually so gray at twenty-eight, Anthony."

Anthony got out of that very cleverly. He said it was the climate. Quite young Germans had gray hair or else they were bald. She could n't say his hair was n't thick.

"And they were really nice to you," Mrs. Arden murmured, "after the first?"

Anthony had admitted to her that at first they were n't very nice to him.

"They were all right," he said a little restlessly "what they had to be, you know, Mother. Guards are n't supposed to be friendly, and the commandant was quite a good fellow, really. He had to be a bit stiff, you know; that was what he was there for. I generally took him the complaints; he was always quite decent to me."

"And what complaints did you take him, dear?" Mrs. Arden softly questioned.

Anthony did not meet her eyes.

"Oh, ordinary prisoners' complaints, you know," he explained carelessly. "Sometimes we wanted more exercise, or the heating went wrong, or what we had in the way of food was n't quite up to the mark. You know the kind of thing."

Mrs. Arden was silent for a moment. She was not quite sure that she did know the kind of thing, but she saw that Anthony wanted her to know it. Then she said:

"Your father has asked Mr. Mallard to dine with us to-night. He wants so much to see you again and to hear your experiences, and so does your father, of course. I thought perhaps you would tell them after dinner, when the girls and I had gone, you know."

Anthony stiffened. He did not want to see the vicar or tell him his experiences; he saw that his mother thought he would talk more freely to the two

men.

He did not guess that she thought it would be good for him to talk more freely, and still less that if he had told her everything, she would not have known more surely than she did what he had suffered.

"I suppose I shall have to see Mallard sooner or later," he agreed after a pause; "only I don't want to see people just yet or to be asked questions. I

don't mean yours, Mother, of course. It is n't that one 's had such a hard time, you know. Most fellows have had a far worse one; only one wants to get used to things gradually."

"Yes, dear, I understand," said Mrs. Arden, gently. "Only, of course, you'll want to tell your father, and I thought Mr. Mallard might be a help. After all, he 's almost like one of ourselves."

"He is n't much like one of me,” said Anthony, with a rueful grin. "You forget he has n't got over my shocking opinions. He told me that I was the most poisoned skeptic he ever prepared for confirmation."

Mrs. Arden smiled.

"Well, dear," she said, "have n't you got over your shocking opinions yet? I think one does, as one gets older, cease to shock."

But Anthony had not got so old as that yet.

"I'm not the least more religious, if that 's what you mean, Mother," he confessed a little uncomfortably.

Mrs. Arden sighed gently, but she waived the question. She did not think that with a really good man like Anthony it mattered very much what he thought he believed. Mrs. Arden never interfered with men's opinions or children's toys; it was her experience that they both preferred what you would least have chosen for them. But that as long as they were kept amused, it did not greatly matter what object their choice fell upon.

"Max is longing to take you round the garden," she said. "You'll find the girls out there waiting for you; they want to show you their improvements. They've been really wonderful since the war, you know, helping your father on the estate; and Ursula is quite pretty, but not, of course, as pretty as Daphne. Go out and be nice to them; and don't, if you can help it, be too clever, Anthony."

Anthony could n't really help it. He always had been too clever for the rest of his family. His mother and Daphne overlooked it, but it stuck in the throats of the others; they found it as difficult to swallow as a fishbone.

Ursula and Gladys did what they could with him. They strolled round