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 resentment at the funeral of
David's father. Her own husband had been carried to his grave on a
hand-bier, but at the funeral of David's father there was a horse-drawn
hearse and a carriage for the mourners. "They were always _such_ people for
show," said Mrs. Wigley. And the memory had rankled. But now it was buried.

Next day we saw the mother and the wife set out down the lane for the
village post-office, and thereafter daily they went to await the arrival of
letters, returning each day silent and hopeless. At last, in reply to
inquiries which had been made at the War Office, there came the official
statement that David had been reported "wounded and missing." We learned
that this usually meant that the man was dead, but the women did not know
this.

And, curiously enough, David's mother, who had been the most despairing of
women, and seemed to regard David as dead even before he started, now
discovered a genius for hopefulness. She had heard of a case from a
neighbouring village of a man who had been reported dead, and who