If he could have gone to France and got through to the firing-line, I am sure he would have dug a little trench all to himself and defied the Germans on his own account.
In November Colonel Dacre was brought home gravely wounded, to a hospital for officers in London.

A nurse gave me the news in a letter in which she said that he had asked to see me before an impending hazardous operation.

I went up to town and found him wrecked almost beyond recognition.

As we were the merest of acquaintances with nothing between us save our common link with Boyce, I feared lest he should desire to tell me of some shameful discovery.

But his gay greeting and the brave smile, pathetically grotesque through the bandages in which his head was wrapped, reassured me.