Certainly Ned Fotheringham himself--deceased some three years before this date--had paid heavily for his mistake; especially through the endless disputes which had arisen between his children and his second wife--partly on questions of religion, partly on this matter of the Army.

Mrs.Fotheringham was an agnostic; her stepsons, the children of a devout mother, were churchmen.

Influenced, moreover, by a small coterie, in which, to the dismay of her elderly husband, she had passed most of her early married years, she detested the Army as a brutal influence on the national life.

Her youngest step-son, however, had insisted on becoming a soldier.

She broke with him, and with his brothers who supported him.