But in the afternoon he was free to read carefully the Sunday papers, and was appalled with the swiftness of the approach of the universal cataclysm.
After Evensong and supper, then, he got out paper and pen and wrote, though it took much longer than he thought it would.

In the end he begged the Bishop to remember him if it was really necessary to find more chaplains, and expressed his readiness to serve the Church and the country when he was wanted.

When it was written, he sat long over the closed envelope and smoked a couple of pipes.

He wondered if men were killing each other, even now, just over the water.

He pictured a battle scene, drawing from imagination and what he remembered of field-days at Aldershot.