to the little desk, and wrote a note on the fine note-paper he found there.

“Dear, wonderful little mother,” he wrote, “I can’t stay here any longer. It isn’t right. But I’ll be back some day to thank you if everything goes all right. Sincerely, Your Boy.”

Your Boy

He tiptoed over, and laid it on the pillow; then he took his old trench-cap, which had been nicely pressed and was hanging on the corner of the looking-glass, and stealthily slid out of the pleasant, warm room, down the carpeted stairs, and out the front door into the crisp, cold morning. The chill air[100] met him with a challenge as he closed the front door, and dared him not to cough; but with an effort he held his breath, and crept down the front walk to the road, holding in control as well the long, violent shivers that seized him in their grasp. The sun met him, and blinded his sensitive eyes; and the wind with a tang of winter jeered at his thin uniform, and trickled up his sleeves and down his collar, penetrating every seam. But he stuffed his hands into his pockets, and strode grimly ahead on the way he had been going when Miss Marilla met him, passing the tall hedge where Mary Amber lived, and trying to hold his head high. He hoped Mary Amber saw him going away!

[100]

For perhaps half a mile past Mary Amber’s house his courage and his pride held him, for he was a soldier, who had slept in a muck-pile under the rain, and held his nerve under fire, and[101] gone on foot ten miles to the hospital after he was wounded. What was a little grippe and a walk in the cold to the neighboring village? He wished he knew how far it was, but he had to go, for it would never do to send the telegram he must send from the town where Miss Marilla lived.

[101]

The second half-mile he lagged and shivered, with not energy enough to keep up a circulation; the third half mile and the fourth were painful, and the fifth was completed in a sick daze of weakness; for the cold, though stimulating at first, had been getting in its work through his uniform, and he felt chilled to the very soul of him. His teeth were chattering, and he was blue around the lips when he staggered into the telegraph-office of Little Silverton. His fingers were almost too stiff to write, and his thoughts seemed to have congealed also, though he had been repeating[102] the message all the way, word for word, with a vague feeling that he might forget it forever if he did not keep it going.

[102]

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