[Pg 48] [Pg 49] And then Peter bethought him of a friend of his, one whose creed, though he himself had inquired little regarding it, he knew to be clear-cut, defined. Perhaps, Peter told himself, his own prayers were [Pg 50]too vague, too nebulous. For himself he was content, or at least sufficiently passive now, to let things remain as they were. For himself, his prayer had failed; he would not be cowardly enough to whine, or recriminate. It was just possible that even the failure belonged to some Great Plan of which he did not see the outcome. He perceived in the same nebulous way that if this were the case rebellion would be not only cowardly, but futile. Yet while remaining passive for himself, something within him stirred him to action for another. He had heard his friend speak of masses for souls in purgatory. It conveyed nothing very definite to Peter’s mind, yet he felt that if there were some method of aiding this soul his friend would know of it. [Pg 50] Accordingly Peter wrote a letter. He gave no address; he merely wrote stating the facts of the case, and asking aid. After that he waited. Now again he was perfectly aware that the whole thing might have been pure fancy, but one day Peter became conscious of a change of atmosphere in the cottage. A repose, a peace, hitherto foreign seemed to have descended upon it. When precisely the change occurred Peter did not know, he [Pg 51]merely suddenly became conscious that the change was there. [Pg 51] Of course it might have been pure fancy, but Peter did not think it was. [Pg 52] [Pg 52] CHAPTER VI AN OLD GENERAL I General Carden, V.C., C.B., D.S.O., was sitting at breakfast in his house in Sloane Street. He was not a young man—in fact, he had just passed his seventy-seventh birthday—but there was about him an air of trim spruceness, an uprightness that many a younger man might have envied. His height in his stockinged feet was exactly six feet one. He was handsome, too, with his fine aquiline features, his snow-white hair, and his drooping moustache. His blue eyes, under shaggy eyebrows, were perhaps a trifle faded from the colour
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