Though you have prayed many prayers for your boy, and they have been answered differently from the way in which you would have had them, I believe your faith in God is no less than before. When Tom and his father meet again, some day, and talk it over, it will all be clear to that father why his boy went home ahead of him. But Tom knows—now; I’m very sure of that.
So, dear friends, you have a glorious memory to comfort you. The gold star you will wear will be the highest honour that can come to you. Nothing that Tom could have accomplished in a long life of effort could so crown that life with imperishable beauty, or so make it immortal. I rejoice with you, for the lad was my dear friend, and I can never forget him.
Faithfully yours,
Robert Black.
Late that night, when all was quiet in the ward, he wrote this same news to Jane. But at the end of his letter came other words, of such joy and thanksgiving as a man can write only when his heart is very full.
What you tell me of yourself goes to my deepest heart, as you must well know. I knew it would come—it had to come. What it means to me I can tell you only when I see you, face to face. The thought of that hour shakes me through and through.
On the 11th of November, at half after ten in the morning, Jane was in one of the larger towns which had been swept by devastating fires at one time or another throughout the entire period of the war. She had been sent with a certain Brigadier General who had been under her care at the Field Hospital, and who had obtained for her a short leave that she might accompany him and see for herself something of this famous region. At the time of their arrival shells had again unexpectedly begun pouring in upon the town, though the rumour of the coming armistice was persistent, and even the hour was given.
“I can’t let you go any nearer,” General Lewiston said to Jane, as his car approached the town, and halted at his order, “much as I want you to be there when the guns cease firing. They’re evidently going to keep it as hot here as they know how, up to the very last minute.”
“Oh, but you must let me stay,” Jane begged. “I’m not in the least afraid, and I’d give all I possess to be exactly there, when the hour comes.”
“I’ll leave you here, in care of Lieutenant Ferguson, and send back for you when it’s over,” the General offered.
“Please, take me in with you. I’ve been under fire, before. We were bombed three times in hospital, you know.”