"A week or two more," thought Bob, "and I shall be at it again."
A copy of an English newspaper, several days old, lay by his side. He took it up and began to read listlessly. The paper had been sent from Lancashire and contained letters from soldiers who had gone from that county. One letter struck him forcibly: it was headed "Back to Hell." "Dear mother," the soldier wrote, "I am alive and well, but I have had a terrible time. Four days and nights I have been fighting without ever having time to change my clothes. Never once during that time did I take off my shoes. It was simply fight, fight, all the time. Our chaps were just worn out, and so were ordered away to rest for a day or two. That is why I am here and have time to write to you. To-morrow I am going back to Hell; but I am going willingly, because I know I am wanted there."
The tears started to Bob's eyes as he read. There was a touch of heroism, and more than heroism, in the simple lad's letter: "I am going back to Hell, and I am going willingly, because I know I am wanted there."
"Yes," thought Bob; "that just hits off the situation."
At that moment a laugh rang out which caused him to start violently and his pulses to quicken; there was not another voice in the world like that; it was a laugh he had heard a hundred times. He remembered it as it sounded above the singing of the waves down by the Cornish sea; he remembered it on the tennis courts at Penwennack, and on the golf links at Leiant. In another second the laugh was lost in a hoarse, excited cry. The eyes of the two met, but neither spoke a word.
"I—I—this is a surprise," stammered Bob presently.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
It was not a bit what either of them wanted to say, but it didn't matter; words at that moment meant very little.
"I never heard you were here," he went on, after a few seconds. "I've been in the hospital such a long time, too, but no one ever told me."
He tried to speak naturally, but the girl heard the tremor in his voice. "It is because he is so weak," she thought. "How pale he looks!"