"Ay, mother."
"Make haste, then, I'll have dinner ready for thee by the time thou'rt ready."
"Ay, it's good to be home," said Tom, and then he sighed. "I wonder now, I wonder——" and then he sighed again.
"I mean to go to chapel to-day," he said to his mother when he presently appeared.
"Chapel!" said his mother, "I thought thou'd given up going to chapel."
"I am going to-day, anyhow," said Tom. "It would be grand if you and father would come with me to-night."
"Then us will," said Ezekiel quietly.
That night Tom, together with his father and mother, found their way to the church which he had attended years before. Many eyes were upon him as he was shown into the pew. All the town had heard of Tom Pollard's return, but few expected to see him at church that night. For some time Tom was very self-conscious, and it is to be feared that he thought little of the service; more than once, too, he caught himself gazing furtively around the building, but he did not see the face he longed yet feared to see. Since his return he had asked no questions about Alice Lister, and neither his mother nor his father had volunteered any information about her.
"Well," said Tom, "I must drive her out of my mind. What a fool I was!"
How beautiful it was to be singing the old hymns again! The Sunday before he had been in Ypres, and instead of church bells he had heard the boom of guns; instead of the music of hymns, the shrieking of shells; instead of the scenes of home, and the loved ones, were the blackened ruins of an ancient town which had been ruthlessly destroyed. Oh, how Tom wished the War were over! How he dreaded the idea of going back again! Yet he knew he must go, knew that he and thousands of others must fight on, until those who had made war should be powerless to make it again.