I don’t suppose you’ll hear from me again till we get across. Don’t worry, pretty soon it will all be over and I’ll come marching home and you’ll be telling people it was me that won the war and I’ll be glad to get a good squint at my old N. C. hills. It will be over before you know it. Now you have to be brave, see? Just like you were when dad died. Remember what you said then? Now don’t think this is good-bye because I’m sailing but remember the Atlantic Ocean isn’t a one way street. Just chalk that up on the wall, and speaking about oceans don’t forget about the water by the woodshed and do what I told you. So now good-bye dear old Mum and don’t worry, and I won’t go near Paris like you said. Hicksville is good enough for me.

Your loving son.

There was something about this old missive which sobered the bantering troop of scouts and made even Pee-wee quiet and thoughtful.

“It’s a letter he was going to send,” Artie Van Arlen finally said.

“Who?” Doc Carson asked.

Artie shrugged his shoulders. “Somebody or other, that’s all we know,” he said. “We don’t even know who he was going to send it to; there are a whole lot of dear old mothers.”

“You said it,” commented Roy.

“Let’s see the other papers,” one of the scouts said.

The only other contents of the wallet were a small paper with blanks filled in, and an engraved calling card. The paper with the blanks filled in was so smeared from long moisture that the written parts were undecipherable. The paper was evidently a leave of absence from camp. The name was utterly blurred out, but by studying the smeared writing in the space where the date had been written the scouts thought they could determine the date, or at least part of it. Sun–1918 was all they could be sure of.

But fortunately the calling card appeared to confirm this date. It was a card of fine quality and beautifully engraved with the name of Helen Shirley Bates. In the lower left hand corner was engraved Woodcliff, New Jersey. On the back of the card was written in a free feminine hand For dinner Sunday April 14th, 1918. One o’clock.