But she endured it as the others did for another week. Then a letter
came from Jem. He was all right.
"I've come through without a scratch, dad. Don't know how I or any of us
did it. You'll have seen all about it in the papers--I can't write of
it. But the Huns haven't got through--they won't get through. Jerry was
knocked stiff by a shell one time, but it was only the shock. He was all
right in a few days. Grant is safe, too."
Nan had a letter from Jerry Meredith. "I came back to consciousness at
dawn," he wrote. "Couldn't tell what had happened to me but thought that
I was done for. I was all alone and afraid--terribly afraid. Dead men
were all around me, lying on the horrible grey, slimy fields. I was
woefully thirsty--and I thought of David and the Bethlehem water--and
of the old spring in Rainbow Valley under the maples. I seemed to see it
just before me--and you standing laughing on the other side of it--and
I thought it was all over with me. And I didn't care. Honestly, I didn't
care. I just felt a dreadful childish fear of loneliness and of those
dead men around me, and a sort of wonder how this could have happened to
me. Then they found me and carted me off and before long I discovered
that there wasn't really anything wrong with me. I'm going back to the
trenches tomorrow. Every man is needed there that can be got."
"Laughter is gone out of the world," said Faith Meredith, who had come
over to report on her letters.
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