We could only wait to hear from him, however.  And it was several weeks before he was strong enough to be able to write to us.  There was no hint of discouragement in what he wrote then.  On the contrary, he kept on trying to reassure us, and if he ever grew downhearted, he made it his business to see that we did not suspect it.  Here is one of his letters—­like most of them it was not about himself.

“I had a sad experience yesterday,” he wrote to me.  “It was the first day I was able to be out of bed, and I went over to a piano in a corner against the wall, sat down, and began playing very softly, more to myself than anything else.

“One of the nurses came to me, and said a Captain Webster, of the Gordon Highlanders, who lay on a bed in the same ward, wanted to speak to me.  She said he had asked who was playing, and she had told him Captain Lauder—­Harry Lauder’s son.  ‘Oh,’ he said, ’I know Harry Lauder very well.  Ask Captain Lauder to come here?’

“This man had gone through ten operations in less than a week.  I thought perhaps my playing had disturbed him, but when I went to his bedside, he grasped my hand, pressed it with what little strength he had left, and thanked me.  He asked me if I could play a hymn.  He said he would like to hear ‘Lead, Kindly Light.’

“So I went back to the piano and played it as softly and as gently as I could.  It was his last request.  He died an hour later.  I was very glad I was able to soothe his last moments a little.  I am very glad now I learned the hymn at Sunday School as a boy.”

[ILLUSTRATION:  “‘Carry On!’ were the last words of my boy, Captain John Lauder, to his men, but he would mean them for me, too.” (See Lauder03.jpg)]

Soon after we received that letter there came what we could not but think great news.  John was ordered home!  He was invalided, to be sure, and I warned his mother that she must be prepared for a shock when she saw him.  But no matter how ill he was, we would have our lad with us for a space.  And for that much British fathers and mothers had learned to be grateful.

I had warned John’s mother, but it was I who was shocked when I saw him first on the day he came back to our wee hoose at Dunoon.  His cheeks were sunken, his eyes very bright, as a man’s are who has a fever.  He was weak and thin, and there was no blood in his cheeks.  It was a sight to wring one’s heart to see the laddie so brought down—­ him who had looked so braw and strong the last time we had seen him.

That had been when he was setting out for the wars, you ken!  And now he was back, sae thin and weak and pitiful as I had not seen him since he had been a bairn in his mother’s arms.

Aweel, it was for us, his mother and I, and all the folks at home, to mend him, and make him strong again.  So he told us, for he had but one thing on his mind—­to get back to his men.

“They’ll be needing me, out there,” he said.  “They’re needing men.  I must go back so soon as I can.  Every man is needed there.”