Well, I knew that, too.  And I tried to cheer up, and feel better, so that I would not spoil the pleasure of the others at Tom Vallance’s house.  I tried to picture John as I thought he must be—­well, and happy, and smiling the old, familiar boyish smile I knew so well.  I had sent him a box of cigars only a few days before, and he would be handing it around among his fellow officers.  I knew that!  But it was no use.  I could think of John, but it was only with sorrow and longing.  And I wondered if this same time in a year would see him still out there, in the trenches.  Would this war ever end?  And so the shadows still hung about me when we reached Tom’s house.

They made me very welcome, did Tom and all his family.  They tried to cheer me, and Tom did all he could to make me feel better, and to reassure me.  But I was still depressed when we left the house and began the drive back to London.

“It’s the holiday—­I’m out of gear with that, I’m thinking,” I told my friend.

He was going to join two other friends, and, with them, to see the New Year in in an old fashioned way, and he wanted me to join them.  But I did not feel up to it; I was not in the mood for anything of the sort.

“No, no, I’ll go home and turn in,” I told him.  “I’m too dull tonight to be good company.”

He hoped, as we all did, that this New Year that was coming would bring victory and peace.  Peace could not come without victory; we were all agreed on that.  But we all hoped that the New Year would bring both—­the new year of 1917.  And so I left him at the corner of Southhampton Row, and went back to my hotel alone.  It was about midnight, a little before, I think, when I got in, and one of the porters had a message for me.

“Sir Thomas Lipton rang you up,” he said, “and wants you to speak with him when you come in.”

I rang him up at home directly.

“Happy New Year, when it comes, Harry!” he said.  He spoke in the same bluff, hearty way he always did.  He fairly shouted in my ear.  “When did you hear from the boy?  Are you and Mrs. Lauder well?”

“Aye, fine,” I told him.  And I told him my last news of John.

“Splendid!” he said.  “Well, it was just to talk to you a minute that I rang you up, Harry.  Good-night—­Happy New Year again.”

I went to bed then.  But I did not go to sleep for a long time.  It was New Year’s, and I lay thinking of my boy, and wondering what this year would bring him.  It was early in the morning before I slept.  And it seemed to me that I had scarce been asleep at all when there came a pounding at the door, loud enough to rouse the heaviest sleeper there ever was.

My heart almost stopped.  There must be something serious indeed for them to be rousing me so early.  I rushed to the door, and there was a porter, holding out a telegram.  I took it and tore it open.  And I knew why I had felt as I had the day before.  I shall never forget what I read: