You ought to see the excitement when the water-cart brings us our mail and the letters are handed out.  Some of the gunners have evidently told their Canadian girls that they are officers, and so they are addressed on their letters as lieutenants.  I have to censor some of their replies, and I can tell you they are as often funny as pathetic.  The ones to their mothers are childish, too, and have rows of kisses.  I think men are always kiddies if you look beneath the surface.  The snapshots did fill me with a wanting to be with you in Kootenay.  But that’s not where you’ll receive this.  There’ll probably be a fire in the sitting-room at home, and a strong aroma of coffee and tobacco.  You’ll be sitting in a low chair before the fire and your fingers rubbing the hair above your left ear as you read this aloud.  I’d like to walk in on you and say, “No more need for letters now.”  Some day soon, I pray and expect.

Tell dear Papa and Mother that their answers come next.  What a lot of love you each one manage to put into your written pages!  I’m afraid if I let myself go that way I might make you unhappy.

Since writing this far I have had supper.  I’m now sleeping in a new dug-out and get a shower of mould on my sleeping-kit each time the guns are fired.  One doesn’t mind that particularly, especially when you know that the earth walls make you safe.  I have a candle in an old petrol tin and dodge the shadows as I write.  You know, this artillery game is good sport and one takes everything as it comes with a joke.  The men are splendid—­their cheeriness comes up bubbling whenever the occasion calls for the dumps.  Certainly there are fine qualities which war, despite its unnaturalness, develops.  I’m hats off to every infantry private I meet nowadays.

God bless you and all of you. 
              Yours lovingly, Con.

The reference in the previous letter to a cross is to a little bronze cross of Francis of Assisi.

Many years ago I visited Assisi, and, on leaving, the monks gave me four of these small bronze crosses, assuring me that those who wore them were securely defended in all peril by the efficacious prayers of St. Francis.  Just before Coningsby left Shorncliff to go to France he wrote to us and asked if we couldn’t send him something to hang round his neck for luck.  We fortunately had one of these crosses of St. Francis at the ranch, and his sister—­the M. of these letters-sent it to him.  It arrived safely, and he has worn it ever since.

XI

September 15th, 1916.

Dear father: 

Your last letter to me was written on a quiet morning in August—­in the summer house at Kootenay.  It came up yesterday evening on a water-cart from the wagon-lines to a scene a little in contrast.