an evening service in the canteen-hall part of the place.  I couldn’t have a morning service, as I was to go out to the forest camp, as I have told you.’  He said in his first letter how he had been motored out to see a camp in the forest where they are cutting wood for something, and he had fixed up a parade,” said Hilda, looking up.  Doyle nodded gravely, and she went on reading:  “’Harold said he’d like to take Communion, and that I could put up a notice in the anteroom of the Officers’ Mess.

“’Well, I spent the morning preparing sermons.  I thought I’d preach from “The axe is laid to the root of the tree” in the forest, and make a sort of little parable out of it for the men.  I planned to say how Christ was really watching and testing each one of us, especially out here, and to begin by talking a bit about Germany, and how the axe was being laid to that tree because it wouldn’t bear good fruit.  I couldn’t get much for the evening, so I thought I’d leave it, and perhaps say much the same as the morning, only differently introduced.  I went and saw the hut manager, a very decent fellow who is a Baptist minister at home, and he said he’d like to come in the morning.  Well, I didn’t know what to say to that; I hated to hurt him, and, of course, he has no Baptist chapel out here; but I didn’t know what the regulations might be, and excused myself on those grounds.

“’Then in the afternoon I went round the camp.  Oh, Hilda, I was fearfully nervous—­I don’t know why exactly, but I was.  The men were playing “crown and anchor,” and sleeping, and cleaning kit (this is a rest camp you know), and it seemed so cold-blooded somehow.  I told them anyone could come in the evening if he wanted to, but that in the morning the service was for Church of England communicants.  I must say I was very bucked up over the result.  I had no end of promises, and those who were going to be out in the evening said so straight out.  Quite thirty said they’d come in the morning, and they were very respectful and decent.  Then I wrote out and put up my notices.  The mess ragged a bit about it, but quite decently ("Here’s the padre actually going to do a bit of work!” and the usual “I shall be a chaplain in the next war!"); and I mentioned to one or two whom I knew to be Church of England that Captain Harold had said he would come to the early service.  Someone had told me that if the O.C. of a camp comes, the others often will.  After dinner we settled down to bridge, and about ten-thirty I was just going off to bed when Harold came in with two or three other men.  Well, I hate to tell you, dear, but I promised I’d write, and, besides, I do want to talk to somebody.  Anyway, he was what they call “merry,” and he and his friends were full of talk about what they’d done up town.  I don’t know that it was anything very bad, but it was awful to me to think that this chap was going to communicate next day.  I didn’t know what to do, but I couldn’t say anything then, and I slipped off to bed as soon as I could.  They made a huge row in the anteroom for some time, but at last I got to sleep.