and like each other.  Though he made no mark at Woolwich he did carry off the prize for the best essay on the South African War.  With it he made his first appearance in print, for it was printed in the R.M.A.  Magazine.  While he was at Woolwich the family circle was enlarged by the arrival of a cousin from Australia, and she and Donald became the greatest of friends.  She reminded him in some way of his mother, and this made all the difference.

The Island of Mauritius, to which he was sent at the age of twenty, not so very long after having received his commission in the Royal Garrison Artillery, stood for him later on, he has told us, as “Revelation”—­“for there it was that I was first a sceptic, and was first shown that I could not remain one.”  Also towards the end of his stay there, when he was doubting as to what course he should take, a sentence came to him insistently, “Would you know Christ?  Lo, He is working in His vineyard.”  It was these things that decided him eventually to resign his commission, but of them his letters home make little or no mention.  They are full, on the other hand, of descriptions of the beauties of the Island which, curious, odd, freakish and unexpected, held him as did those of no other place.  The curious inconsistencies of the Creole nature also interested him, and he spent much of his spare time sketching and studying the people.  Two friendships he made there were diverse and lasting, but he complains very much of feeling the lack of a woman friend—­no one to tease and pick flowers for!

While he was still there, there appeared at home a baby nephew—­another “Hugh”—­“trailing clouds of glory,” but to return all too soon to his “Eternal Home.”  Some years previously, when his eldest sister had told him of her engagement, he congratulated her warmly, and said he “had always longed for a nephew”!  He never saw the child, but wrote after his death that he had heard so much about him that he seemed to know him, and “I think I must have played with him in my dreams.”  Possibly the baby nephew, in his short ten months of life, did more for his uncle than either knew, for no frozen hearts could do otherwise than melt in the presence of the insistent needs of that gallant little spirit and fragile little body, and a more whole-hearted sister was awaiting him on his return home, which took place at the end of two years, after he had fallen a victim to the prevalent complaint in the R.G.A—­abscess on the liver.  It was caused by the shocking conditions under which the R.G.A. had to live in Mauritius during that hot summer when the Russian Fleet sojourned in Madagascan waters, and in Donald’s case it necessitated a severe operation.

His joy in his homecoming was quickly clouded over, for his father died only a month or two after his return; not, however, before he had given a delighted acquiescence to Donald’s proposal to resign his commission and go to Oxford in order to study theology—­his own favourite pursuit—­with the object of eventually taking Holy Orders.