“I suppose you are right, Uncle Phil,” sighed Larry.  “You usually are.  But it’s like having a piece taken right out of me to have him go off like that.  And the Canadians are the very devil of fighters.  Always in the thick of things.”

“That is where Ted would want to be, Larry.  Let us not cross that bridge until we have to.  As he says himself there are worse things than death anyway.”

“I know.  Marrying the girl would have been worse.  She was rather magnificent, wasn’t she, just as he says, not saving herself when she might have at his expense?”

“I think she was.  I am almost glad the poor child is where she can suffer no more at the hands of men.”

The next day came a wire from Ted announcing his acceptance in the Canadian army and giving his address in the training camp.

The doctor answered at once, writing a long, cheerful letter full of home news especially the interesting developments in Ruth’s romantic story.  It was only at the end that he referred to the big thing that had to be faced between them.

“I am not going to say a word that will add in any way to the burden you are already carrying, Teddy, my lad.  You know how sadly disappointed we all are in your having to leave college this way but I understand and sympathize fully with your reasons for doing what you did.  Even though I can’t approve of the thing itself.  I haven’t a single reproach to offer.  You have had a harsh lesson.  Learn it so well that you will never bring yourself or the rest of us to such pain and shame again.  Keep your scar.  I should be sorry to think you were so callous that you could pass through an experience like that without carrying off an indelible mark from it.  But it isn’t going to ruin your life.  On the contrary it is going to make a man of you, is doing that already if I may judge from the spirit of your letter which goes far to atone for the rest.  The forgiveness is yours always, son, seventy times seven if need be.  Never doubt it.  We shall miss you very much.  I wonder if you know how dear to us you are, Teddy lad.  But we aren’t going to borrow trouble of the future.  We shall say instead God speed.  May he watch over you wherever you are and bring you safe back to us in His good time!”

And Ted reading the letter later in the Canadian training camp was not ashamed of the tears that came stinging up in his eyes.  He was woefully homesick, wanted the home people, especially Uncle Phil desperately.  But the message from the Hill brought strength and comfort as well as heart ache.

“Dear Uncle Phil,” he thought.  “I will make it up to him somehow.  I will.  He shan’t ever have to be ashamed of me again.”

And so Ted Holiday girded on manhood along with his khaki and his Sam Browne belt and started bravely up out of the pit which his own willful folly had dug for him.

Tony was not told the full story of her brother’s fiasco.  She only knew that he had left college for some reason or other and had taken French leave for the Canadian training camp.  She was relieved to discover that even in Larry’s stern eyes the escapade, whatever it was, had not apparently been a very damaging one and accepted thankfully her uncle’s assurance that there was nothing at all to worry about and that Ted was no doubt very much better off where he was than if he had stayed in college.