There was more news in John’s letters now.  We took some comfort from that.  I remember one in which he told his mother how good a bed he had finally made for himself the night before.  For some reason he was without quarters—­either a billet or a dug-out.  He had to skirmish around, for he did not care to sleep simply in Flanders mud.  But at last he found two handfuls of straw, and with them made his couch.

“I got a good two hours’ sleep,” he wrote to his mother.  “And I was perfectly comfortable.  I can tell you one thing, too, Mother.  If I ever get home after this experience, there’ll be one in the house who’ll never grumble!  This business puts the grumbling out of your head.  This is where the men are.  This is where every man ought to be.”

In another letter he told us that nine of his men had been killed.

“We buried them last night,” he wrote, “just as the sun went down.  It was the first funeral I have ever attended.  It was most impressive.  We carried the boys to one huge grave.  The padre said a prayer, and we lowered the boys into the ground, and we all sang a little hymn:  ‘Peace, Perfect Peace!’ Then I called my men to attention again, and we marched straight back into the trenches, each of us, I dare say, wondering who would be the next.”

John was promoted for the second time in Flanders.  He was a captain, having got his step on the field of battle.  Promotion came swiftly in those days to those who proved themselves worthy.  And all of the few reports that came to us of John showed us that he was a good officer.  His men liked him, and trusted him, and would follow him anywhere.  And little more than that can be said of any officer.

While Captain John Lauder was playing his part across the Channel, I was still trying to do what I could at home.  My band still travelled up and down, the length and width of the United Kingdom, skirling and drumming and drawing men by the score to the recruiting office.

There was no more talk now of a short war.  We knew what we were in for now.

But there was no thought or talk of anything save victory.  Let the war go on as long as it must—­it could end only in one way.  We had been forced into the fight—­but we were in, and we were in to stay.  John, writing from France, was no more determined than those at home.

It was not very long before there came again a break in John’s letters.  We were used to the days—­far apart—­that brought no word.  Not until the second day and the third day passed without a word, did Mrs. Lauder and I confess our terrors and our anxiety to ourselves and one another.  This time our suspense was comparatively short-lived.  Word came that John was in hospital again—­at the Duke of Westminster’s hospital at Le Toquet, in France.  This time he was not wounded; he was suffering from dysentery, fever and—­a nervous breakdown.  That was what staggered his mother and me.  A nervous breakdown!  We could not reconcile the John we knew with the idea that the words conveyed to us.  He had been high strung, to be sure, and sensitive.  But never had he been the sort of boy of whom to expect a breakdown so severe as this must be if they had sent him to the hospital.