There have been other little changes in Wellingsford.  Mrs. Boyce left the town soon after Leonard’s death, and lives with her sister in London.  I had a letter from her this morning—­a brave woman’s letter.  She has no suspicion of the truth.  God still tempereth the wind. ...  Out of the innocent generosity of her heart she sent me also, as a keepsake, “a little heavy cane, of which Leonard was extraordinarily fond.”  She will never know that I put it into the fire, and with what strange and solemn thoughts I watched it burn.

It is Christmas Day.  Dr. Cliffe, although he has washed his hands of me, tyrannically keeps me indoors of winter nights, so that I cannot, as usual, dine at Wellings Park.  To counter the fellow’s machinations, however, I have prepared a modest feast to which I have bidden Sir Anthony and Lady Fenimore and my dearest Betty.

As to Betty—­

Phyllis comes in radiant, her pretty face pink above an absurd panoply of furs.  She has had a long letter from Randall from the Lord knows where.  He will be home on leave in the middle of January.  In her excitement she drops prayer-books and hymn-books all over me.  Then, picking them up, reminds me it is time to go to church.  I am an old-fashioned fogey and I go to church on Christmas Day.  I hope our admirable and conscientious Vicar won’t feel it his duty to tell us to love Germans.  I simply can’t do it.

New Year’s Day, 1917.

I must finish off this jumble of a chronicle.

Before us lies the most eventful year in all the old world’s history.  Thank God my beloved England is strong, and Great Britain and our great Empire and immortal France.  There is exhilaration in the air; a consciousness of high ideals; an unwavering resolution to attain them; a thrilling faith in their ultimate attainment.  No one has died or lost sight or limbs in vain.  I look around my own little circle.  Oswald Fenimore, Willie Connor, Reggie Dacre, Leonard Boyce—­how many more could I not add to the list?  All those little burial grounds in France—­which France, with her exquisite sense of beauty, has assigned as British soil for all time—­all those burial grounds, each bearing its modest leaden inscription—­some, indeed, heart-rendingly inscribed “Sacred to the memory of six unknown British soldiers killed in action”—­are monuments not to be bedewed with tears of lamentation.  From the young lives that have gone there springs imperishable love and strength and wisdom—­and the vast determination to use that love and strength and wisdom for the great good of mankind.  If there is a God of Battles, guiding, in His inscrutable omniscience, the hosts that fight for the eternal verities—­for all that man in his straining towards the Godhead has striven for since the world began—­the men who have died will come into their glory, and those who have mourned will share exultant in the victory.  From before the beginning of Time Mithra has ever been triumphant and his foot on the throat of Ahriman.