If you could see this big dusty monotonous olive-drab camp you would know what a bright spot your letter and the thought of a real friend has made in it. I suppose you have been thinking all this time that I was neglectful because I didn't answer, but it was all the fault of someone who gave you the wrong address. I am hoping you will forgive me for the delay and that some day you will have time to write to me again.
Sincerely and proudly, Your knight, JOHN CAMERON.
As he walked back to his barracks in the starlight his heart was filled with a great peace. What a thing it was to have been able to speak to her on paper and let her know his thoughts of her. It was as if after all these years he had been able to pluck another trifling rose and lay it at her lovely feet. Her knight! It was the fulfillment of all his boyish dreams!
He had entrusted his letter to the Y.M.C.A. man to mail as he was going out of camp that night and would mail it in Baltimore, ensuring it an immediate start. Now he began to speculate whether it would reach its destination by morning and be delivered with the morning mail. He felt as excited and impatient as a child over it.
Suddenly a voice above him in a barracks window rang out with a familiar guffaw, and the words: "Why, man, I can't! Didn't I tell you I'm going to marry Ruth Macdonald before I go! There wouldn't be time for that and the other, too!"
Something in his heart grew cold with pain and horror, and something in his motive power stopped suddenly and halted his feet on the sidewalk in the grade cut below the officers' barracks.
"Aw! A week more won't make any difference," drawled another familiar voice, "I say, Hal, she's just crazy about you and you could get no end of information out of her if you tried. All she asks is that you tell what you know about a few little things that don't matter anyway."
"But I tell you I can't, man. If Ruth found out about the girl the mischief would be to pay. She wouldn't stand for another girl--not that kind of a girl, you know, and there wouldn't be time for me to explain and smooth things over before I go across the Pond. I tell you I've made up my mind about this."
The barracks door slammed shut on the voices and Corporal Cameron's heart gave a great jump upwards in his breast and went on. Slowly, dizzily he came to his senses and moved on automatically toward his own quarters.