My dearest Father,

It is with a grief which cannot be diminished by the certainty of his having been removed to the Heavenly Kingdom, that I now impart to you the Dreadful news, that my brother has in the small hours of this morning met his end of this life. A more distressing intelligence I know it would be impossible for you to receive, than that you should never see again one of those whom we all of us loved dearest on earth. You may be assured that Algie was gallant indeed. He rose this morning still a boy, but by his fortitude and courage he died a man. With his final breath he expressed the wish that someone more severely wounded should be brought back to camp before himself.

The only consolation I may offer is that he knew no suffering. He stood, he fell, all in one instant. Enemy fire took him with such swiftness that he cannot have been sensible of it. His cerement will …

Here he faltered. How could he tell his father that the boy lay still unburied, where he fell? That an armistice for burial might be two days off, or more? Nor could he bear to let them know at home that his brother would be buried without a coffin. Lacking timber enough to build shelters for the living, and fires to heat their food, there was no wood spare to make cradles for the dead. At the rear of the camp, where gabions and fascines were in constant production, a mere handful of rough coffins had been nailed together; but these boxes were only for more senior occupants than Algernon Gale. Instead, William would supply one of his own blankets as a makeshift shroud, for he could not let earth fall on the boy’s uncovered face.

2.

Alice was in an agitation. It was her habit to keep abreast of the accounts of what was said in Parliament, lest any debate therein should shed light on what was planned concerning the Russian war, for it seemed to her that her husband’s fate was just as likely to be decided at Westminster – or more latterly, at the Conference at Vienna – as on the shores of the Black Sea. Thus it was that Mr Cobden’s speech of the 5th of June had come to her attention and within it a warning which troubled her greatly. It was that gentleman’s contention that any man, if well clothed, well fed and sheltered, may survive a winter. But, he went on: