Jem was in camp on Salisbury Plain and was writing gay, cheery letters home in spite of the mud. Walter was at Redmond and his letters to Rilla were anything but cheerful. She never opened one without a dread tugging at her heart that it would tell her he had enlisted. His unhappiness made her unhappy. She wanted to put her arm round him and comfort him, as she had done that day in Rainbow Valley. She hated everybody who was responsible for Walter's unhappiness.

"He will go yet," she murmured miserably to herself one afternoon, as she sat alone in Rainbow Valley, reading a letter from him, "he will go yet--and if he does I just can't bear it."

Walter wrote that some one had sent him an envelope containing a white feather.

"I deserved it, Rilla. I felt that I ought to put it on and wear it-- proclaiming myself to all Redmond the coward I know I am. The boys of my year are going--going. Every day two or three of them join up. Some days I almost make up my mind to do it--and then I see myself thrusting a bayonet through another man--some woman's husband or sweetheart or son--perhaps the father of little children--I see myself lying alone torn and mangled, burning with thirst on a cold, wet field, surrounded by dead and dying men--and I know I never can. I can't face even the thought of it. How could I face the reality? There are times when I wish I had never been born. Life has always seemed such a beautiful thing to me--and now it is a hideous thing. Rilla-my-Rilla, if it weren't for your letters--your dear, bright, merry, funny, comical, believing letters--I think I'd give up. And Una's! Una is really a little brick, isn't she? There's a wonderful fineness and firmness under all that shy, wistful girlishness of her. She hasn't your knack of writing laugh-provoking epistles, but there's something in her letters--I don't know what--that makes me feel at least while I'm reading them, that I could even go to the front. Not that she ever says a word about my going --or hints that I ought to go--she isn't that kind. It's just the spirit of them--the personality that is in them. Well, I can't go. You have a brother and Una has a friend who is a coward."