As it was, Tony would have to stay at all costs.

Mr.Maitland sat back in his chair, his eyes fixed upon the Big Bluff visible through the window, but his mind lingering over a picture that had often gripped hard at his heart during the last two years, a picture drawn for him in a letter from his remaining son, Jack.

The letter lay in the desk at his hand.

He saw in the black night that shell-torn strip of land between the lines, black as a ploughed field, lurid for a swift moment under the red glare of a bursting shell or ghastly in the sickly illumination of a Verry light, and over this black pitted earth a man painfully staggering with a wounded man on his back.
The words leaped to his eyes.

"He brought me out of that hell, Dad." He closed his eyes to shut out that picture, his hands clenched on the arms of his chair.
"No," he said, raising his hand in solemn affirmation, "as the Lord God liveth, while I stay he stays." "Come in," he said, in answer to a timid tap at the office door.