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The telegraph messenger took the three telegrams reluctantly.

“Why pick on me?” he asked plaintively.

“Don’t argue the point. Go and see if you can find him. The other two idiots couldn’t.”

“That’s the writer chap who went off his rocker at the Masonic, isn’t it?”

“So would you go off your rocker, young fellow, if you found your wife and daughter as he did. Hop it! If he’s not in the camps you’ll find him up on the hill, likely as not. We can stretch a point and hunt for him a bit.”

“We?” snorted the telegraph messenger offensively.

“Go on! Quick and lively, before I come over there after you!”

“All right. I’m going. I’ll see you about August, if I’m lucky.”

The over-worked lad walked out leisurely. The clerk looked after him with murder in his glance.

“Hello, Whiskers!” the lad greeted an aproned individual over an hour later.

The aproned individual, who perspired as he wrote the mid-day menu in chalk upon a blackboard outside the cook-house which served one of the refugee camps, did not turn his head.

“Good-day, Cheeky,” he returned good-humouredly. “Who let you out?”

The lad ignored the question.

“Any idea where I’ll find a fellow named Harley?” he asked.

“’Arley?”

“Harley—with an aitch. James Harley.”

“Never ’eard of ’im. ’Ow do you spell ‘lentils’?”

“They told me he was in this camp.”

“Aw! They’d tell you anything, son. If there’s a wire for ’im ’e‘ll call for it—same as the rest of ’em. Are we getting back to normal again, or something? Running about with wires again?”