There are some things I want to say before -- well , before tomorrow . `` You and Ingleside seem strangely near me tonight . It 's the first time I 've felt this since I came . Always home has seemed so far away -- so hopelessly far away from this hideous welter of filth and blood . But tonight it is quite close to me -- it seems to me I can almost see you -- hear you speak . And I can see the moonlight shining white and still on the old hills of home . It has seemed to me ever since I came here that it was impossible that there could be calm gentle nights and unshattered moonlight anywhere in the world . But tonight somehow , all the beautiful things I have always loved seem to have become possible again -- and this is good , and makes me feel a deep , certain , exquisite happiness . It must be autumn at home now -- the harbour is a-dream and the old Glen hills blue with haze , and Rainbow Valley a haunt of delight with wild asters blowing all over it -- our old `` farewell-summers . '' I always liked that name better than ` aster ' -- it was a poem in itself . `` Rilla , you know I 've always had premonitions . You remember the Pied Piper -- but no , of course you would n't -- you were too young . One evening long ago when Nan and Di and Jem and the Merediths and I were together in Rainbow Valley I had a queer vision or presentiment -- whatever you like to call it . Rilla , I saw the Piper coming down the Valley with a shadowy host behind him . The others thought I was only pretending -- but I saw him for just one moment . And Rilla , last night I saw him again . I was doing sentry-go and I saw him marching across No-man 's - land from our trenches to the German trenches -- the same tall shadowy form , piping weirdly -- and behind him followed boys in khaki . Rilla , I tell you I saw him -- it was no fancy -- no illusion . I heard his music , and then -- he was gone . But I had seen him -- and I knew what it meant -- I knew that I was among those who followed him .
`` Rilla , the XXXXX will pipe me ` west ' tomorrow .
Di German Glen Ingleside Merediths Piper evening harbour night nights