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 at Cambridge; and while at Cambridge he became engaged to Sylvia Marsh, daughter of a Quaker family, with whose traditions and ideals he had much in common. They planned to make their home in New Zealand. In October last he returned to France, joining the 4th Battalion of the Seaforths, and on 21st November, in the fighting about Cambrai, he fell, shot through the head.

Alan Mackintosh looked the Gael he was, loose-limbed, muscular, tall and dark. He carried a fine head well. His roving eye, merry, tender, cautious, penetrating, bold by rapid turns, epitomised the richness of his nature and his still rarer force of self-expression.

He spent two happy years at Oxford. For study, and especially the routine study of the schools, he cared little. Native power and a felicitous exuberance in literary things gained him his place in honour classical moderations. He played with Socialism, to the point of having scruples about the possession of wealth. He read poetry enthusiastically, and notably French poetry, in which his répertoire was very large. Both in term and out of term he cultivated, above all, the sentiments and the arts of the Highlands. He learned to play the pipes and to speak Gaelic, things which later endeared him to his regiment. His friendships were many and ardent. Of