Richard Hannay returns to the front lines and participates in desperate fighting following the Germans' massive, last-ditch effort to win the war. Soon after the end of the war, Hannay marries Mary Lamington, and the following year they have a son, Peter John Hannay. The boy is named after Hannay's two great friends John Scantlebury Blenkiron (an American businessman and spy who had often helped him) and Peter Pienaar ("Mr Standfast"), an old Boer scout who seems to have been a kind of father-figure to him. The family settles in Mary's old home in the Cotswolds, Fosse Manor, Oxfordshire and Hannay (now
Patrick Hannay the upper portion and the author's portrait below. Each of the five parts has a separate title-page. "The Nightingale", a poem in stanzas of sixteen lines, has a dedication to the Duchess of Lennox and commendatory verse by Robert Hannay, John Marshall, William Lithgow and others. ‘Sheretine and Mariana,’ a graceful narrative poem in six-line stanzas, is dedicated to the Countess of Bedford. Before the "Songs and Sonnets" there is a dedicatory epistle to a soldier under whom Hannay had served abroad, Sir Andrew Gray. In 1632 a copy of commendatory verses by him was prefixed to the first collected