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+Project Gutenberg's The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land, by Ralph Connor
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land
+
+Author: Ralph Connor
+
+Release Date: June 3, 2006 [EBook #3288]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN'S LAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN'S LAND
+
+
+By Ralph Connor
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I.     ONLY A MISSIONARY
+
+II.    ON THE RED PINE TRAIL
+
+III.   A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE
+
+IV.    REJECTED
+
+V.     THE WAR DRUM CALLS
+
+VI.    THE MEN OF THE NORTH
+
+VII.   BARRICADES AND BAYONETS
+
+VIII.  A QUESTION OF NERVE
+
+IX.    SUBMARINES, BULLPUPS AND OTHER THINGS
+
+X.     FRANCE
+
+XI.    THE NEW MESSAGE
+
+XII.   A MAN OF GOD
+
+XIII.  INTENSIVE TRAINING
+
+XIV.   A TOUCH OF WAR
+
+XV.    THINNING RANKS
+
+XVI.   THE PASSING OF McCUAIG
+
+XVII.  LONDON LEAVE AND PHYLLIS
+
+XVIII. A WEDDING JOURNEY
+
+XIX.   THE PILOT'S LAST PORT
+
+XX.    "CARRY ON"
+
+
+
+
+THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN'S LAND
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ONLY A MISSIONARY
+
+
+High upon a rock, poised like a bird for flight, stark naked, his satin
+skin shining like gold and silver in the rising sun, stood a youth,
+tall, slim of body, not fully developed but with muscles promising, in
+their faultless, gently swelling outline, strength and suppleness to an
+unusual degree. Gazing down into the pool formed by an eddy of the river
+twenty feet below him, he stood as if calculating the distance, his
+profile turned toward the man who had just emerged from the bushes and
+was standing on the sandy strand of the river, paddle in hand, looking
+up at him with an expression of wonder and delight in his eyes.
+
+"Ye gods, what a picture!" said the man to himself.
+
+Noiselessly, as if fearing to send the youth off in flight, he laid his
+paddle on the sand, hurriedly felt in his pockets, and swore to himself
+vigorously when he could find no sketch book there.
+
+"What a pose! What an Apollo!" he muttered.
+
+The sunlight glistening on the beautiful white skin lay like pools of
+gold in the curving hollows of the perfectly modelled body, and ran like
+silver over the rounded swellings of the limbs. Instinct with life he
+seemed, something in his pose suggesting that he had either alighted
+from the golden, ambient air, or was about to commit himself to it. The
+man on the sand continued to gaze as if he were beholding a creature of
+another world.
+
+"Oh, Lord! What lines!" he breathed.
+
+Slowly the youth began to move his arms up to the horizontal, then to
+the perpendicular, reaching to the utmost of his height upon his toe
+tips, breathing deep the while. Smoothly, slowly, the muscles in legs
+and thighs, in back, in abdomen, in chest, responding to the exercise
+moved under the lustrous skin as if themselves were living things. Over
+and over again the action was repeated, the muscles and body moving in
+rhythmic harmony like some perfect mechanism running in a bath of oil.
+
+"Ye gods of Greece!" breathed the man. "What is this thing I see? Flesh
+or spirit? Man or god?" Again he swore at himself for neglecting to
+bring his sketch book and pencil.
+
+"Hello, father! Where are you?" A girl's voice rang out, high, clear,
+and near at hand.
+
+"Good Lord!" said the man to himself, glancing up at the poised figure.
+"I must stop her."
+
+One startled glance the youth flung down upon him, another in the
+direction of the voice, then, like a white, gleaming arrow he shot down,
+and disappeared in the dark pool below.
+
+With his eyes upon the water the man awaited his reappearing. A half
+minute, a full minute he waited, but in vain. Swiftly he ran toward the
+edge of the pool. There was no sign anywhere of the youth.
+
+Ghastly pale and panting, the man ran, as far round the base of the rock
+as the water would allow him, seeking everywhere signs of the swimmer.
+
+"Hello, father! Oh, there you are!" Breaking through the bushes, a girl
+ran to him.
+
+"What is it, pater? You are ill. What is the matter?"
+
+"Good heavens! he was there!" gasped the man, pointing to the high rock.
+"He plunged in there." He pointed to the pool. "He hasn't come up. He is
+drowned."
+
+"Who? What are you saying? Wake up, father. Who was there?"
+
+"A boy! A young man! He disappeared down there."
+
+"A young man? Was he--was he--dressed?" inquired the girl.
+
+"Dressed? No. No."
+
+"Did he--did he--hear me--calling?"
+
+"Of course he did. That's what startled him, I imagine. Poor boy! I fear
+he is gone."
+
+"Did he fall in, or did he dive?"
+
+"He seemed to dive, but he has not come up. I fear he is gone."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, father," said the girl. "I bet you he has swum round the
+bend. Just go over the rock and see."
+
+"God grant it!" said her father.
+
+He dropped his paddle, ran up over the rock and down into the little
+dell on the other side that ran down to the water's edge. There he saw
+a tent, with all the accompaniments of a well ordered camp, and a man
+cooking breakfast on a small fire.
+
+"Well, I'll be combusticated!" he said to himself, weakly holding to a
+little poplar tree.
+
+"I say!" he cried, "where is he? Has he come in? Is he all right?"
+
+"Who?" said the man at the fire.
+
+"The boy on the rock."
+
+The man gazed at him astonished, then as if suddenly grasping his
+meaning, replied,
+
+"Yes, he came in. He's dressing in the tent."
+
+"Well, I'll be condumbusticated!" said the man. "Say! what the devil
+does he mean by scaring people out of their senses in that way!"
+
+The man at the fire stood gazing at him in an utterly bewildered way.
+
+"If you will tell me exactly what you are after, I may be able to help
+you."
+
+The other drew slowly near the fire. He was still pale, and breathing
+quickly.
+
+"Hello, dad, is breakfast ready?" came a cheery voice from the tent.
+
+"Thank God, he is alive apparently," said the man, sinking down on a log
+beside the fire. "You must pardon me, sir," he said. "You see, I saw
+him take a header into the pool from that high rock over yonder, and he
+never came up again. I thought he was drowned."
+
+The man at the fire smiled.
+
+"The young villain gave you a fright, did he? One of his usual tricks.
+Well, as his father, and more or less responsible for him, I offer the
+most humble apology. Have you had breakfast?"
+
+"Yes. But why did he do such a thing?"
+
+"Ask him. Here he comes."
+
+Out from the tent came the youth in shorts, the warm glow of his body
+showing through the filmy material.
+
+"Hello!" he cried, backing toward the tent door. "You are the man with
+the paddle. Is there by any chance a lady with you, or did I hear a
+lady's voice over there? I assure you I got a deuce of a fright."
+
+"You gave me the supreme fright of my life, young man, I can tell you
+that."
+
+"But I surely heard a lady's voice," said the youth.
+
+"You did. It was my daughter's voice, and it was she who suggested that
+you had swum around the bend. And she sent me over here to investigate."
+
+"Oh, your daughter. Excuse me," said the youth. "I shall be out in a few
+minutes." He slid into the tent, and did not reappear.
+
+The man remained chatting with the youth's father for a few minutes,
+then rising said,
+
+"Well, I feel better. I confess this thing gave me something of a shock.
+But come round and see us before we go. We shall be leaving in an hour."
+
+The man at the fire promised to make the visit, and the other took his
+departure.
+
+A few minutes later the youth reappeared.
+
+"Is breakfast ready?" he cried. "My, but I'm hungry! But who is he,
+dad?"
+
+"Sit down," said his father, "and get your breakfast while it is hot."
+
+"But who is he, dad?" persisted the youth.
+
+"Who is he?" said his father, dishing up the bacon. "An oil explorer,
+an artist, a capitalist, an American from Pittsburgh, the father of one
+child, a girl. Her mother is dead. Nineteen years old, athletic, modern
+type, college bred, 'boss of the show' (quotation). These are a few of
+the facts volunteered within the limited space of his visit."
+
+"What's he like, dad?"
+
+"Like? Like an American."
+
+"Now, dad, don't allow your old British prejudices to run away with your
+judgment."
+
+"On the contrary, I am perfectly charmed. He is one of those Americans
+who capture you at once, educated, frank, open, with that peculiar charm
+that Britishers will not be able to develop for many generations. An
+American, but not of the unspeakable type. Not at all. You will like
+him."
+
+"I am sure I shall," replied the youth. "I liked his voice and his face.
+I like the Americans. I met such nice chaps at college. So clever, and
+with such a vocabulary."
+
+"Vocabulary? Well, I'm not too sure as to the vocabulary part of it."
+
+"Yes, such bright, pat, expressive slang, so fresh and in such variety.
+So different from your heavy British slang, in which everything
+approaching the superlative must be one of three things, 'ripping,' with
+very distinct articulation on the double p, or 'top hole,' or 'awfully
+jolly.' More recently, I believe, a fourth variation is allowed in
+'priceless.'
+
+"Ah, my boy, you have unconsciously uttered a most searching criticism
+on your American friends. Don't you know that a vocabulary rich in slang
+is poverty stricken in forceful and well chosen English? The wealth of
+the one is the poverty of the other."
+
+"Where is he going?" enquired the boy.
+
+"Out by way of Edmonton, Calgary, Moose Jaw, Minneapolis, so on to
+Pittsburgh. Partner with him, young lawyer, expert in mines, unmarried.
+He is coming back in a couple of months or so for a big hunt. Wants us
+to join him. Really extraordinary, when you come to think of it, how
+much information he was able to convey in such a short space of time.
+Marvellous gift of expression!"
+
+"What did you say, dad?"
+
+"Say? Oh, as to his invitation! Why, I believe I accepted, my boy. It
+seemed as if I could do nothing else. It's a way he has."
+
+"Is--is the daughter to be along?"
+
+"Let me see. What did he say? Really, I don't know. But I should judge
+that it would be entirely as she wished. She is--"
+
+"Boss of the show, eh?"
+
+"Exactly. Most vivid phrase, eh?"
+
+"Very. And no doubt aptly descriptive of the fact."
+
+In half an hour the breakfast was finished, and the elder man got his
+pipe a-going.
+
+"Now, dad, you had better go along and make your call, while I get
+things together here."
+
+"What! You not going! No, no, that won't do, my boy. It was about you
+they were concerned. You were the occasion of the acquaintanceship.
+Besides, meeting in the wilderness this way we can't do that sort of
+thing, you know."
+
+"Well, dad, frankly, I am quite terrified of the young lady. Suppose she
+should start bossing us. We should both be quite helpless."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, boy! Come along. Get your hat."
+
+"All right, I'll come. On your head be the consequences, dad. No. I
+don't need a hat. Fortunately I put on a clean shirt. Will I do, dad?
+You know I'm 'scairt stiff,' as Harry Hobbs would say."
+
+His father looked him over, but there was nothing critical in his
+glance. Pride and love filled his eyes as they ran over his son's face
+and figure. And small wonder! The youth was good to look upon. A shade
+under six feet he stood, straight and slim, strength and supple grace
+in every move of his body. His face was beautiful with the beauty of
+features, clean cut and strong, but more with the beauty of a clear,
+candid soul. He seemed to radiate an atmosphere of cheery good nature
+and unspoiled simplicity. He was two years past his majority, yet
+he carried the air of a youth of eighteen, in which shyness and
+fearlessness looked out from his deep blue eyes. It was well that he
+wore no hat to hide the mass of rich brown hair that waved back from his
+forehead.
+
+"You'll do, boy," said his father, in a voice whose rigid evenness of
+tone revealed the emotion it sought to conceal. "You'll take all the
+shine from me, you young beggar," he added in a tone of gruff banter,
+"but there was a time--"
+
+"WAS a time, dad? IS, and don't tell me you don't know it. I always feel
+like a school kid in any company when you're about.
+
+
+     'When the sun comes out
+      All the little stars run in,'"
+
+
+he sang from a late music hall effusion. "Why, just come here and look
+at yourself," and the boy's eyes dwelt with affectionate pride upon his
+father.
+
+It was easy to see where the boy got his perfect form. Not so tall as
+his son, he was more firmly knit, and with a kind of dainty neatness in
+his appearance which suggested the beau in earlier days. But there
+was nothing of weakness about the erect, trim figure. A second glance
+discovered a depth of chest, a thickness of shoulder and of thigh, and
+a general development of muscle such as a ring champion might show; and,
+indeed, it was his achievements in the ring rather than in the class
+lists that won for Dick Dunbar in his college days his highest fame. And
+though his fifty years had slowed somewhat the speed of foot and hand,
+the eye was as sure as ever, and but little of the natural force was
+abated which once had made him the glory of the Cambridge sporting
+youth, and which even yet could test his son's mettle in a fast bout.
+
+On the sandy shore of the river below the eddy, they found the American
+and his party gathered, with their stuff ranged about them ready for the
+canoes.
+
+"Ah, here you are, sir," said the American, advancing hat in hand. "And
+this is your son, the young rascal who came mighty near giving me heart
+failure this morning. By the way, I haven't the pleasure of knowing your
+name."
+
+"My name is Richard Dunbar, and this is my son Barry."
+
+"My name is Osborne Howland, of Pittsburgh, and this is my daughter
+Paula. In bloomers, as you see, but nevertheless my daughter. Meet also
+my friend and partner, Mr. Cornwall Brand."
+
+The party exchanged greetings, and spent some moments giving utterance
+to those platitudes which are so useful in such circumstances, a sort of
+mental marking time preparatory to further mutual acquaintance.
+
+The girl possessed that striking, dashing kind of brunette beauty that
+goes with good health, good living, and abundance of outdoor exercise.
+She carried herself with that air of assured self-confidence that comes
+as the result of a somewhat wide experience of men, women and things.
+She quite evidently scorned the conventions, as her garb, being quite
+masculine, her speech being outspoken and decorated with the newest and
+most ingenious slang, her whole manner being frankly impulsive, loudly
+proclaimed.
+
+But Barry liked her at once, and made no pretence of concealing his
+liking. To her father, also, he was immediately drawn. As to Cornwall
+Brand, between whom and the girl there seemed to exist a sort of
+understanding, he was not so sure.
+
+For half an hour or so they stood by the river exchanging their
+experiences in these northern wilds, and their views upon life in the
+wilderness and upon things in general. By a little skilful managing
+the girl got the young man away from the others, and then proceeded to
+dissect and classify him.
+
+Through the open woods along the river bank they wandered, pausing here
+and there to admire the view, until they came to an overhanging bank at
+the entrance to a somewhat deep gorge, through which the river foamed to
+the boiling rapids below. It was indeed a beautiful scene. The banks
+of the river were covered with every variety of shrub and tree, except
+where the black rocks broke through; between the banks the dark river
+raged and fretted itself into a foam against its rocky barriers; over
+them arched the sky, a perfect blue.
+
+"What a lovely view!" exclaimed the girl, seating herself upon the edge
+of the bank. "Now," she said, "tell me about yourself. You gave my pater
+a fearful fright this morning. He was quite paralysed when I came on
+him."
+
+"I am very sorry," said the youth, "but I had no intention--"
+
+"I know. I told him not to worry," replied the girl. "I knew you would
+be all right."
+
+"And how, pray?" said the young man, blushing at the memory of his
+startling appearance upon that rock.
+
+"I knew that any fellow who could take that dive wouldn't likely let
+himself drown. I guessed, too, that if you heard me hoot--"
+
+"I did," said the youth.
+
+"You sure would get slippy right away."
+
+"I did."
+
+"I guess you were pretty well startled yourself, weren't you?" said the
+girl, pursuing the subject with cool persistence.
+
+"Rather," said the young man, blushing more violently, and wishing she
+would change the subject. "You are going out?" he enquired.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"Now--right away."
+
+"Too bad," he said, his disappointment evident in his tone.
+
+"When are you going out? But who are you, anyway?" asked the girl. "You
+have to tell me that."
+
+"My life story, so to speak?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"It's very short and simple, like the annals of the poor," he replied.
+"From England in infancy, on a ranch in northern Alberta for ten years,
+a puny little wretch I was, terribly bothered with asthma, then"--the
+boy hesitated a moment--"my mother died, father moved to Edmonton, lived
+there for five years, thence to Wapiti, away northwest of Edmonton, our
+present home, prepared for college by my father, university course in
+Winnipeg, graduated in theology a year ago, now the missionary in charge
+of Wapiti and the surrounding district."
+
+"A preacher!" said the girl, her face and her tone showing her
+disappointment only too plainly.
+
+"Not much of a preacher, I fear," said the young man with a smile. "A
+missionary, rather. That's my story."
+
+She noticed with some chagrin that he did not ask for hers.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she enquired.
+
+He hesitated a moment or two.
+
+"Dad and I always take a trip into the wilds every summer." Then he
+added after a few moments' pause, "But of course we have other business
+on hand up here."
+
+"Business? Up here?"
+
+"Yes. Dad has some." He made as if to continue, but changed his mind and
+fell into silence, leaving her piqued by his reserve and by his apparent
+indifference to the things concerning herself. She did not know that he
+was eagerly hoping that she would supply this information.
+
+At length he ventured, "Must you go away to-day?"
+
+"I don't suppose there's any 'must' about it."
+
+"Why not stay?"
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Oh, it would be jolly," he cried. "You see, we could--explore about
+here--and,"--he ended rather lamely,--"it's a lovely country."
+
+"We've seen a lot of it. It IS lovely," she said, her eyes upon his face
+as if appraising him. "I should like to know you better," she added,
+with sudden and characteristic frankness, "so I think we will stay. But
+you will have to be awfully good to me."
+
+"Why, of course," he cried. "That's splendid! Perfectly jolly!"
+
+"Then we had better find father and tell him. Come along," she ordered,
+and led the way back to the camp.
+
+The young man followed her, wondering at her, and giving slight heed
+to the chatter she flung over her shoulder at him as she strode along
+through the bushes.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" she cried, facing round upon him. "You
+were thinking about me, I know. Confess, now."
+
+"I was," he acknowledged, smiling at her.
+
+"What were you thinking? Tell me," she insisted.
+
+"I was thinking--" He paused.
+
+"Go on!" she cried.
+
+"I was thinking of what your father said about you."
+
+"My father? About me? What did he say? To you?"
+
+"No. To dad."
+
+"What was it? Tell me. I must know." She was very imperious in her
+manner. The youth only smiled at her.
+
+"Go on!" she said impatiently.
+
+"I think possibly your father was right," he replied, "when he said you
+'boss the show.'"
+
+"Oh, that's what he said, eh? Well, I guess he's about right."
+
+"But you don't really?"
+
+"Don't what? 'Boss the show'? Well, I boss my own show, at any rate.
+Don't you?"
+
+"Don't I what, exactly? Boss the show? Well, I don't think we have any
+'show,' and I don't believe we have any 'boss.' Dad and I just talk
+things over, you see."
+
+"But," she insisted, "some one in the last analysis must decide. Your
+menage, no matter how simple, must have a head. It is a law of the
+universe itself, and it is the law of mankind. You see, I have done some
+political economy."
+
+"And yet," said the young man, "you say you run your own show?"
+
+"Exactly. Every social organism must have a head, but every individual
+in the organism must live its own free life. That is true democracy. But
+of course you don't understand democracy, you Canadians."
+
+"Aha! There you are! You Americans are the most insular of all the great
+peoples of the world. You know nothing of other people. You know only
+your own history and not even that correctly, your own geography, and
+your own political science. You know nothing of Canada. You don't
+know, for instance, that the purest form of democracy on this American
+continent lies outside the bounds of the U. S. A."
+
+"In Canada?" she asked scornfully. "By the way, how many Canadians are
+there?"
+
+"Yes, I know. We are a small people," he said quietly, "but no more real
+democracy exists anywhere in the world than in this country of mine. We
+are a small people, but," he said, with a sweep of his hand toward the
+west and the north, "the future is with us. The day is coming when
+along this waterway great cities shall be, with factories and humming
+industries. These plains, these flowing hills will be the home of
+millions of men, and in my lifetime, too."
+
+His eyes began to glow, his face to shine with a rare and fascinating
+beauty.
+
+"Do you know the statistics of your country? Do you know that during the
+last twenty years the rate of Canada's growth was three times greater
+than ever in the history of the United States? You are a great
+commercial nation, but do you know that the per capita rate of Canada's
+trade to-day is many times that of the United States? You are a great
+agricultural people, but do you know that three-quarters of the wheat
+land on this continent is Canadian, and that before many years you will
+be coming to Canada for your wheat, yes, and for your flour? Do you see
+that river? Do you know that Canada is the richest country in the world
+in water power? And more than that, in the things essential to national
+greatness,--not these things that you can see, these material things,"
+he said, sweeping his hand contemptuously toward the horizon, "but in
+such things as educational standards, in administration of justice,
+in the customs of a liberty loving people, in religious privileges, in
+everything that goes to make character and morale, Canada has already
+laid the foundations of a great nation."
+
+He stopped short, abashed, the glow fading from his face, the light from
+his eyes.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, with a little laugh. "I am a first class ass.
+I fear I was blowing like a fog horn. But when you touch Canada you
+release something in me."
+
+While he was speaking her eyes never left his face. "Go on!" she said,
+in a voice of suppressed emotion, "go on. I love to hear you."
+
+Her wonted poise was gone; she was obviously stirred with deep emotion.
+
+"Go on!" she commanded, laying her hand upon his arm. "Don't stop. Tell
+me more about--about Canada, about anything," she added impatiently.
+
+A warm, eager light filled her eyes. She was biting her lips to still
+their tremor.
+
+"There's plenty to tell about Canada," he said, "but not now. What
+started me? Oh, democracy. Yes, it was you that began it. Democracy?
+After all, it is worth while that the people who are one day to fill
+this wide land should be truly democratic, truly free, and truly great."
+
+Once more the light began to burn in his eyes and in his face.
+
+"Ah, to have a hand in that!"
+
+"And you," she said in a low voice, "you with all that in you, are only
+a preacher."
+
+"A missionary," he corrected.
+
+"Well, a missionary. Only a missionary."
+
+Disappointment and scorn were all too evident in her voice.
+
+"ONLY a missionary. Ah, if I could only be one. A missionary! With a
+mission and a message to my people! If only I had the gift of tongues,
+of flaming, burning, illuminating speech, of heart-compelling speech! To
+tell my people how to make this country truly great and truly free, how
+to keep it free from the sordid things, the cruel things, the unjust,
+the unclean, the loathsome things that have debased and degraded the
+older nations, that are debasing and degrading even your young, great
+nation. Ah, to be a missionary with a tongue of fire, with a message of
+light! A missionary to my people to help them to high and worthy living,
+to help them to God! ONLY a missionary! What would you have me? A
+money-maker?"
+
+He turned swiftly upon her, a magnetic, compelling personality. From the
+furious scorn in his voice and in his flaming face she visibly shrank,
+almost as if he had struck her.
+
+"No!" she breathed. "Nothing else. Only a missionary."
+
+Silent she stood, as if still under the spell of his words, her eyes
+devouring his face.
+
+"How your mother would have loved you, would have been proud of you,"
+she said in a low tone. "Is--is there no one else to--to rejoice in
+you?" she asked shyly, but eagerly.
+
+He laughed aloud. "There's dad, dear old dad."
+
+"And no one else?" Still with shy, eager eyes she held him.
+
+"Oh, heaps," he cried, still laughing.
+
+She smiled upon him, a slightly uncertain smile, and yet as if his
+answer somehow satisfied her.
+
+"Good-bye," she said impulsively, offering her hand.
+
+"But you are not going! You're staying a few days!" he gasped.
+
+"No, we're going. We're going right away. Goodbye," she said. "I don't
+want those others to see. Goodbye. Oh, it's been a wonderful morning!
+And,--and--a friend is a wonderful discovery."
+
+Her hand held his in a strong, warm grasp, but her eyes searched his
+face as if seeking something she greatly desired.
+
+"Good-bye. I am sorry you are going," he said, simply. "I want to know
+you better."
+
+"Do you?" she cried, with a sudden eagerness in her voice and manner.
+Then, "No. You would be disappointed. I am not of your world. But you
+shall see me again," she added, as if taking a new resolve. "We are
+coming back on a big hunt, and you and your father are to join us. Won't
+you?"
+
+"Dad said we should," said the youth, smiling at the remembrance.
+
+"And you?" she said, with a touch of impatience.
+
+"If things can so arrange themselves--my work, I mean, and dad's."
+
+"But, do you want to? Do you really want to?" she asked. "I wish I knew.
+I hate not to understand people. You are hard to know. I don't know you.
+But you will come?"
+
+"I think so," said the young man. "Of course a fellow's work comes
+first, you know."
+
+"Work?" she cried. "Your work? Oh, your missionary work. Oh, yes, yes. I
+should like to see you at it. Come, let us go."
+
+Mr. Cornwall Brand they found in a fever of impatience. He had the
+trip scheduled to a time table, and he hated to be forced to change his
+plans. His impatience showed itself in snappy commands and inquiries to
+his Indian guides, who, however, merely grunted replies. They knew their
+job and did it without command or advice, and with complete indifference
+to anything the white man might have to say. To Paula the only change in
+his manner was an excess of politeness.
+
+Her father, however, met her with remonstrances.
+
+"Why, Paula, my dear, you have kept us waiting."
+
+"What's the rush, pater?" she enquired, coolly.
+
+"Why, my dear, we are already behind our schedule, and you know Cornwall
+hates that," he said in a low voice.
+
+"Cornwall!" said Paula, in a loud voice of unmistakable ill temper.
+"Does Cornwall run this outfit?"
+
+"My dear Paula!" again remonstrated her father.
+
+She turned to him impatiently, with an angry word at her lips, caught
+upon Barry's face a look of surprise, paused midway in her passion, then
+moved slowly toward him.
+
+"Well," she asked, in an even, cold voice, "what do you think about it?
+And anyway," she dropped her voice so that none heard but himself, "why
+should you halt me? Who are you, to give me pause this way?"
+
+"Only a missionary," he answered, in an equally low tone, but with a
+smile gentle, almost wistful on his face.
+
+As with a flash the wrathful cloud vanished.
+
+"A missionary," she replied softly. "God knows I need one."
+
+"You do," he said emphatically, and still he smiled.
+
+"Come, Paula," called Cornwall Brand. "We are all waiting."
+
+Her face hardened at his words.
+
+"Good-bye," she said to Barry. "I am coming back again to--to your
+wonderful Canada."
+
+"Of course you are," said Barry, heartily. "They all do."
+
+He went with her to the canoe, steadied her as she took her place, and
+stood watching till the bend in the river shut them from view.
+
+"Nice people," said his father. "Very fine, jolly girl."
+
+"Yes, isn't she?" replied his son.
+
+"Handsome, too," said his father, glancing keenly at him.
+
+"Is she? Yes, I think so. Yes, indeed, very," he added, as if pondering
+the matter. "When do we move, dad?"
+
+A look of relief crossed the father's face.
+
+"This afternoon, I think. We have only a few days now. We shall run up
+Buffalo Creek into the Foothills for some trout. It will be a little
+stiff, but you are fit enough now, aren't you, Barry?" His voice was
+tinged with anxiety.
+
+"Fit for anything, dad, thanks to you."
+
+"Not to me, Barry. To yourself largely."
+
+"No," said the boy, throwing his arm round his father's shoulder,
+"thanks to you, dear old dad,--and to God."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ON THE RED PINE TRAIL
+
+
+On the Red Pine trail two men were driving in a buckboard drawn by a
+pair of half-broken pinto bronchos. The outfit was a rather ramshackle
+affair, and the driver was like his outfit. Stewart Duff was a rancher,
+once a "remittance man," but since his marriage three years ago he had
+learned self-reliance and was disciplining himself in self-restraint.
+A big, lean man he was, his thick shoulders and large, hairy muscular
+hands suggesting great physical strength, his swarthy face, heavy
+features, coarse black hair, keen dark eyes, deepset under shaggy
+brows, suggesting force of character with a possibility of brutality in
+passion. Yet when he smiled his heavy face was not unkindly, indeed the
+smile gave it a kind of rugged attractiveness. He was past his first
+youth, and on his face were the marks of the stormy way by which he had
+come.
+
+He drove his jibing bronchos with steady hands. No light touch was his
+upon the reins, and the bronchos' wild plunging met with a check
+from those muscular hands of such iron rigidity as to fling them back
+helpless and amazed upon their hocks.
+
+His companion was his opposite in physical appearance, and in those
+features and lines that so unmistakably reveal the nature and character
+within. Short and stout, inclined indeed to fat, to his great distress,
+his thick-set figure indicated strength without agility, solidity
+without resilience. He had a pleasant, open face, with a kindly,
+twinkling blue eye that goes with a merry heart, with a genial, sunny
+soul. But there was in the blue eye and in the open face, for all the
+twinkles and the smiles, a certain alert shrewdness that proclaimed the
+keen man of business, and in the clean cut lips lay the suggestion of
+resolute strength. A likable man he was, with an infinite capacity
+for humour, but with a bedrock of unyielding determination in him that
+always surprised those who judged him lightly.
+
+The men were friends, and had been comrades more or less during those
+pioneer days that followed their arrival in the country from Scotland
+some dozen years ago. Often they had fallen out with each other, for
+Duff was stormy of temper and had a habit of letting himself swing out
+upon its gusts of passion, reckless of consequences; but he was ever the
+one to offer amends and to seek renewal of good relations. He had few
+friends, and so he clung the more closely to those he had. At such times
+the other would wait in cool, good-tempered but determined aloofness for
+his friend's return.
+
+"You can chew your cud till you're cool again," he would say when the
+outbreak would arise. But invariably their differences were composed and
+their friendship remained unbroken.
+
+The men sat in the buckboard, leaning forward with hunched shoulders,
+swaying easily to the pitching of the vehicle as it rattled along the
+trail which, especially where it passed over the round topped ridges,
+was thickly strewn with stones. Before them, now on the trail and now
+ranging wide over the prairie, ran a beautiful black and white English
+setter.
+
+"Great dog that, Sandy," said Duff. "I could have had a dozen birds this
+afternoon. A wonderful nose, and steady as a rock."
+
+"A good dog, Stewart," assented Sandy, but with slight interest.
+
+"There ain't another like him in this western country," said the owner
+of the dog with emphasis.
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that. There are some very good dogs around here,
+Stewart," replied Sandy lightly.
+
+"But I know. And that's why I'm saying there ain't his like in this
+western country, and that's as true as your name is Sandy Bayne."
+
+"Well, my name is Sandy Bayne, all right, but how did he come out at the
+Calgary trials?"
+
+"Aw, those damned gawks! They don't know a good dog from a he-goat! They
+don't know what a dog is for, or how to use him."
+
+"Oh, now, Stewart," said Sandy, "I guess Willocks knows a dog when he
+sees one."
+
+"Willocks!" said his friend with scorn. "There's where you're wrong. Do
+you know why he cut Slipper out of the Blue Ribbon? Because he wouldn't
+range a mile away. Darned old fool! What's the good of a point a mile
+away! Keeps you running over the whole creation, makes you lose time,
+tires yourself and tires your dog; and more than that, in nine cases out
+of ten you lose your bird. Give me a close ranger. He cleans up as he
+goes, keeps your game right at your hand, and gets you all the sport
+there is."
+
+"Who beat you, Stewart, in the trials?"
+
+"That bitch of Snider's."
+
+"Man! Stewart, that's a beautiful bitch! I know her well. She's a
+beautiful bitch!" Sandy began to show enthusiasm.
+
+"Oh, there you go! That's just what those fool judges said. 'Beautiful
+dog! Beautiful dog!' Suppose she is! Looks ain't everything. They're
+something, but the question is, does she get the birds? Now, Slipper
+there got three birds to her one. Got 'em within range, too."
+
+"Ah, but Stewart, yon's a good bitch," said Sandy.
+
+"Look here!" cried his friend, "I have bred more dogs in the old country
+than those men ever saw in their lives."
+
+"That may be, Stewart, but yon's a good bitch," persisted Sandy.
+
+For a mile more they discussed the merits of Slipper and of his rivals,
+Sandy with his semi-humorous chaff extracting quiet amusement from his
+friend's wrath, and the latter, though suspecting that he was being
+drawn, unable to restrain his passionate championship of his dog.
+
+At length Sandy, wearying of the discussion, caught sight of a figure
+far before them on the trail.
+
+"Who is that walking along there?" he enquired.
+
+Together they ran over the names of all who in this horse country were
+unfortunate enough to be doomed to a pedestrian form of locomotion.
+
+"Guess it's the preacher," said Duff finally, whose eyes were like a
+hawk's.
+
+"He's been out at my place Sunday afternoon," said Sandy, "but I haven't
+met him myself. What sort is he?"
+
+"Don't ask me. I sometimes go with the madame to church, but generally I
+fall asleep. He's no alarm clock."
+
+"Then you can't tell what sort of a preacher he is," said Sandy with a
+twinkle in his eye. "You can't hear much when you are asleep."
+
+"I hear enough to know that he's no good as a preacher. I hear they're
+going to fire him."
+
+"I tell you what it is, Stewart," said Sandy, "I don't believe you would
+know a good sermon if you heard one."
+
+"What's that you say? I've heard the best preachers in the country that
+breeds preachers, in the country where preachers grow like the berries
+on the bramble bushes. I know preaching, and I like good preaching,
+too."
+
+"Oh, come off, Stewart! You may be a good judge of dogs, but I'm blowed
+if I am going to take you as a judge of preachers."
+
+"The same qualities in all of them, dogs, horses, preachers," insisted
+Duff.
+
+"How do you make that out?"
+
+"Well, take a horse. He must be a good-looker. This preacher is a
+good-looker, all right, but looks ain't everything. Must be quick at the
+start, must have good action, good style, staying power, and good at
+the finish. Most preachers never know when to finish, and that's the way
+with this man."
+
+"Are you going to take him up?" inquired Sandy, for they were now close
+upon the man walking before them.
+
+"Oh, I guess not," replied Duff. "I haven't much use for him."
+
+"Say, what's the matter with him? He looks rather puffed out," said
+Sandy. "Better take him up."
+
+"All right," replied Duff, pulling up his bronchos. "Good day. Will you
+have a ride? Mr. Barry Dunbar, my friend Mr. Bayne."
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Bayne," said Barry, who was pale and panting
+hard. "Thanks for the lift. The truth--is--I'm rather--done up. A touch
+of asthma--the first--in five years. An old trouble of mine."
+
+"Get up here," said Sandy. "There's room for three in the seat."
+
+"No--thank you,--I should--crowd you,--all right behind here. Beastly
+business--this asthma. Worse when--the pollen--from the plants--is
+floating--about--so they say. I don't know--nobody does--I fancy." They
+drove on, bumping over the stones, Barry gradually getting back his
+wind. The talk of the men in the front seat had fallen again on dogs,
+Stewart maintaining with ever increasing vehemence his expert knowledge
+of dogs, of hunting dogs, and very especially of setter hunting dogs;
+his friend, while granting his knowledge of dogs in general, questioning
+the unprejudiced nature of his judgment as far as Slipper was concerned.
+
+As Duff's declarations grew in violence they became more and more
+elaborately decorated with profanity. In the full tide of their
+conversation a quiet voice broke in:
+
+"Too many 'damns.'"
+
+"What!" exclaimed Duff.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" said Sandy.
+
+"Too many 'damns,'" said Barry, looking quietly at Duff.
+
+"Dams? Where?" said Duff, looking about.
+
+"Beaver dams, do you mean?" enquired Sandy. "I don't see any."
+
+"Too many 'damns,'" reiterated Barry. "You don't need them. You really
+don't need them, you know, and besides, they are not right. Profanity is
+quite useless, and it's wicked."
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" said Stewart in a low voice to his friend. "He
+means us."
+
+"And quite right, too," said Sandy solemnly. "You know your English is
+rotten bad. Yes, sir," he continued, turning round to Barry, "I quite
+agree with you. My friend is quite unnecessarily free in his speech."
+
+"Yes, but you are just the same, you know," said Barry. "Not quite so
+many, but then you are not quite so excited."
+
+"Got you there, old sport," grunted Duff, highly amused at Sandy's
+discomfiture. But to Barry he said, "I guess it's our own business how
+we express ourselves."
+
+"Yes, it is, but, pardon me, not entirely so. There are others in the
+world, you know, and you must consider others. The habit is a bad habit,
+a rotten habit, and quite useless--silly, indeed."
+
+Duff turned his back upon him. Sandy, giving his friend a nudge, burst
+into a loud laugh.
+
+"You are right, sir," he said, turning to Barry. "You are quite right."
+
+At this point Slipper created a diversion.
+
+"Hello!" said Duff. "Say! Look at him!" He pointed to the dog. "Ain't he
+a picture!"
+
+A hundred yards away stood Slipper, rigid, every muscle, every hair
+taut, one foot arrested in air.
+
+"I'll just get those," said Duff, slipping out of the buckboard and
+drawing the gun from beneath the seat. "Steady, old boy, steady! Hold
+the lines, Sandy."
+
+He moved quickly toward the dog who, quivering with that mysterious
+instinct found in the hunting dog, still held the point with taut
+muscles, nose and tail in line.
+
+"Hello!" Barry called out. "It isn't the season yet for chicken. I say,
+Mr. Duff," he shouted, "it isn't the chicken season, you know."
+
+"Better leave him alone," said Sandy.
+
+"But it isn't the season yet! It is against the law!" protested Barry
+indignantly.
+
+Meantime Stewart Duff was closing up cautiously behind Slipper.
+
+"Forward, old boy! Ste-e-e-ady! Forward!" The dog refused to move.
+"Forward, Slipper!"
+
+Still the dog remained rigid, as if nailed to the ground.
+
+"On, Slipper!"
+
+Slowly the dog turned his head with infinite caution half round toward
+his master, as if in protest.
+
+"Hello, there!" shouted Barry, "you know--"
+
+Just as he called there was on all sides a great whirring of wings. A
+dozen chicken flew up from under Duff's feet. Bang! Bang! went his gun.
+
+"Missed, as I'm a sinner!" exclaimed Sandy. "I thought he was a better
+shot than that."
+
+Back came Duff striding wide toward the buckboard. Fifty yards away he
+shouted:
+
+"Say! what the devil do you mean calling like that at a man when he's on
+the point of shooting!" His face was black with anger. He looked ready
+to strike. Barry looked at him steadily.
+
+"But, I was just reminding you that it was not the season for chicken
+yet," he said in the tone of a man prepared to reason the matter.
+
+"What's that got to do with it! And anyway, whose business is it what I
+do but my own?"
+
+"But it's against the law!"
+
+"Oh, blank the law! Besides--"
+
+"Besides it isn't--well, you know, it isn't quite sporting to shoot out
+of season." Barry's manner was as if dealing with a fractious child.
+
+Duff, speechless with his passion, looked at him as if not quite sure
+what form his vengeance should take.
+
+"He's quite right, Stewart," said his friend Sandy, who was hugely
+enjoying himself. "You know well enough you are down on the farmer chaps
+who go pot hunting before season. It's rotten sport, you know."
+
+"Oh, hell! Will you shut up! Can't I shoot over my dog when he points?
+I'm not out shooting. If I want to give my dog a little experience an
+odd bird or two don't matter. Besides, what the--"
+
+"Oh, come on, Stewart! Get in, and get a move on! You know you are in
+the wrong. But I thought you were a better shot than that," added Sandy.
+
+His remark diverted Duff's rage.
+
+"Better shot!" he stormed. "Who could shoot with a--a--a--" he was
+feeling round helplessly for a properly effective word,--"with a fellow
+yelling at you?" he concluded lamely. "I'd have had a brace of them if
+it hadn't been for him."
+
+"In that case," said Barry coolly, "I saved you from the law."
+
+"Saved me from the law! What the devil do you mean, anyway?" said
+Stewart. "If I want to pick up a bird who's to hinder me? And what's the
+law got to do with it?"
+
+"Well, you know, I'm not sure but it might have been my duty to report
+you. I feel that all who break the game laws should be reported. It is
+the only way to stop the lawless destruction of the game."
+
+Barry spoke in a voice of quiet deliberation, as if pondering the proper
+action in the premises.
+
+"Quite right, too," said Sandy gravely, but with a twinkle in his blue
+eye. "They ought to be reported. I have no use for those poachers."
+
+Duff made no reply. His rage and disgust, mingled with the sense of his
+being in the wrong, held him silent. No man in the whole country was
+harder upon the game poachers than he, but to be held up in his action
+and to be threatened with the law by this young preacher, whom he rather
+despised anyway, seemed to paralyse his mental activities. It did not
+help his self-control that he was aware that his friend was having his
+fun of him.
+
+At this moment, fortunately for the harmony of the party, their
+attention was arrested by the appearance of a motor car driven at a
+furious rate along the trail, and which almost before they were aware
+came honking upon them. With a wild lurch the bronchos hurled themselves
+from the trail, upsetting the buckboard and spilling its load.
+
+Duff, cumbered with his gun, which he had reloaded, allowed one of
+the reins to drop from his hands and the team went plunging about in a
+circle, but Barry, the first to get to his feet, rushed to the rescue,
+snatched the reins and held on till he had dragged the plunging bronchos
+to a halt.
+
+The rage which had been boiling in Duff, and which with difficulty had
+been held within bounds, suddenly burst all bonds of control. With
+a fierce oath he picked up the gun which he had thrown aside in his
+struggle with the horses, and levelled it at the speeding motor car.
+
+"For God's sake, Stewart, stop!" shouted Bayne, springing toward his
+friend.
+
+Barry was nearer and quicker. The shot went off, but his hand had
+knocked up the gun.
+
+"My God, Stewart! Are you clean crazy!" said Bayne, gripping him by the
+arm. "Do you know what you are doing? You are not fit to carry a gun!"
+
+"I'd have bust his blanked tires for him, anyway!" blustered Duff,
+though his face and voice showed that he had received a shock.
+
+"Yes, and you might have been a murderer by this time, and heading for
+the pen, but for Dunbar here. You owe him more than you can ever pay,
+you blanked fool!"
+
+Duff made no reply, but busied himself with his horses. Nor did he speak
+again till everything was in readiness for the road.
+
+"Get in," he then said gruffly, and that was his last word until they
+drove into the village.
+
+At the store he drew up.
+
+"Thank you for the lift," said Barry. "I should have had a tough job to
+get back in time."
+
+Duff grunted at him, and passed on into the store.
+
+"I am very glad to have met you," said Bayne, shaking hands warmly with
+him. "You have done us both a great service. He is my friend, you know."
+
+"I am afraid I have offended him, all the same. But you see I couldn't
+help it, could I?"
+
+Bayne looked at his young, earnest face for a moment or two as if
+studying him, then said with a curious smile, "No, I don't believe you
+could have helped it." And with that he passed into the store.
+
+"What sort of a chap is that preacher of yours?" he asked of the
+storekeeper.
+
+"I don't know; he ain't my church. Ask Innes there. He's a pillar."
+
+Bayne turned to a long, lean, hard-faced man leaning against the
+counter.
+
+"My name is Bayne, from Red Pine, Mr. Innes. I am interested in knowing
+what sort of a chap your preacher is. He comes out to our section, but I
+never met him till to-day."
+
+"Oh, he's no that bad," said Innes cautiously.
+
+"Not worth a cent," said a little, red headed man standing near. "He
+can't preach for sour apples."
+
+"I wadna just say that, Mr. Hayes," said Innes.
+
+"How do you know, Innes?" retorted Hayes. "You know you fall asleep
+before he gets rightly started."
+
+"I aye listen better with ma eyes shut."
+
+"Yes, and snore better, too, Mac," said Hayes. "But I don't blame you.
+Most of them go to sleep anyway. That's the kind of preacher he is."
+
+"What sort of a chap is he? I mean what sort of man?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, he's always buttin' in," volunteered a
+square-built military looking man standing near. "If he'd stick to
+his gospel it wouldn't be so bad, but he's always pokin' his nose into
+everything."
+
+"But he's no that bad," said Innes again, "and as for buttin' in,
+McFettridge, and preachin' the gospel, I doubt the country is a good
+deal the better for the buttin' in that him and his likes have done this
+past year. And besides, the bairns all like him."
+
+"Well, that's not a bad sign, Mr. Innes," said Sandy Bayne, "and I'm not
+sure that I don't like him myself. But I guess he butts in, all right."
+
+"Oh, ay! he butts in," agreed Innes, "but I'm no so sure that that's no
+a part of his job, too."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE
+
+
+The Dunbars lived in a cottage on a back street, which had the
+distinction of being the only home on the street which possessed the
+adornment of a garden. A unique garden it was, too. Indeed, with the
+single exception of Judge Hepburn's garden, which was quite an elaborate
+affair, and which was said to have cost the Judge a "pile of money,"
+there was none to compare with it in the village of Wapiti.
+
+Any garden on that bare, wind-swept prairie meant toil and infinite
+pains, but a garden like that of the Dunbars represented in addition
+something of genius. In conception, in design, and in execution the
+Dunbars' garden was something apart. Visitors were taken 'round to the
+back street to get a glimpse of the Dunbars' cottage and garden.
+
+The garden was in two sections. That at the back of the cottage,
+sheltered by a high, close board fence covered with Virginia creeper,
+was given over to vegetables, and it was quite marvellous how, under
+Richard Dunbar's care, a quarter of an acre of ground could grow such
+enormous quantities of vegetables of all kinds. Next to the vegetable
+garden came the plot for small fruits--strawberries, raspberries,
+currants, of rare varieties.
+
+The front garden was devoted to flowers. Here were to be found the old
+fashioned flowers dear to our grandmothers, and more particularly the
+old fashioned flowers native to English and Scottish soil. Between the
+two gardens a thick row of tall, splendid sunflowers made a stately
+hedge. Then came larkspur, peonies, stocks, and sweet-williams, verbenas
+and mignonette, with borders of lobelia and heliotrope. Along the fence
+were sweet peas, for which Alberta is famous.
+
+But it was the part of the garden close about the front porch and
+verandah where the particular genius of Richard Dunbar showed itself.
+Here the flowers native to the prairie, the coulee, the canyon, were
+gathered; the early wind flower, the crowfoot and the buffalo bean, wild
+snowdrops and violets. Over trellises ran the tiny morning-glory,
+with vetch and trailing arbutus. A bed of wild roses grew to wonderful
+perfection. Later in the year would be seen the yellow and crimson
+lilies, daisies white and golden, and when other flowers had faded,
+golden rod and asters in gorgeous contrast. The approach to the door of
+the house was by a gravel walk bordered by these prairie flowers.
+
+The house inside fulfilled the promise of the garden. The living room,
+simple in its plan, plain in its furnishing, revealed everywhere that
+touch in decorative adornment that spoke of the cultivated mind and
+refined taste. A group of rare etchings had their place over the mantel
+above a large, open fireplace. On the walls were to be seen really fine
+copies of the world's most famous pictures, and on the panels which ran
+'round the walls were bits of pottery and china, relics of other days
+and of other homes.
+
+But what was most likely to strike the eye of a stranger on entering the
+living room was the array of different kinds of musical instruments.
+At one end of the room stood a small upright piano, a 'cello held one
+corner, a guitar another; upon a table a cornet was deposited, and on
+the piano a violin case could be seen, while a banjo hung from a nail on
+the wall.
+
+Near the fireplace a curiously carved pipe-rack hung, with some half
+dozen pipes of weird design, evidently the collection of years, while
+just under it a small table held the utensils sacred to the smoker.
+
+When Barry entered he found the table set and everything in readiness
+for tea.
+
+"Awfully sorry I'm too late to help you with tea, dad. I have had a long
+walk, and quite a deuce of a time getting home."
+
+"All right, boy. Glad you are here. The toast is ready, tea waiting to
+be infused. But what happened? No, don't begin telling me till you get
+yourself ready. But hurry, your meeting hour will be on in no time."
+
+"Right-o, dad! Shame to make a slavey of you in this way. I'll be out in
+a jiffy."
+
+He threw off his coat and vest, shirt and collar, took a pail of water
+to a big block in the little shed at the back, soused his head and
+shoulders in it with loud snorting and puffing, and emerged in a few
+minutes looking refreshed, clean and wholesome, his handsome face
+shining with vigorous health.
+
+Together they stood at the table while the son said a few words of
+reverent grace.
+
+"I'm ravenous, dad. What! Fried potatoes! Oh, you are a brick."
+
+"Tired, boy?"
+
+"No. That reminds me of my thrilling tale, which I shall begin after
+my third slice of toast, and not before. You can occupy the precious
+minutes, dad, in telling me of your excitements in the office this
+afternoon."
+
+"Don't sniff at me. I had a few, though apparently you think it
+impossible in my humdrum grey life."
+
+"Good!" said Barry, his mouth full of toast. "Go on."
+
+"Young Neil Fraser is buying, or has just bought, the S.Q.R. ranch.
+Filed the transfer to-day."
+
+"Neil Fraser? He's in my tale, too. Bought the S.Q.R.? Where did he get
+the stuff?"
+
+"Stuff?"
+
+"Dough, the dirt, the wherewithal, in short the currency, dad."
+
+"Barry, you are ruining your English," said his father.
+
+"Yum-yum. Bully! Did you notice that, dad? I'm coming on, eh? One thing
+I almost pray about, that I might become expert in slinging the modern
+jaw hash. I'm appallingly correct in my forms of speech. But go on, dad.
+I'm throwing too much vocalisation myself. You were telling me about
+Neil Fraser. Give us the chorus now."
+
+"I don't like it, boy," said his father, shaking his head, "and
+especially in a clergyman."
+
+"But that's where you are off, dad. The trouble is, when I come within
+range of any of my flock all my flip vocabulary absolutely vanishes,
+and I find myself talking like a professor of English or a maiden lady
+school ma'am of very certain age."
+
+"I don't like it, boy. Correct English is the only English for a
+gentleman."
+
+"I wonder," said the lad. "But I don't want to worry you, dad."
+
+"Oh, as for me, that matters nothing at all, but I am thinking of you
+and of your profession, your standing."
+
+"I know that, dad. I sometimes wish you would think a little more about
+yourself. But what of Neil Fraser?"
+
+"He has come into some money. He has bought the ranch."
+
+Barry's tone expressed doubtful approval. "Neil is a good sort, dad,
+awfully reckless, but I like him," said Barry. "He is up and up with it
+all."
+
+"Now, what about your afternoon?" said his father.
+
+"Well, to begin with, I had a dose of my old friend, the enemy."
+
+"Barry, you don't tell me! Your asthma!" His father sat back from the
+table gazing at him in dismay. "And I thought that was all done with."
+
+"So did I, dad. But it really didn't amount to much. Probably some
+stomach derangement, more likely some of that pollen which is floating
+around now. I passed through a beaver meadow where they were cutting
+hay, and away I went in a gale of sneezing, forty miles an hour. But I'm
+all right now, dad. I'm telling you the truth. You know I do."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," said his father, concern and relief mingling in his
+voice, "but you don't know how to take care of yourself, Barry. But go
+on with your tale."
+
+"Well, as I was panting along like a 'heavey horse,' as Harry Hobbs
+would say,--not really too bad, dad,--along comes that big rancher,
+Stewart Duff, driving his team of pinto bronchos, and with him a chap
+named Bayne, from Red Pine Creek. He turned out to be an awfully decent
+sort. And Duff's dog, Slipper, ranging on ahead, a beautiful setter."
+
+"Yes, I have seen him."
+
+They discussed for a few moments the beauties and points of Duff's
+Slipper, for both were keen sportsmen, and both were devoted to dogs.
+Then Barry went back to his tale and gave an account of what had
+happened during the ride home.
+
+"You see Slipper ranging about got 'on point' and beautiful work it was,
+too. Out jumped Duff with his gun, ready to shoot, though, of course, he
+knew it was out of season and that he was breaking the law. Well, just
+as Slipper flushed the birds, I shouted to Duff that he was shooting out
+of season. He missed."
+
+"Oh, he was properly wrathful at my spoiling his shot," cried the young
+man.
+
+"I don't know that I blame him, Barry," said his father thoughtfully.
+"It is an annoying thing to be shouted at with your gun on a bird, you
+know, extremely annoying."
+
+"But he was breaking the law, dad!" cried Barry indignantly.
+
+"I know, I know. But after all--"
+
+"But, dad, you can't sit there and tell me that you don't condemn him
+for shooting out of season. You know nothing makes you more furious than
+hearing about chaps who pot chicken out of season."
+
+"I know, I know, my boy." The father was apparently quite distressed.
+"You are quite right, but--"
+
+"Now, dad, I won't have it! You are not to tell me that I had no
+business to stop him if I could. Besides, the law is the law, and sport
+is sport."
+
+"I quite agree, Barry. Believe me, I quite agree. Yet all the same, a
+chap does hate to have his shot spoiled, and to shout at a fellow with
+his gun on a bird,--well, you'll excuse me, Barry, but it is hardly the
+sporting thing."
+
+"Sporting! Sporting!" said Barry. "I know that I hated to do it, but
+it was right. Besides talk about 'sporting'--what about shooting out of
+season?"
+
+"Yes, yes. Well, we won't discuss it. Go on, Barry."
+
+"But I don't like it, dad. I don't like to think that you don't approve
+of what I do. It was a beastly hard thing to do, anyway. I had to make
+myself do it. It was my duty." The young man sat looking anxiously at
+his father.
+
+"Well, my boy," said his father, "I may be wrong, but do you think you
+are always called upon to remonstrate with every law breaker? No, listen
+to me," he continued hurriedly. "What I mean is, must you or any of us
+assume responsibility for every criminal in the land?"
+
+Barry sat silent a moment, considering this proposition.
+
+"I wish I knew, dad. You know, I have often said that to excuse myself
+after I have funked a thing, and let something go by without speaking up
+against it."
+
+"Funked it!"
+
+"Yes. Funked standing up for the right thing, you know."
+
+"Funked it!" said his father again. "You wouldn't do that, Barry?"
+
+"Oh, wouldn't I, though? I am afraid you don't know me very well, dad.
+However, I rather think I had started him up before that, you know. You
+won't like this either. But I may as well go through with it. You know,
+he was swearing and cursing most awfully, just in his ordinary talk you
+know, and that is a thing I can't stand, so I up and told him he was
+using too many 'damns.'"
+
+"You did, eh?" In spite of himself the father could not keep the
+surprise out of his voice. "Well, that took some nerve, at any rate."
+
+"There you are again, dad! You think I had no right to speak. But
+somehow I can't help feeling I was right. For don't you see, it would
+have seemed a bit like lowering the flag to have kept silent."
+
+"Then for God's sake speak out, lad! I do not feel quite the same way as
+you, but it is what you think yourself that must guide you. But go on,
+go on."
+
+"Well, I assure you he was in a proper rage, and if it hadn't been
+for Bayne I believe he would have trimmed me to a peak, administered a
+fitting castigation, I mean."
+
+"He would, eh?" said the father with a grim smile. "I should like to see
+him try."
+
+"So should I, dad, if you were around. I think I see you--feint with
+the right, then left, right, left! bing! bang! bung! All over but the
+shiver, eh, dad? It would be sweet! But," he added regretfully, "that's
+the very thing a fellow cannot do."
+
+"Cannot do? And why not, pray? It is what every fellow is in duty bound
+to do to a bully of that sort."
+
+"Yes, but to be quite fair, dad, you could hardly call Duff a bully. At
+least, he wasn't bullying me. As a matter of fact, I was bullying him.
+Oh, I think he had reason to be angry. When a chap undertakes to pull
+another chap up for law breaking, perhaps he should be prepared to take
+the consequences. But to go on. Bayne stepped in--awfully decent of
+him, too,--when just at that moment, as novelists say, with startling
+suddenness occurred an event that averted the impending calamity. Along
+came Neil Fraser, no less, in that new car of his, in a whirlwind of
+noise and dust, honking like a flock of wild geese. Well, you should
+have seen those bronchos. One lurch, and we were on the ground, a
+beautiful upset, and the bronchos in an incipient runaway, fortunately
+checked by your humble servant. Duff, in a new and real rage this time,
+up with his gun and banged off both barrels after the motor car, by this
+time honking down the trail."
+
+"By Jove! he deserved it," said the father. "Those motor fellows make me
+long to do murder at times."
+
+"That's because you have no car, Dad, of course."
+
+"Did he hit him, do you think?"
+
+"No. My arm happened to fly up, the gun banged toward the zenith.
+Nothing doing!"
+
+"Well, Barry, you do seem to have run foul of Mr. Duff."
+
+"Three times, dad. But each time prevented him from breaking the law and
+doing himself and others injury. Would you have let him off this last
+time, dad?"
+
+"No, no, boy. Human life has the first claim upon our care. You did
+quite right, quite right. Ungovernable fool he must be! Shouldn't be
+allowed to carry a gun."
+
+"So Bayne declared," said Barry.
+
+"Well, you have had quite an exciting afternoon. But finish your tea and
+get ready for the meeting. I will wash up."
+
+"Not if I know it, dad. You take your saw-horse and do me a little
+Handel or Schubert. Do, please," entreated his son. "I want that before
+meeting more than anything else. I want a change of mood. I confess I am
+slightly rattled. My address is all prepared, but I must have atmosphere
+before I go into the meeting."
+
+His father took the 'cello, and after a few moments spent in carefully
+tuning up, began with Handel's immortal Largo, then he wandered into
+the Adagio Movement in Haydn's third Sonata, from thence to Schubert's
+Impromptu in C Minor, after which he began the Serenade, when he was
+checked by his son.
+
+"No, not that, dad, that's sickening. I consider that the most morally
+relaxing bit of music that I know. It frays the whole moral fibre. Give
+us one of Chopin's Ballades, or better still a bit of that posthumous
+Fantasie Impromptu, the largo movement. Ah! fine! fine!"
+
+He flung his dish-cloth aside, ran to the piano and began an
+accompaniment to his father's playing.
+
+"Now, dad, the Largo once more before we close." They did the Largo once
+and again, then springing from the piano Barry cried: "That Largo is
+a means of grace to me. There could be no better preparation for a
+religious meeting than that. If you would only come in and play for
+them, it would do them much more good than all my preaching."
+
+"If you would only take your music seriously, Barry," replied his
+father, somewhat sadly, "you would become a good player, perhaps even a
+great player."
+
+"And then what, dad?"
+
+His father waved him aside, putting up his 'cello.
+
+"No use going into that again, boy."
+
+"Well, I couldn't have been a great player, at any rate, dad."
+
+"Perhaps not, boy, perhaps not," said his father. "Great players are
+very rare. But it is time for your meeting."
+
+"So it is, dad. Awfully sorry I didn't finish up those dishes. Let them
+go till I return. I wish you would, dad, and come along with me." His
+voice had a wistful note in it.
+
+"Not to-night, boy, I think. We will have some talk after. You will only
+be an hour, you know."
+
+"All right, dad," said Barry. "Some time you may come." He could not
+hide the wistful regret of his tone.
+
+"Perhaps I shall, boy," replied his father.
+
+It was the one point upon which there was a lack of perfect harmony
+between father and son. When the boy went to college it was with the
+intention of entering the profession of law, for which his father had
+been reading in his young manhood when the lure of Canada and her broad,
+free acres caught him, and he had abandoned the law and with his wife
+and baby boy had emigrated to become a land owner in the great Canadian
+west.
+
+Alas! death, that rude spoiler of so many plans, broke in upon the
+sanctity and perfect peace of that happy ranch home and ravished it of
+its treasure, leaving a broken hearted man and a little boy, orphaned
+and sickly, to be cared for. The ranch was sold, the rancher moved to
+the city of Edmonton, thence in a few years to a little village some
+twenty-five miles nearer to the Foothills, where he became the Registrar
+and Homestead Inspector for the district.
+
+Here he had lived ever since, training the torn tendrils of his heart
+about the lad, till peace came back again, though never the perfect
+joy of the earlier days. Every May Day the two were wont to go upon an
+expedition many miles into the Foothills, to a little, sunny spot, where
+a strong, palisaded enclosure held a little grave. So little it looked,
+and so lonely amid the great hills. There, not in an abandonment of
+grief, but in loving and grateful remembrance of her whose dust the
+little grave now held, of what she had been to them, and had done for
+them, they spent the day, returning to take up again with hearts solemn,
+tender and chastened, the daily routine of life.
+
+That his son should grow to take up the profession of law had been the
+father's dream, but during his university course the boy had come under
+the compelling influence of a spiritual awakening that swept him into
+a world filled with new impressions and other desires. Obeying what
+he felt to be an imperative call, the boy chose the church as his
+profession, and after completing his theological course in the city of
+Winnipeg, and spending a year in study in Germany, while still a mere
+youth he had been appointed as missionary to the district of which his
+own village was the centre.
+
+But though widely separate from each other in the matter of religion,
+there were many points of contact between them. They were both men of
+the great out-of-doors, and under his father's inspiration and direction
+the boy had come to love athletic exercises of all kinds. They were
+both music-mad, the father having had in early youth a thorough musical
+education, the boy possessing musical talent of a high order. Such
+training as was his he had received from his father, but it was confined
+to one single instrument, the violin. To this instrument, upon which his
+father had received the tuition of a really excellent master, the son
+devoted long hours of study and practice during his boyhood years, and
+his attainments were such as to give promise of something more than
+an amateur's mastery of his instrument. His college work, however,
+interfered with his music, and to his father's great disappointment and
+regret he was forced to lay aside his study of the violin. On the piano,
+however, the boy developed an extraordinary power of improvisation and
+of sight reading, and while his technique was faulty his insight, his
+power of interpretation were far in excess of many artists who were his
+superiors in musical knowledge and power of execution. Many were the
+hours the father and son spent together through the long evenings of
+the western winter, and among the many bonds that held them in close
+comradeship, none was stronger than their common devotion to music.
+
+Long after his son had departed to his meeting the father sat dreaming
+over his 'cello, wandering among the familiar bits from the old masters
+as fancy led him, nor was he aware of the lapse of time till his son
+returned.
+
+"Hello! Nine-thirty?" he exclaimed, looking at his watch. "You have
+given them an extra dose to-night."
+
+"Business meeting afterwards, which didn't come off after all," said
+his son. "Postponed till next Sunday." With this curt announcement, and
+without further comment he sat down at his desk.
+
+But after a few moments he rose quickly, saying, "Let us do some real
+work, dad."
+
+He took up his violin. His father, who was used to his moods, without
+question or remark proceeded to tune up. An hour's hard practice
+followed, without word from either except as regarded the work in hand.
+
+"I feel better now, dad," said the young man when they had finished.
+"And now for a round with you."
+
+"But what about your wind, boy? I don't like that asthma of yours this
+afternoon."
+
+"I am quite all right. It's quite gone. I feel sure it was the pollen
+from the beaver meadow."
+
+They cleared back the table and chairs from the centre of the room,
+stripped to their shirts, put on the gloves and went at each other with
+vim. Their style was similar, for the father had taught the son all
+he knew, except that the father's was the fighting and the son's the
+sparring style. To-night the roles appeared to be reversed, the son
+pressing hard at the in-fighting, the father trusting to his foot work
+and countering with the light touch of a man making points.
+
+"You ARE boring in, aren't you?" said the father, stopping a fierce
+rally.
+
+"You are not playing up, dad," said his son. "I don't feel like soft
+work to-night. Come to me!"
+
+"As you say," replied the father, and for the next five minutes Barry
+had no reason to complain of soft work, for his father went after him
+with all the fight that was in him, so that in spite of a vigorous
+defence the son was forced to take refuge in a runaway game.
+
+"Now you're going!" shouted the son, making a fierce counter with his
+right to a hard driven left, which he side-stepped. It was a fatal
+exposure. Like the dart of a snake the right hand hook got him below the
+jaw, and he was hurled breathless on the couch at the side of the room.
+
+"Got you now!" said his father.
+
+"Not quite yet," cried Barry. Like a cat he was on his feet, breathing
+deep breaths, dodging about, fighting for time.
+
+"Enough!" cried his father, putting down his hands.
+
+"Play up!" shouted Barry, who was rapidly recovering his wind. "No soft
+work. Watch out!"
+
+Again the father was on guard, while Barry, who seemed to have drawn
+upon some secret source of strength, came at him with a whirlwind
+attack, feinting, jabbing, swinging, hooking, till finally he landed a
+short half arm on the jaw, which staggered his father against the wall.
+
+"Pax!" cried the young man. "I have all I want."
+
+"Great!" said his father. "I believe you could fight, boy, if you were
+forced to."
+
+In the shed they sluiced each other with pails of water, had a rub down
+and got into their dressing gowns.
+
+"I feel fine, now, dad, and ready for anything," said Barry, glowing
+with his exercise and his tub. "I was feeling like a quitter. I guess
+that asthma got at my nerve. But I believe I will see it through some
+way."
+
+"Yes?" said his father, and waited.
+
+"Yes. They were talking blue ruin in there to-night. Finances are
+behind, congregation is running down, therefore the preacher is a
+failure."
+
+"Well, lad, remember this," said his father, "never let your liver
+decide any course of action for you. Some good stiff work, a turn
+with the gloves, for instance, is the best preparation I know for any
+important decision. A man cannot decide wisely when he feels grubby.
+Your asthma this afternoon is a symptom of liver."
+
+"It is humiliating to a creature endowed with conscience and intellect
+to discover how small a part these play at times in his decisions.
+The ancients were not far wrong who made the liver the seat of the
+emotions."
+
+"Well," said his father, "it is a good thing to remember that most of
+our bad hours come from our livers. So the preacher is a failure? Who
+said so?"
+
+"Oh, a number of them, principally Hayes."
+
+"Thank God, and go to sleep," said his father. "If Hayes were pleased
+with my preaching I should greatly suspect my call to the ministry."
+
+"But seriously, I am certainly not a great preacher, and perhaps not
+a preacher at all. They say I have no 'pep,' which with some of them
+appears to be the distinctive and altogether necessary characteristic of
+a popular preacher."
+
+"What said Innes?" enquired his father.
+
+"Did you ever hear Innes say much? From his silence one would judge that
+he must possess the accumulated wisdom of the ages."
+
+"When he does talk, however, he generally says something. What was his
+contribution?"
+
+"'Ah, weel,' said the silent one, 'Ah doot he's no a Spurgeon, not yet a
+Billy Sunday, but ye'll hardly be expectin' thae fowk at Wapiti for nine
+hundred dollars a year.' Then, bless his old heart, he added, 'But the
+bairns tak to him like ducks to water, so you'd better bide a bit.' So
+they decided to 'bide a bit' till next Sunday. Dad, at first I wanted
+to throw their job in their faces, only I always know that it is the old
+Adam in me that feels like that, so I decided to 'bide a bit' too."
+
+"It is a poor job, after all, my boy," said his father. "It's no
+gentleman's job the way it is carried on in this country. To think of
+your being at the bidding of a creature like Hayes!"
+
+He could have said no better word. The boy's face cleared like the
+sudden shining of the sun after rain. He lifted his head and said,
+
+"Thank God, not at his bidding, dad. 'One is your Master,'" he quoted.
+"But after all, Hayes has something good in him. Do you know, I rather
+like him. He's--"
+
+"Oh, come now, we'll drop it right there," said his father, in a
+disgusted tone. "When you come to finding something to like in that rat,
+I surrender."
+
+"Who knows?" said the boy, as if to himself. "Poor Hayes. He may be
+quite a wonderful man, considering all things, his heredity and his
+environment. What would I have been, dad, but for you?"
+
+His father grunted, pulled hard at his pipe, coughed a bit, then looked
+his son straight in the face, saying, "God knows what any of us owe to
+our past." He fell into silence. His mind was far away, following his
+heart to the palisaded plot of ground among the Foothills and the little
+grave there in which he had covered from his sight her that had been the
+inspiration to his best and finest things, and his defence against the
+things low and base that had once hounded his soul, howling hard upon
+his trail.
+
+The son, knowing his mood, sat in silence with him, then rising suddenly
+he sat himself on the arm of his father's chair, threw his arm around
+his shoulder and said, "Dear old dad! Good old boy you are, too. Good
+stuff! What would I have been but for you? A puny, puling, wretched
+little crock, afraid of anything that could spit at me. Do you remember
+the old gander? I was near my eternal damnation that day."
+
+"But you won out, my boy," said his father in a croaking voice, putting
+his arm round his son.
+
+"Yes, because you made me stick it, just as you have often made me stick
+it since. May God forget me if I ever forget what you have done for me.
+Shall we read now?"
+
+He took the big Bible from its place upon the table, and turning the
+leaves read aloud from the teachings of the world's greatest Master. It
+was the parable of the talents.
+
+"Rather hard on the failure," he said as he closed the book.
+
+"No, not the failure," said his father, "the slacker, the quitter. It is
+nature's law. There is no place in God's universe for a quitter."
+
+"You are right, dad," said Barry. "Good-night."
+
+He kissed his father, as he had ever done since his earliest infancy.
+Their prayers were said in private, the son, clergyman though he was,
+could never bring himself to offer to lead the devotions of him at whose
+knee he had kneeled every night of his life, as a boy, for his evening
+prayer.
+
+"Good-night, boy," said his father, holding him by the hand for a moment
+or so. "We do not know what is before us, defeat, loss, suffering. That
+part is not in our hands altogether, but the shame of the quitter never
+need, and never shall be ours."
+
+The little man stepped into his bedroom with his shoulders squared and
+his head erect.
+
+"By Jove! He's no quitter," said his son to himself, as his eyes
+followed him. "When he quits he'll be dead. God keep me from shaming
+him!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+REJECTED
+
+
+The hour for the church service had not quite arrived, but already a
+number of wagons, buckboards and buggies had driven up and deposited
+their loads at the church door. The women had passed into the church,
+where the Sunday School was already in session; the men waited outside,
+driven by the heat of the July sun and the hotter July wind into the
+shade of the church building.
+
+Through the church windows came the droning of voices, with now and then
+a staccato rapping out of commands heard above the droning.
+
+"That's Hayes," said a sturdy young chap, brown as an Indian, lolling
+upon the grass. "He likes to be bossing something."
+
+"That's so, Ewen," replied a smaller man, with a fish-like face, his
+mouth and nose running into a single feature.
+
+"I guess he's doin' his best, Nathan Pilley," answered another man,
+stout and stocky, with bushy side whiskers flanking around a rubicund
+face, out of which stared two prominent blue eyes.
+
+"Oh, I reckon he is, Mr. Boggs. I have no word agin Hayes," replied
+Nathan Pilley, a North Ontario man, who, abandoning a rocky farm in
+Muskoka, had strayed to this far west country in search of better
+fortune. "I have no word agin Mr. Hayes, Mr. Boggs," he reiterated. "In
+fact, I think he ought to be highly commended for his beneficent work."
+
+"But he does like to hear himself giving out orders, all the same,"
+persisted the young man addressed as Ewen.
+
+"Yes, he seems to sorter enjoy that, too, Ewen," agreed Nathan, who was
+never known to oppose any man's opinion.
+
+"He's doin' his best," insisted Mr. Boggs, rather sullenly.
+
+"Yes, he is that, Mr. Boggs, he is that," said Nathan.
+
+"But he likes to be the big toad in the puddle," said Ewen.
+
+"Well, he certainly seems to, he does indeed, Ewen."
+
+Clear over the droning there arose at this point another sound, a chorus
+of childish laughter.
+
+"That's the preacher's class," said Boggs. "Quare sort o' Sunday School
+where the kids carry on like that."
+
+"Seems rather peculiar," agreed Nathan, "peculiar in Sunday School, it
+does."
+
+"What's the matter with young Pickles?" enquired Ewen.
+
+The eyes of the company, following the pointing finger, fell upon young
+Pickles standing at the window of the little vestry to the church, and
+looking in. He was apparently convulsed with laughter, with his hand
+hard upon his mouth and nose as a kind of silencer.
+
+"Do you know what's the matter with him, Pat?" continued Ewen.
+
+Pat McCann, the faithful friend and shadow of young Pickles, after
+studying the attitude and motions of his friend, gave answer:
+
+"It's the preacher, I guess. He's kiddin' the kids inside. He's some
+kidder, too," he said, moving to take his place beside his friend.
+
+"What's he doing anyway?" said Ewen. "I'm going to see."
+
+Gradually a little company gathered behind young Pickles and Pat McCann.
+The window commanded a view of the room, yet in such a way that the
+group were unobserved by the speaker.
+
+"Say, you ought to seen him do the camel a minute ago," whispered
+Pickles.
+
+In the little vestry room were packed some twenty children of all ages
+and sizes, with a number of grownups who had joined the class in charge
+of some of its younger members. There was, for instance, Mrs. Innes,
+with the two youngest of her numerous progeny pillowed against her
+yielding and billowy person; and Mrs. Stewart Duff, an infant of only a
+few weeks upon her knee accounting sufficiently for the paleness of
+her sweet face, and two or three other women with their small children
+filling the bench that ran along the wall.
+
+"Say! look at Harry Hobbs," said Pat McCann to his friend.
+
+Upon the stove, which in summer was relegated to the corner of the room,
+sat Harry Hobbs, a man of any age from his appearance, thin and wiry,
+with keen, darting eyes, which now, however, were fastened upon the
+preacher. All other eyes were, too. Even the smallest of the children
+seated on the front bench were gazing with mouths wide open, as if
+fascinated, upon the preacher who, moving up and down with quick, lithe
+steps, was telling them a story. A wonderful story, too, it seemed, the
+wonder of it apparent in the riveted eyes and fixed faces. It was
+the immortal story, matchless in the language, of Joseph, the Hebrew
+shepherd boy, who, sold into slavery by his brethren, became prime
+minister of the mighty empire of Egypt. The voice tone of the minister,
+now clear and high, now low and soft, vibrating like the deeper notes
+of the 'cello, was made for story telling. Changing with every changing
+emotion, it formed an exquisite medium to the hearts of the listeners
+for the exquisite music of the tale.
+
+The story was approaching its climactic denouement; the rapturous
+moment of the younger brother's revealing was at hand; Judah, the
+older brother, was now holding the centre of the stage and making that
+thrilling appeal, than which nothing more moving is to be found in our
+English speech. The preacher's voice was throbbing with all the
+pathos of the tale. Motionless, the little group hung hard upon the
+story-teller, when the door opened quickly, a red head appeared, a
+rasping voice broke in:
+
+"Your class report, Mr. Dunbar, please. We're waiting for it."
+
+A sigh of disappointment and regret swept the room.
+
+"Oh, darn the little woodpecker!" said Ewen from the outside, in a
+disgusted tone. "That's the way with Hayes. He thinks he's the whole
+works, and that he never can get in wrong."
+
+The spell was broken, never to be renewed. The story hurried to its
+close, but the great climax failed of its proper effect.
+
+"He's a hummer, ain't he?" exclaimed young Pickles to his friend, Pat
+McCann.
+
+"Some hummer, and then some!" replied Pat.
+
+"I'm goin' in," said Pickles.
+
+"Aw, what for? He ain't no good preachin' to them folks. By gum! I think
+he's scared of 'em."
+
+But Pickles persisted, and followed with the men and boys who lounged
+lazily into the church, from which the Sunday School had now been
+dismissed.
+
+It appeared that the judgment of Pat McCann upon the merits of the
+preacher would be echoed by the majority of the congregation present.
+While the service was conducted in proper form and in reverent spirit,
+the sermon was marked by that most unpardonable sin of which sermons can
+be guilty; it was dull. Solid enough in matter, thoughtful beyond the
+average, it was delivered in a style appallingly wooden, with an utter
+absence of that arresting, dramatic power that the preacher had shown in
+his children's class.
+
+The appearance of the congregation was, as ever, a reflection of the
+sermon. The heat of the day, the reaction from the long week in the open
+air, the quiet monotony of the well modulated voice rising and falling
+in regular cadence in what is supposed by so many preachers to be
+the tone suitable for any sacred office, produced an overwhelmingly
+somnolent effect. Many of them slept, some frankly and openly, others
+under cover of shading hands, bowed heads, or other subterfuges. Others
+again spent the whole of the period of the sermon, except for some
+delicious moments of surreptitious sleep, in a painful but altogether
+commendable struggle against the insidious influence of the god of
+slumber.
+
+Among the latter was Mrs. Innes, whose loyalty to her minister, which
+was as much a part of her as her breathing, contended in a vigorous
+fight against her much too solid flesh. It was a certain aid to
+wakefulness that her two children, deep in audible slumber, kept her in
+a state of active concern lest their inert and rotund little masses of
+slippery flesh should elude her grasp, and wreck the proprieties of the
+hour by flopping on the floor. There was also a further sleep deterrent
+in the fact that immediately before her sat Mr. McFettridge, whose
+usually erect form, yielding to the soporific influences of the
+environment, showed a tendency gradually to sag into an attitude,
+relaxed and formless, which suggested sleep. This, to the lady behind
+him, partook of the nature of an affront to her minister. Consequently
+she considered it her duty to arouse the snoozing McFettridge with a
+vigorous poke in the small of the back.
+
+The effect was instantaneously apparent. As if her insistent finger had
+touched a button and released an electric current, Mr. McFettridge's
+sagging form shot convulsively into rigidity, and impinging violently
+upon the peacefully slumbering Mr. Boggs on the extreme end of the
+bench, toppled him over into the aisle.
+
+The astonished Boggs, finding himself thus deposited upon the floor, and
+beholding the irate face of Mr. McFettridge glooming down upon him, and
+fancying him to be the cause of his present humiliating position, sprang
+to his feet, swung a violent blow upon Mr. Fettridge's ear, exclaiming
+sotto voce:
+
+"Take that, will you! And mind your own business! You were sleeping
+yourself, anyway!"
+
+Before the astonished and enraged Mr. McFettridge could gather his wits
+sufficiently for action, there rang over the astonished congregation a
+peal of boyish laughter. It was from the minister. A few irrepressible
+youngsters joined in the laugh; the rest of the congregation, however,
+were held rigid in the grip of a shocked amazement.
+
+"Oh, I say! do forgive me, Mr. McFettridge!" cried the young man at the
+desk. "It was quite involuntary, I assure you." Then, quickly recovering
+himself, he added, "And now we shall conclude the service by singing the
+seventy-ninth hymn."
+
+Before the last verse was sung he reminded the audience of the
+congregational meeting immediately following, and without further
+comment the service was brought to a close.
+
+A number of the congregation, among them Barry's father, departed.
+
+"Sit down, Neil," said Mrs. Innes to Neil Fraser. "You'll be wanted I
+doot." And Neil, protesting that he knew nothing about church business,
+sat down.
+
+At the back of the church were gathered Harry Hobbs, young Pickles,
+and others of the less important attendants of the church, who had been
+induced to remain by the rumour of a "scrap."
+
+By a fatal mischance, the pliant Nathan Pilley was elected chairman.
+This gentleman was obsessed by the notion that he possessed in a high
+degree the two qualities which he considered essential to the harmonious
+and expeditious conduct of a public meeting, namely, an invincible
+determination to agree with every speaker, and an equally invincible
+determination to get motions passed.
+
+In a rambling and aimless speech, Mr. Pilley set forth in a somewhat
+general way the steps leading up to this meeting, and then called
+upon Mr. Innes, the chairman of the Board of Management, to state more
+specifically the object for which it was called.
+
+Mr. Innes, who was incurably averse to voluble speech, whether public or
+private, arose and said, in rolling Doric:
+
+"Weel, Mr. Chair-r-man, there's no much to be done. We're behind a few
+hundred dollars, but if some one will go about wi' a bit paper, nae doot
+the ar-rear-rs wad soon be made up, and everything wad be ar-richt."
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Pilley pleasantly. "Now will some one offer a
+motion?"
+
+Thereupon Mr. Hayes was instantly upon his feet, and in a voice thin and
+rasping exclaimed:
+
+"Mr. Chairman, there's business to be done, and we are here to do it,
+and we're not going to be rushed through in this way."
+
+"Exactly, Mr. Hayes, exactly," said Mr. Pilley. "We must give these
+matters the fullest consideration."
+
+Then followed a silence.
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Hayes--" continued the chairman, looking appealingly at
+that gentleman.
+
+"Well, Mr. Chairman," said Mr. Hayes, with an appeased but slightly
+injured air, "it is not my place to set forth the cause of this meeting
+being called. If the chairman of the board would do his duty"--here he
+glared at the unconscious Mr. Innes--"he would set before it the
+things that have made this meeting necessary, and that call for drastic
+action."
+
+"Hear! Hear!" cried Mr. Boggs.
+
+"Exactly so," acquiesced the chairman. "Please continue, Mr. Hayes."
+
+Mr. Hayes continued: "The situation briefly is this: We are almost
+hopelessly in debt, and--"
+
+"How much?" enquired Neil Fraser, briskly interrupting.
+
+"Seven hundred dollars," replied Mr. Hayes, "and further--"
+
+"Five hundred dollars," said Mr. Innes.
+
+"I have examined the treasurer's books," said Mr. Hayes in the calmly
+triumphant tone of one sure of his position, "and I find the amount to
+be seven hundred dollars, and therefore--"
+
+"Five hundred dollars," repeated Mr. Innes, gazing into space.
+
+"Seven hundred dollars, I say," snapped Mr. Hayes.
+
+"Five hundred dollars," reiterated Mr. Innes, without further comment.
+
+"I say I have examined the books. The arrears are seven hundred
+dollars."
+
+"Five hundred dollars," said Mr. Innes calmly.
+
+The youngsters at the back snickered.
+
+"Go to it!" said Harry Hobbs, under his breath.
+
+Even the minister, who was sitting immediately behind Harry, could not
+restrain a smile.
+
+"Mr. Chairman," cried Mr. Hayes, indignantly, "I appeal against this
+interruption. I assert--"
+
+"Where's the treasurer?" said Neil Fraser. "What's the use of this
+chewin' the rag?"
+
+"Ah! Exactly so," said the chairman, greatly relieved. "Mr.
+Boggs--Perhaps Mr. Boggs will enlighten us."
+
+Mr. Boggs arose with ponderous deliberation.
+
+"Mr. Chairman," he said, "in one sense Mr. Hayes is right when he states
+the arrears to be seven hundred dollars--"
+
+"Five hundred dollars A'm tellin' ye," said Mr. Innes with the first
+sign of feeling he had shown.
+
+"And Mr. Innes is also right," continued Mr. Boggs, ignoring the
+interruption, "when he makes the arrears five hundred dollars, the two
+hundred dollars difference being the quarterly revenue now due."
+
+"Next week," said Mr. Innes, reverting to his wonted calm.
+
+"Exactly so," said the chairman, rubbing his hands amiably; "so that the
+seven hundred dollars we now owe--"
+
+This was too much even for the imperturbable Mr. Innes.
+
+He arose in his place, moved out into the aisle, advanced toward the
+platform, and with arm outstretched, exclaimed in wrathful tones:
+
+"Mon, did ye no hear me tellin' ye? I want nae mon to mak' me a le-ear."
+
+At this point Mr. Stewart Duff, who had come to convey his wife home,
+and had got tired waiting for her outside, entered the church.
+
+"Oh, get on with the business," said Neil Fraser, who, although enjoying
+the scene, was becoming anxious for his dinner. "The question what's to
+be done with the five hundred dollars' arrears. I say, let's make it up
+right here. I am willing to give--"
+
+"No, Mr. Chairman," shouted Mr. Hayes, who was notoriously averse
+to parting with his money, and was especially fearful of a public
+subscription.
+
+"There is something more than mere arrears--much more--"
+
+"Ay, there is," emphatically declared Mr. McFettridge, rising straight
+and stiff. "I'm for plain speakin'. The finances is not the worst about
+this congregation. The congregation has fallen off. Other churches in
+this village has good congregations. Why shouldn't we? The truth is, Mr.
+Chairman,"--Mr. McFettridge's voice rolled deep and sonorous over the
+audience--"we want a popular preacher--a preacher that draws--a preacher
+with some pep."
+
+"Hear! hear!" cried Mr. Boggs. "Pep's what we want. That's it--pep."
+
+"Pep," echoed the chairman. "Exactly so, pep."
+
+"More than that," continued Mr. McFettridge, "we want a minister that's
+a good mixer--one that stands in with the boys."
+
+"Hear! Hear!" cried Mr. Boggs again.
+
+"A mixer! Exactly!" agreed the chairman. "A mixer!" nodding pleasantly
+at Mr. Boggs.
+
+"And another thing I will say," continued Mr. McFettridge, "now that I
+am on my feet. We want a preacher that will stick to his job--that will
+preach the gospel and not go meddlin' with other matters--with politics
+and such like."
+
+"Or prohibition," shouted Harry Hobbs from the rear, to the undiluted
+joy of the youngsters in his vicinity.
+
+The minister shook his head at him.
+
+"Yes, prohibition," answered Mr. McFettridge, facing toward the rear
+of the church defiantly. "Let him stick to his preaching the gospel; I
+believe the time has come for a change and I'm prepared to make a motion
+that we ask our minister to resign, and that motion I now make."
+
+"Second the motion," cried Mr. Boggs promptly.
+
+"You have heard the motion," said the chairman, with business-like
+promptitude. "Are you ready for the question?"
+
+"Question," said Mr. Hayes, after a few moments' silence, broken by the
+shuffling of some members in their seats, and by the audible whispering
+of Mrs. Innes, evidently exhorting her husband to action.
+
+"Then all those in favour of the motion will please--"
+
+Then from behind the organ a little voice piped up, "Does this mean, Mr.
+Chairman, that we lose our minister?"
+
+It was Miss Quigg, a lady whose years no gallantry could set below
+forty, for her appearance indicated that she was long past the bloom of
+her youth. She was thin, almost to the point of frailness, with sharp,
+delicately cut features; but the little chin was firm, and a flash of
+the brown eyes revealed a fiery soul within. Miss Quigg was the milliner
+and dressmaker of the village, and was herself a walking model of her
+own exquisite taste in clothes and hats. It was only her failing health
+that had driven her to abandon a much larger sphere than her present
+position offered, but even here her fame was such as to draw to her
+little shop customers from the villages round about for many miles.
+
+"Does this mean, sir, that Mr. Dunbar will leave us?" she repeated.
+
+"Well,--yes, madam--that is, Miss, I suppose, in a way--practically it
+would amount to that."
+
+"Will you tell me yes or no, please," Miss Quigg's neat little figure
+was all a-quiver to the tips of her hat plumes.
+
+"Well," said the chairman, squirming under the unpleasant experience of
+being forced to a definite answer, "I suppose,--yes."
+
+Miss Quigg turned from the squirming and smiling Mr. Pilley in contempt.
+
+"Then," she said, "I say no. And I believe there are many here who would
+say no--and men, too." The wealth of indignation and contemptuous
+scorn infused into the word by which the difference in sex of the
+human species was indicated, made those unhappy individuals glance
+shamefacedly at each other--"only they are too timid, the creatures! or
+too indifferent."
+
+Again there was an exchange of furtive glances and smiles and an uneasy
+shifting of position on the part of "the creatures."
+
+"But if you give them time, Mr. Chairman, I believe they will perhaps
+get up courage enough to speak."
+
+Miss Quigg sat down in her place behind the organ, disappearing quite
+from view except for the tips of her plumes, whose rapid and rhythmic
+vibrations were eloquent of the beating of her gallant little heart.
+
+"Exactly so," said the chairman, in confused but hearty acquiescence.
+"Perhaps some one will say something."
+
+Then Mr. Innes, forced to a change of position by the physical
+discomfort caused by his wife's prodding, rose and said,
+
+"I dinna see the need o' any change. Mr. Dunbar is no a great preacher,
+but Ah doot he does his best. And the bairns all like him."
+
+Then the congregation had a thrill. In the back seat rose Harry Hobbs.
+
+"I'm near forty years old," he cried, in a high nasal tone that
+indicated a state of extreme nervous tension, "and I never spoke in
+meetin' before. I ain't had no use for churches and preachers, and I
+guess they hadn't no use for me. You folks all know me. I've been in
+this burg for near eight years, and I was a drinkin', swearin', fightin'
+cuss. This preacher came into the barn one day when I was freezin' to
+death after a big spree. He tuk me home with him and kep' me there
+for two weeks, settin' up nights with me, too. Let me be," he said
+impatiently to Barry, who was trying to pull him down to his seat. "I'm
+agoin' to speak this time if it kills me. Many a time I done him dirt
+sence then, but he stuck to me, and never quit till he got me turned
+'round. I was goin' straight to hell; he says I'm goin' to heaven now."
+Here he laughed with a touch of scorn. "I dunno. But, by gum! if you
+fire him and do him dirt, I don't know what'll become of me, but I guess
+I'll go straight to hell again."
+
+"No, Harry, no you won't. You'll keep right on, Harry, straight to
+heaven." It was the preacher's voice, full of cheery confidence.
+
+Mrs. Innes was audibly sniffling; Mrs. Stewart Duff wiping her eyes. It
+was doubtless this sight that brought her husband to his feet.
+
+"I don't quite know what the trouble is here," he said. "I understand
+there are arrears. I heard some criticism of the minister's preaching.
+I can't say I care much for it myself, but I want to say right here that
+there are other things wanted in a minister, and this young fellow has
+got some of them. If he stays, he gets my money; if he doesn't, no one
+else does. I'll make you gentlemen who are kicking about finances a
+sporting proposition. I'm willing to double my subscription, if any
+other ten men will cover my ante."
+
+"I'll call you," said Neil Fraser, "and I'll raise you one."
+
+"I'm willing to meet Mr. Duff and Mr. Fraser," said Miss Quigg, rising
+from behind her organ with a triumphant smile on her face.
+
+"I ain't got much money," said Harry Hobbs, "but I'll go you just half
+what I earn if you'll meet me on that proposition."
+
+"Ah may say," said Mr. Innes, yielding to his wife's vigorous vocal and
+physical incitations, "A'm prepair-r-ed to mak' a substantial increase
+in my subscreeption--that is, if necessary," he added cautiously.
+
+Then Barry came forward from the back of the church and stood before the
+platform. After looking them over for a few moments in silence, he said,
+in a voice clear, quiet, but with a ring in it that made it echo in
+every heart:
+
+"Had it not been for these last speeches, it would have been unnecessary
+to allow the motion to go before you. I could not have remained where I
+am not wanted. But now I am puzzled, I confess, I am really puzzled to
+know what to do. I am not a great preacher, I know, but then there are
+worse. I don't, at least I think I don't, talk nonsense. And I am not
+what Mr. McFettridge calls a 'good mixer.' On the other hand, I think
+Mr. Innes is right when he says the bairns like me; at least, it would
+break"--he paused, his lip quivering, then he went on quietly--"it would
+be very hard to think they didn't."
+
+"They do that, then," said Mrs. Innes, emphatically.
+
+"So you see, it is really very difficult to know what to do. I would
+hate to go away, but it might be right to go away. I suggest you let me
+have a week to think it over. Can you wait that long?"
+
+His handsome, boyish face, alight with a fine glow of earnestness and
+sincerity, made irresistible appeal to all but those who for personal
+reasons were opposed to him.
+
+"You see," he continued, in a tone of voice deliberative and quite
+detached, "there are a number of things to think about. Those arrears,
+for instance, are hardly my fault--at least, not altogether. I was
+looking over the treasurer's books the other day, and I was surprised
+to find how many had apparently quite forgotten to pay their church
+subscription. It is no doubt just an oversight. For instance," he added,
+in the confidential tone of one imparting interesting and valuable
+information, "you will be surprised to learn, Mr. Duff, that you are
+twenty-five dollars behind in your payments."
+
+At this Neil Fraser threw back his head with a loud laugh. "Touche!" he
+said, in a joyous undertone.
+
+The minister looked at him in surprise, and went on, "And while Mr.
+Innes and Miss Quigg are both paid up in full, Mr. Hayes has apparently
+neglected to pay his last quarter."
+
+"Hit him again," murmured Harry Hobbs, while Mr. Hayes rose in virtuous
+indignation.
+
+"I protest, Mr. Chairman!" he cried, "against these personalities."
+
+"Oh, you quite mistake me, Mr. Hayes," said the preacher, "these are not
+personalities. I am simply showing how easy it is for arrears to arise,
+and that it may not be my fault at all. Of course, it may be right for
+me to resign. I don't know about that yet, but I want to be very sure.
+It would be easier to resign, but I don't want to be a quitter."
+
+"I move we adjourn," said Neil Fraser.
+
+"I second the motion," said Stewart Duff. The motion was carried, and
+the meeting adjourned.
+
+At the door the minister stood shaking hands with all as they passed
+out, making no distinction in the heartiness with which he greeted all
+his parishioners. To Miss Quigg, however, he said, "Thank you. You were
+splendidly plucky."
+
+"Nonsense!" cried the little lady, the colour flaming in her faded
+cheeks. "But," she added hastily, "you did that beautifully, and he
+deserved it, the little beast!"
+
+"Solar plexus!" said Neil Fraser, who was immediately behind Miss Quigg.
+
+The minister glanced from one to the other in perplexity, as they passed
+out of the door.
+
+"But, you know, I was only--"
+
+"Oh, yes, we know," cried Miss Quigg. "But if those men would only take
+hold! Oh, those men!" She turned upon Neil Fraser and shook her head at
+him violently.
+
+"I know, Miss Quigg. We are a hopeless and helpless lot. But we're going
+to reform."
+
+"You need to, badly," she said. "But you need some one to reform you.
+Look at Mr. Duff there, how vastly improved he is," and she waved her
+hand to that gentleman, who was driving away with his wife in their
+buckboard.
+
+"He is a perfect dear," sighed Mrs. Duff, as she bowed to the minister.
+"And you, too, Stewart," she added, giving his arm a little squeeze,
+"you said just the right thing when those horrid people were going to
+turn him out."
+
+"Say! Your preacher isn't so bad after all," said her husband. "Wasn't
+that a neat one for old Hayes?"
+
+"He rather got you, though, Stewart."
+
+"Yes, he did, by Jove! Not the first time, either, he's done it. But I
+must look after that. Say, he's the limit for freshness though. Or is it
+freshness? I'm not quite sure."
+
+"Will he stay with us?" said his wife. "I really do hope he will."
+
+"Guess he'll stay all right. He won't give up his job," said her
+husband.
+
+But next week proved Mr. Duff a poor prophet, for the minister after
+the service informed his people that he had come to the conclusion that
+another man might get better results as minister of the congregation; he
+had therefore handed in his resignation to the Presbytery.
+
+It was a shock to them all, but he adhered to his resolution in spite of
+tearful lamentations from the women, wide-eyed amazement and dismay from
+the bairns of the congregation, and indignation, loudly expressed, from
+Neil Fraser and Stewart Duff, and others of their kind.
+
+"Well," said Miss Quigg, struggling with indignant tears, as she was
+passing out of the church, "you won't see Harry Hobbs in this church
+again, nor me, either."
+
+"Oh, yes, Miss Quigg, Harry has promised me that he will stick by the
+church, and that he will be there every Sunday. And so will you, dear
+Miss Quigg. I know you. You will do what is right."
+
+But that little lady, with her head very erect and a red spot burning in
+each faded cheek, passed out of the church saying nothing, the plumes on
+her jaunty little hat quivering defiance and wrath against "those men,
+who had so little spunk as to allow a little beast like Hayes to run
+them."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE WAR DRUM CALLS
+
+
+"Well, dad," said Barry next evening as they were sitting in the garden
+after tea, "I feel something like Mohammed's coffin, detached from earth
+but not yet ascended into heaven. It's unpleasant to be out of a job.
+I confess I shall always cherish a more intelligent sympathy henceforth
+for the great unemployed. But cheer up, dad! You are taking this thing
+much too seriously. The world is wide, and there is something waiting me
+that I can do better than any one else."
+
+But the father had little to say. He felt bitterly the humiliation to
+which his son had been subjected.
+
+Barry refused to see the humiliation.
+
+"Why should I not resign if I decide it is my duty so to do? And why,
+on the other hand, should not they have the right to terminate my
+engagement with them when they so desire? That's democratic government."
+
+"But good Lord, Barry!" burst out his father, with quite an unusual
+display of feeling; "to think that a gentleman should hold his position
+at the whim of such whippersnappers as Hayes, Boggs et hoc genus omne.
+And more than that, that I should have to accept as my minister a man
+who would be the choice of cattle like that."
+
+"After all, dad, we are ruled by majorities in this age and in this
+country. That is at once the glory and the danger of democratic
+government. There is no better way discovered as yet. And besides, I
+couldn't go on here, dad, preaching Sunday after Sunday to people who I
+felt were all the time saying, 'He's no good'; to people, in short, who
+could not profit by my preaching."
+
+"Because it had no pep, eh?" said his father with bitter scorn.
+
+"Do you know, dad, I believe that's what is wrong with my preaching: it
+hasn't got pep. What pep is, only the initiated know. But the long and
+the short of this thing is, it is the people that must be satisfied. It
+is they who have to stand your preaching, they who pay the piper. But
+cheer up, dad, I have no fear for the future."
+
+"Nor have I, my boy, not the slightest. I hope you did not think for a
+moment, my son," he added with some dignity, "that I was in doubt about
+your future."
+
+"No, no, dad. We both feel a little sore naturally, but the future is
+all right."
+
+"True, my dear boy, true. I was forgetting myself. As you say, the world
+is wide and your place is waiting."
+
+"Hello! here comes my friend, Mr. Duff," said Barry in a low voice. "He
+was ready to throw Mr. McFettridge out of the meeting yesterday, body
+and bones. Awfully funny, if it hadn't been in church. Wonder what he
+wants! Seems in a bit of a hurry."
+
+But hurry or not, it was a full hour before Mr. Duff introduced his
+business. As he entered the garden he stood gazing about him in amazed
+wonder and delight, and that hour was spent in company with Mr. Dunbar,
+exploring the garden, Barry following behind lost in amazement at the
+new phase of character displayed by their visitor.
+
+"I have not had such a delightful evening, Mr. Dunbar, for years," said
+Duff, when they had finished making the round of the garden. "I have
+heard about your garden, but I had no idea that it held such a wealth
+and variety of treasures. I had something of a garden myself in the old
+country, but here there is no time apparently for anything but cattle
+and horses and money. But if you would allow me I should greatly like to
+have the pleasure of bringing Mrs. Duff to see your beautiful garden."
+
+Mr. Duff was assured that the Dunbars would have the greatest pleasure
+in receiving Mrs. Duff.
+
+"Do bring her," said Barry, "and we can have a little music, too. She is
+musical, I know. I hear her sing in church."
+
+"Music! Why, she loves it. But she dropped her music when she came here;
+there seemed to be no time, no time, no time. I wonder sometimes--Well,
+I must get at my business. It is this letter that brings me. It is from
+an American whom you know, at least, he knows you, a Mr. Osborne Howland
+of Pittsburgh."
+
+Mr. Dunbar nodded.
+
+"He is planning a big trip up the Peace River country prospecting for
+oil and mines, and later hunting. He says you and your son engaged to
+accompany him, and he asks me to complete arrangements with you. I am
+getting Jim Knight to look after the outfit. You know Jim, perhaps. He
+runs the Lone Pine ranch. Fine chap he is. Knows all about the hunting
+business. Takes a party into the mountains every year. He'll take Tom
+Fielding with him. I don't know Fielding, but Knight does. Mr. Howland
+says there will be three of their party. Far too many, but that's his
+business. I myself am rather anxious to look after some oil deposits,
+and this will be a good chance. What do you say?"
+
+Father and son looked at each other.
+
+"It would be fine, if we could manage it," said Mr. Dunbar, "but my work
+is so pressing just now. A great many are coming in, and I am alone in
+the office at present. When does he propose to start?"
+
+"In six weeks' time. I hope you can come, Mr. Dunbar. I couldn't have
+said so yesterday, but I can now. Any man with a garden like this, the
+product of his own planning and working, is worth knowing. So I do
+hope you can both come. By the way, Knight wants a camp hand, a kind of
+roustabout, who can cook--a handy man, you know."
+
+"I have him," said Barry. "Harry Hobbs."
+
+"Hobbs? Boozes a bit, doesn't he?"
+
+"Not now. Hasn't for six months. He's a new man. I can guarantee him."
+
+"You can, eh? Well, my experience is once a boozer always a boozer."
+
+"Oh," said Barry, "Hobbs is different. He is a member of our church, you
+know."
+
+"No, I didn't know. But I don't know that that makes much difference
+anyway," said Duff with a laugh. "I don't mean to be offensive," he
+added.
+
+"It does to Hobbs, he's a Christian man now. I mean a real Christian,
+Mr. Duff."
+
+"Well, I suppose there is such a thing. In fact, I've known one or two,
+but--well, if you guarantee him I'll take him."
+
+"I will guarantee him," said Barry.
+
+"Let me have your answer to-morrow," said Duff as he bade them
+good-night.
+
+The Dunbars discussed the matter far into the night. It was clearly
+impossible for Mr. Dunbar to leave his work, and the only question
+was whether or not Barry should make one of the party. Barry greatly
+disliked the idea of leaving his father during the hot summer months,
+as he said, "to slave away at his desk, and to slop away in his bachelor
+diggings." He raised many objections, but one consideration seemed to
+settle things for the Dunbars. To them a promise was a promise.
+
+"If I remember aright, Barry, we promised that we should join their
+party on this expedition."
+
+"Yes," added Barry quickly, "if our work permitted it."
+
+"Exactly," said his father. "My work prevents me, your work does not."
+
+Hence it came that by the end of August Barry found himself in the far
+northern wilds of the Peace River country, a hundred miles or so from
+Edmonton, attached to a prospecting-hunting party of which Mr. Osborne
+Howland was the nominal head, but of which the "boss" was undoubtedly
+his handsome, athletic and impetuous daughter Paula. The party had not
+been on the trail for more than a week before every member was moving at
+her command, and apparently glad to do so.
+
+The party were camped by a rushing river at the foot of a falls. Below
+the falls the river made a wide eddy, then swept down in a turbulent
+rapid for some miles. The landing was a smooth and shelving rock that
+pitched somewhat steeply into the river.
+
+The unfortunate Harry, who after the day's march had exchanged his heavy
+marching boots with their clinging hobnails for shoes more comfortable
+but with less clinging qualities, in making preparation for the evening
+meal made his way down this shelving rock of water. No sooner had he
+filled his pail than his foot slipped from under him, and in an instant
+the pail and himself were in the swiftly flowing river.
+
+His cry startled the camp.
+
+"Hello!" shouted Duff, with a great laugh. "Harry is in the drink! I
+never knew he was so fond of water as all that. You've got to swim for
+it now, old boy."
+
+"Throw him something," said Knight.
+
+Past them ran Barry, throwing off coat and vest.
+
+"He can't swim," he cried, tearing at his boots. "Throw him a line, some
+one." He ran down to the water's edge, plunged in, and swam toward the
+unfortunate Harry, who, splashing wildly, was being carried rapidly into
+the rough water.
+
+"Oh, father, he will be drowned!" cried Paula, rushing toward a canoe
+which was drawn up on the shore. Before any one could reach her she had
+pushed it out and was steering over the boiling current in Barry's wake.
+But after a few strokes of her paddle she found herself driven far
+out into the current and away from the struggling men. Paula had had
+sufficient experience with a canoe to handle it with considerable ease
+in smooth water and under ordinary conditions, but in the swirl of this
+rough and swift water the canoe took the management of its course out of
+her hands, and she had all she could do to keep afloat.
+
+"For God's sake, men, get her!" cried Brand. "She will be drowned before
+our eyes."
+
+"Come on, Tom," cried Jim Knight, swinging another canoe into the water.
+A glance he gave at the girl, another at the struggling men, for by this
+time Barry could be seen struggling with the drowning Hobbs.
+
+"Get in, Tom," ordered Knight, taking the stern. "We will get the men
+first. The girl is all right in the meantime."
+
+"Get the girl!" commanded Brand. "For God's sake go for the girl," he
+entreated in a frenzy of distress.
+
+"No," said Knight, "the men first. She's all right."
+
+"Here," said Duff to Brand, pushing out the remaining canoe, "get into
+the bow, and stop howling. Those men are in danger of being drowned, but
+Knight will get them. We'll go for the girl."
+
+It took but a few minutes for Knight and Fielding, who knew their craft
+thoroughly and how to get the best out of her in just such an emergency,
+to draw up upon Harry and his rescuer.
+
+"Say, they are fighting hard," said Fielding. "That bloody little fool
+is choking the life out of Dunbar. My God! they are out of sight!"
+
+"Go on," roared Knight. "Keep your eyes on the spot, and for Heaven's
+sake, paddle!"
+
+"They are up again! One of them is. It's Barry. The other is gone. No,
+by Jove! he's got him! Hold on, Barry, we're coming," yelled Tom. "Stick
+to it, old boy!"
+
+Swiftly the canoe sped toward the drowning men.
+
+"They are gone this time for sure," cried Tom, as the canoe shot over
+the spot where the men had last been seen.
+
+"Not much!" said Knight, as reaching out of the stern he gripped Barry
+by the hair. "Hold hard, Barry," he said quietly. "No monkey work now or
+you'll drown us all." Immediately Barry ceased struggling.
+
+"Don't try to get in, Barry. We'll have to tow you ashore."
+
+"All right, Jim," he said between his sobbing breaths. "Only--hurry
+up--I've got him--here."
+
+Knight reached down carefully, lifted Barry till his hand touched the
+gunwale of the canoe.
+
+"Not too hard, Barry," he said. "I'll ease you round to the stern.
+Steady, boy, steady. Don't dump us."
+
+"All right--Jim--but--he's under the water--here."
+
+"Oh, never mind him. We'll get him all right. Can you hold on now?" said
+Knight.
+
+"Yes--I think so."
+
+"Now, for God's sake, Tom, edge her into the shore. See that little eddy
+there? Swing into that! You'll do it all right. Good man!"
+
+By this time Knight was able to get Harry's head above water.
+
+In a few minutes they had reached the shore, and were working hard over
+Harry's unconscious body, leaving Barry lying on the sand to recover his
+strength. A long fight was necessary to bring the life back into Harry,
+by which time Barry was sufficiently recovered to sit up.
+
+"Stay where you are, Barry, until we get this man back to camp," ordered
+Knight. "We'll light a bit of a fire for you."
+
+"I'm warm enough," said Barry.
+
+"Warm enough? You may be, but you will be better with a fire, and you
+lie beside it till we get you. Don't move now."
+
+"There's the other canoes coming," said Fielding. "They'll make shore
+a little lower down. They're all right. Say, she's handling that canoe
+like a man!"
+
+"Who?" said Barry.
+
+"Why, Miss Howland," said Fielding. "She was out after you like a shot.
+She's a plucky one!"
+
+Barry was on his feet in an instant, watching anxiously the progress
+of the canoes, which were being slowly edged across the river in a long
+incline toward the shore.
+
+"They'll make it, all right," said Knight, after observing them for a
+time. "Don't you worry. Just lie down by the fire. We'll be back in a
+jiffy."
+
+In an hour they were all safely back in camp, and sufficiently recovered
+to discover the humorous points in the episode. But they were all
+familiar enough with the treacherous possibilities of rough and rapid
+water to know that for Hobbs and his deliverer at least, there had been
+some serious moments during their fierce struggle in the river.
+
+"Another minute would have done," said Fielding to his friend, as they
+sat over the fire after supper.
+
+"A half a minute would have been just as good," said Knight. "I got
+Barry by the hair under water. He was at his last kick, you bet! And
+that rat," he added, smiling good naturedly at Harry, "was dragging him
+down for the last time."
+
+"I didn't know nothin' about it," said poor Harry, who was lying
+stretched out by the fire, still very weak and miserable. "I didn't
+know nothin' about it, or you bet I woudn't ha' done it. I didn't know
+nothin' after he got me."
+
+"After you got him, you mean," said Fielding.
+
+"I guess that's right," said Harry, "but I wouldn't ha' got him if he
+hadn't ha' got me first."
+
+They all joined in the discussion of the event except Paula, who sat
+distrait and silent, gazing into the fire, and Barry, who lay, drowsy
+and relaxed, on a blanket not far from her side.
+
+"You ought to go to bed," said Paula at length in a low voice to him.
+"You need a good night's sleep."
+
+"I'm too tired to sleep," said Barry. "I feel rather rotten, in fact. I
+ought to feel very grateful, but somehow I just feel rotten."
+
+"Can one be grateful and feel rotten at the same time?" said Paula,
+making talk.
+
+"Behold me," replied Barry. "I know I am grateful, but I do feel rotten.
+I don't think I have even thanked you for risking your life for me," he
+added, turning toward her.
+
+"Risking my life? Nonsense! I paddled 'round in the canoe for a bit,
+till two strong men came to tow me in, and would have, if I had allowed
+them. Thank the boys, who got you in time." She shuddered as she spoke.
+
+"I do thank them, and I do feel grateful to them," said Barry. "It was
+rather a near thing. You see, I let him grip me. I choked him off my
+arms, but he slid down to my thigh, and I could not kick him off. Had to
+practically drown him. Even then he hung on."
+
+"Oh, don't speak about it," she said with a shudder, covering her face
+with her hands. "It was too awful, and it might have been the end of
+you." Her voice broke a little.
+
+"No, not an end," answered Barry, in a quiet voice. "Not the end by a
+long way, not by a very long way."
+
+"What do you mean? Oh, you are thinking of immortality, and all that,"
+said Paula. "It's a chilly, ghostly subject. It makes me shiver. I get
+little comfort out of it."
+
+"Ghostly it is, if you mean a thing of spirits," said Barry, "but
+chilly! Why chilly?" Then he added to himself in an undertone: "I
+wonder! I wonder! I wish sometimes I knew more."
+
+"Sometimes?" cried Paula. "Always!" she added passionately. "It's a
+dreadful business to me. To be suddenly snatched out of the light and
+the warmth, away from the touch of warm fingers and the sight of dear
+faces! Ah, I dread it! I loathe the thought of it. I hate it!"
+
+"And yet," mused Barry, "somehow I cannot forget that out there
+somewhere there is One, kindly, genial, true,--like my dad. How good
+he has been to me--my dad, I mean, and that Other, too, has been good.
+Somehow I think of them together. Yes, I am grateful to Him."
+
+"Oh, God, you mean," said Paula, a little impatiently.
+
+"Yes, to God. He saved me to-day. 'Saved,' I say. It is a queer way to
+speak, after all. What I really ought to say is that God thought it
+best that I should camp 'round here for a bit longer before moving in
+nearer."
+
+"Nearer?"
+
+"Yes, into the nearer circle. Life moves 'round a centre, in outer
+and inner circles. This is the outer circle. Nearer in there, it is
+kindlier, with better light and clearer vision. 'We shall know even as
+we are known.'" Barry mused on, as if communing with himself.
+
+"But when you move in," said Paula, and there was no mistaking the
+earnestness of her tone, "you break touch with those you love here."
+
+"I don't know about that," answered Barry quickly.
+
+"Oh, yes you do. You are out of all this,--all this," she swept her
+hand at the world around her, "this good old world, all your joy and
+happiness, all you love. Oh, that's the worst of it; you give up your
+love. I hate it!" she concluded with vehemence sudden and fierce, as she
+shook her fist towards the stars.
+
+"Give up your love?" said Barry. "Not I! Not one good, honest affection
+do I mean to give up, nor shall I."
+
+"Oh, nonsense! Don't be religious. Just be honest," said Paula, in a
+low, intense voice. "Let me speak to you. Suppose I--I love a man with
+all my soul and body--and body, mind you, and he goes out, or goes in,
+as you say. No matter, he goes out of my life. I lose him, he is not
+here. I cannot feel and respond to his love. I cannot feel his strong
+arms about me. My God!" Her voice came with increasing vehemence. "I
+want his arms. I want him as he is. I want his body--I cannot love a
+ghost. No! no!" she added in a low, hopeless voice. "When he goes out
+I lose him, and lose him as mine forever. Oh, what do I care for your
+spirit love! The old Greeks were right. They are shades--shades, mere
+shades beyond the river. I don't want a shade. I want a man, a strong,
+warm-hearted, brave man. Yes, a good man, a man with a soul. But a MAN,
+not a SOUL. My God!" she moaned, "how terrible it all is! And it came so
+near to us to-day. But I should not be saying this to you, played out as
+you are. I am going to bed. Good-night."
+
+She put out her hand and gripped his in warm, strong, muscular fingers.
+"Thank God, yes God, if you like, you are still--still in this outer
+circle,"--she broke into a laugh, but there was little mirth in her
+laughter--"this good old outer circle, yet awhile."
+
+"Yes," said Barry simply but very earnestly, "thank God. It is a good
+world. But with all my soul I believe there is a better, and all that is
+best in love and life we shall take with us. Good-night," he added, "and
+thank you, at least for the will and the attempt to save my life."
+
+"Sleep well," she said.
+
+"I hope so," he replied, "but I doubt it."
+
+His doubts, it turned out, were justified, for soon after midnight Mr.
+Howland was aroused by Harry Hobbs in a terror of excitement.
+
+"Will you come to Mr. Dunbar, sir?" he cried. "I think he is dying."
+
+"Dying?" Mr. Howland was out of his cot immediately and at Barry's side.
+He found him fighting for breath, his eyes starting from his head, a
+look of infinite distress on his face.
+
+"My dear boy, what is it? Hobbs says you are dying."
+
+"That con-con-founded--fool--shouldn't have--called you. I
+forbade--him," gasped Barry.
+
+"But, my dear boy, what is the matter? Are you in pain?"
+
+"No, no,--it's--nothing--only an old--friend come back--for a call,--a
+brief one--let us--hope. It's only asthma. Looks bad--feels worse--but
+really--not at all dangerous."
+
+"What can be done, my boy?" asked Mr. Howland, greatly relieved, as
+are most laymen, when the trouble can be named. It is upon the terror
+inspired by the unknown that the medical profession lives.
+
+"Tell Harry--to make--a hot drink," said Barry, but Harry had already
+forestalled the request, and appeared with a steaming bowl. "This
+will--help. Now--go to--bed, Mr. Howland. Do, please.--You distress--me
+by remaining--there. Harry will--look after me. Good-night."
+
+Next morning Barry appeared at breakfast a little washed out in
+appearance, but quite bright and announcing himself fit for anything.
+
+The incident, however, was a determining factor in changing the party's
+plans. Already they were behind their time schedule, to Mr. Cornwall
+Brand's disgust. The party was too large and too heavily encumbered with
+impedimenta for swift travel. Besides, as Paula said, "Why rush? Are we
+not doing the Peace River Country? We are out for a good time and we
+are having it." Paula was not interested in mines and oil. She did not
+announce just what special interest was hers. She was "having a good
+time" and that was reason enough for leisurely travel. In consequence
+their provisions had run low.
+
+It was decided to send forward a scouting party to the Hudson's Bay Post
+some thirty miles further on to restock their commissariat. Accordingly
+Knight and Fielding were despatched on this mission, the rest of the
+party remaining in camp.
+
+"A lazy day or two in camp is what we all need," said Mr. Howland. "I
+confess I am quite used up myself, and therefore I know you must all
+feel much the same."
+
+On the fourth day the scouting party appeared.
+
+"There's war!" cried Knight as he touched land. He flung out a bundle of
+papers for Mr. Howland.
+
+"War!" The word came back in tones as varied as those who uttered it.
+
+"War!" said Mr. Howland. "Between whom?"
+
+"Every one, pretty much," said Knight. "Germany, France, Russia,
+Austria, Servia, Belgium, and Britain."
+
+"Britain!" said Barry and Duff at the same moment.
+
+"Britain," answered Knight solemnly.
+
+The men stood stock still, looking at each other with awed faces.
+
+"War!" again said Barry. "With Germany!" He turned abruptly away from
+the group and said, "I am going."
+
+"Going! Going where?" said Mr. Howland.
+
+"To the war," said Barry quietly.
+
+"To the war! You? A clergyman?" said Mr. Howland.
+
+"You? You going?" cried Paula. At the pain in her voice her father and
+Brand turned and looked at her. Disturbed by what he saw, her father
+began an excited appeal to Barry.
+
+"Why, my dear sir, it would surely be most unusual for a man like you
+to go to war," he began, and for quite ten minutes he proceeded to set
+forth in fluent and excited speech a number of reasons why the idea
+of Barry's going to war was absurd and preposterous to him. It must be
+confessed that Barry was the only one of the men who appeared to give
+much heed to him. They seemed to be dazed by the stupendous fact that
+had been announced to them, and to be adjusting themselves to that fact.
+
+When he had finished his lengthy and excited speech Brand took up the
+discourse.
+
+"Of course you don't think of going immediately," he said. "We have this
+expedition in hand."
+
+The men made no reply. Indeed, they hardly seemed to hear him.
+
+"You don't mean to say," continued Brand with a touch of indignation in
+his voice, addressing Duff, the recognised leader of the party, "that
+you would break your engagement with this party, Mr. Duff?"
+
+Duff glanced at him, then looked away in silence, studying the horizon.
+The world was to him and to them all a new world within the last few
+minutes.
+
+His silence appeared to enrage Brand. He turned to Barry.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me, sir, that you approve of this? Do you consider
+it right and fair that these men should break their engagement with us?
+We have gone to great expense, we have extremely important interests at
+stake in this exploration."
+
+Barry stood looking at him in silence, as if trying to take in exactly
+what he meant, then in a low and awed tone he said:
+
+"It is war! War with Germany!"
+
+"We cannot help that," cried Brand. "What difference can this war make
+to you here a hundred miles from civilisation? These men are pledged to
+us."
+
+"Their first pledge is to their country, sir," said Barry gravely.
+
+"But why should you, a Canadian, take part in this war?" argued Mr.
+Howland. "Surely this is England's war."
+
+Then Barry appeared to awake as from a dream.
+
+"Yes, it is England's war, it is Britain's war, and when Britain is at
+war my country is at war, and when my country is at war I ought to be
+there."
+
+"God in heaven!" shouted Duff, striking him on the back, "you have said
+it! My country is at war, and I must be there. As God hears me, I am off
+to-day--now."
+
+"Me, too!" said Knight with a shout.
+
+"I'm going with you, sir," said little Harry Hobbs, ranging himself
+beside Barry.
+
+"Count me in," said Tom Fielding quietly. "I have a wife and three kids,
+but--"
+
+"My God!" gasped Duff. "My wife." His face went white. He had not yet
+fully adjusted himself to the fact of war.
+
+"Why, of course," said Mr. Howland, "you married men won't be called
+upon. You must be reasonable. For instance you, Mr. Duff, cannot leave
+your wife."
+
+But Duff had recovered himself.
+
+"My wife, sir? My wife would despise me if I stayed up here. Sir, my
+wife will buckle on my belt and spurs and send me off to the war," cried
+Duff in a voice that shook as he spoke.
+
+With a single stride Barry was at his side, offering both his hands.
+
+"Thank God for men like you! And in my soul I believe the Empire has
+millions of them."
+
+"Does your Empire demand that you desert those you have pledged yourself
+to?" enquired Brand in a sneering tone.
+
+"Oh, Cornwall!" exclaimed Paula, "how can you?"
+
+"Why, Brand," said Mr. Howland, "that is unworthy of you."
+
+"We will see you into safety, sir," said Duff, swinging round upon
+Brand, "either to the Hudson's Bay Company's post, where you can
+get Indians, or back to Edmonton, but not one step further on this
+expedition do I go."
+
+"Nor I," said Knight.
+
+"Nor I," said Fielding.
+
+"Nor I," said Barry.
+
+"Nor I," said Harry Hobbs.
+
+"You are quite right, sir," said Mr. Howland, turning to Barry. "I
+apologise to you, sir, to all of you Canadians. I am ashamed to confess
+that I did not at first get the full meaning of this terrific thing that
+has befallen your Empire. Were it the U.S.A. that was in a war of this
+kind, hell itself would not keep me from going to her aid. Nor you
+either, Brand. Yes, you are right. Go to your war. God go with you."
+
+He shook hands solemnly with them one by one. "I only wish to God that
+my country were with you, too, in this thing," he said when he had
+performed this function.
+
+"Father," cried Paula, "do you think for one minute that Uncle Sam won't
+be in this? You put it down," she said, swinging 'round upon Barry,
+"where it will jump at you some day: We will be with you in this scrap
+for all we are worth."
+
+"And now for the march," said Barry, who seemed almost to assume
+command. Then removing his hat and lifting high his hand, he said in a
+voice thrilling with solemn reverence, "God grant victory to the right!
+God save the king!"
+
+Instinctively the men took off their hats and stood with bared and bent
+heads, as if sharing in a solemn ritual. They stood with millions upon
+millions of their kin in the old mother lands, and scattered wide upon
+the seas, stood with many millions more of peoples and nations, pledging
+to this same cause of right, life and love and all they held dear, and
+with hearts open to that all-searching eye, praying that same prayer,
+"God grant victory to the right. Amen and amen. We ask no other."
+
+Then they faced to their hundred miles' trek en route to the war.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MEN OF THE NORTH
+
+
+"Fifty miles--not too bad, boy, not too bad for a one day's go. We'll
+camp right here at the portage. How is it, Knight?"
+
+"Good place, Duff, right on that point. Good wood, good landing. Besides
+there's a deuce of a portage beyond, which we can do after supper
+to-night. How do you feel, Barry?" asked Knight. "Hard day, eh?"
+
+"Feeling fit, a little tired, of course, but good for another ten
+miles," answered Barry.
+
+"That's the stuff," replied Knight, looking at him keenly, "but, see
+here, you must ease up on the carrying. You haven't quite got over that
+ducking of yours."
+
+"I'm fit enough," answered Barry, rather more curtly than his wont.
+
+They brought the canoes up to the landing, and with the speed of long
+practice unloaded them, and drew them upon the shore.
+
+Knight approached Duff, and, pointing toward Barry, said quietly:
+
+"I guess we'll have to ease him up a bit. That fight, you know, took it
+out of him, and he always jumps for the biggest pack. We'd better hold
+him back to-morrow a bit."
+
+"Can't hold back any one," said Duff, with an oath. "We've got to make
+it to-morrow night. There's the devil of a trip before us. That big
+marsh portage is a heartbreaker, and there must be a dozen or fifteen of
+them awaiting us, and we're going to get through--at least, I am."
+
+"All right," said Knight, with a quick flash of temper. "I'll stay with
+you, only I thought we might ease him a bit."
+
+"I'm telling you, we're going to get through," said Duff, with another
+oath.
+
+"You needn't tell me, Duff," said Knight. "Keep your shirt on."
+
+"On or off, wet or dry, sink or swim, we're going to make that train
+to-morrow, Knight. That's all about it."
+
+Then Knight let himself go.
+
+"See here, Duff. Do you want to go on to-night? If you do, hell and
+blazes, say the word and I'm with you."
+
+His face was white as he spoke. He seized a tump-line, swung the pack
+upon his head, and set off across the portage.
+
+"Come on, boys," he yelled. "We're going through to-night."
+
+"Oh, hold up, Knight!" said Duff. "What the hell's eating you? We'll
+grub first anyway."
+
+"No," said Knight. "The next rapid is a bad bit of water, and if we're
+going through to-night, I want that bit behind me, before it gets too
+dark. So come along!"
+
+"Oh, cut it out, Knight," said Duff, in a gruff but conciliatory tone.
+"We'll camp right here."
+
+"It's all the same to me," said Knight, flinging his pack down. "When
+you want to go on, say the word. You won't have to ask me twice."
+
+Duff looked over the six feet of bone and sinew and muscle of the young
+rancher, made as if to answer, paused a moment, changed his mind, and
+said more quietly:
+
+"Don't be an ass, Knight. I'm not trying to hang your shirt on a tree."
+
+"You know damned well you can't," said Knight, who was still white with
+passion.
+
+"Oh, come off," replied Duff. "Anyway, I don't see what young Dunbar is
+to you. We must get through to-morrow night. The overseas contingent is
+camping at Valcartier, according to these papers and whatever happens I
+am going with that contingent."
+
+Knight made no reply. He was a little ashamed of his temper. But during
+the past two days he had chafed under the rasp of Duff's tongue and
+his overbearing manner. He resented too his total disregard of Barry's
+weariness, for in spite of his sheer grit, the pace was wearing the boy
+down.
+
+"We ought to reach the railroad by six to-morrow," said Duff, renewing
+the conversation, and anxious to appease his comrade. "There's a late
+train, but if we catch the six we shall make home in good time. Hello,
+what's this coming?"
+
+At his words they all turned and looked in the direction in which he
+pointed.
+
+Down a stream, which at this point came tumbling into theirs in a
+dangerous looking rapid, came a canoe with a man in the centre guiding
+it as only an expert could.
+
+"By Jove! He can't make that drop," said Knight, walking down toward the
+landing.
+
+They all stood watching the canoe which, at the moment, hung poised upon
+the brink of the rapid like a bird for flight. Even as Knight spoke the
+canoe entered the first smooth pitch at the top. Two long, swallow-like
+sweeps, then she plunged into the foam, to appear a moment later
+fighting her way through the mass of crowding, crested waves, which,
+like white-fanged wolves upon a doe, seemed to be hurling themselves
+upon her, intent upon bearing her down to destruction.
+
+"By the living, jumping Jemima!" said Fielding, in an awe-stricken tone,
+"she's gone!"
+
+"She's through!" cried Knight.
+
+"Great Jehoshaphat!" said Fielding. "He's a bird!"
+
+With a flip or two of his paddle, the stranger shot his canoe across the
+stream, and floated quietly to the landing.
+
+Barry ran down to meet him.
+
+"I say, that was beautifully done," he cried, taking the nose of the
+canoe while the man stepped ashore and stood a moment looking back at
+the water.
+
+"A leetle more to the left would have been better, I think. She took
+some water," he remarked in a slow voice, as if to himself.
+
+He was a strange-looking creature. He might have stepped out of one of
+Fenimore Cooper's novels. Indeed, as Barry's eyes travelled up and down
+his long, bony, stooping, slouching figure, his mind leaped at once to
+the Pathfinder.
+
+"Come far?" asked Duff, approaching the stranger.
+
+"Quite a bit," he answered, in a quiet, courteous voice, pausing a
+moment in his work.
+
+"Going out?" enquired Duff.
+
+"Not yet," he said. "Going up the country first to The Post."
+
+"Ah, we have just come down from there," said Duff. "We started
+yesterday morning," he added, evidently hoping to surprise the man.
+
+"Yes," he answered in a quiet tone of approval. "Nice little run! Nice
+little run! Bit of a hurry, I guess," he ventured apologetically.
+
+"You bet your life, we just are. This damned war makes a man feel like
+as if the devil was after him," said Duff.
+
+"War!" The man looked blankly at him. "Who's fightin'?"
+
+"Why, haven't you heard? It's been going on for a month. We heard only
+three days ago as we were going further up the country. It knocked our
+plans endways, and here we are chasing ourselves to get out."
+
+"War!" said the man again. "Who's fightin'? Uncle Sam after them
+Mexicans?"
+
+"No. Mexicans, hell!" exclaimed Duff. "Germany and Britain."
+
+"Britain!" The slouching shoulders lost their droop. "Britain!" he said,
+straightening himself up. "What's she been doin' to Germany?"
+
+"What's Germany been doing to her, and to Belgium, and to Servia, and
+to France?" answered Duff, in a wrathful voice. "She's been raising hell
+all around. You haven't seen the papers, eh? I have them all here."
+
+The stranger seemed dazed by the news. He made no reply, but getting out
+his frying-pan and tea-pail, his only utensils, he set about preparing
+his evening meal.
+
+"I say," said Duff, "won't you eat with us? We're just about ready.
+We'll be glad to have you."
+
+The man hesitated a perceptible moment. In the wilds men do not always
+accept invitations to eat. Food is sometimes worth more than its weight
+in gold.
+
+"I guess I will, if you've lots of stuff," he said at length.
+
+"We've lots of grub, and we expect to be home by tomorrow night anyway,
+if things go all right. You are very welcome."
+
+The man laid down his frying-pan and tea-pail, and walked with Duff
+toward his camp.
+
+"Are you goin'?" he enquired.
+
+"Going?"
+
+"To the war. Guess some of our Canadian boys will be goin' likely, eh?"
+
+"Going," cried Duff. "You bet your life I'm going. But, come on. We'll
+talk as we eat. And we can't stay long, either."
+
+Duff introduced the party.
+
+"My name's McCuaig," said the stranger.
+
+"Scotch, I guess?" enquired Duff.
+
+"My father came out with The Company. I was born up north. Never been
+much out, but I read the papers," he added quickly, as if to correct any
+misapprehension as to his knowledge of the world and its affairs. "My
+father always got the Times and the Spectator, and I've continued the
+habit."
+
+"Any one who reads the Times and the Spectator," said Barry, "can claim
+to be a fairly well-read man. My father takes the Spectator, too."
+
+As they sat down to supper, he noticed that McCuaig took off his old
+grey felt and crossed himself before beginning toast.
+
+As a matter of courtesy, Barry had always been asked to say grace before
+meals while with the Howland party. This custom, however, had been
+discontinued upon this trip. They had no time for meals. They had "just
+grabbed their grub and run," as Harry Hobbs said.
+
+While they ate, Duff kept a full tide of conversation going in regard to
+the causes of the war and its progress, as reported in the papers. Barry
+noticed that McCuaig's comments, though few, revealed a unique knowledge
+of European political affairs during the last quarter of a century. He
+noticed too that his manners at the table were those of a gentleman.
+
+After supper they packed their stuff over the long portage, leaving
+their tent and sleeping gear, with their food, however, to be taken in
+the morning. For a long time they sat over the fire, Barry reading, for
+McCuaig's benefit, the newspaper accounts of the Belgian atrocities, the
+story of the smashing drive of the German hosts, and the retreat of the
+British army from Mons.
+
+"What," exclaimed McCuaig, "the British soldiers goin' back! Runnin'
+away from them Germans!"
+
+"Well, the Germans are only about ten to one, not only in men but in
+guns, and in this war it's guns that count. Guns can wipe out an army of
+heroes as easily as an army of cowards," said Duff.
+
+"And them women and children," said McCuaig. "Are they killing them
+still?"
+
+"You're just right, they are," replied Duff, "and will till we stop
+them."
+
+McCuaig's eyes were glowing with a deep inner light. They were wonderful
+eyes, quick, darting, straight-looking and fearless, the eyes of a man
+who owes his life to his vigilance and his courage.
+
+Before turning in for the night, Barry went to the river's edge, and
+stood looking up at the stars holding their steadfast watch over the
+turbulent and tossing waters below.
+
+"Quiet, ain't they?" said a voice at his shoulder.
+
+"Why, you startled me, Mr. McCuaig; I never heard you step."
+
+McCuaig laughed his quiet laugh.
+
+"Got to move quietly in this country," he said, "if you are going to
+keep alive."
+
+A moment or so he stood by Barry's side, looking up with him at the
+stars.
+
+"No fuss, up there," he said, interpreting Barry's mood and attitude.
+"Not like that there pitchin', tossin', threatenin' water."
+
+"No," said Barry, "but though they look quiet, I suppose if we could
+really see, there is a most terrific whirling of millions of stars up
+there, going at the rate of thousands of miles a minute."
+
+"Millions of 'em, and all whirlin' about," said McCuaig in an
+awe-stricken voice. "It's a wonder they don't hit."
+
+"They don't hit because they each keep their own orbit," said Barry,
+"and they obey the laws of their existence."
+
+"Orbut," enquired McCuaig. "What's that?"
+
+"The trail that each star follows," said Barry.
+
+"I see," said McCuaig, "each one keeps its own trail, its own orbut,
+and so there's peace up there. And I guess there'd be peace down here if
+folks did the same thing. It's when a man gets out of his own orbut
+and into another fellow's that the scrap begins. I guess that's where
+Germany's got wrong."
+
+"Something like that," replied Barry.
+
+"And sometimes," continued McCuaig, his eyes upon the stars, "when a
+little one comes up against a big one, he gets busted, eh?"
+
+Barry nodded.
+
+"And a big one, when he comes up against a bigger one gets pretty badly
+jarred, eh?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Barry.
+
+"That's what's goin' to happen to Germany," said McCuaig.
+
+"Germany's a very powerful nation," said Barry. "The most powerful
+military nation in the world."
+
+"What!" said McCuaig. "Bigger than Britain?"
+
+"Britain has two or three hundred thousand men in her army; Germany has
+seven millions or more, with seventy millions of people behind them,
+organised for war. Of course, Britain has her navy, but then Germany has
+the next biggest in the world. Oh, it's going to be a terrific war."
+
+"I say," said McCuaig, putting his hand on Barry's shoulder. "You don't
+think it will bother us any to lick her?"
+
+"It will be the most terrible of all Britain's wars," replied Barry. "It
+will take every ounce of Britain's strength."
+
+"You don't tell me!" exclaimed McCuaig, as if struck by an entirely new
+idea. "Say, are you really anxious, young man?"
+
+"I am terribly anxious," replied Barry. "I know Germany a little. I
+spent a year there. She is a mighty nation, and she is ready for war."
+
+"She is, eh!" replied McCuaig thoughtfully. He wandered off to the fire
+without further word, where, rolling himself in his blanket and scorning
+the place in the tent offered him by Duff, he made himself comfortable
+for the night.
+
+At the break of day Duff was awakened by the smell of something frying.
+Over the fire bent McCuaig, busy preparing a breakfast of tea, bacon and
+bannocks, together with thick slices of fat pork.
+
+Breakfast was eaten in haste. The day's work was before them, and there
+was no time for talk. In a very few minutes they stood ready for their
+trip across the portage.
+
+With them stood McCuaig. His blanket roll containing his grub, with
+frying-pan and tea-pail attached, lay at his feet; his rifle beside it.
+
+For a moment or two he stood looking back up the stream by which, last
+night, he had come. Then he began tying his paddles to the canoe thwarts
+in preparation for packing it across the portage.
+
+As he was tying on the second paddle, Duff's eye fell on him.
+
+"What's up, McCuaig?" he said. "Aren't you going up to the Post?"
+
+"No, I guess I ain't goin' up no more," replied McCuaig slowly.
+
+"What do you mean? You aren't going back home?"
+
+"No. My old shack will do without me for a while, I guess.--Say," he
+continued, facing around upon Duff and looking him squarely in the face,
+"this young chap says"--putting his hand upon Barry's shoulder--"Britain
+is going to have a hell of a time licking Germany back into her own
+orbut. Them papers said last night that Canada was going in strong. Do
+you think she could use a fellow like me?"
+
+A silence fell upon the group of men.
+
+"What! Do you mean it, McCuaig?" said Duff at length.
+
+The man turned his thin, eagle face toward the speaker, a light in his
+eyes.
+
+"Why, ain't you goin'? Ain't every one goin' that can? If a fellow stood
+on one side while his country was fightin', where would he live when
+it's all over? He read out of the papers that them Germans were shootin'
+women and children. So--" his face began to work, "am I goin' to stand
+by and ask some one else to make 'em quit? No, by God!"
+
+The men stood watching his face, curiously twisted and quivering. Then
+without a word Duff seized his pack, and swung into the trail, every
+man following him in his order. Without pausing, except for a brief half
+hour at noon, and another later in the day for eating, they pressed the
+trail, running what rapids they could and portaging the others, until in
+the early evening they saw, far away, a dirty blur on the skyline.
+
+"Hurrah!" yelled Fielding. "Good old firebus, waiting for us."
+
+"Somebody run ahead and hold her," said Duff.
+
+Barry flung his pack down and started away.
+
+"Come back here, Barry," cried Knight. "You're not fit. You're all in."
+
+"That's right, too," said McCuaig. "I guess I'll go."
+
+And off he set with the long, shuffling, tireless trot with which, for
+a hundred years, the "runners of the woods" have packed their loads and
+tracked their game in the wilds of northwestern Canada.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BARRICADES AND BAYONETS
+
+
+The city of Edmonton was in an uproar, its streets thronged with
+excited men, ranchers and cowboys from the ranches, lumberjacks from the
+foothill camps, men from the mines, trappers with lean, hard faces, in
+weird garb, from the north.
+
+The news from the front was ominous. Belgium was a smoking waste. Her
+skies were black with the burning of her towns, villages and homesteads,
+her soil red with the blood of her old men, her women and children. The
+French armies, driven back in rout from the Belgian frontier, were being
+pounded to death by the German hordes. Fortresses hitherto considered
+impregnable were tumbling like ninepins before the terrible smashing of
+Austrian and German sixteen-inch guns. Already von Kluck with his four
+hundred thousand of conquering warriors was at the gates of Paris.
+
+Most ominous of all, the British army, that gallant, little sacrificial
+army, of a scant seventy-five thousand men, holding like a bulldog to
+the flank of von Bulow's mighty army, fifty times as strong, threatened
+by von Kluck on the left flank and by von Housen on the right, was
+slowing down the German advance, but was itself being slowly ground
+into the bloody dust of the northern and eastern roads of Northern and
+Eastern France.
+
+Black days these were for the men of British blood. Was the world to
+see something new in war? Were Germans to overcome men of the race of
+Nelson, and Wellington and Colin Campbell?
+
+At home, hundreds of thousands were battering at the recruiting offices.
+In the Dominions of the Empire overseas it was the same. In Canada
+a hundred thousand men were demanding a place in the first Canadian
+contingent of thirty-five thousand, now almost ready to sail. General
+Sam at Ottawa was being snowed under by entreating, insistent, cajoling,
+threatening telegrams. Already northern Alberta had sent two thousand
+men. The rumour in Edmonton ran that there were only a few places left
+to be filled in the north Alberta quota. For these few places hundreds
+of men were fighting in the streets.
+
+Alighting from their train, Duff and his men stood amazed, aghast,
+gazing upon the scene before them. Duff climbed a wagon wheel and
+surveyed the crowd packing the street in front of the bulletin boards.
+
+"No use, this way, boys. We'll have to go around. Come on."
+
+They went on. Up side streets and lanes, through back yards and shops
+they went until at length they emerged within a hundred yards of the
+recruiting office.
+
+Duff called his men about him.
+
+"Boys, we'll have to bluff them," he said. "You're a party of recruits
+that Col. Kavanagh expects. You've been sent for. I'm bringing you in
+under orders. Look as much like soldiers as you can, and bore in like
+hell. Come on!"
+
+They began to bore. At once there was an uproar, punctuated with
+vociferous and varied profanity.
+
+Duff proved himself an effective leader.
+
+"Here, let me pass," he shouted into the backs of men's heads. "I'm on
+duty here. I must get through to Colonel Kavanagh. Keep up there, men;
+keep your line! Stand back, please! Make way!"
+
+His huge bulk, distorted face and his loud and authoritative voice
+startled men into temporary submission, and before they could recover
+themselves he and his little company of hard-boring men were through.
+
+Twenty-five yards from the recruiting office a side rush of the crowd
+caught them.
+
+"They've smashed the barricades," a boy from a telegraph pole called
+out.
+
+Duff and his men fought to hold their places, but they became conscious
+of a steady pressure backwards.
+
+"What's doing now, boy?" shouted Duff to the urchin clinging to the
+telegraph pole.
+
+"The fusileers--they are sticking their bayonets into them."
+
+Before the line of bayonets the crowd retreated slowly, but Duff and his
+company held their ground, allowing the crowd to ebb past them, until
+they found themselves against the line of bayonets.
+
+"Let me through here, sergeant, with my party," said Duff. "I'm under
+orders of Colonel Kavanagh."
+
+The sergeant, an old British army man, looked them over.
+
+"Have you an order, sir--a written order, I mean?"
+
+"No," said Duff. "I haven't, but the colonel expects us. He is waiting
+for me now."
+
+"Sorry, sir," replied the sergeant, "my orders are to let no one through
+without a written pass."
+
+Duff argued, stormed, threatened, swore; but to no purpose. The N. C. O.
+knew his job.
+
+"Send a note in," suggested Barry in Duff's ear.
+
+"Good idea," replied Duff, and wrote hurriedly.
+
+"Here, take this through to your colonel," he said, passing the note to
+the sergeant.
+
+Almost immediately Colonel Kavanagh came out and greeted Duff warmly.
+
+"Where in this wide creation have you been, Duff?" he exclaimed. "I've
+wanted you terribly."
+
+"Here I am now, then," answered Duff. "Six of us. We're going with you."
+
+"It can't be done," said the colonel. "I have only twenty places left;
+every one promised ten times over."
+
+"That makes it easy, Kavanagh. You can give six of them to us."
+
+"Duff, it simply can't be done. You know I'd give it to you if I
+could. I've wires from Ottawa backing up a hundred applicants, actually
+ordering me to put them on. No! It's no use," continued the colonel,
+holding up his hand. "Look here, I'll give you a pointer. We have got
+word to-day that there's to be a second contingent. Neil Fraser is out
+there in your district, Wapiti, raising a company of two hundred and
+fifty men. We have stripped that country bare already, so he's up
+against it. He wants Wapiti men, he says. They are no better than any
+other, but he thinks they are. You get out there to-night, Duff, and get
+in on that thing. You will get a commission, too. Now hike! Hike! Go!
+Honest to God, Duff, I want you with my battalion, and if I can work it
+afterwards, I'll get you exchanged, but your only chance now is Wapiti.
+Go, for God's sake, go quick!"
+
+"What do you say, boys?" asked Duff, wheeling upon his men.
+
+"I say, go!" said Knight.
+
+In this decision they all agreed.
+
+"Go it is," said Duff. "Right about turn. Good luck, Kavanagh, damn you.
+I see you have got a good sergeant there."
+
+"Who? McDowell? None better. You couldn't beat him, eh?" said the
+colonel with a grin.
+
+The sergeant stood at attention, with a wooden face.
+
+"He's the kind of man they want in the front lines," said Duff. "The
+devil himself couldn't break through where he is."
+
+"That's why I have him. Good luck. Good-bye!"
+
+Throughout the night they marched, now and then receiving a lift from a
+ranch wagon, and in the grey of the morning, weary, hungry, but resolute
+for a place in the Wapiti company, they made the village.
+
+Early as it was, Barry found his father astir, with breakfast in
+readiness.
+
+"Hello, boy!" cried his father running to him with outstretched hands.
+
+"Hello, dad!" answered Barry. His father threw a searching glance over
+his son's face as he shook his hand warmly.
+
+"Not a word, Barry, until you eat. Not a word. Go get ready for your
+bath. I'll have it for you in a minute. No, not one word. Quick. March.
+That is the only word these days. As you eat I'll give you the news."
+
+Resolutely he refused to talk until he saw his son begin upon his
+breakfast. Then he poured forth a stream of news. The whole country was
+aflame with war enthusiasm. Alberta had offered half a million bushels
+of oats for the imperial army, and a thousand horses or more. The
+Calgary district had recruited two thousand men, the Edmonton district
+as many more. All over Canada, from Vancouver to Halifax, it was the
+same.
+
+From the Wapiti district twenty-six ranchers, furnishing their own
+horses, had already gone. Ewen Innes was in Edmonton. His brother
+Malcolm was in uniform, too, and his young brother Jim was keen to
+enlist. Neil Fraser was busy raising a company of Wapiti men. Young
+Pickles and McCann had joined up as buglers.
+
+And so the stream flowed, Barry listening with grave face but making no
+response.
+
+"And I'm glad you're back, my boy. I'm glad you're back," said his
+father, clapping him on the shoulder.
+
+The rest of the meal was eaten in silence. They were having each his own
+thoughts, and for the first time in their life together, they kept their
+thoughts to themselves.
+
+"You're going to your office, Dad," said Barry, when they had cleared
+away, and set the house in order.
+
+"No, the office is closed, and will be for some time, I imagine. I'm
+busy with Neil Fraser. I'm acting paymaster, quartermaster, recruiting
+sergeant, and half a dozen other things."
+
+"I'll go down with you," said Barry, as his father rose to go.
+
+His father came back to him, put his hands on his shoulders, and said:
+
+"Barry, I want you to go to bed."
+
+"Nonsense, dad. I'm all right. I'm going downtown with you."
+
+"Barry," said his father, "we have hard times before us, and you must be
+fit. I ask you to go to bed and sleep there this forenoon. You're half
+asleep now. This afternoon we shall face up to our job."
+
+His father's voice was quietly authoritative and Barry yielded.
+
+"All right, dad. I'll do as you say, and this afternoon--well, we'll
+see."
+
+At the noonday meal they were conscious of a mutual restraint. For the
+first time in their lives they were not opening to each other their
+innermost souls. The experience was as distressing as it was unusual.
+The father, as if in dread of silence, was obviously exerting himself
+to keep a stream of talk flowing. Barry was listening with a face very
+grave and very unlike the bright and buoyant face he usually carried.
+They avoided each other's eyes, and paid little heed to their food.
+
+At length Barry pushed back his chair.
+
+"Will you excuse me, dad," he said. "I think I shall step out a moment
+into the garden."
+
+"Do, Barry," said his father, in obvious relief. "You are fagged out, my
+boy."
+
+"Thanks, dad. I am a bit played out."
+
+"And take it easy this afternoon, Barry. To-night you will tell me about
+your trip, and--and--we'll have a talk."
+
+"Good old dad!" said Barry. "You do understand a chap. See you later,
+then," he called back as he passed through the door.
+
+His father sat gazing before him for some moments with a deep shadow on
+his face.
+
+"There is something wrong with that boy," he said to himself. "I wish I
+knew what it was."
+
+He set his house in order, moving heavily as if a sudden weight of years
+had fallen upon his shoulders, and took his way slowly down the street.
+
+"I wonder what it is," he mused, refusing to give form to a horrible
+thought that hovered like a spectre about the windows of his soul.
+
+The first glance at his son's face at the time of the evening meal made
+his heart sing within him.
+
+"He's all right again! He's all right!" he said to himself jubilantly.
+
+"Hello, dad," cried Barry, as his father entered the room. "Supper's
+just ready. How do you feel, eh?"
+
+"Better, my boy--first rate, I mean. I'm properly hungry. You're rested,
+I can see."
+
+"I'm all right, dad! I'm all right!" cried Barry, in his old cheery way.
+"Dad, I want to apologise to you. I wasn't myself to-day, but now I'm
+all right again. Dad, I've joined up. I'm a soldier now," he said with a
+smile on his face, but with anxious eyes turned on his father.
+
+"Joined up!" echoed his father. "Barry, you have enlisted! Thank God, my
+boy. I feared--I thought--No, damned if I did!" he added, with such
+an unusual burst of passion that Barry could only gaze at him with
+astonishment.
+
+"Forgive me, my boy," he said, coming forward with outstretched hand.
+"For a moment I confess I thought--" Again he paused, apparently unable
+to continue.
+
+"You thought, dad," cried Barry, "and--forgive me, dad--I thought too. I
+ought to have known you better."
+
+"And I, you, my son."
+
+They shook hands with each other in an ecstasy of jubilation.
+
+"My God, I'm glad that's through," said the older man. "We were both
+fools, Barry, but thank God that horror is past. Now tell me all about
+everything--your trip, your plans. Let's have a good talk as we always
+do."
+
+"Come on then, dad," cried Barry. "Let's have an eat first. By Jove,
+I feel a thousand years younger. I go to the M. O. to-morrow for an
+examination."
+
+"He is quite unusually severe in his interpretation of the regulations,
+I understand," said his father. "He is turning men down right and left.
+He knows, of course, that there are plenty to choose from. But there is
+no fear of your fitness, Barry."
+
+"Not much," said Barry, with a gay laugh.
+
+Never had they spent a happier evening together. True, the spectre of
+war would thrust itself upon them, but they faced it as men--with a full
+appreciation of its solemn reality, but without fear, and with a quiet
+determination to make whatever sacrifice might be demanded of them. The
+perfect understanding that had always marked their intercourse with
+each other was restored. The intolerable burden of mutual uncertainty in
+regard to each other's attitude toward the war was lifted. All shadows
+that lay between them were gone. Nothing else really mattered.
+
+The day following, Barry received a rude shock. The M. O., after an
+examination, to his amazement and dismay, pronounced him physically
+unfit for service.
+
+"And why, pray?" cried his father indignantly, when Barry announced the
+astounding report. "Is the man a fool? I understood that he was strict.
+But you! unfit! It is preposterous. Unfit! how?"
+
+"Heart murmur," said Barry. "Sets it down to asthma. You remember I told
+you I had a rotten attack after my experience last week in the river. He
+suggested that I apply for a position in an ambulance corps, and he is
+giving me a letter to Colonel Sidleigh at Edmonton. I am going to-morrow
+to Edmonton to see Sidleigh, and besides I have some church business to
+attend to. I must call upon my superintendent. You remember I made an
+application to him for another mission field."
+
+He found Colonel Sidleigh courteously willing to accept his application,
+the answer to which, he was informed, he might expect in a fortnight;
+and so went with a comparatively light heart to his interview with his
+superintendent.
+
+The interview, however, turned out not entirely as he had expected. He
+went with an idea of surrendering his appointment. His superintendent
+made him an offer of another and greater.
+
+"So they turned you down," said the superintendent. "Well, I consider
+it most providential. You have applied for a position on the ambulance
+corps. As fine as is that service, and as splendid as are its
+possibilities, I offer you something much finer, and I will even say
+much more important to our army and to our cause. We are in need of men
+for the Chaplain Service, and for this service we demand the picked men
+of our church. The appointments that have been made already are some
+of them most unsuitable, some, I regret to say, scandalous. Let me
+tell you, sir, of an experience in Winnipeg only last week. It was, my
+fortune to fall in with the commanding officer of a Saskatchewan unit.
+I found him in a rage against the church and all its officials. His
+chaplain had become so hilarious at the mess that he was quite unable to
+carry on."
+
+"Hilarious?" inquired Barry.
+
+"Hilarious, sir. Yes, plain drunk. Think of it. Think of the crime! the
+shame of it! A man charged with the responsibility of the souls of these
+men going to war--possibly to their death--drunk, in their presence!
+A man standing for God and the great eternal verities, incapacitated
+before them! I took the matter up with Ottawa, and I have this
+satisfaction at least, that I believe that no such appointment will ever
+be made again. That chaplain, I may say too, has been dismissed. I have
+here, sir, a mission field suitable to your ability and experience. I
+shall not offer it to you. I am offering you the position of chaplain in
+one of our Alberta battalions."
+
+Barry stood before him, dumb with dismay.
+
+"Of course, I want to go to the war," he said at length, "but I am sure,
+sir, I am not the man for the position you offer me."
+
+"Sir," said the superintendent, "I have taken the liberty of sending in
+your name. Time was an element. Appointments were being rapidly made,
+and I was extremely anxious that you should go with this battalion. I
+confess to a selfish interest. My own boy, Duncan, has enlisted in
+that unit, and many of our finest young men with him. I assumed the
+responsibility of asking for your appointment. I must urge you solemnly
+to consider the matter before you decline."
+
+Eloquently Barry pleaded his unfitness, instancing his failure as a
+preacher in his last field.
+
+"I am not a preacher," he protested. "I am not a 'mixer.' They all say
+so. I shall be impossible as a chaplain."
+
+"Young man," said the superintendent, a note of sternness in his voice,
+"you know not what transformations in character this war will work.
+Would I were twenty years younger," he added passionately, "twenty years
+sounder. Think of the opportunity to stand for God among your men, to
+point them the way of duty, and fit them for it, to bring them comfort,
+when they need comfort sorely, to bring them peace, when they most need
+peace."
+
+Barry came away from the interview more disturbed than he had ever been
+in his life. After he had returned to his hotel, a message from his
+superintendent recalled him.
+
+"I have a bit of work to do," he said, "in which I need your help. I
+wish you to join me in a visitation of some of the military camps in
+this district. We start this evening."
+
+There was nothing for it but to obey his superintendent's orders. The
+two weeks' experience with his chief gave Barry a new view and a new
+estimate of the chaplain's work. As he came into closer touch with camp
+life and its conditions, he began to see how great was the soldier's
+need of such moral and spiritual support as a chaplain might be able
+to render. He was exposed to subtle and powerful temptations. He was
+deprived of the wonted restraints imposed by convention, by environment,
+by family ties. The reactions from the exhaustion of physical training,
+from the monotonous routine of military discipline, from loneliness and
+homesickness were such as to call for that warm, sympathetic, brotherly
+aid, and for the uplifting spiritual inspiration that it is a chaplain's
+privilege to offer. But in proportion as the service took on a nobler
+and loftier aspect, was Barry conscious to a corresponding degree of his
+own unfitness for the work.
+
+When he returned to the city, he found no definite information awaiting
+him in regard to a place in the ambulance corps. He returned home in an
+unhappy and uncertain frame of mind.
+
+But under the drive of war, events were moving rapidly in Barry's life.
+He arrived late in the afternoon, and proceeding to the military H.Q.,
+he found neither his father nor Captain Neil Fraser in the office.
+
+"Gone out for the afternoon, sir," was the word from the orderly in
+charge.
+
+Wandering about the village, he saw in a field at its outskirts, a squad
+of recruits doing military evolutions and physical drill. As he drew
+near he was arrested by the short, snappy tones of the N. C. O. in
+charge.
+
+"That chap knows his job," he said to himself, "and looks like his job,
+too," he added, as his eyes rested upon the neat, upright, soldier-like
+figure.
+
+Captain Neil he found observing the drill from a distance.
+
+"What do you think of that?" he called out to Barry, as the latter came
+within hailing distance. "What do you think of my sergeant?"
+
+"Fine," replied Barry. "Where did you get him?"
+
+"What? Look at him!"
+
+"I am. Pretty natty sergeant he makes, too."
+
+"Let's go out there, and I'll introduce him."
+
+As they crossed the parade ground, the sergeant dropped his military
+tone and proceeded to explain in his ordinary voice some details in
+connection with the drill. Barry, catching the sound of his voice,
+stopped short.
+
+"You don't mean it, Captain Neil! Not dad, is it?"
+
+"Nobody else," said Captain Neil. "Wait a minute. Wait and let's watch
+him at his work."
+
+For some time they stood observing the work of the new sergeant. Barry
+was filled with amazement and delight.
+
+"What do you think of him?" inquired Captain Neil.
+
+But Barry made no reply.
+
+"My company sergeant major got drunk," continued Captain Neil. "I had no
+one to take the drill. I asked your father to take it. He nearly swept
+us off our feet. In consequence, there he stands, my company sergeant
+major, and let me tell you, he will be the regimental sergeant major
+before many weeks have passed, or I'm a German."
+
+"But his age," inquired Barry, still in a maze of astonishment.
+
+"Oh, that's all right. You don't want them too young. I assured the
+authorities that he was of proper military age, telling them, at the
+same time, that I must have him. He's a wonder, and the men just adore
+him."
+
+"I don't wonder at that," said Barry.
+
+Together they moved over to the squad. The sergeant, observing his
+officer, called his men smartly to attention, and greeted the captain
+with a very snappy salute.
+
+"Sergeant major, let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Barry Dunbar,"
+said Captain Neil with a grin.
+
+"I say, dad," said Barry, still unable to associate his father with this
+N. C. O. in uniform who stood before him. "I say, dad, where did you get
+all that military stuff?"
+
+"I'm very rusty, my boy, very rusty! I hope to brush up, though. The men
+are improving, I think, sir."
+
+"I'm sure of it," said Captain Neil. "How is that wild man from
+Athabasca doing?"
+
+"He is finding it hard work, sir, I'm afraid. He finds it difficult to
+connect up this drill business with the business of war. He wants to go
+right off and kill Germans. But he is making an effort to put up with
+me."
+
+"And you, with him, eh, sergeant major? But turn them loose. They have
+done enough for to-day, and I know your son wants to take you off with
+him, and get you to explain how you go into the army."
+
+The explanation came as they were walking home together.
+
+"You see, boy, I felt keenly your disappointment in being rejected from
+the fighting forces of the country. I felt too that our family ought
+to be represented in the fighting line, so when Captain Fraser found
+himself in need of a drill sergeant, I could hardly refuse. I would have
+liked to have consulted you, my boy, but--"
+
+"Not at all, dad; you did perfectly right. It was just fine of you. I'm
+as proud as Punch. I only wish I could go with you. I'd like to be in
+your squad. But never mind, I've two jobs open to me now, and I sorely
+need your advice."
+
+Together they talked over the superintendent's offer of the position of
+chaplain.
+
+"I can't see myself a chaplain, dad. The position calls for an older
+man, a man of wider experience. Many of these men would be almost twice
+my age. Now the superintendent himself would be the man for the job. You
+ought to see him at his work with the soldiers. I really can't think I'm
+fit."
+
+In this opinion his father rather concurred.
+
+"An older man would be better, Barry--a man of more experience would be
+of more service, and, yet I don't know. One thing I am sure of, if you
+accept the position, I believe you will fill it worthily. After all, in
+every department, this war is a young man's job."
+
+"Of course," said Barry. "If I went as chaplain, it would be in your
+unit, dad, and that would be altogether glorious."
+
+"I do hope so. But we must not allow that, however, to influence our
+decision," replied his father.
+
+"I know, I know!" hurriedly agreed Barry. "I trust I would not be unduly
+influenced by personal considerations."
+
+This hope, however, was rudely dashed by an unexpected call for a draft
+of recruits from Captain Neil's company that came through from Colonel
+Kavanagh to replace a draft suddenly dispatched to make up to strength
+another western regiment. Attached to the call there was a specific
+request, which amounted to a demand for the sergeant major, for whose
+special qualifications as physical and military instructor there was
+apparently serious need in Colonel Kavanagh's regiment.
+
+With great reluctance, and with the expenditure of considerable
+profanity, Captain Neil Fraser dispatched his draft and agreed to the
+surrender of his sergeant major.
+
+The change came as a shock to both Barry and his father. For some days
+they had indulged the hope that they would both be attached to the same
+military unit, and unconsciously this had been weighing with Barry in
+his consideration of his probable appointment as chaplain.
+
+The disappointment of their hope was the more bitter when it was
+announced that Colonel Kavanagh's battalion was warned for immediate
+service overseas, and the further announcement that in all probability
+the new battalion, to which the Wapiti company would be attached, might
+not be dispatched until some time in the spring.
+
+"But you may catch us up in England, Barry," said his father, when Barry
+was deploring their ill luck. "No one knows what our movements will be.
+I do wish, however, that your position were definitely settled."
+
+The decision in this matter came quickly, and was, without his will or
+desire, materially hastened by Barry himself.
+
+Colonel Kavanagh's battalion being under orders to depart within ten
+days, a final Church Parade was ordered, at which only soldiers and
+their kin were permitted to be present. The preacher for the day falling
+ill from an overweight of war work, and Barry being in the city with
+nothing to do, the duty of preaching at this Parade Service was suddenly
+thrust upon him.
+
+To his own amazement and to that of his father, Barry accepted without
+any fear or hesitation this duty which in other circumstances would
+have overwhelmed him with dismay. But to Barry the occasion was of such
+surpassing magnitude and importance that all personal considerations
+were obliterated.
+
+The war, with its horrors, its losses, its overwhelming sacrifice, its
+vast and eternal issues, was the single fact that filled his mind. It
+was this that delivered him from that nervous self-consciousness, the
+preacher's curse, that paralyses the mental activities, chills the
+passions, and cloggs the imagination, so that his sermon becomes
+a lifeless repetition of words, previously prepared, correct, even
+beautiful, it may be in form, logical in argument, sound in philosophy,
+but dead, dull and impotent, bereft of the fire that kindles the powers
+of the soul, the emotion that urges to action, the imagination that
+lures to high endeavour.
+
+"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye
+present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which
+is your reasonable service."
+
+The voice, clear, vibrant, melodious, arrested with its first word the
+eyes and hearts of his hearers, and so held them to the end. With the
+earnest voice there was the fascination of a face alight with a noble
+beauty, eyes glowing as with lambent flame.
+
+A second time he read the appealing words, then paused and allowed his
+eyes to wander quietly over the congregation. They represented to him in
+that hour the manhood and womanhood of his country. Sincerely, with
+no attempt at rhetoric and with no employment of any of its tricks, he
+began his sermon.
+
+"This war," he said, "is a conflict of ideals eternally opposed. Our
+ambitious and ruthless enemy has made the issue and has determined the
+method of settlement. It is a war of souls, but the method of settlement
+is not that of reason but that of force--a force that finds expression
+through your bodies. Therefore the appeal of the Apostle Paul, this
+old-world hero, to the men of his time reaches down to us in this day,
+and at this crisis of the world's history. Offer your bodies--these
+living bodies--these sacred bodies--offer them in sacrifice to God."
+
+There was little discussion of the causes of the war. What need? They
+knew that this war was neither of their desiring nor of their making.
+There was no attempt to incite hatred or revenge. There was little
+reference to the horrors of war, to its griefs, its dreadful agonies,
+its irreparable losses.
+
+From the first word he lifted his audience to the high plane of
+sacrament and sacrifice. They were called upon to offer upon the altar
+of the world's freedom all that they held dear in life--yea, life
+itself! It was the ancient sacrifice that the noblest of the race had
+always been called upon to make. In giving themselves to this cause they
+were giving themselves to their country. They were offering themselves
+to God. In simple diction, and in clear flowing speech, the sermon
+proceeded without pause or stumbling to the end. The preacher closed
+with an appeal to the soldiers present to make this sacrifice of theirs
+at once worthy and complete. These bodies of theirs were sacred and were
+devoted to this cause. It was their duty to keep them clean and fit.
+
+For a few brief moments, he turned to the others present at the
+service--the fathers, mothers, wives and sweethearts of the soldiers,
+and reminded them in tones thrilling with tenderness and sympathy that
+though not privileged to share in the soldiers' service in the front
+lines, none the less might they share in this sacrifice, by patient
+endurance of the separation and loss, by a cheerful submission to trial,
+and by continual remembrance in prayer to Almighty God of the sacred
+cause and its defenders they might help to bring this cause to victory.
+
+In the brief prayer that followed the sermon, in words tender, simple,
+heart-moving, he led the people in solemn dedication of themselves, soul
+and body, to their country, to their cause, to their God.
+
+The effect of the sermon and prayer was overpowering. There were
+no tears, but men walked out with heads more erect, because of the
+exaltation of spirit which was theirs. And women, fearful of the coming
+hour of parting, felt their hearts grow strong within them with the
+thought that they were voluntarily sending their men away. Upon the
+whole congregation lay a new and solemn sense of duty, a new and
+uplifting sense of privilege in making the sacrifice of all that they
+counted precious for this holy cause.
+
+It was the sermon that brought the decision in the matter of Barry's
+appointment.
+
+"What do you think of that, Colonel Kavanagh?" asked Captain Neil
+Fraser, who came in for the service.
+
+"A very fine sermon! A very notable sermon!" said the colonel. "Who is
+he?"
+
+"He is my own minister," said Captain Neil, "and he gave me, to-day, the
+surprise of my life. I didn't know it was in him. I understand there is
+a chance of his being our chaplain. He is Sergeant Dunbar's son."
+
+"I wish to Heaven we could take him with us! What about it, Fraser?
+We've got the father, why not the son, too? They'd both like it."
+
+"I say, Colonel, for Heaven's sake, have a heart. I hated to surrender
+my company sergeant major. I don't think I ought to be asked to
+surrender our chaplain."
+
+"All right, Fraser, so be it. But you have got a wonderful chaplain in
+that boy. What a face! What a voice! And that's the kind of a spirit we
+want in our men."
+
+That very afternoon, Captain Neil went straight away to Colonel
+Leighton, the officer commanding the new regiment to which Captain
+Neil's company belonged. To the colonel he gave an enthusiastic report
+of the sermon, with Colonel Kavanagh's judgment thereon.
+
+"I would suggest, sir, that you wire Ottawa on the matter," he urged.
+"If Colonel Kavanagh thought he had a chance, he would not hesitate. We
+really ought to get this fixed. I assure you he's a find."
+
+"Go to it, then, Fraser. I'm rather interested to see your earnest
+desire for a chaplain. The Lord knows you need one! Go up to
+Headquarters and use my name. Say what you like."
+
+Thus it came that the following day Barry was informed by wire of his
+appointment as chaplain of the new regiment of Alberta rangers.
+
+"It's at least a relief to have the matter settled," said his father, to
+whom Barry brought his wire. "Barry, I'm glad of the opportunity to tell
+you that since yesterday, my mind has undergone considerable change.
+I am not sure but that you have found your place and your work in the
+war."
+
+"No, dad," answered Barry, "I wasn't responsible for that sermon
+yesterday. The war was very near and very real to me. Those boys were
+looking up at me, and you were there, dad. You drew that sermon stuff
+out of me."
+
+"If once, why not again? At any rate, it greatly rejoiced me to know
+that it was there in you. I don't say I was proud of you, my boy. I was
+proud of you, but that is not the word that I should like to use. I was
+profoundly grateful that I was privileged to hear a sermon like that
+from a son of mine. Now, Barry," continued his father, "this is our last
+day together for some months, perhaps forever," he added in a low tone.
+
+"Don't, daddy, don't," cried Barry, "I can't bear to think of that
+to-day."
+
+"All right, Barry, but why not? It is really far better that we should
+face all the possibilities. But now that we have this day--and what a
+perfect day it is--for our last day together, what shall we do with it?"
+
+"I know, dad--I think you would wish that we take our ride into the
+foothills to-day."
+
+"It was in my mind, my boy. I hesitated to suggest it. So let us go."
+
+It was one of those rare November days that only Alberta knows, mellow
+with the warm sun, and yet with a nip in it that suggested the coming
+frost, without a ripple of the wind that almost constantly sweeps the
+Alberta ranges. In the blue sky hung motionless, like white ships at
+sea, bits of cloud. The long grass, brown, yellow and green in a hundred
+shades, lay like a carpet over the rolling hills and wide spreading
+valleys, reaching up on every side to the horizon, except toward the
+west, where it faded into the blue of the foothills at the bases of the
+mighty Rockies.
+
+Up the long trail, resilient to their horses' feet, they cantered where
+the going was good, or picked their way with slow and careful tread
+where the rocky ridges jutted through the black soil.
+
+They made no effort to repulse the thought that this was their last day
+together, nor did they seek to banish the fact of the war. With calm
+courage and hope they faced the facts of their environment, seeking
+to aid each other in readjusting their lives to those facts. They
+were resolutely cheerful. The day was not to be spoiled with tears
+and lamentations. Already each in his own place and time had made his
+sacrifice of a comradeship that was far dearer than life. The agony of
+that hour, each had borne in silence and alone. No shadow should fall
+across this sunny day.
+
+By the side of the grave, in its little palisaded enclosure, they
+lingered, the father recalling the days of his earlier manhood, which
+had been brightened by a love whose fragrance he had cherished and
+shared with his son through their years together, Barry listening with
+reverent attention and tender sympathy.
+
+"I had always planned that I too should be laid here, Barry," said his
+father, as they prepared to take their departure, "but do you know, boy,
+this war has made many changes in me and this is one. It seems to me
+a very little thing where my body lies, if it be offered, as you were
+saying so beautifully yesterday, in sacrifice to our cause."
+
+Barry could only nod his head in reply. He was deeply moved.
+
+"You are young, Barry," said his father, noting his emotion, "and life
+is very dear to you, my boy."
+
+"No, dad, no! Not life," said Barry brokenly. "Not life, only you, dad.
+I just want you, and, oh dad!" continued the boy, losing hold of himself
+and making no effort to check or hide the tears that ran down his face,
+"if one of us is to go in this war,--as is likely enough,--I only
+want that the other should be there at the time. It would
+be--terribly--lonely--dad--to go out myself--without you. Or to have you
+go out--alone.--We have always been together--and you have been--so very
+good to me, dad. I can't help this, dad,--I try--but I am not strong
+enough--I'm not holding back from the sacrifice, dad," hurrying his
+words,--"No, no, not that, but perhaps you understand."
+
+For answer, his father put both his arms around his son, drew his head
+down to his breast, as if he had been a child.
+
+"There, there, laddie," he said, patting him on the shoulder, "I know, I
+know! Oh God, how I know. We have lived together very closely, without
+a shadow ever between us, and my prayer, since this war began, has
+been that in death, if it had to be, we might be together, and, Barry,
+somehow I believe God will give us that."
+
+"Good old dad, good old boy! What a brick you are! I couldn't help that,
+dad. Forgive me for being a baby, and spoiling the day--"
+
+"Forgive you, boy," still with his arms around his son, "Barry, I love
+you for it. You've never brought me one sorrow nor will you. To-day and
+every day I thank God for you, my son."
+
+They rode back through the evening toward the camp. By the time they
+arrived there, the sun had sunk behind the mountains, and the quiet
+stars were riding serenely above the broken, floating clouds, and in
+their hearts was peace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A QUESTION OF NERVE
+
+
+"Gentlemen, may I introduce Captain Dunbar, your sky-pilot, padre,
+chaplain, anything you like? They say he's a devil of a good preacher.
+The Lord knows you need one."
+
+So Barry's commanding officer introduced him to the mess.
+
+He bowed in different directions to the group of officers who, in the
+ante-room of the mess, were having a pre-prandial cocktail. Barry found
+a place near the foot of the table and for a few minutes sat silent,
+getting his bearings.
+
+Some of the officers were known to him. He had met the commanding
+officer, Colonel Leighton, a typical, burly Englishman, the owner of
+an Alberta horse ranch, who, well to do to begin with, had made money
+during his five years in the country. He had the reputation of being a
+sporting man, of easy morality, fond of his glass and of good living. He
+owed his present position, partly to political influence, and partly
+to his previous military experience in the South African war. His
+popularity with his officers was due largely to his easy discipline, and
+to the absence of that rigidity of manner which is supposed to go with
+high military command, and which civilians are wont to find so irksome.
+
+Barry had also met Major Bustead, the Senior Major of the Battalion, and
+President of the mess, an eastern Canadian, with no military experience
+whatever, but with abounding energy and ambition; the close friend and
+boon companion of Colonel Leighton, he naturally had become his second
+in command. Barry was especially delighted to observe Major Bayne, whom
+he had not seen since his first meeting with him some months ago on the
+Red Pine Trail. Captain Neil Fraser and Lieutenant Stewart Duff were the
+only officers about the table whom he recognised, except that, among
+the junior lieutenants, he caught the face of young Duncan Cameron, the
+oldest son of his superintendent, and a fine, clean-looking young fellow
+he appeared.
+
+Altogether Barry was strongly attracted by the clean, strong faces about
+him. He would surely soon find good friends among them, and he only
+hoped he might be able to be of some service to them.
+
+The young fellow on his right introduced himself as Captain Hopeton.
+He was a young English public school boy, who, though a failure as a
+rancher, had proved an immense success in the social circles of the
+city. Because of this, and also of his family connections "at home," he
+had been appointed to a Civil Service position. A rather bored manner
+and a supercilious air spoiled what would otherwise have been a handsome
+and attractive face.
+
+After a single remark about the "beastly bore" of military duty, Hopeton
+ignored Barry, giving such attention as he had to spare from his dinner
+to a man across the table, with whom, apparently, he had shared some
+rather exciting social experiences in the city.
+
+For the first half hour of the meal, the conversation was of the most
+trivial nature, and was to Barry supremely uninteresting. "Shop talk"
+was strictly taboo, and also all reference to the war. The thin stream
+of conversation that trickled from lip to lip ran the gamut of sport,
+spiced somewhat highly with society scandal which, even in that little
+city, appeared to flourish.
+
+To Barry it was as if he were in a strange land and among people of a
+strange tongue. Of sport, as understood by these young chaps, he knew
+little, and of scandal he was entirely innocent; so much so that many
+of the references that excited the most merriment were to him utterly
+obscure. After some attempts to introduce topics of conversation which
+he thought might be of mutual interest, but which had fallen quite flat,
+Barry gave up, and sat silent with a desolating sense of loneliness
+growing upon his spirit.
+
+"After the port," when smoking was permitted, he was offered a cigarette
+by Hopeton, and surprised that young man mightily by saying that he
+never smoked. This surprise, it is to be feared, deepened into disgust
+when, a few moments later, he declined a drink from Hopeton's whisky
+bottle, which a servant brought him.
+
+Liquors were not provided at the mess, but officers were permitted to
+order what they desired.
+
+As the bottles circulated, tongues were loosened. There was nothing foul
+in the talk, but more and more profanity, with frequent apology to the
+chaplain, began to decorate the conversation. Conscious of a deepening
+disgust with his environment, and of an overwhelming sense of isolation,
+Barry cast vainly about for a means of escape. Of military etiquette he
+was ignorant; hence he could only wait in deepening disgust for the
+O. C. to give the signal to rise. How long he could have endured is
+doubtful, but release came in a startling, and, to most of the members
+of the mess, a truly horrifying manner.
+
+In one of those strange silences that fall upon even the noisiest of
+companies, Colonel Leighton, under the influence of a somewhat liberal
+indulgence in his whisky bottle, began the relation of a tale of very
+doubtful flavour. In the midst of the laughter that followed the tale,
+Barry rose to his feet, his face white and his eyes aflame, and in a
+voice vibrating with passion, said:
+
+"May I be excused, sir?"
+
+"Why, certainly," said the colonel pleasantly, adding after a moment's
+hesitation, "is there anything wrong, Dunbar? Are you ill?"
+
+"No, sir." Barry's voice had the resonant quality of a cello string.
+"I mean, yes, sir," he corrected. "I am ill. The atmosphere surrounding
+such a tale is nauseating to me."
+
+In the horrified silence that followed his remark, he walked out from
+the room. Upon his ears, as he stood in the ante-room, trembling with
+the violence of his passion, a burst of laughter fell. A sudden wrath
+like a hot flame swept his body. He wheeled in his tracks, tore open the
+door, and with head high and face set, strode to his place at the table
+and sat down.
+
+Astonishment beyond all words held the company in tense stillness. From
+Barry's face they looked toward the colonel, who, too dumfounded for
+speech or action, sat gazing at his chaplain. Then from the end of the
+table a few places down from Barry, a voice was heard.
+
+"Feel better, Dunbar?" The cool, clear voice cut through the tense
+silence like the zip of a sword.
+
+"I do, thank you, sir," looking him straight in the eye.
+
+"The fresh air, doubtless," continued the cool voice. "I always find
+myself that even a whiff of fresh air is a very effective antidote for
+threatening vertigo. I remember once--" continued the speaker, dropping
+into a conversational tone, and leaning across the table slightly toward
+Barry, "I was in the room with a company of men--" And the speaker
+entered upon a long and none too interesting relation of an experience
+of his, the point of which no one grasped, but the effect of which every
+one welcomed with the profoundest relief. He was the regimental medical
+officer, a tall, slight man, with a keen eye, a pleasant face crowned by
+a topknot of flaming hair, and with a little dab of hair of like colour
+upon his upper lip, which he fondly cherished, as an important item in
+his military equipment.
+
+"Say, the old doc is a lifesaver, sure enough," said a young subaltern,
+answering to the name of "Sally," colloquial for Salford, as he stood
+amid a circle of officers gathered in the smoking room a few minutes
+later. "A lifesaver," repeated Sally, with emphasis. "He can have me for
+his laboratory collection after I'm through."
+
+"He is one sure singing bird," said another sub, a stout, overgrown boy
+by the name of Booth. "The nerve of him," added Booth in admiration.
+
+"Nerve!" echoed a young captain, "but what about the pilot's nerve?"
+
+"Sui generis, Train, I should say," drawled Hopeton.
+
+"Suey, who did you say?" inquired Sally. "What's her second name? But
+let me tell you I could have fallen on his neck and burst into tears of
+gratitude. For me," continued Sally, glancing about the room, "I don't
+hold with that dirt stuff at mess. It isn't necessary."
+
+"Beastly bad form," said Hopeton, "but, good Lord! Your Commanding
+Officer, Sally! There's such a thing as discipline, you know."
+
+"What extraordinary thing is it that Sally knows?" inquired Major
+Bustead, who lounged up to the group.
+
+"We were discussing the padre's break, Major, which for my part,"
+drawled Hopeton, "I consider rotten discipline."
+
+"Discipline!" snorted the major. "By Gad, it was a piece of the most
+damnable cheek I have ever heard at a mess table. He ought to be sent to
+Coventry. I only hope the O. C. will get him exchanged."
+
+The major made no effort to subdue his voice, which was plainly audible
+throughout the room.
+
+"Hush, for God's sake," warned Captain Train, as Barry entered the door.
+"Here he is."
+
+But Barry had caught the major's words. For a moment he stood
+irresolute; then walked quietly toward the group.
+
+"I couldn't help hearing you, Major Bustead," he said, in a voice
+pleasant and under perfect control. "I gather you were referring to me."
+
+"I was, sir," said the major defiantly.
+
+"And why should I be sent to Coventry, or exchanged, may I ask?" Barry's
+voice was that of an interested outsider.
+
+"Because," stuttered the Major, "I consider, sir, that--that--you have
+been guilty of a piece of damnable impertinence toward your Commanding
+Officer. I never heard anything like it in my life. Infernal cheek, I
+call it, sir."
+
+While the major was speaking, Barry stood listening with an air of
+respectful attention.
+
+"I wonder!" he said, after a moment's thought. "If I thought I had been
+impertinent, I should at once apologise. But, sir, do you think it is
+part of my duty to allow any man, even my Commanding Officer, to--pardon
+the disgusting metaphor, it is not so disgusting as the action
+complained of--to spit in my soup, and take it without protest? Do you,
+sir?"
+
+"I--you--" The major grew very red in the face. "You need to learn your
+place in this battalion, sir."
+
+"I do," said Barry, still preserving his quiet voice and manner. "I
+want to learn--I am really anxious to learn it. Do you mind answering
+my question?" His tone was that of a man who is earnestly but quite
+respectfully seeking information from a superior officer.
+
+"Your question, sir?" stuttered the major, "your--your--question. Damn
+your question, and yourself too."
+
+The major turned abruptly away. Barry heard him quite unmoved, stood
+looking after him in silence a moment or two, then, shaking his head,
+with a puzzled expression on his face, moved slowly away from the group.
+
+"Oh, my aunt Caroline," breathed Sally into his friend Hopeton's ear,
+resting heavily meanwhile against his shoulder. "What a score! What a
+score!"
+
+"A bull, begad! a clean bull!" murmured Hopeton, supporting his friend
+out of the room as he added, "A little fresh air, as a preventative of
+vertigo, as the old doc says, eh, Sally."
+
+"Good Lord, is he just a plain ass, or what?" inquired young Booth, his
+eye following Barry down the room.
+
+"Ass! A mule, I should say. And one with a good lot of kick in him,"
+replied Captain Train. "I don't know that I care for that kind of an
+animal, though."
+
+Before many hours had passed, the whole battalion had received with
+undiluted joy an account of the incident, for though the Commanding
+Officer was popular with his men, to have him called down at his own
+mess by one of his own officers was an event too thrilling to give
+anything but unalloyed delight to those who had to suffer in silence
+similar indignities at the hands of their officers.
+
+A notable exception in the battalion, however, was Sergeant Major
+McFetteridge, who, because of his military experience, and of his
+reputation as a disciplinarian, had been recently transferred to the
+battalion. To the sergeant major this act of Barry's was but another and
+more flagrant example of his fondness for "buttin' in," and the sergeant
+major let it be known that he strongly condemned the chaplain for what
+he declared was an unheard of breach of military discipline.
+
+Of course there were others who openly approved, and who admired the
+chaplain's "nerve in standing up to the old man." In their opinion he
+was entirely justified in what he had said. The O. C. had insulted him,
+and every officer at the mess, by his off-colour story, but on the whole
+the general result of the incident was that Barry's life became more and
+more one of isolation from both officers and men. For this reason and
+because of a haunting sense of failure the months of training preceding
+the battalion's departure for England were for Barry one long and almost
+uninterrupted misery. It seemed impossible to establish any point of
+contact with either the officers or the men. In their athletics, in
+their social gatherings, in their reading, he was quietly ignored and
+made to feel that he was in no way necessary. An impalpable but very
+real barrier prevented his near approach to those whom he was so eager
+to serve.
+
+This unexpressed opposition was quickened into active hostility by the
+chaplain's uncompromising attitude on the liquor question. By the army
+regulations, the battalion canteen was dry, but in spite of this
+many, both of the officers and the men, freely indulged in the use
+of intoxicating drink. The effect upon discipline was, of course,
+deplorable, and in his public addresses as well as private conversation,
+Barry constantly denounced these demoralising habits, winning thereby
+the violent dislike of those especially affected, and the latent
+hostility of the majority of the men who agreed with the sergeant major
+in resenting the chaplain's "buttin' in."
+
+It was, therefore, with unspeakable joy that Barry learned that the
+battalion was warned for overseas service. Any change in his lot would
+be an improvement, for he was convinced that he had reached the limit of
+wretchedness in the exercise of his duty as chaplain of the battalion.
+
+In this conviction, however, he was mistaken. On shipboard, he
+discovered that there were still depths of misery which he was called
+upon to plumb. Assigned to a miserable stateroom in an uncomfortable
+part of the ship, he suffered horribly from seasickness, and for the
+first half of the voyage lay foodless and spiritless in his bunk,
+indifferent to his environment or to his fate. His sole friend was his
+batman, Harry Hobbs, but, of course, he could not confide to Harry the
+misery of his body, or the deeper misery of his soul.
+
+It was Harry, however, that brought relief, for it was he that called
+the M. O. to his officer's bedside. The M. O. was shocked to find the
+chaplain in a state of extreme physical weakness, and mental depression.
+At once, he gave orders that Barry should be removed to his own
+stateroom, which was large and airy and open to the sea breezes. The
+effect was immediately apparent, for the change of room, and more
+especially the touch of human sympathy, did much to restore Barry to his
+normal health and spirits. A friendship sprang up between the M. O.
+and the chaplain. With this friendship a new interest came into Barry's
+life, and with surprising rapidity he regained both his physical and
+mental tone.
+
+The doctor took him resolutely in hand, pressed him to take his part in
+the daily physical drill, induced him to share the daily programme of
+sports, and, best of all, discovering a violin on board, insisted on his
+taking a place on the musical programme rendered nightly in the salon.
+As might be expected, his violin won him friends among all of the music
+lovers on board ship, and life for Barry began once more to be bearable.
+
+Returning strength, however, recalled him to the performance of
+his duties as chaplain, and straightway in the exercise of what he
+considered his duty, he came into conflict with no less a personage than
+the sergeant major himself. The trouble arose over his batman, Harry
+Hobbs.
+
+Harry was a man who, in his youthful days, had been a diligent patron of
+the London music halls, and in consequence had become himself an amateur
+entertainer of very considerable ability. His sailor's hornpipes, Irish
+jigs, his old English North-country ballads and his coster songs were an
+unending joy to his comrades. Their gratitude and admiration took forms
+that proved poor Harry's undoing, and besides some of them took an
+unholy joy in sending the chaplain's batman to his officer incapable of
+service.
+
+Barry's indignation and grief were beyond words. He dealt faithfully
+with the erring Hobbs, as his minister, as his officer, as chaplain, but
+the downward drag of his environment proved too great for his batman's
+powers of resistance. Once and again Barry sought the aid of the
+sergeant major to rescue Harry from his downward course, but the old
+sergeant major was unimpressed with the account of Harry's lapses.
+
+"Is your batman unfit for duty, sir?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, he is, often," said Barry indignantly.
+
+"Did you report him, sir?" inquired the sergeant major.
+
+"No, I did not."
+
+"Then, sir, I am afraid that until you do your duty I can do nothing,"
+answered the sergeant major, with suave respect.
+
+"If you did your duty," Barry was moved to say, "then Hobbs would not
+need to be reported. The regulations governing that canteen should
+prevent these frequent examples of drunkenness, which are a disgrace to
+the battalion."
+
+"Do I understand, sir," inquired the sergeant major, with quiet respect,
+"that you are accusing me of a failure in duty?"
+
+"I am saying that if the regulations were observed my batman and
+others would not be so frequently drunk, and the enforcing of these
+regulations, I understand, is a part of your duty."
+
+"Then, sir," replied the sergeant major, "perhaps I had better report
+myself to the Commanding Officer."
+
+"You can please yourself," said Barry, shortly, as he turned away.
+
+"Very good, sir," replied the sergeant major. "I shall report myself at
+once."
+
+The day following, the chaplain received an order to appear before the
+O. C. in the orderly room.
+
+"Captain Dunbar, I understand that you are making a charge against
+Sergeant Major McFetteridge," was Colonel Leighton's greeting.
+
+"I am making no charge against any one, sir," replied Barry quietly.
+
+"What do you say to that, Sergeant Major McFetteridge?"
+
+In reply, the sergeant major gave a full and fair statement of the
+passage between the chaplain and himself the day before.
+
+"Is this correct, Captain Dunbar?" asked the O. C.
+
+"Substantially correct, sir, except that the sergeant major is here on
+his own suggestion, and on no order of mine."
+
+"Then I understand that you withdraw your charge against the sergeant
+major."
+
+"I withdraw nothing, sir. I had no intention of laying a charge, and I
+have laid no charge against the sergeant major; but at the same time I
+have no hesitation in saying that the regulations governing the canteen
+are not observed, and, as I understand that the responsibility for
+enforcing these regulations is in the sergeant major's hands, in that
+sense I consider that he has failed in his duty."
+
+But the sergeant major was too old a soldier to be caught napping.
+He had his witnesses ready at hand to testify that the canteen was
+conducted according to regulations, and that if the chaplain's batman
+or any others took more liquor than they should, neither the corporal in
+charge of the canteen nor the sergeant major was to be blamed.
+
+"All I can say, sir," replied Barry, "is that soldiers are frequently
+drunk on this ship, and I myself have seen them when the worse for
+liquor going into the canteen."
+
+"And did you report these men to their officers or to me, Captain
+Dunbar, or did you report the corporal in charge of the canteen?"
+
+"No, sir, I did not."
+
+"Then sir, do you know that you have been guilty of serious neglect of
+duty?" said the colonel sternly.
+
+"Do I understand, sir, that it is my duty to report to you every man I
+see the worse for liquor on this ship?"
+
+"Most certainly," replied the colonel, emphatically. "Every breach of
+discipline must be reported."
+
+"I understood, sir, that an officer had a certain amount of discretion
+in a matter of this kind."
+
+"Where did you get that notion?" inquired the colonel. "Let me tell you
+that you are wrong. Discretionary powers lie solely with me."
+
+"Then, sir, I am to understand that I must report every man whom I see
+the worse for liquor?"
+
+"Certainly, sir."
+
+"And every officer, as well, sir?"
+
+The colonel hesitated a moment, fumbled with his papers, and then
+blurted out:
+
+"Certainly, sir. And let me say, Captain Dunbar, that an officer,
+especially an officer in your position, ought to be very careful in
+making a charge against a N. C. O., more particularly the sergeant major
+of his battalion. Nothing is more calculated to drag down discipline.
+The case is dismissed."
+
+"Sir," said Barry, maintaining his place before the table. "May I ask
+one question?"
+
+"The case is dismissed, Captain Dunbar. What do you want?" asked the
+colonel brusquely.
+
+"I want to be quite clear as to my duty, in the future, sir. Do I
+understand that if any man or officer is found under the influence of
+liquor, anywhere in this ship, and at any hour of the day or night, he
+is to be reported at once to the orderly room, even though that officer
+should be, say, even the adjutant or yourself?" Barry said, gazing up
+at the colonel with a face in which earnestness and candour were equally
+blended.
+
+The colonel gazed back at him with a face in which rage and perplexity
+were equally apparent. For some moments, he was speechless, while the
+whole orderly room held its breath.
+
+"I mean--that you--you understand--of course," stuttered the colonel,
+"that an officer must use common sense. He must be damned sure of what
+he says, in other words," said the colonel, rushing his speech.
+
+"But, sir," continued Barry.
+
+"Oh, go to the devil, sir," roared the colonel. "The case is dismissed."
+
+Barry saluted and left the room.
+
+"Is the man an infernal and condemned fool, or what is the matter with
+him?" exclaimed the colonel, turning to his adjutant in a helpless
+appeal, while the orderly room struggled with its grins.
+
+"The devil only knows," said Major Bustead. "He beats me. He is an
+interfering and impertinent ass, in my opinion, but what else he is, I
+don't know."
+
+It is fair to say that the sergeant major bore the chaplain no grudge
+for his part in the affair. The whole battalion, however, soon became
+possessed of the tale, adorned and expanded to an unrecognisable extent,
+and revelled in ecstasy over the discomfort of the C. O. The consensus
+of opinion was that on the whole the sergeant major had come off with
+premier honours, and as between the "old man" and the "Sky Pilot," as
+Barry was coming to be called, it was about an even break. As for the
+Pilot, he remained more than ever a mystery, and on the whole, the
+battalion was inclined to leave him alone.
+
+The chaplain, however, had partially, at least, achieved his aim, in
+that the regulations governing the canteen were more strictly enforced,
+to the vast improvement of discipline generally, and to the immense
+advantage of Harry Hobbs in particular.
+
+Soon after this, another event occurred which aided materially in
+bringing about this same result, and which also led to a modification of
+opinion in the battalion in regard to their chaplain.
+
+To the civilian soldier the punctilio of military etiquette is
+frequently not only a bore, but at times takes on the appearance of
+wilful insult which no grown man should be expected to tolerate. To the
+civilian soldier born and brought up in wide spaces of the far Northwest
+this is especially the case.
+
+It is not surprising, therefore, that McCuaig, fresh from his
+thirty-five years of life in the Athabasca wilds, should find the
+routine of military discipline extremely irksome and the niceties of
+military etiquette as from a private to an officer not only foolish
+but degrading both to officer and man. Under the patient shepherding of
+Barry's father, he had endured much without protest or complaint, but,
+with the advent of Sergeant Major McFetteridge, with his rigid military
+discipline and his strict insistence upon etiquette, McCuaig passed
+into a new atmosphere. To the freeborn and freebred recruit from the
+Athabasca plains, the stiff and somewhat exaggerated military bearing
+of the sergeant major was at first a source of quiet amusement, later of
+perplexity, and finally of annoyance. For McFetteridge and his minutiae
+of military discipline McCuaig held only contempt. To him, the whole
+business was a piece of silly nonsense unworthy of serious men.
+
+It was inevitable that the sergeant major should sooner or later
+discover this opinion in Private McCuaig, and that he should consider
+the holding of this opinion as a tendency toward insubordination. It was
+also inevitable that the sergeant major should order a course of special
+fatigues calculated to subdue the spirit of the insubordinate private.
+
+It took McCuaig some days to discover that in these frequent fatigues
+and special duties, he was undergoing punishment, but once made, the
+discovery wrought in him a cold and silent rage, which drove him to
+an undue and quite unwonted devotion to the canteen, which in turn
+transformed the reserved, self-controlled man of the wilds into a
+demonstrative, disorderly and quarrelsome "rookie" aching for trouble.
+
+Under these circumstances, an outburst was inevitable. Corporal Ferry,
+in charge of the canteen, furnished the occasion.
+
+"No more for you, McCuaig. You've got more aboard now than you can
+carry."
+
+To the injury of being denied another beer was added the insult
+of suggesting his inability to carry what he had. This to a man of
+McCuaig's experience in every bar and camp and roadhouse from Edmonton
+to the Arctic circle, was not to be endured.
+
+He leaned over the improvised bar, until his face almost touched the
+corporal's.
+
+"What?" he ejaculated, but in the single expletive there darted out
+such concentrated fury, that the little corporal sprang back as from a
+striking snake.
+
+"You can't have any more beer, McCuaig," said the corporal, from a safe
+distance.
+
+"Watch me, sonny!" replied McCuaig.
+
+With a single sweep of his hand, he snatched two bottles from the ledge
+behind the corporal's head. Holding one aloft, he knocked the top off
+the other, drank its contents slowly and smashed the empty bottle at the
+spot where the corporal's head had been; knocked the top off the second
+bottle and was proceeding to drink it, in a more or less leisurely
+fashion.
+
+"Private Timms! Private Mulligan!" shouted Corporal Ferry, reappearing
+from beneath the counter. "Arrest that man!"
+
+"Wait, sonny; give me a chance," cried McCuaig, in a wild, high,
+singsong voice. Lifting his bottle to his lips, he continued to drink
+slowly, keeping his eye upon the two privates, who were considering the
+best method of carrying out their orders.
+
+"There, sonny, fill that up again," cried McCuaig, good-naturedly, when
+he had finished his drink, tossing the second bottle at the head of
+the corporal, who, being on the alert, again made a successful
+disappearance.
+
+"Now, then, boys, come on," said McCuaig, backing toward the wall, and
+dropping his hands to his hips. With a curse of disappointment that he
+found himself without his usual weapons of defence, McCuaig raised a
+shout, sprang into the air, cracked his heels together in a double rap,
+and swinging his arms around his head, yelled:
+
+"Come on, my boys! I'm hungry, I am! Meat! Meat! Meat!"
+
+With each "meat," his white teeth came together with a snap like that
+of a hungry wolf. Such was the beastly ferocity in his face and posture
+that both Private Timms and Private Mulligan, themselves men of more
+than average strength, paused and looked at the corporal for further
+orders.
+
+"Arrest that man," said the corporal again, preserving at the same time
+an attitude that revealed a complete readiness for swift disappearance.
+"Private McTavish," he added, calling upon a tall Highlander who was
+gazing with admiring eyes upon the raging McCuaig, "assist Private Timms
+and Private Mulligan in arresting that man."
+
+"Why don't you come yourself, sonny?" inquired McCuaig. With a swift
+sidestep and a swifter swoop of his long arm, he reached for the
+corporal, who once more found safety in swift disappearance.
+
+At that instant, the Highlander, seeing his opportunity, flung himself
+upon McCuaig, and winding his arms around him, hung to him grimly,
+crying out:
+
+"Get hold of his legs! Queeck! Will you?"
+
+When the sergeant major, attracted by the unwonted uproar, appeared upon
+the scene, there was a man on every one of McQuaig's limbs, and another
+one astride his stomach. "Heavin' like sawlogs shootin' a rapid," as
+Private Corbin, a lumberjack from the Eau Claire, was later heard to
+remark.
+
+"What is he like now?" inquired the colonel, after listening to the
+sergeant major's report of the Homeric combat.
+
+"He is in a compartment in the hold, sir, and raging like one demented.
+He very nearly did for Major Bustead, smashing at him with a scantling
+that he ripped from the ship's timbers, sir. He still has the scantling,
+sir."
+
+"Let him cool off all night," said the Commanding Officer, after
+consultation with the adjutant.
+
+Barry, who with difficulty had restrained himself during the sergeant
+major's report, slipped from the room, found the M. O., to whom he
+detailed the story and dragged him off to visit the raging McCuaig.
+
+They found a corporal on guard outside.
+
+"I would not open the door, sir. He is really dangerous."
+
+"Oh, rot!" replied the M. O. "Open up the door!"
+
+"Excuse me, sir," said the corporal, "it is not safe. At present, he is
+clean crazy. He is off his nut entirely."
+
+The M. O. stood listening at the door. From within came moaning sounds
+as from a suffering beast.
+
+"That man is suffering. Open the door!" ordered the M. O. peremptorily.
+
+The corporal, with great reluctance, unlocked the padlock, shot back the
+bolt, and then stood away from the door.
+
+"It is the medical officer, McCuaig," said the doctor, opening the door
+slightly.
+
+Bang! Crash! came the scantling upon the door jamb, shattering it to
+pieces. The whole guard flung themselves against the door, shoved it
+shut, and shot the bolt.
+
+"I warned you, sir," said the panting corporal. "Better leave him until
+morning. He's a regular devil!"
+
+"He is no more a devil than you are, corporal," said Barry, in a loud,
+clear voice. "He is one of the best men in the battalion. More than
+that, he is my friend, and if he spends the night there, I spend it with
+him."
+
+So saying, and before any one could stop him, Barry shot back the bolt,
+opened the door, and with his torchlight flashing before him, stepped
+inside.
+
+"Hello, McCuaig," he called, in a quiet, clear voice, "where are you?
+It's Dunbar, you know."
+
+He drew the door shut after him. The corporal was for following him, but
+the M. O. interposed.
+
+"Stop out!" he ordered. "Stay where you are! You have done enough
+mischief already."
+
+"But, sir, he'll kill him!"
+
+"This is my case," said the M. O. sharply. "Fall back all of you, out of
+sight!"
+
+Together they stood listening in awestruck silence, expecting every
+moment to hear sounds of conflict, and cries for help, but all they
+heard was the cool, even flow of a quiet voice, and after some minutes
+had passed, the sound of moans, mingled with a terrible sobbing.
+
+The M. O., moving toward the corporal and his guard, said in a low tone:
+
+"Take your men down the passage and keep them there until I call for
+you."
+
+"Sir," began the corporal.
+
+"Will you obey my orders?" said the M. O. "I'm in command here! Go!"
+
+Without further words, the corporal moved his men away.
+
+Half an hour later, the sergeant major, going his rounds, received a
+rude shock. In the passage leading to McCuaig's compartment, he met four
+men, bearing on a stretcher toward the sick bay a long silent form.
+
+"Who have you got there, corporal?" he inquired in a tone of kindly
+interest.
+
+"McCuaig, sir."
+
+"McCuaig?" roared the sergeant major. "And who--"
+
+"Medical officer's orders."
+
+"Silence there," said a sharp voice in the rear. "Carry on, men."
+
+And past the astonished sergeant major, the procession filed with the
+medical officer and the chaplain at its tail end.
+
+After the sergeant major had made his report to the O. C., as was his
+duty, the M. O. was sent for. What took place at that interview
+was never divulged to the mess, but it was known that whereas the
+conversation began in very loud tones by the Officer Commanding, it
+ended half an hour later with the M. O. being shown out of the room by
+the colonel himself, who was heard to remark:
+
+"A very fine bit of work. Tell him I want to see him when he has a few
+minutes, and thank you, doctor, thank you!"
+
+"Who does the old man want to see?" inquired Sally, who, with Hopeton
+and Booth, happened to be passing.
+
+"The chaplain," snapped the M. O., going on his way.
+
+"The chaplain? By Jove, he's a queer one, eh?"
+
+The M. O. turned sharply back, and coming very close to Sally, said in a
+wrathful voice:
+
+"A queer one? Yes, a queer one! But if some of you damned young idiots
+that sniff at him had just half his guts, you'd be twice the men you
+are.--Shut up, Hopeton! Listen to me--" and in words of fiery rage that
+ran close to tears, he recounted his experience of the last hour.
+
+"By Jove! Doc, some guts, eh?" said Sally in a low tone, as he moved
+away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SUBMARINES, BULLPUPS, AND OTHER THINGS
+
+
+A long, weird blast from the fog horn, followed by two short, sharp
+toots, recalled Barry from his morning dream.
+
+"Fog," he grumbled, and turned over to re-capture the enchantment of the
+Athabasca rapids, and his dancing canoe.
+
+Overhead there sounded the trampling of feet.
+
+"Submarines, doc," he shouted and leaped to the floor broad awake.
+
+"What's the row?" murmured the M. O., who was a heavy sleeper.
+
+For answer, Barry ripped the clothes from the doctor's bed.
+
+"Submarines, doc," he shouted again, and buckling on his Sam Brown, and
+seizing his lifebelt, he stood ready to go.
+
+"What! your boots off, doc?"
+
+In the orders of the day before had been an announcement that officers
+and men were to sleep fully dressed.
+
+"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed the doctor, hunting through his bedclothes
+in desperation. "I can't sleep in my boots. Where's my tunic? Go on, old
+fellow, I'll follow you."
+
+Barry held his tunic for him.
+
+"Here you are! Wake up, doc! And here's your Sam Brown."
+
+Barry dropped to lace the doctor's boots, while the latter was buckling
+on the rest of his equipment.
+
+"All right," cried the doctor, rushing from the room and leaving his
+lifebelt behind him.
+
+Barry caught up the lifebelt and followed.
+
+"Your lifebelt, doc," he said, as they passed up the companion way.
+
+"Oh, I'm a peach of a soldier," said the doctor, struggling into his
+lifebelt, and swearing deeply the while.
+
+"Stop swearing, doc! It's a waste of energy."
+
+"Oh, go to hell!"
+
+"No, I prefer Heaven, if I must leave this ship, but for the present, I
+believe I'm needed here, and so are you, doc. Look there!"
+
+The doctor glanced out upon the deck.
+
+"By Jove! You're right, old man, we are needed and badly. I say, old
+chap," he said, pausing for a moment to turn to Barry, "you are a dear
+old thing, aren't you?"
+
+The deck was a mass of soldiers struggling, swearing, fighting their way
+to their various stations. Officers, half dressed and half awake, were
+rushing hither and thither, seeking their units, swearing at the men
+and shouting meaningless orders. Over all the stentorian voice of the
+sergeant major was vainly trying to make itself understood.
+
+In the confusion the cry was raised: "We're torpedoed! We're going
+down!"
+
+There was a great rush for the nearest boats. Men flung discipline
+to the winds and began fighting for a chance of their lives. It was a
+terrific and humiliating scene.
+
+Suddenly, over the tumult, was heard a loud, ringing laugh.
+
+"Oh, I say, Duff! Not that way! Not that way!"
+
+Again came the ringing laugh.
+
+Immediately a silence fell upon the struggling crowd, and for a moment
+they stood looking inquiringly at each other. That moment of silence was
+seized by the sergeant major. Like a trumpet his sonorous voice rang out
+steady and clear.
+
+"Fall in, men! Boat quarters! Silence there!"
+
+He followed this with sharp, intelligible commands to his N. C. O.'s.
+Like magic, order fell upon the turbulent, struggling crowd.
+
+"Stand steady, you there!" roared the sergeant major, who having got
+control of his men, began to indulge himself in a few telling and
+descriptive adjectives.
+
+In less than two minutes, the men were standing steady as a rock and the
+panic was passed.
+
+"Who was it that laughed up there in that stampede?" inquired the O. C.,
+when the officers were gathered about him in the orderly room.
+
+"I think it was the Sky Pilot, sir--the chaplain, sir," said Lieutenant
+Stewart Duff.
+
+"Was it you that laughed, Captain Dunbar?" asked the colonel, turning
+upon Barry.
+
+"Perhaps I did, sir. I'm sorry if--"
+
+"Sorry!" exclaimed the colonel. "Dammit, sir, you saved the situation
+for us all. Who told you it was a false alarm?"
+
+"No one, sir. I didn't know it was a false alarm. I was looking at
+Lieutenant Duff--" He checked himself promptly. "I mean, sir--well, it
+seemed a good place to laugh, so I just let it come."
+
+The colonel's eyes rested with curious inquiry upon the serene face of
+the chaplain, with its glowing eyes and candid expression. "A good place
+for a laugh? It was a damned good place for a laugh, and gentlemen, I
+thank God I have one officer who finds in the face of sudden danger a
+good place for a laugh. And now I have something to say to you."
+
+The O. C.'s remarks did not improve the officers' opinion of themselves,
+and they slunk out of the room--no other word properly describes the
+cowed and shamed appearance of that company of men--they slunk out of
+the room. They had failed to play the part of British officers in the
+face of sudden peril.
+
+In his speech to the men, the C. O. made only a single reference to the
+incident, but that reference bit deep.
+
+"Men, I am thoroughly ashamed and disappointed. You acted, not like
+soldiers, but like a herd of steers. The difference between a herd of
+steers and a battalion of soldiers, in the face of sudden danger, is
+only this:--the steers break blindly for God knows where, and end piled
+up over a cut bank; soldiers stand steady listening for the word of
+command."
+
+If the O. C. handled the men with a light hand, the sergeant major did
+not. His tongue rasped them to the raw. No one knows a soldier as does
+his N. C. O., and no N. C. O. is qualified to set forth the soldier's
+characteristics with the intimate knowledge and adequate fluency of
+the sergeant major. One by one he peeled from their shivering souls the
+various layers of their moral cuticle, until they stood, in their own
+and in each other's eyes, objects of commiseration.
+
+"There's just one thing more I wad like ta say to ye." The sergeant
+major's tendency to Doric was more noticeable in his moments of deeper
+feeling, "but it's something for you lads to give heed ta. When ye were
+scrammlin' up yonder, like a lot o' mavericks at a brandin', and yowlin'
+like a bunch o' coyotes, there was one man in the regiment who could
+laugh. There's lots o' animals that the Almighty made can yowl, but
+there's only one can laugh, and that's a mon. For God's sake, men, when
+ye're in a tight place, try a laugh."
+
+For some weeks after this event the chaplain was known throughout the
+battalion as "the man that can laugh," and certain it is that from
+that day there existed between the M. O. and the chaplain a new bond of
+friendship.
+
+As the ship advanced deeper into the submarine zone, the sole topic of
+thought and of conversation came to be the convoy. Where was that convoy
+anyway? While the daylight lasted, a thousand pairs of eyes swept the
+horizon, and the intervening spaces of tossing, blue-grey water, for the
+sight of a sinister periscope, or for the smudge of a friendly cruiser,
+and when night fell, a thousand pairs of ears listened with strained
+intentness for the impact of the deadly torpedo or for the signal of the
+protecting convoy.
+
+While still a day and a night out from land, Barry awoke in the
+dim light of a misty morning, and proceeded to the deck for his
+constitutional. There he fell in with Captain Neil Fraser and Captain
+Hopeton pacing up and down.
+
+"Come along, Pilot!" said Captain Neil, heartily, between whom and the
+chaplain during the last few days a cordial friendship had sprung up.
+"We're looking for submarines. This is the place and the time for Fritz,
+if he is going to get us at all."
+
+Arm in arm they made the circle of the deck. The mist, lying like a
+bank upon the sea, shifted the horizon to within a thousand yards of the
+ship.
+
+"I wish I knew just what lies behind that bank there," said Captain
+Hopeton, pointing over the bow.
+
+For some moments they stood, peering idly into the mist.
+
+"By Jove, there IS something there," said Barry, who had a hawk's eye.
+
+"You've got 'em too, eh," laughed Hopeton. "I've had 'em for the last
+forty-eight hours. I've been 'seein' things' all night."
+
+"But there is," insisted Barry, pointing over the port bow.
+
+"What is it like?" asked Captain Neil, while Hopeton ran for his glass.
+
+"I'll tell you what it's like--exactly like the eye of an oyster in its
+pulp. And, by Jove, there's another!" added Barry excitedly.
+
+"I can't see anything," said Captain Neil.
+
+"But I can," insisted Barry. "Look there, Hopeton!"
+
+Hopeton fixed his glass upon the mist, where Barry pointed.
+
+"You're right! There is something, and there are two of them."
+
+"Give the Pilot the glass, Hopeton," said Neil. "He's got a good eye."
+
+"There are two ships, boys, as I'm a sinner, but what they are, I don't
+know," cried Barry in a voice tense with excitement. "Here, Neil, take
+the glass. You know about ships."
+
+Long and earnestly, Captain Neil held the glass in the direction
+indicated.
+
+"Boys, by all that's holy, they're destroyers," he said at length in a
+low voice.
+
+Even as they gazed, the two black dots rapidly took shape, growing
+out of the mist into two sea monsters, all head and shoulders, boring
+through the seas, each flinging high a huge comb of white spray, and
+with an indescribable suggestion of arrogant, resistless power, bearing
+down upon the ship at furious speed.
+
+"Destroyers!" shouted Captain Neil, in a voice that rang through the
+ship. "By gad, destroyers!"
+
+There was no question of friend or foe; only Great Britain's navy rode
+over those seas immune.
+
+Upon every hand the word was caught up and passed along. In a
+marvellously short space of time, the rails, the boats, the rigging, all
+the points of vantage were thronged with men, roaring, waving, cheering,
+like mad.
+
+With undiminished speed, each enveloped in its cloud of spray, the
+destroyers came, one on each side, rushed foaming past, swept in a
+circle around the ship and took their stations alongside, riding quietly
+at half speed like bulldogs tugging at a leash.
+
+"Great heavens, what a sight!" At the croak in Hopeton's voice, the
+others turned and looked at him.
+
+"You've got it too, eh!" said Captain Neil, clearing his own throat.
+
+"I've got something, God knows!" answered Hopeton, wiping his eyes.
+
+"I, too," said Barry, swallowing the proverbial lump. "Those
+little--little--"
+
+"Bulldogs," suggested Hopeton.
+
+"Bulldog pups," said Captain Neil.
+
+"That's it," said Barry. "That's what they are, little bulldog pups, got
+me by the throat all right."
+
+"Me, too, by gad!" said Captain Neil. "I should have howled out loud in
+another minute."
+
+"Listen to the boys!" cried Barry.
+
+From end to end of the ship rose one continuous roar, "Good old Navy!
+Good old John Bull!" while Hopeton, openly abandoning the traditional
+reserve and self-control supposed to be a characteristic of the English
+public school boy, climbed upon the rail and, hanging by a stanchion
+with one hand, and with the other frantically waving his cap over his
+head, continued to shout:
+
+"England! England! England forever!"
+
+Then above the cheering cries was heard the battalion band, and from
+a thousand throats in solemn chant there rose the Empire's national
+anthem, "God Save the King."
+
+That night they steamed into old Plymouth town, and the following
+morning were anchored safe at Devonport dock. Strict orders held the
+officers and men on board ship until arrangements for debarkation should
+be completed, but to Barry and the doctor, the Commanding Officer gave
+shore leave for an hour.
+
+"And I would suggest," he said, "that you go and have a talk with that
+old boy walking up and down the dock there. Yarn to him about Canada,
+he's wild to know about it."
+
+The old naval officer was indeed "wild to know about Canada," so
+that the greater part of their shore leave was spent in answering his
+questions, and eager though he was to explore the old historic town,
+before Barry knew it, he was in the full tide of a glowing description
+of his own Province of Alberta, extolling its great ranches, its
+sweeping valleys, its immense resources.
+
+"And to think you are all British out there," exclaimed the old salt.
+
+"We're all British, of course," replied Barry, "but not all from
+Britain."
+
+"I know, I know," said the officer, "but that only makes it more
+wonderful."
+
+"Wonderful! Why, why should it be wonderful?"
+
+"Yes, wonderful. Oh, you Canadians," cried the old salt, impulsively
+stretching out his hand to Barry. "You Canadians!"
+
+Surprised, Barry glanced at his face. Those hard blue eyes were brimming
+with tears; the leatherlike skin was working curiously about the mouth.
+
+"Why, sir, I don't quite understand what you mean," said Barry.
+
+"No, and you never will. Think of it, rushing three thousand miles--"
+
+"Five thousand for some of us," interrupted Barry.
+
+"Fancy that! Rushing five thousand miles in this way, to help old mother
+England, and all of your own free will. We didn't ask it of you. Though,
+by heaven, we're grateful for it. I find it difficult, sir, to speak
+quietly of this."
+
+Not until that moment had Barry caught the British point of view. To
+him, as to all Canadians, it had only been a perfectly reasonable and
+natural thing that when the Empire was threatened, they should spring
+into the fight. They saw nothing heroic in that. They were doing their
+simple duty.
+
+"But think of the wonder of it," said the naval officer again, "that
+Canada should feel in that way its response to the call of the blood."
+
+The old man's lips were still quivering.
+
+"That is true, sir," said the M. O., joining in the talk, "but there is
+something more. Frankly, my opinion is that the biggest thing, sir, with
+some of us in Canada, is not that the motherland was in need of help,
+though, of course, we all feel that, but that the freedom of the world
+is threatened, and that Canada, as one of the free nations of the world,
+must do her part in its defence."
+
+"A fine spirit," said the old gentleman.
+
+"This fight," continued the M. O., "is ours, you see, as well as yours,
+and we hate a bully."
+
+The old salt swore a great oath, and said:
+
+"You are pups of the old breed, and you run true to type. I'm glad to
+know you, gentlemen," he continued, shaking them warmly by the hand.
+
+After they had gone a few steps he called Barry back to him.
+
+"That's my card, sir. I should like you to come to see me in London
+sometime when you are on leave."
+
+Barry glanced at the card and read, "Commander Howard Vincent, R. N. R."
+
+"It was very decent of the old boy," he said to the Commanding Officer
+afterwards, when recounting the interview. "I don't suppose I'll ever
+use the card, but I do think he really meant it."
+
+"Meant it," exclaimed the Commanding Officer. "Why, Dunbar, I'm an old
+country man, and I know. Make no mistake. These people, and especially
+these naval people, do not throw their cards loosely about. You will
+undoubtedly hear from him."
+
+"It's not likely," replied Barry, "but the old gentleman is great stuff,
+all right."
+
+During the long, sunny spring day, their dinky little train whisked them
+briskly through the sweet and restful beauty of the English southern
+counties. To these men, however, from the wide sunbaked, windswept
+plains of western Canada, the English landscape suggested a dainty
+picture, done in soft greys and greens, with here and there a vivid
+splash of colour, where the rich red soil broke through the green. But
+its tiny fields set off with hedges, and lines of trees, its little,
+clean-swept villages, with their picturesque church spires, its parks
+with deer that actually stood still to look at you, its splendid manor
+houses, and, at rare intervals, its turreted castles, gave these men,
+fresh from the raw, unmeasured and unmade west, a sense of unreality. To
+them it seemed a toy landscape for children to play with, but, as they
+passed through the big towns and cities with their tall, clustering
+chimneys, their crowding populations, with unmistakable evidences of
+great wealth, their shipping, where the harbours bit into the red coast
+line, there began to waken in them the thought that this tiny England,
+so beautifully finished, and so neatly adorned, was something mightier
+than they had ever known.
+
+In these tiny fields, in these clean swept villages, in these manor
+houses, in these castles, in factory and in shipyard, were struck deep
+the roots of an England whose greatness they had never yet guessed.
+
+The next afternoon brought them to the great military camp at
+Shorncliffe, in a misty rain, hungry, for their rations had been
+exhausted early in the day, weary from ship and train travel, and eager
+to get their feet once again on mother earth.
+
+At the little station they were kept waiting in a pouring rain for
+something to happen, they knew not what. The R. T. O., a young Imperial
+officer, blase with his ten months of war in England, had some occult
+reason for delaying their departure. So, while the night grew every
+moment wetter and darker, the men sat on their kit-bags or found such
+shelter as they could in the tiny station, or in the lee of the "goods
+trains" blocking the railroad tracks, growing more indignant and
+more disgusted with the British high command, the war in general, and
+registering with increasing intensity vows of vengeance against the
+Kaiser, who, in the last analysis, they considered responsible for their
+misery.
+
+At length the "brass hat" for whom they had been waiting appeared
+upon the scene, not in the slightest degree apologetic, but very
+businesslike, and with a highly emphasised military manner. After a
+little conversation between the brass hat and their Commanding Officer,
+the latter gave the command and off they set in the darkness for their
+first route march on English soil.
+
+Through muddy roads and lanes, over fields, slushy and sodden, up hill
+and down dale, they plodded steadily along. At the rear of the column
+marched Barry with the M. O.
+
+Long before they reached their destination, their conversation had given
+out, the M. O. sucking sullenly at his pipe, the bowl upside down. The
+rear end of the column was very frayed and straggling. Why it is that a
+perfectly fit company will invariably fray out if placed at the rear
+of a marching column, no military expert has quite succeeded in
+satisfactorily explaining.
+
+As he tramped along in the dark by the side of the road, the M. O.
+stumbled over a soldier sitting upon the soggy bank.
+
+"Who are you?" he inquired shortly.
+
+"Corporal Thom, sir."
+
+"What's the matter with you?"
+
+"I'm all in, sir. I've been sick all day, sir."
+
+"Why didn't you report sick, then? Can't you get on?"
+
+"I don't think so, sir. Not for a while, at least."
+
+"Have you any pain, any nausea?"
+
+"No, sir, I'm just all in."
+
+"Do you know our route?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I've got the turns down."
+
+"Well, come along then when you can. I'll send back a waggon later, but
+don't wait for that."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Corporal Thom.
+
+"Come on, Dunbar! We'll send a waggon back for these stragglers. There
+will be a good many of them before long."
+
+"You go on, doc. I'll come later," said Barry. "I'll catch up to you."
+
+But the M. O., at the various halts, waited in vain for the chaplain to
+appear.
+
+On arriving at the camp, after a long struggle, he succeeded in sending
+back an Army Service waggon to bring in the stragglers, but just as the
+waggon was about to leave, he heard coming up the road, a party stepping
+out briskly to the music of their own whistling. In the rear of the
+party marched the chaplain, laden down with one man's rifle and another
+man's kit-bag.
+
+"They're all here, sir," said Corporal Thom to the M. O., with a
+distinct note of triumph in his voice. "All here, sir," he repeated, as
+he observed the sergeant major standing at the doctor's side.
+
+"Well done, corporal," said the sergeant major. "You brought 'em all
+in? That means that no man has fallen out on our first march in this
+country."
+
+The corporal made no reply, but later on, he explained the matter to the
+sergeant major.
+
+"It's that Sky Pilot of ours, sir," he said. "Blowed if he'd let us fall
+out."
+
+"Kept you marching, eh?"
+
+"No, it's his chocolate and his jaw, but more his jaw than his
+chocolate. He's got lots of both. I was all in. I'd been sick all day
+in the train. Couldn't eat a bite. Well, the first thing, he gives me a
+cake of his chocolate. Then he sets himself down in the mud beside me,
+and me wishin' all the time he'd go on and leave me for the waggon to
+pick up. Then he gives me a cigarette, and then he begins to talk."
+
+"Talk, what about?"
+
+"Damned if I know, but the first thing I knew I was tellin' him about
+the broncho bustin',--that's my job, you know--and how I won out from
+Nigger Jake in the Calgary Stampede, until I was that stuck on myself
+that I said: 'Well, sir, we'd better get a move on,' and up he gets with
+my kit-bag on his back. By and by, we picks up another lame duck and
+then another, feedin' 'em with chocolate and slingin' his jaw, and when
+we was at the limit, he halts us outside one of them stone shacks and
+knocks at the door. 'No soldiers here,' snaps the red-headed angel,
+shuttin' the door right in his face. Then he opens the door and steps
+right in where she could see him, and starts to talk to her, and us
+listening out in the rain. Say! In fifteen minutes we was all standin'
+up to a feed of coffee and buns, and then he gets Harry Hobbs whistlin'
+and singin', and derned if we couldn't have marched to Berlin. Say!
+He's a good one, ain't no quitter, and he won't let nobody else be a
+quitter."
+
+And thus it came that with Corporal Thom and his derelicts the chaplain
+marched into a new place in the esteem of the men of his battalion, and
+of its sergeant major.
+
+But of this, of course, Barry had no knowledge. He knew that he had made
+some little progress into the confidence of both officers and men in his
+battalion. He had made, too, some firm friendships which had relieved,
+to a certain extent, the sense of isolation and loneliness that had
+made his first months with the battalion so appalling. But there still
+remained the sense of failure inasfar as his specific duty as chaplain
+was concerned.
+
+The experiences of the first weeks in England only served to deepen in
+him the conviction that his influence on the men against the evils which
+were their especial snare was as the wind against the incoming tide,
+beating in from the North Sea. He could make a ripple, a certain amount
+of fussy noise, but the tide of temptation rolled steadily onward,
+unchecked in its flow.
+
+The old temptations to profanity, drink and lust, that had haunted the
+soldiers' steps at home, were found to be lying in wait for them here
+and in aggravated form. True, in the mess and in his presence among the
+men there was less profanity than there had been at the first, but it
+filled him with a kind of rage to feel that this change was due to no
+sense of the evil of the habit, but solely to an unwillingness to give
+offence to one whom many of them were coming to regard with respect and
+some even with affection.
+
+"I hate that," he said to the M. O., to whom he would occasionally
+unburden his soul. "You'd think I was a kind of policeman over their
+morals."
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," said the M. O., to whom the habit of
+profanity was a very venial sin. "You ought to be mighty glad that your
+presence does act as a kind of moral prophylactic. And it does, I assure
+you. I confess that since I have come to be associated with you, I am
+conscious of a very real, and at times, distressing limitation of
+my vocabulary. I may not be more virtuous, but certainly I am more
+respectable."
+
+This sentiment, however, brought little comfort to the chaplain.
+
+"I am not a policeman," he protested, "and I am not going to play
+policeman to these men. I notice them shut up when I come around, but I
+know quite well that they turn themselves loose when I pass on, and
+that they feel much more comfortable. I am not and will not be their
+policeman."
+
+"What then would you be?" inquired the M. O.
+
+Barry pondered this question for some time.
+
+"To tell the truth," he said, at length, "I confess, I don't quite
+know. I wish I did, doc, on my soul. One thing I do know, the men are no
+better here in their morals than they were at home."
+
+"Better? They are worse, by Jove!" exclaimed the M. O. "Look at
+the daily crime-sheet! Look at that daily orderly room parade. It's
+something fierce, and it's getting worse."
+
+"The wet canteen?" inquired Barry, who had lost prestige with some in
+the battalion by reason of the strenuous fight he had made against its
+introduction since coming to England. Not that the men cared so much
+for their liquor, but they resented the idea that they were denied
+privileges enjoyed by other battalions.
+
+"The wet canteen?" echoed the doctor. "No, you know I opposed, as you
+did, the introduction of the wet canteen, although not upon the same
+grounds. I regard it as a perfect nuisance in camp. It is the centre of
+every disorder, it is subversive of discipline; it materially
+increases my sick parade. But it is not the wet canteen that is chiefly
+responsible for the growing crime-sheet and orderly room parade. It is
+those damned--I don't apologise--"
+
+"Please don't. Say it again!" exclaimed Barry fervently.
+
+"Those damned pubs," continued the M. O., "stuck at every crossroads in
+this country. They're the cause of ninety per cent. of the drunkenness
+in our army, and more than that, I want to give you another bit of
+information that came out at our M. O. conference this week, namely that
+these pubs account for ninety per cent. of our tent hospital cases."
+
+"Ninety per cent., doctor? That's surely high."
+
+"I would have said so, but I am giving you the unanimous verdict of
+the twenty-six medical officers at the conference. Cut out the damned
+beer--and you know I take my share of it--cut out the beer and ninety
+per cent. of the venereal disease goes. With me it is not a question of
+morality but of efficiency." Here the M. O. sprang from his chair and
+began to pace the hut. "This is the one thing in this army business that
+makes me wild. We come over here to fight--these boys are willing to
+fight--and by gad they will fight! They go out for a walk, they have a
+few beers together, their inhibitory powers are paralysed, opportunity
+comes their way, and they wake up a little later diseased. God in
+heaven! I love this dear old England, and I would die for her if need
+be, but may God Almighty damn her public houses, and all the infernal
+and vicious customs which they nourish."
+
+"Thank you, doctor, go right on," said Barry. "I was at the tent
+hospital this week for the first time. Ever since, I have been wanting
+to say what you have said just now. But what did your M. O. conference
+do about it?"
+
+"What could we do? The Home Office blocks the way. Well, I've got that
+off my stomach, and I feel better," added the M. O., with a slight
+laugh.
+
+"But, doc, I want to say this," said Barry. "I don't believe that the
+percentage of men who go in for this sort of thing is large. I've been
+making inquiries from our chaplains and they all agree that we have a
+mighty fine and clean body of men in our Canadian army."
+
+"Right you are! Of course, it is only a small percentage, a very small
+percentage--a much smaller percentage than in our civilian population
+at home. But small as it is, it is just that much too many. Hell and
+blazes! These men are soldiers. They have left their homes, and their
+folks, to fight. Their people--their people are the best in our land.
+There's that young Pentland. A finer young chap never threw a leg over
+a broncho. He's in that tent hospital to-night. I know his mother. Three
+sons she has given. Oh, damn it all," the doctor's voice broke at this
+point. "I can't speak quietly. Their mothers have given them up, to
+death, if need be, but not to this rotten, damnable disease. Look here,
+Pilot!" The doctor pointed a shaking and accusing finger at Barry. "You
+have often spoken against this thing, but next time you break loose,
+give them merry hell over it. You can't make it too hot."
+
+Long Barry sat silent overborne by the fury of the doctor's passionate
+indictment.
+
+"Cheer up, old chap!" said the doctor, when his wrath had somewhat
+subsided. "We'll lick the Kaiser and beat the devil yet."
+
+"But, doctor, what can I do?" implored Barry. "That's part of my job,
+surely. Part of the job of the chaplain service, I mean. Oh, that is the
+ghastly tragedy of this work of mine. Somehow I can't get at it. These
+evils exist. I can speak against them and make enemies, but the things
+go on just as before."
+
+"Don't you believe it, Pilot, not quite as before. Behold how you have
+already checked my profanity. Even the old man has pretty much cut it
+out at mess. You don't know where they would have been but for you.
+Cheer up! Our wings may not be visible but, on the other hand, there are
+no signs of horns and hoofs."
+
+"Doctor, one thing I'll do," cried Barry, with a sudden inspiration
+"We've a meeting of the chaplains' corps to-morrow. I'll give them your
+speech."
+
+"Expurgated edition, I hope," said the M. O.
+
+"No, I'll put in every damn I can remember, and, if need be, a few
+more."
+
+"Lord, I'd like to be there, old boy!" said the doctor, fervently.
+
+Barry was as good as his word. At the meeting of the chaplains'
+corps, the time was mainly taken up in routine business, dealing with
+arrangements for religious services at the various camps within the
+area.
+
+At the close of the meeting, however, one of the chaplains rose and
+announced that he had a matter to bring to the attention of the corps--a
+matter of the highest importance, which demanded their immediate and
+serious attention, and which they dared not any longer ignore. It was
+the matter of venereal disease in our Canadian army.
+
+His statistics and illustrative incidents gripped hard the hearts of
+the men present. He closed with a demand that steps be taken that day to
+deal with the situation. The Canadian people had entrusted them with
+the care of their boys' souls. "Their souls," he cried. "I say our first
+duty is to their bodies. I am not saying the percentage is large. It is
+not as large as in the civilian population at home. But why any? We must
+care for these men's bodies. They fight with their bodies."
+
+His last sentence struck Barry to the heart. It recalled his own sermon,
+spoken in Edmonton to his father's battalion. Immediately he was on his
+feet, and without preface or apology, reproduced as far as he was able
+the M. O.'s speech of the previous night, and that without expurgation.
+
+There was but little discussion. There was but one opinion. It was
+resolved to call a joint meeting of the chaplains and medical officers
+to decide upon a course of action.
+
+As Barry was leaving the meeting, the senior chaplain, an old Anglican
+clergyman, with a saintly face and a smile that set one's tenderest
+emotions astir, came to him, and putting his hand affectionately upon
+his shoulder, said:
+
+"And how is your work going, my dear fellow?"
+
+It was to Barry as if his father's hand were upon his shoulder, and
+before he was aware he was pouring out the miserable story of his own
+sad failure as a chaplain.
+
+"Poor boy! Poor boy!" the old gentleman kept saying. "I know how you
+feel. Just so, just so!"
+
+When Barry had finished relieving his heart of the burden that had so
+long lain upon it, the old gentleman took him by the hand and said:
+
+"My dear fellow, remember they are far from home. These boys need their
+mothers. They sorely need their mothers! And, my boy, they need God. And
+they need you. Good-bye!"
+
+Barry came away with a warm feeling in his heart, and in it a new
+purpose and resolve. No longer would he be a policeman to his men. He
+would try to forget their faults, and to remember only how sorely they
+needed their mothers and their God, and that they needed him, too.
+
+He found the camp thrilling with great news, glorious news. The day so
+long awaited had come. The battalion was under orders for France. At
+that very moment there was an officers' meeting in the orderly room.
+
+As Barry entered the room, the O. C. was closing his speech.
+
+Barry was immediately conscious of a new tone, a new spirit, in the
+colonel's words. He spoke with a new sense of responsibility, and what
+more than anything else arrested Barry's attention, with a new sense of
+brotherhood toward his officers.
+
+"In closing what I have to say, gentlemen, let me make a confession.
+I am not satisfied with the battalion, nor with my officers. I am not
+satisfied with myself. I remember being indignant at the report sent in
+by the inspecting officer concerning this battalion. I thought he was
+unfair and unduly severe. I believe I said so. Gentlemen, I was wrong.
+Since that time I have seen work in some regiments of the Imperial
+Service, and especially, I have seen the work on the front line. I think
+I know now what discipline means. Discipline, gentlemen, is the
+thing that saves an army from disaster. Some things we must cut out
+absolutely. Whatever unfits for service must go. I saw a soldier, a
+Canadian soldier, shot at the front for being intoxicated. I pray God,
+I may never see the like again. At this point, I wish to express my
+appreciation of the work of our chaplain, who I am glad to see has just
+come in. He has stood for the right thing among us, and has materially
+helped in the discipline and efficiency of this battalion. Gentlemen,
+you have your orders. Let there be no failure. Obedience is demanded,
+not excuses. Gentlemen, carry on!"
+
+Barry hurried away to his hut. The words of his colonel had lifted him
+out of his despair. He had not then so desperately failed. His colonel
+had found something in him to approve. And France was before him! There
+was still a chance for service. The boys would need him there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FRANCE
+
+
+"France, sunny France!" The tone carried concentrated bitterness and
+disgust. "One cursed fraud after another in this war."
+
+"Cheer up!" said Barry. "There's worse to come--perhaps better. This
+rain is beastly, but the clouds will pass, and the sun will shine again,
+for in spite of the rain this IS 'sunny France.' There's a little homily
+for you," said Barry, "and for myself as well, for I assure you this
+combination of mal de mer and sleet makes one feel rotten."
+
+"Everything is rotten," grumbled Duff, gazing gloomily through the
+drizzling rain at the rugged outline of wharves that marked the Boulogne
+docks.
+
+"Look at this," cried Duff, sweeping his hand toward the deck. "You
+would think this stuff was shot out of the blower of a threshing
+machine--soldier's baggage, kits, quartermaster's stores--and this is a
+military organisation. Good Lord!"
+
+"Lieutenant Duff! Is Lieutenant Duff here?" It was the O. C.'s voice.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Duff, going forward and saluting.
+
+"Mr. Duff, I wish you to take charge of the Transport for the present.
+Lieutenant Bonner is quite useless--helpless, I mean. You will find
+Sergeant Mackay a reliable man. Sorry I couldn't give you longer notice.
+I think, however, you are the man for the job."
+
+"I'll do my best, sir," said Duff, saluting, as the O. C. turned away.
+
+"What did I tell you, Duff?" said Barry. "You certainly are in for it,
+and you have my sympathy."
+
+"Sympathy! Don't you worry about me," said Duff. "This is just the kind
+of thing I like. I haven't run a gang of navvies in the Crow's Nest Pass
+for nothing. You watch my smoke. But, one word, Pilot! When you see me
+bearing down, full steam ahead, give me room! I'll make this go or bust
+something." Then in a burst of confidence, he took Barry by the arm, and
+added in a low voice: "And if I live, Pilot, I'll be running something
+in this war bigger than the Transport of a battalion before I'm done."
+
+Barry let his eyes run over the powerful figure, the rugged, passionate
+face, lit up now with gleaming eyes, and said:
+
+"I believe you, Duff. Meantime, I'll watch your smoke."
+
+"Do!" replied Duff with superb self-confidence. And it was worth while
+during the next hour to watch Duff evolve order out of chaos. First of
+all he put into his men and into his sergeant the fear of death. But he
+did more than that. He breathed into them something of his own spirit
+of invincible determination. He had them springing at his snappy orders
+with an eagerness that was in itself the larger half of obedience, and
+as they obeyed they became conscious that they were working under the
+direction of a brain that had a perfected plan of action, and that held
+its details firmly in its grasp.
+
+Not only did Duff show himself a master of organisation and control,
+but in a critical moment he himself leaped into the breach, and did
+the thing that balked his men. Did a heavy transport wagon jamb at the
+gangway, holding up the traffic, with a spring, Duff was at the wheel.
+A heave of his mighty shoulders, and the wagon went roaring down the
+gangway. Did a horse, stupid with terror, from its unusual surroundings,
+balk, Duff had a "twitch" on its upper lip, and before it knew what
+awful thing had gripped it, the horse was lifted clear out of its
+tracks, and was on its way to the dock.
+
+Before he had cleared the ship, Duff had a circle of admirers about him,
+gazing as if at a circus.
+
+"An energetic officer you have there," said the brass hat standing
+beside the colonel.
+
+"A new man. This is his first time on the transport," replied the
+colonel.
+
+"Quite remarkable! Quite remarkable!" exclaimed the brass hat. "That
+unloading must have been done in record time, and in spite of quite
+unusual conditions."
+
+The boat being clear and the loads made up, Duff approached the
+Commanding Officer.
+
+"All ready, sir," he announced. "Shall we move off? I should like to get
+a start. The roads will be almost impassable, I'm afraid."
+
+"Do you know the route?" asked the Commanding Officer.
+
+"Yes, sir, I have it here."
+
+"All right, go ahead, Duff. A mighty good piece of work you have done
+there."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Duff, saluting and turning away.
+
+"Move off, there," he shouted to the leading team.
+
+The driver started the team but they slipped, plunged and fell heavily.
+Duff was at their heads before any other man could move.
+
+"Get hold here, men," he yelled. "Take hold of that horse. What are
+you afraid of?" he cried to a groom who was gingerly approaching the
+struggling animal. "Now then, all together!"
+
+When he had the team on their feet again, he said to the grooms standing
+at their heads, "Jump up on the horses' backs; that will help the them
+to hold their footing."
+
+There was some slight hesitation on the part of the grooms.
+
+"Come on!" he roared, and striding to the horse nearest him, he flung
+himself upon its back.
+
+A groom mounted the other, and once more a start was made, but they had
+not gone more than a few steps, when the groom's horse fell heavily, and
+rolled over on its side, pinning the unfortunate man beneath him.
+
+There was a shriek of agony. In an instant Duff was off his horse and at
+the head of the fallen animal.
+
+"Medical officer here!" he shouted. "Now then, two of you men. One of
+you pull out that man while we lift."
+
+The horse's head and shoulders were lifted clear, and the injured man
+was pulled out of danger.
+
+"Take him out of the way, please, doctor," said Duff, to the M. O., who
+was examining the groom.
+
+"Sergeant!"
+
+His sergeant literally sprang to his side.
+
+"Get me a dozen bags," he said.
+
+"Bags, sir? I don't know where--"
+
+"Bags," repeated Duff savagely. "Canvas, anything to wrap around these
+horses' feet."
+
+The sergeant without further words plunged into the darkness, returning
+almost immediately with half a dozen bags.
+
+"Thanks, sergeant; that's the way to move. Now get some more!"
+
+Under Duff's directions the bags were tied about the feet of the horses,
+thus enabling them to hold their footing, and the transport moved off in
+the darkness.
+
+Returning from the disposing of the injured man, the M. O. found Barry
+shivering with the cold, and weak from his recent attack of seasickness.
+
+"There will be no end of a sick parade to-morrow morning, and you'll be
+one of them," grumbled the M. O. "If they don't move them out of here
+soon they'll take them away in ambulances. There are a hundred men at
+this moment fit to go to hospital, but the O. C. won't hear of it."
+
+"Doc, they ought to have something hot. The kitchens are left behind, I
+understand. Let me have a couple of your men, and let me see what I can
+do."
+
+"It's no use, I've tried all the hotels about here. They're full up."
+
+"No harm trying, doc," said Barry, and off he went.
+
+But he found the hotels full up, as the doctor had said. After much
+inquiry, he found his way to the Y. M. C. A. A cheerful but sleepy
+secretary, half dead with the fatigue of a heavy day ministering to
+soldiers "going up the line," could offer him no help at all.
+
+"Do you mean to say that there is no place in this town," said Barry
+desperately, "where a sick man can get a dish of coffee?"
+
+"Sick man!" cried the secretary. "Why, certainly! Why not try the R. A.
+M. C.? They've a hospital half a mile up the street. They will certainly
+help you out. I'll come with you."
+
+"No, you don't," said Barry. "You go back to bed. I'll find the place."
+
+Half a mile up the street, as the secretary had said, Barry came upon
+the flaring lantern of the R. A. M. C., at the entrance to a huge
+warehouse, the gate of which stood wide open.
+
+Entering the courtyard, Barry found a group of men about a blazing fire.
+
+"May I see the officer in charge?" he asked, approaching the group.
+
+The men glanced at his rank badges.
+
+"Yes, sir," said a sergeant, clicking his heels smartly. "Can I do
+anything for you, sir?"
+
+"Thank you," said Barry, and told him his wants.
+
+"We have plenty of biscuits," said the sergeant, "and coffee, too. You
+are welcome to all you can carry, but I don't see how we can do any more
+for you. But would you like to see the officer in charge, sir?"
+
+"Thank you," said Barry, and together they passed into another room.
+
+But the officer was engaged elsewhere. While they were discussing the
+matter, a door opened, and a young girl dressed in the uniform of a V.
+A. D. (Voluntary Aid Detachment) appeared.
+
+"What is it, sergeant?" she inquired, in a soft but rather tired voice.
+
+The sergeant explained, while she listened with mild interest. Then
+Barry took up the tale, and proceeded to dilate upon the wretched
+condition of his comrades, out in the icy rain. But his story moved
+the V. A. D. not at all. She had seen too much of the real misery and
+horrors of war. Barry began to feel discouraged, and indeed a little
+ashamed of himself.
+
+"You see, we have just come over," he said in an apologetic tone, "and
+we don't know much about war yet."
+
+"You are Canadians?" cried the girl, a new interest dawning in her eyes.
+As she came into the light, Barry noticed that they were brown, and that
+they were very lustrous.
+
+"I love the Canadians," she exclaimed. "My brother was a liaison
+artillery officer at Ypres; with them, at the time of the gas, you know.
+He liked them immensely." Her voice was soft and sad.
+
+Unconsciously Barry let his eyes fall to the black band on her arm.
+
+"He was with the Canadians, too, when he was killed at Armentieres,
+three months ago."
+
+"Killed!" exclaimed Barry. "Oh, I am so sorry for you."
+
+"I had two brothers," she went on, in her gentle even tone. "One was
+killed at Landrecies, on the retreat from Mons, you know."
+
+"No," said Barry, "I'm afraid I don't know about it. Tell me!"
+
+"It was a great fight," said the girl. "Oh, a splendid fight!" A ring
+came into her voice and a little colour into her cheek. "They tried to
+rush our men, but they couldn't. My oldest brother was there in charge
+of a machine gun section. The machine guns did wonderful work. The
+colonel came to tell us about it. He said it was very fine." There was
+no sign of tears in her eyes, nor tremor in her voice, only tenderness
+and pride.
+
+"And your mother is alone now?" inquired Barry.
+
+"Oh, we gave up our house to the government for a hospital. You see,
+father was in munitions. He's too old for active service, and mother is
+matron in the hospital. She was very unwilling that I should come over
+here. She said I was far too young, but of course that's quite nonsense.
+So you see, we are all in it."
+
+"It is perfectly amazing," said Barry. "You British women are
+wonderful!"
+
+The brown eyes opened a little wider.
+
+"Wonderful? Why, what else could we do? But the Canadians! I think
+they're wonderful, coming all this way to fight."
+
+"I can't see that," said Barry. "That's what that old naval boy at
+Devonport said, but I can't see that it's anything wonderful that we
+should fight for our Empire."
+
+"Devonport! A naval officer!" The girl lost her calm. She became
+excited. "What was his name?"
+
+"I have his card here," said Barry, taking out his pocket book and
+handing her the card.
+
+"My uncle!" she cried. "Why, how perfectly splendid!" offering Barry
+her hand. "Why, we're really introduced. Then you're the man that Uncle
+Howard--" She stopped abruptly, a flush on her cheek. Then she turned
+to the N. C. O. "Yes, sergeant, that will do," as the man brought half a
+dozen large biscuit cans and as many large bottles of prepared coffee.
+
+As Barry's eyes fell upon the biscuit cans an idea came to him.
+
+"Will these cans hold water?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the sergeant.
+
+"Then, we're fixed," cried Barry, in high delight. "This is perfectly
+fine."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the girl.
+
+"We'll dump the biscuits, and boil the coffee in the cans. I haven't
+camped on the Athabasca for nothing. Now we're all right and I suppose
+we must go."
+
+The V. A. D. hesitated a moment, then she took the sergeant to one side,
+and entered into earnest and persuasive talk with him.
+
+"It's against regulations, miss," Barry heard him say, "and besides, you
+know, we're expecting a hospital train any minute, and every car will be
+needed."
+
+"Then I'll take my own car," she said. "It's all ready and has the
+chains on, sergeant, I think."
+
+"Yes, it's quite ready, but you will get me into trouble, miss."
+
+"Then, I'll get you out again. Load those things in, while I run and
+change--I'm going to drive you out to your camp," she said to Barry as
+she hurried away.
+
+The sergeant shook his head as he looked after her.
+
+"She's a thoroughbred, sir," he said. "We jump when she asks us for
+anything. She's a real blooded one; not like some, sir--like some of
+them fullrigged ones. They keep 'er 'oppin'."
+
+"Fullrigged ones?" inquired Barry.
+
+"Them nurses, I mean, sir. They loves to 'awe them--them young
+'Vaddies,' as we call them--V. A. D., you know, sir. They keeps 'em a
+'oppin' proper--scrubbin' floors, runnin' messages, but Miss Vincent,
+she mostly drives a car."
+
+While the sergeant was dilating upon the virtues and excellences of the
+young V. A. D., his men ran out her car, and packed into it the biscuit
+tins and coffee. By the time the sergeant was ready she was back,
+dressed in a chauffeur's uniform.
+
+Barry had thought her charming in her V. A. D. dress, but in her uniform
+she was bewitching. He noticed that her hair clustered in tiny ringlets
+about her natty little cap, in quite a maddening way. One vagrant curl
+over her ear had a particular fascination for his eyes. He felt it ought
+to be tucked in just a shade. He was conscious of an almost irresistible
+desire to do the tucking in. What would happen if--
+
+"Well, are you ready?" inquired the girl in a quick, businesslike tone.
+
+"What? Oh, yes," said Barry, recalled to the business of the moment.
+
+During the drive the girl gave her whole attention to her wheel, as
+indeed was necessary, for the road was dangerously slippery, and she
+drove without lights through the black night. Barry kept up an endless
+stream of talk, set going by her command, as she took her place at the
+wheel. "Now tell me about Canada. I can listen, but I can't talk."
+
+In the full tide of his most eloquent passages, Barry found himself
+growing incoherent at times, for his mind was in a state of oscillation
+between the wonderful and lustrous qualities of the brown eyes that
+he remembered flashing upon him in the light of the fire, and that
+maddening little curl over the girl's ear.
+
+In an unbelievably short time, so it seemed to him, they came upon the
+rear of a marching column.
+
+"These are your men, I fancy," she said, "and this will be your camp on
+the left; I know it well. I've often been here."
+
+She swung the car off the road into an open field, set out with tents,
+and brought the car to a stop beside an old ruined factory.
+
+"This, I believe, will be the best place for your purpose," she said,
+and sprang from her seat, and ran to the ruin, flashing her torchlight
+before her. "Here you are," she said. "This will be just the thing."
+
+Barry followed her a few steps down into the long, stone-flagged cellar.
+
+"Splendid! This is the very thing," he cried enthusiastically. "You are
+really the most wonderful person."
+
+"Now get your stuff in here," she ordered. "But what will you do for
+wood? There is always water," she added, "in some tanks further on.
+Come, I'll show you."
+
+Barry followed her in growing amazement and admiration at her prompt
+efficiency.
+
+"Now then, there are your tanks," she said. "As for wood, I don't know
+what you will do, but there is a garden paling a little further on, and,
+of course--"
+
+"Don't worry about that," said Barry.
+
+"I won't," with a gay laugh; "I know you Canadians, you see."
+
+Together they returned to the car.
+
+Before she mounted to her seat she turned to Barry, and offered him her
+hand and said: "I think it is perfectly ripping that we were introduced
+in this way. Though I don't know your name yet," she added shyly.
+
+"Awfully stupid of me," said Barry, and he gave her his name, adding
+that of the regiment, and his rank.
+
+"Good-bye, then," she said, climbing into her car, and starting her
+engine.
+
+"But," said Barry, "I must see you safely back."
+
+She laughed a scornful but, as Barry thought, a most delicious little
+laugh.
+
+"Nonsense! We don't do that sort of thing here, you know. We're on our
+own."
+
+A little silence fell between them.
+
+"When does your battalion march?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"Perhaps to-morrow. I don't know."
+
+"If you do go then," she said, with again that little touch of shyness,
+"I suppose I won't see you again."
+
+"See you again," exclaimed Barry, his tone indicating that the
+possibility of such a calamity was unthinkable, "why, of course I shall
+see you again. I must see you again--I--I--I just must see you again."
+
+"Good night, then," she said in a soft, hurried voice, throwing in her
+clutch.
+
+Barry stood listening in the dark to the hum of her engine, growing more
+faint every moment.
+
+"Some girl, eh?" said a voice. At his side he saw Harry Hobbs. Barry
+turned sharply upon him.
+
+"Now then, Hobbs, some wood and we will get a fire going and look
+lively! And, Hobbs, I believe there's a fence about fifty yards down
+there, which you might find useful. Now move. Quick!" Unconsciously he
+tried to reproduce, in uttering the last word, Duff's tone and manner.
+The effect was evident immediately.
+
+Hobbs without further words departed in the darkness. Again Barry stood
+listening to the hum of the engine, until he could no longer hear it in
+the noise and confusion of the camp, but in his heart Harry's words made
+music.
+
+"Some girl, eh?"
+
+As he stood there in the darkness, hearing that music in his heart, a
+voice broke in, swearing hard and deep oaths. It was the M. O.
+
+"Hello, doc, my boy; come here," cried Barry.
+
+The M. O. approached. He was in a state of rage that rendered coherent
+speech impossible.
+
+"Oh, quit it, doc. Let me show you something."
+
+He led him into the ruin, where his spoils were cached.
+
+"Biscuits, my boy, and coffee. Hold on! Listen! I'm going to get a
+fire going here and in twenty minutes there'll be six cans of fragrant
+delicious coffee, boiling hot."
+
+"Why, how the--"
+
+"Doc, don't talk! Listen to me! You round up your sick men, and bring
+them quietly over here. I don't know how many I can supply, but at
+least, I think, a hundred."
+
+"Why, how the devil--?"
+
+"Go on; I haven't time to talk to you. Get busy!"
+
+Working by flashlight, the men cut open the tins, dumped the biscuits
+on a blanket spread in a corner of the cellar, while Barry made
+preparations for a fire.
+
+"Here, Hobbs, you punch two holes in these cans, just an inch from the
+top."
+
+Soon the fire was blazing cheerily. In its light Barry was searching
+through the ruin.
+
+"By Jove," he shouted, "the very thing. Just made for us."
+
+He pulled out a long steel rod from a heap of rubbish and ran with it to
+the fire.
+
+"Here, boys, punch a hole in this wall. Now then, for the cans. String
+them on this rod."
+
+In twenty minutes the coffee was ready.
+
+"How is it?" he inquired anxiously, handing a mess tin full to one of
+his men.
+
+The boy tasted it.
+
+"Like mother made," he said, with a grin. "Gee, but it's good."
+
+At that moment the doctor appeared at the cellar door.
+
+"I say, old chap," he said, "there will be a riot here in fifteen
+minutes. That coffee smells the whole camp."
+
+"Bring 'em along, doc. The sick chaps first. By Jove, here's the
+sergeant major himself."
+
+"What's all this?" inquired the sergeant major in his gruffest voice.
+"Who's responsible for this fire?"
+
+"Coffee, sergeant major?" answered Barry, handing him a tin full.
+
+"But what--?"
+
+"Drink it first, sergeant major."
+
+The sergeant major took the mess tin and tasted the coffee.
+
+"Well, this IS fine," he declared, "and it's what the boys want. But
+this fire is against orders, sir. I ought to have it put out."
+
+"You will have it put out over my dead body, sergeant major," cried the
+M. O.
+
+"And mine," added Barry.
+
+"By gad, we'll chance the zeps, sir," said the sergeant major. "This
+freezin' rain will kill more men than a bomb. Bring in your men, sir,"
+he added to the M. O. "But I must see the O. C."
+
+The sergeant major's devotion to military discipline was struggling hard
+with his humanity, which, under his rugged exterior, beat warm in his
+heart.
+
+"Why bother with the O. C.?" said the M. D.
+
+"But I must see him," insisted the sergeant major.
+
+He had not far to go to attain his purpose.
+
+"Hello! What the devil is this?" exclaimed a loud voice at the door.
+
+"By gad, it's the old man himself," muttered the M. O. to Barry. "Now
+look out for ructions."
+
+In came the O. C., followed by a brass hat. Barry went forward with a
+steaming tin of coffee.
+
+"Sorry our china hasn't arrived yet, sir," he said cheerfully, "but the
+coffee isn't bad, the boys say."
+
+"Why, it's you, Dunbar," said the colonel, peering into his face, and
+shaking the rain drops from his coat. "I might have guessed that you'd
+be in it. Where there's any trouble," he continued, turning to the brass
+hat at his side, "you may be quite sure that the Pilot or the M. O. here
+will be in it. By Jove, this coffee goes to the right spot. Have a cup,
+major?" he said as Barry brought a second tin.
+
+"It's against regulations, you know," said the major, taking the mess
+tin gingerly. "Fires are quite forbidden. Air raids, and that sort of
+thing, don't you know."
+
+"Oh, hang it all, major," cried the O. C. "The coffee is fine, and my
+men will be a lot better for it. This camp of yours, anyway, is no place
+for human beings, and especially for men straight off the boat. As for
+me, I'm devilish glad to get this coffee. Give me another tin, Pilot."
+
+"It's quite irregular," murmured the major, still drinking his coffee.
+"It's quite irregular! But I see the door is fairly well guarded against
+light, and perhaps--"
+
+"I think we'll just carry on," said the colonel. "If there is any
+trouble, I'll assume the responsibility for it. Thank you, Pilot. Just
+keep guard on the light here, sergeant major."
+
+"All right, sir. Very good, sir, we will hang up a blanket."
+
+Meanwhile the news had spread throughout the camp, and before many
+minutes had passed the cellar was jammed with a crowd of men that
+reached through the door and out into the night. The crowd was becoming
+noisy and there was danger of confusion. Then the pilot climbed up on a
+heap of rubbish and made a little speech.
+
+"Men," he called out, "this coffee is intended first of all for the sick
+men in this battalion. Those sick men must first be cared for. After
+that we shall distribute the coffee as far as it will go. There is
+plenty of water outside, and I think I have plenty of coffee. Sergeant
+major, I suggest that you round up these men in some sort of order."
+
+A few sharp words of command from the sergeant major brought order
+out of confusion, and for two hours there filed through the cellar a
+continuous stream of men, each bringing an empty mess tin, and carrying
+it away full of hot and fragrant coffee.
+
+By the time the men had been supplied the officers were finished with
+their duties, and having got word of the Pilot's coffee stall, came
+crowding in. One and all they were vociferous in their praise of the
+chaplain, voting him a "good fellow" and a "life-saver" of the highest
+order. But it was felt by all that Corporal Thom expressed the general
+consensus of opinion to his friend Timms. "That Pilot of ours," he
+declared, "runs a little to the narrow gauge, but in that last round up
+he was telling us about last Sunday there won't be the goat run for him.
+It's him for the baa baas, sure enough."
+
+And though in the vernacular the corporal's words did not sound quite
+reverent, it was agreed that they expressed in an entirely satisfactory
+manner the general opinion of the battalion.
+
+An hour later, wearied as he was, Barry crawled into his icy blankets,
+but with a warmer feeling in his heart than he had known since he joined
+the battalion. But before he had gone to sleep, there came into his mind
+a thought that brought him up wide awake. He had quite forgotten all
+about his duty as chaplain. "What a chance you had there," insisted his
+chaplain's conscience, "for a word that would really hearten your men.
+This is their first night in France. To-morrow they march up to danger
+and death. What a chance! And you missed it."
+
+Barry was too weary to discuss the matter further, but as he fell asleep
+he said to himself, "At any rate, the boys are feeling a lot better,"
+and in spite of his sense of failure, that thought brought him no small
+comfort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE NEW MESSAGE
+
+
+"I think," said Barry, to the M. O., "I really ought to ride down to the
+R. A. M. C. hospital, and tell them how the boys enjoyed the coffee last
+night." His face was slightly flushed, but the flush might have been due
+to the fact that he had been busily engaged in tying up the thongs of
+his bed-roll, an awkward job at times.
+
+"Sure thing," agreed the M. O. heartily. "Indeed it's absolutely
+essential, and say, old chap, you might tell her how I enjoyed my
+coffee. She will be glad to hear about me."
+
+Barry heaved his bed-roll at the doctor and departed.
+
+At the R. A. M. C. Hospital the Officer Commanding, to whom he had sent
+in his card, gave him a cordial greeting.
+
+"I am glad to know you, sir. We have quite a lot of your chaps here now
+and then, and fine fellows they seem to be. We expect a hospital train
+this morning, and I understand there are some Canadians among them.
+Rather a bad go a few days ago at St. Eloi. Heavy casualty list.
+Clearing stations all crowded, and so they are sending a lot down the
+line."
+
+"Canadians?" asked Barry, thinking of his father. "You have not heard
+what unit, sir?"
+
+"No, we only get the numbers and the character of the casualties and
+that sort of thing. Well, I must be off. Would you care to look around?"
+
+"Thank you, no. We are also on the march. I simply came to tell you how
+very greatly our men appreciated your help last night."
+
+"Oh, that's perfectly all right. Glad the sergeant had sense enough to
+do the right thing."
+
+Barry hesitated.
+
+"May I see--ah--the sergeant?"
+
+"The sergeant? Why, certainly, but it's not necessary at all."
+
+The sergeant was called and duly thanked. The R. A. M. C. officer was
+obviously anxious to be rid of his visitor and to get off to his duty.
+
+Still Barry lingered.
+
+"There was also a young lady, sir, last night," he said at length.
+
+"A young lady?"
+
+"Sister Vincent, sir," interjected the sergeant. "She ran them up to the
+camp in her car, sir. The ambulances and cars were all under orders."
+
+"Ah! Ran you up to the camp, eh?"
+
+"Yes, she ran us up with the biscuits and coffee. It was awfully kind of
+her."
+
+"Ah!--Um!--Very good! Very good! Sergeant, call her," said the O. C.
+abruptly.
+
+"I'm afraid she'd be asleep now, sir. She was on night duty, sir."
+
+"Oh, then," said Barry, "please don't disturb her. I wouldn't think of
+it. If you will be kind enough, sir, to convey the thanks of the men and
+of myself to her."
+
+"Surely, surely! Well, I really must be going. Goodbye! Good luck!"
+
+He turned to his motor car. "I won't forget, sir," he said to Barry.
+"Oh, I'll be sure to tell her," he added with a significant smile.
+
+As Barry was mounting his horse, the strains of the battalion band were
+heard floating down the street. He drew up his horse beside the entrance
+and waited. Down the winding hill they came, tall, lean, hard-looking
+men, striding with the free, easy swing of the men of the foothills.
+Barry felt his heart fill with pride in his comrades.
+
+"By Jove," he said to himself, "the boys are all right."
+
+"Fine body of men, sir," said the sergeant, who with his comrades had
+gathered about the gateway.
+
+"Not too bad, eh, sergeant?" said Barry, with modest pride.
+
+"Sir," said the sergeant in a low voice, "the young lady is up at the
+window to your left."
+
+"Sergeant, you're a brick! Thank you," said Barry. He turned in his
+saddle, and saw above him a window filled with smiling nurses looking
+down at the marching column, and among them his friend of the night
+before. Her face was turned away from him, and her eyes were upon the
+column, eagerly searching the ranks of the marching men.
+
+"Sergeant," said Barry, "your Commanding Officer is a very busy man, and
+has a great many things to occupy his attention. Don't you think it is
+quite possible that that message of mine might escape his memory, and
+don't you think it would be really more satisfactory if I could deliver
+that message in person?"
+
+The sergeant tilted his hat over one eye, and scratched his head.
+
+"Well, sir, the Commanding Officer does 'ave a lot of things to think
+about, and though he doesn't often forget, he might. Besides, I really
+think the young lady would like to know just how the coffee went."
+
+"Sergeant, you are a man of discernment. I'll just wait here until the
+battalion passes."
+
+He moved his horse a few steps out from the gateway, and swung him
+around so that he stood facing the window. The movement caught the
+attention of the V. A. D. in the window. She glanced down, saw him, and,
+leaning far out, waved her hand in eager greeting and with a smile of
+warm friendliness.
+
+He had only time to wave his hand in reply, when the head of the column
+drew opposite the gateway, forcing him to turn his back to the window
+and stand at salute.
+
+The Commanding Officer acknowledged the salute, glanced up at the
+window, waved his hand to the group of nurses there gathered, then
+glanced back at Barry, with a smile full of meaning, and rode on.
+
+After the band had passed the entrance, it ceased playing, and the men,
+catching sight of Barry and the smiling group at the window above him,
+broke softly into a rather suggestive music hall ditty, at that time
+popular with the soldiers:
+
+
+     "Hello!  Hello!  Who's your lady friend;
+      Who's the little blossom by your side;
+      I saw you, with a girl or two,
+      Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm surprised at you."
+
+
+Down the length of the column the refrain passed, gradually gaining
+in strength and volume, until by the time the rear came opposite the
+entrance, the men were shouting with wide open throats:
+
+
+     "Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm surprised at you."
+
+
+with a growing emphasis and meaning upon every successive "Oh!"
+
+Barry's face was aflame and his heart hot with furious indignation.
+She was not that kind of a girl. She would be humiliated before her
+associates. He glanced up at the window but she was gone. The battalion
+marched on but Barry still remained, his eyes following the swinging
+column, his face still flaming, and his heart hot with indignation.
+
+"Good morning, Captain Dunbar!"
+
+He swung off his horse, and there smiling at him with warm friendliness
+was the little V. A. D.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," began Barry, thinking of the impudent song of his
+comrades. "I mean I'm very glad to see you. I just ran in to tell you
+how splendidly the coffee went last night. There are a hundred fellows
+marching along there that are fine and fit just because of your
+kindness, and I'm here to give you their thanks."
+
+Barry felt that he was cutting a rather poor figure. His words came
+haltingly and stumblingly. The suggestive music hall ditty was still in
+his mind.
+
+"What a splendid band you have," she said, "and how splendidly the men
+sing."
+
+"Sing!" cried Barry indignantly. "Oh, yes, they do sing rather well,
+don't they?" he added, greatly relieved. "I have only a minute," he
+added hurriedly, "but I wanted to see you again, and I wonder if I may
+drop you a little note now and then, just to--well, hang it all--just to
+keep in touch with you. I don't want you to quite forget me."
+
+"Oh, I won't forget you," she said. The brown eyes looked straight at
+him. "You see, after all, my uncle knows you so well. Indeed, he told me
+about you. You see, we really are friends, in a way, aren't we?"
+
+"We are indeed, and you are awfully good. Goodbye!"
+
+"Goodbye," she said, "and if I leave here soon, I promise to let you
+know."
+
+And Barry rode away, his heart in such a turmoil as he had never known.
+In his ears lingered the music of that soft voice, and his eyes saw a
+bewildering complexity of dancing ringlets and lustrous glances, until
+he drew up at the rear of the column and found himself riding once more
+beside his friend, the M. O.
+
+"Congratulations, old man," said the doctor. "She's a blossom, all
+right. Cheer up; you may find her bending over your white face some
+day, holding your hand, or smoothing your brow, in the approved V. A. D.
+manner."
+
+"Oh, shut up, doc," said Barry with quite unusual curtness. "She's not
+that kind of a girl."
+
+"Ah, who knows!" said the doctor. "Who knows!"
+
+At the railway station, the battalion was halted, awaiting the making
+up of their train, the departure of which was delayed by the incoming
+hospital train from up the line. They had not long to wait.
+
+"Here she is, boys!" called out a soldier. And into the station slowly
+rolled that hospital train, with its freight of wounded men, mutilated,
+maimed, broken. Its windows were crowded with faces, white as their
+swathings, worn, spent, deep-lined, from which looked forth eyes,
+indifferent, staring, but undaunted and indomitable.
+
+Gradually, with stately movement, as befitted its noble burden, the
+train came to rest immediately opposite the battalion. With grave,
+fascinated, horror-stricken faces the men of the battalion stood rigid
+and voiceless gazing at that deeply moving spectacle. Before their eyes
+were being paraded the tragic, pathetic remnants of a gallant regiment,
+which but a few weeks before had stood where they now stood, vital
+with life, tingling with courage. At their country's bidding they had
+ascended that Holy Mount of Sacrifice, to offer upon the altar of the
+world's freedom their bodies as a living sacrifice unto God, holy and
+acceptable. Now, their offering being made, they were being borne back
+helpless, bruised, shattered but unconquered and eternally glorious.
+
+Silently the two companies gazed at each other across the intervening
+space. Then from the window of the train a soldier thrust a bandaged
+head and bandaged arm.
+
+"Hello there, Canada!" he cried, waving the arm. Instantly, as if he
+had touched a hidden spring, from the battalion's thousand throats there
+broke a roar of cheers that seemed to rock the rafters of the station
+building.
+
+Again, again, and yet again! As if they could never exhaust the burden
+of their swelling emotions, they roared forth their cheers, waving caps
+and rifles high in the air, while down their cheeks poured, unheeded and
+unhindered, a rain of tears.
+
+"Canada! Canada! Canada!" they cried. "Oh, you Canadians! Alberta!
+Alberta!"
+
+Feebly came the answering cheers, awkwardly waved the bandaged hands and
+arms.
+
+Then the battalion broke ranks and flinging rifles and kitbags to the
+ground, they rushed across the tracks, eager to bring their tribute of
+pride and love to their brothers from their own country, far across the
+sea.
+
+"Malcolm! Hello, Malcolm!" cried a voice from a window of the train, as
+the noise had somewhat subsided. "Hey, Malcolm, here you are!" cried a
+wounded man, raising himself from his cot to the window.
+
+Malcolm Innes turned, scanned the train, then rushed across the tracks
+to the window and clung fast to it.
+
+It was his brother, Ewen.
+
+"Is it yourself, Ewen, and are you hurted bad?" cried the boy, all
+unconscious of his breaking voice and falling tears. They clung together
+for some little time in silence.
+
+"Are you much hurted, Ewen? Tell me the God's truth," again said
+Malcolm.
+
+"Not much," said Ewen. "True as death, I'm tellin' you. My arm is broke,
+that's all. We had a bad time of it, but, man, we gave them hell, you
+bet. Oh, it was great!"
+
+Then again the silence fell between them. There seemed to be nothing to
+say.
+
+"Here, stand back there! You must get back, you know, men!"
+
+An N. C. O. of the R. A. M. C. tried to push Malcolm back from the
+window.
+
+"Here, you go to hell," cried Malcolm fiercely. "It's my brother I've
+got."
+
+The N. C. O., widely experienced in these tragic scenes, hesitated a
+moment. An officer, coming up behind him, with a single glance took in
+the situation.
+
+"My boy," he said kindly, placing his hand on Malcolm's arm, "we want
+to get these poor chaps as soon as possible where they will be
+comfortable."
+
+Malcolm sprang back at once, saluting.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said. "Certainly, sir." And backing across the tracks,
+stood looking across at the window from which his brother, wearied with
+his effort, had disappeared.
+
+Meantime the R. A. M. C. were busy with their work. With marvellous
+rapidity and speed the train was unloaded of its pathetic freight,
+the carrying cases into ambulances and the walking cases into cars and
+wagons.
+
+"Good-bye, Mac," called a voice as a car was driving off. It was Ewen
+again. The wounded man spoke to the driver, who immediately pulled up
+and swung over to the platform where Malcolm was standing.
+
+"Oh, are you sure, Ewen, you are goin' to be all right? Man, you look
+awful white."
+
+"All right, Mac. You bet I will. It's only my arm," said Ewen, his
+brave, bright words in pathetic contrast to his white face.
+
+At this point Barry came rushing along.
+
+"Why, Ewen! My poor fellow!" he cried, throwing his arm about the
+wounded man's shoulder. "What is it?"
+
+"My arm, sir," said the boy, adding some words in a low tone. "But I'm
+all right," he said brightly. "You'll write my mother, sir, and tell
+her? You'll know what to say."
+
+"Surely I will. You'll be all right, old boy, God bless you! Good luck,
+Ewen!"
+
+Then leaning over the boy, he added in a low voice, "Remember you are
+not all alone. God is with you. You won't forget that!"
+
+"I won't, sir. I know it well," said Ewen earnestly.
+
+Most of the stretcher cases had been hurried away. Only a few of the
+more seriously wounded remained. As Barry turned away from the car, he
+saw the medical officer and sergeant major approaching him.
+
+"A terrible business," said Barry, in a horror-stricken voice. "Splendid
+chaps. How plucky they are!"
+
+The M. O. made no reply, but coming close to Barry, he put his arm
+through his, the sergeant major taking him by the other arm.
+
+"I say, Barry, old chap," said the M. O. in a grave voice, calling him
+for the first time by his first name. "There is some one here that you
+know well."
+
+"Some one I know," said Barry, standing still and looking from one to
+the other.
+
+"Ay, sir. Some one we all know and greatly respect," replied the
+sergeant major.
+
+"Not--not--oh, not my father!"
+
+The M. O. nodded.
+
+"Bad, doctor? Not dying, doctor?" His face was white even in spite of
+his tan. His hands closed about the doctor's arm in a grip that reached
+to the bone.
+
+"No, not dying, Barry, but in a bad way, I fear."
+
+"Take me," muttered Barry, in a dazed way, and they moved together
+rapidly across the platform.
+
+"Wait a moment, doctor," said Barry, breathing hard.
+
+They stood still, a silent and sympathetic group of soldiers about them.
+Barry turned from them, walked a few steps, his clasped hands writhing
+before him, then stood with his face uplifted to the sky for a few
+moments.
+
+"All right, doctor, I'll follow," he said, coming quietly back. "Will he
+know me?"
+
+"Sure thing, sir," said the sergeant major cheerily. "He was asking for
+you."
+
+On a stretcher, waiting to be lifted into the ambulance, he found his
+father, lying white and still.
+
+"Dad!" cried Barry, dropping to his knees beside him. He put his arms
+around him on the stretcher, and kissed him on both cheeks and on the
+lips. They all drew back from the stretcher and turned their backs upon
+the two.
+
+"Barry, my boy. Thank the good God! I feared I would not see you. It's
+all right now. Everything is all right now. I can't put my arms around
+you, boy. I haven't any left."
+
+Barry's shudder shook the stretcher.
+
+"Dad, dad, oh, dad!" he whispered, over and over again.
+
+"It's all right," whispered his father. "We must not forget we're
+soldiers. Help me to keep up, boy. I'm not very strong."
+
+That pitiful word did for Barry what nothing else could do. He lifted
+his head, stood up and drew a deep breath.
+
+"Sure thing, dad," he said, in a clear, steady voice. "I mustn't keep
+you."
+
+He motioned to the bearers. Then suddenly recollecting that his duty
+would call him away from his father, he turned to the M. O., an agony of
+supplication in his voice.
+
+"Oh, doctor, must I leave him here?" he asked in a low tone.
+
+Just then an orderly came running up to him, and, saluting, said:
+
+"Sir, the Commanding Officer says you are to remain behind with your
+father--till--till--"
+
+"Until you are sent for," said the M. O. "I will see to that."
+
+"Where's the Commanding Officer?" cried Barry, starting forward.
+
+"He has gone off somewheres, sir. He was sorry he couldn't come himself,
+but he was called away. He sent that message to you."
+
+"Doctor, will you remember to thank the Commanding Officer for me?" he
+said briefly, and turned to follow his father into the ambulance, which
+he discovered to be in charge of his friend, the sergeant of the R. A.
+M. C.
+
+At the hospital he was received with every mark of solicitous care. He
+was made to feel that he was among friends.
+
+"How long, doctor?" he asked, after the doctor had finished his
+examination.
+
+"Not long, I'm afraid. A few hours, perhaps a day. He will not suffer
+though," said the doctor. "But," he added, taking Barry by the arm, "he
+is very weak, remember, and must not be excited."
+
+"I know, doctor," said Barry, quietly. "I won't worry him."
+
+Through the morning Barry sat by his father's cot, giving him, under
+the directions of the nurse, such stimulants as he needed, now and then
+speaking a quiet, cheery word.
+
+Often his father opened his eyes and smiled at him.
+
+"Good to see you there, my boy. That was my only grief. I feared I might
+not see you again. Thank the good God that he allowed me to see you."
+
+"He is good, dad, isn't He? Good to me; good to us both."
+
+"Yes, He is good," said his father, and fell asleep. For almost two
+hours he slept, a sleep of exhaustion, due to the terrific strain of the
+past forty-eight hours, and woke refreshed, calm and strong.
+
+"You are a lot better, dad," said Barry. "I believe you are going to
+pull through, eh!"
+
+"A lot better, Barry," said his father, "but, my boy, we are soldiers,
+you and I. I shall not be long, but remember, we are soldiers."
+
+"All right, dad. I'll try to play the game."
+
+"That's the word, Barry. We must play the game, and by God's grace we
+will, you and I--our last game together."
+
+Through the afternoon they talked, between intervals of sleep, resolved
+each to help the other in playing to the end, in the manner of British
+soldiers, that last, great game.
+
+They talked, of course, of home and their happy days together, going far
+back into the earlier years of struggle on the ranch.
+
+"Hard days, Barry, they were, but your mother never failed me. Wonderful
+courage she had, and if we were all right, you and I, Barry, she was
+always happy. Do you remember her?"
+
+"Yes, dad, quite well. I remember her smiling always."
+
+"Smiling, my God! Smiling through those days. Yes, that's the way she
+played the game, and that's the only way, boy."
+
+"Yes, dad," said Barry, and his smile was brighter than ever, but his
+knuckles showed white where he gripped the chair.
+
+The nurse came and went, wondering at their bright faces and their
+cheery voices. They kept their minds upon the old happy days. They
+recalled their canoe trips, their hunting experiences, dwelling mostly
+upon the humorous incidents, playing the game. Of the war they spoke
+little; not at all of what was to be after--the past, the golden, happy
+past, rich in love and in comradeship, that was their one theme.
+
+As night fell, the father grew weary, and his periods of sleep grew
+longer, but ever as he woke he found his son's face smiling down upon
+him.
+
+"Good boy, Barry," he said once, with an understanding look and an
+answering smile. "Don't try too hard, my boy."
+
+"It's all right, dad. I assure you it's all right. You know it is."
+
+"I know, I know, my boy," he said, and fell asleep again.
+
+As the midnight hour drew on, Barry's head, from sheer weariness, sunk
+upon his breast. In his sleep he became aware of some one near him. He
+sat up, dazed and stupid from his exhaustion and his grief, and found a
+nurse at his side.
+
+"Take this," she said softly. "You will need it." She set a tray at his
+side.
+
+"Oh, thank you, no!" he said. "I can't eat. I can't touch anything."
+
+"You need it," said the nurse. "You must take it, for his sake, you
+know. He will need you."
+
+Her voice aroused him. He glanced at her face.
+
+"Oh, it's you!" he cried.
+
+It was the little V. A. D.
+
+"Don't rise," she said, putting her hand on his shoulder, and pointing
+to his father. "Drink this first." She handed him an eggnog. "Now
+take your tea." There was a quiet authority about her that compelled
+obedience. He ate in silence while she stood beside him. He was too
+weary and too sick at heart to talk, but he gradually became aware that
+the overpowering sense of loneliness that had been with him all day was
+gone.
+
+When he had finished his slight meal, he whispered to her:
+
+"I wish I could thank you, but I can't. I did need it. You have helped
+me greatly."
+
+"You are better now," she said softly. "It's very, very hard for you, so
+far from home, and from all your friends."
+
+"There is no one else," said Barry simply. "We have no one but just
+ourselves."
+
+At this point his father opened his eyes bright and very wide-awake.
+
+The V. A. D. began to gather up the tea things. Barry put out his hand
+and touched her arm.
+
+"Dad, this is your night nurse. She was very kind to me last night, and
+again to-night. This is Miss Vincent."
+
+The brightness of the V. A. D.'s smile outshone his own.
+
+"I'm not a real nurse," she said. "I'm only a V. A. D., you know. They
+use me to wash the floors and dishes, and for all sorts of odd jobs.
+To-night they are shorthanded, and have put me on this duty."
+
+While she was speaking, she continued to smile, a smile of radiant cheer
+and courage.
+
+The wounded man listened gravely to her, his eyes searching her face,
+her eyes, her very soul, it seemed to her. In spite of her experience
+and her self-control, she felt her face flushing under his searching
+gaze.
+
+"My dear," he said at length, "I am glad to meet you. You are a good and
+brave girl, I know." His eyes fell upon the black band upon her arm. "I
+see you are wearing the badge of heroism. My dear, pardon me, you
+have the same look--Barry, she has your dear mother's look, not so
+beautiful--you will forgive me, my dear--but the same look. She thinks
+of others and she has courage to suffer. My dear, I cannot take your
+hands in mine,"--he glanced with a pathetic smile at his bandaged arms,
+but with a swift movement of indescribable grace the girl stooped and
+kissed him on the forehead.
+
+"Barry," he said, turning to his son, "that was a fine courtesy. I count
+it an honour to have known you, Miss Vincent."
+
+He paused a moment or two, his searching eyes still upon her face.
+
+"You will befriend my boy, after--after--"
+
+"I will try my best, sir," said the girl, the colour deepening in her
+cheeks the while. "Good night, sir," she said. "I shall be near at hand
+if I am wanted."
+
+"Barry," said his father, after the girl had gone, "that is a very
+charming and a very superior young lady, one you will be glad to know."
+
+"Yes, dad, I am sure she is," said Barry, and then he told his father of
+the events of the previous night.
+
+For some moments after he had finished his father lay with his eyes
+shut, and quite still, and Barry, thinking he slept, sat watching, his
+eyes intent upon the face he loved best in all the world.
+
+But his father was not asleep.
+
+"Yes, Barry," he said, "she is like your dear mother, and now," he added
+hurriedly, "I hope you will not think I am taking a liberty--"
+
+"Oh, dad, I implore you!" said Barry.
+
+"Barry, I would like to speak to you about your work."
+
+Barry shook his head sadly.
+
+"I'm not much good, dad," he said, "but I'm not going to quit," he added
+quickly, noting a shadow on his father's face.
+
+"Barry, I'm going to say something to you which I do hope will not hurt
+you. I know the common soldier better than you do, boy. Our Canadian
+soldiers do not like to be rebuked, criticised or even watched too
+closely. Forgive me this, my boy."
+
+"Oh, dad, please tell me all that is in your heart!"
+
+"Thank you, Barry. They don't like the chaplain to be a censor over
+their words."
+
+"I loathe it," said Barry passionately.
+
+"Believe me, they are good chaps in their hearts. They swear and all
+that, but that is merely a habit or a mere expression of high emotion.
+You ought to hear them as they 'go over.' Barry, let all that pass and
+remember that these boys are giving their lives--their lives, Barry, for
+right, for conscience, and ultimately, though it may be unconsciously,
+for God. Barry, a man that is giving his life for God may say what he
+likes. Don't be too hard on them, but recall to mind, Barry, that when
+they go up the line they feel terribly lonely and terribly afraid, and
+that is a truly awful experience."
+
+He paused a moment or two, and then lowered his voice and continued:
+"Barry, you won't be ashamed of me. I was terribly afraid, myself."
+
+Barry choked back a convulsive sob.
+
+"You, dad, you!" He laughed scornfully.
+
+"I didn't run, Barry, thank God! But the boys--my boys--they are only
+lads, many of them--lonely and afraid--and they must go on. They must
+go on. Oh, Barry, in that hour they need some one to go with them. They
+need God."
+
+His son was listening with his heart in his eyes. He was getting a new
+view of the soldier and of the soldier's needs.
+
+"Unhappily," continued his father, "God is at best a shadowy being, to
+many of them a stranger, to some a terror. Barry," he said, "they need
+some one to tell them the truth about God. It's not fair to God, you
+know." Here again his father paused and then said very humbly: "I think
+I may say, Barry, I know God now, as I did not before. And you helped
+me, boy, to know him."
+
+"Oh, dad," cried Barry, passionately. "Not I! I don't know Him at all!"
+
+"Let me tell you how you helped me, Barry. Before I went up the last
+time, I wanted--"
+
+He paused abruptly, his face working and his lip quivering.
+
+"Forgive me, my boy. I'm a little weak."
+
+A few moments of silence and then he continued quietly:
+
+"I wanted you, Barry."
+
+The boy's hands were writhing under his knees, but his face and eyes
+were quite steady.
+
+"I was terribly lonely. I thought of that strange, dear bond that held
+us together, and then like a flash out of the sky came those great
+words: 'Like as a father pitieth his children,' and oh, boy, boy! It
+came to me then that as I feel toward my boy God feels toward me. Barry,
+listen--" His voice fell to a whisper. "I am God's son, as you are
+mine. There was no more fear, and I was not nearly so lonely. Tell the
+boys--tell the boys the truth about God."
+
+He lay a long time silent, with his eyes closed, and as Barry watched
+he saw two tears fall down the white cheeks. It was to him a terrible
+sight. Never, not even at his mother's grave, had he seen his father's
+tears. It was more than he could endure. He put his face down beside his
+father's on the pillow.
+
+"Dad, I understand," he whispered. "I know now what God is like. He is
+like you, dad. He gave himself for us, as you, dad, have given yourself
+all these years for me."
+
+He was sobbing, but very quietly.
+
+"Forgive me, dad; I'm not crying. I'm just thinking about God and you.
+Oh, dad, you are both wonderful! Wonderful!"
+
+"Barry, my boy, tell them. Don't worry yourself about them. Just tell
+them about God. He is responsible for them, not you."
+
+"Oh, I will, dad; I promise you I will. I've been all wrong, but I'll
+tell them. I'll tell them."
+
+"Thank God, my boy," said his father, with a deep sigh. "Now I'm tired.
+Say 'Our Father.'"
+
+Together they whispered those greatest of words in human speech, those
+words that have bound heaven to earth in yearning and in hope for these
+two thousand years.
+
+"Don't move, Barry," whispered his father. "I like you there."
+
+With their faces thus together they fell asleep.
+
+Barry was awakened by his father's voice, clear and strong.
+
+"Are you there, Barry?" it said.
+
+"Here, dad, right here!"
+
+"Good boy. Good boy. You won't leave me, Barry. I mean you don't need to
+go?"
+
+"No, dad, I'll never leave you."
+
+"Good boy," again murmured his father softly. "Always a good boy,
+always, always--"
+
+He was breathing heavily, long deep breaths.
+
+"Lift me up, Barry," he said.
+
+Barry sat on the bed, put his arm around his father's shoulders, and
+lifted him up.
+
+"That's better--hold me closer, Barry--You won't hurt me--Oh, it's
+good--to feel--your arms--strong arms--Barry."
+
+"You made them strong, dad," said Barry, in a clear, steady voice.
+
+The father nestled his head upon his son's shoulder.
+
+"Barry," he said in the low tone of one giving a confidence, "don't
+ever forget--to thank God--for these eighteen years--together--You saved
+me--from despair--eighteen years ago--when she went away--you know--and
+you have been--all the world to me--my son--"
+
+"And you to me, dad," said his son in the same steady tone.
+
+"I've tried all my life--to make you know--how I love you--but somehow I
+couldn't--"
+
+"But I knew, dad," said Barry. "All my life I have known."
+
+"Really?" asked his father. "I--wonder--I don't think--you quite
+know--Ah--my boy--my boy--You don't--know--you--can't. Barry," he
+said, "I think--I'm going out--I'm going--out--no, in--your word--my
+boy--in--eh--Barry?"
+
+"Yes, dad," said his son. "Going in. The inner circle, you know."
+
+"The--inner--circle--" echoed his father. "Warmth--light--love--Now--I
+think--I'll sleep--Good night--Barry--Oh--my boy,--you--don't
+quite--know--Kiss me--Barry--"
+
+Barry kissed him on the lips.
+
+"So--Good--night--"
+
+A deep breath he took; another--Barry waited for the next, but there was
+not another.
+
+He laid his father down and looked into his quiet face, touched even
+now with the noble stateliness of death. He put his arms about the
+unresponsive form, and his face to the cheek still warm.
+
+"Dad, oh, dad," he whispered. "Do you know--do you know--Oh, God, tell
+him how I love him. Tell him! Tell him! I never could."
+
+The little V. A. D. came softly and stood looking from a distance. Then
+coming to the bedside, she laid her hand upon the head and then the
+heart of the dead man. Then she drew back, and beckoning to an orderly,
+they placed a screen about the cot. She let her eyes rest for a moment
+or two upon the kneeling boy, then went softly away.
+
+Death was to her an all too familiar thing. She had often seen it
+unmoved, but to-night, as she walked away, the brown eyes could not hold
+their tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A MAN OF GOD
+
+
+Barry was standing beside his father's grave, in a little plot in the
+Boulogne cemetery set apart for British officers. They had, one by one,
+gone away and left him until, alone, he stood looking down on the simple
+wooden cross on which were recorded the name, age, and unit of the
+soldier with the date of his death, and underneath the simple legend,
+eloquent of heroic sacrifice, "Died of wounds received in action."
+
+Throughout the simple, beautiful burial service he had not been acutely
+conscious of grief. Even now he wondered that he could shed no tears.
+Rather did an exultant emotion fill his soul as he looked around upon
+the little British plot, with its rows of crosses, and he was chiefly
+conscious of a solemn, tender pride that he was permitted to share that
+glorious offering which his Empire was making for the saving of the
+world. But, in this moment, as he stood there alone close to his
+father's grave, and surrounded by those examples of high courage and
+devotion, he became aware of a mighty change wrought in him during these
+last three days. He had experienced a veritable emancipation of soul. He
+was as if he had been born anew.
+
+The old sense of failure in his work, the feeling of unfitness for it,
+and the old dread of it, had been lifted out of his soul, and not only
+was he a new man, but he felt himself to be charged with a new mission,
+because he had a new message for his men. No longer did he conceive
+himself as a moral policeman or religious censor, whose main duty it
+was to stand in judgment over the faults and sins of the men of
+his battalion. No more would the burden of his message be a stern
+denunciation of these faults and sins. Standing there to-day, he could
+only wonder at his former blindness and stupidity and pride.
+
+"Who am I," he said in bitter self-humiliation, "that I should judge my
+comrades? How little I knew myself."
+
+"A man of God," his superintendent had said in his last letter to him.
+Yes, truly a man of God! A MAN not God! A MAN not to sit in God's place
+in judgment upon his fellow sinners, but to show them God, their Father.
+
+Barry thought of the frequent rebukes he had administered to the
+officers and men for what he considered to be their sins. He groaned
+aloud.
+
+"God will forgive me, I know," he said. "But will they?"
+
+He tried to recall what the burden of his message to his battalion
+had been during these past months, but to him there came no clear and
+distinct memory of aught but warnings and denunciations, with reference
+to what he judged to be faulty in their conduct. To-day it seemed to him
+both sad and terrible.
+
+How had he so failed and so misconceived the Master's plain teaching? He
+moved among sinners all His days, not with denunciations in His heart or
+voice, but only with pity and love.
+
+"Be not anxious," He had said. "Consider the birds of the air. Not
+one of them falleth to the ground without your Father. How much more
+precious are you than the birds."
+
+What a message for men going up to face the terrors and perils of the
+front line. "Be not anxious!"
+
+"I was afraid," his father had said to him. That to him was
+inconceivable. That that gallant spirit should know terror seemed to
+him impossible. Yet even he had said, "I was afraid." And for the
+loneliness, what a message he now had. In their loneliness men cried out
+for the presence of a friend, and the Master had said:
+
+"When ye pray, pray to your Father. Your Father knoweth. When ye pray,
+say, 'Our Father'!" And he had missed all this. What a mess he had made
+of his work! How sadly misread his Master's teaching and misinterpreted
+his Master's spirit!
+
+Barry looked down upon the grave at his feet.
+
+"But you knew, dad, you knew!" he whispered.
+
+For the first time since he had become a chaplain, he thought of his
+work with gratitude and eagerness. He longed to see his men again. He
+had something to tell them. It was this: that God to them was like their
+fathers, their mothers, their brothers, their friends; only infinitely
+more loving, and without their faults.
+
+With his head high and his feet light upon the earth, he returned to the
+R. A. M. C. Hospital, where he found Harry Hobbs, with his handbag and a
+letter from his O. C.
+
+"Take a few days off," said the O. C. "We all sympathise with you.
+We miss you and shall be glad to see you, but take a few days now for
+yourself."
+
+Barry was greatly touched, but he had only one desire now, and that was
+to return to his unit. His batman brought him also an order from
+the Assistant Director of Chaplain Service bidding him report at the
+earliest moment.
+
+At Headquarters he learned that the A. D. C. S. had been in Boulogne,
+but had gone to Etaples, some thirty or forty miles distant, to visit
+the large hospitals there. He determined that to-morrow he would go to
+Etaples and report, after which he would proceed to his battalion.
+
+That evening, he visited the men in the hospital, coming upon many
+Canadians whose joy in seeing a chaplain from their own country touched
+Barry to the heart. He took their messages which he promised to transmit
+to their folks at home, and left with them something of the serene and
+exultant peace that filled his own soul.
+
+From Ewen Innes and others of the Wapiti draft, he learned something
+of his father's work and place in their battalion. Soldiers are not
+eloquent in speech, but mostly in silence. Their words halted when they
+came to speak of their sergeant major's soldierly qualities,--for his
+father had become the sergeant major of the battalion--his patience, his
+skill, his courage.
+
+"He knew his job, sir," said one of them. "He was always onto it."
+
+"It was his care of his men that we thought most of," said Ewen, who
+continued to relate incidents that had come under his own observation of
+this characteristic, tears the while flowing down his cheeks.
+
+"He never thought of himself, sir. It was our comfort first. He was far
+more than our sergeant major. He watched us like a father; that's what
+he did."
+
+As Barry listened to the soldiers telling of his father in broken words,
+and with flowing tears, he almost wondered at them for their tears and
+wondered at himself that he had none. Tears seemed to be so much out of
+place in telling such a tale as that.
+
+The train for Etaples leaving at an unearthly hour in the morning, Barry
+went to take farewell of the V. A. D. the night before.
+
+"That is an awfully early hour," she said, "and, oh, such a wretched
+train." There was in her voice an almost maternal solicitude for his
+comfort.
+
+"That's nothing," said Barry. "When I see you here at your unending
+work, it makes me feel more and more like a slacker."
+
+"Wait for me here a moment," she said, and hurried away to return
+shortly in such a glow of excitement as even her wonted calm and
+self-restraint could not quite hide.
+
+"I'm going to drive you to Etaples to-morrow in my car. I know the
+matron and some of the nurses in the American hospital there."
+
+"You don't mean it," said Barry, "but are you sure it's not a terrible
+bore for you? I am much afraid that I have been a nuisance to you, and
+you have been so very, very good to me."
+
+"A bore!" she cried, and the brown eyes were wide open in surprise. "A
+bore, and you a Canadian! Why, you are one of my brothers' friends,
+and besides you seem to me a friend of our family. My uncle Howard, you
+know, told me all about you. Besides," she added in a voice of great
+gentleness, "you remember, I promised."
+
+Barry caught her hand.
+
+"I wish I could tell you all I feel about it, but somehow I can't get
+the words."
+
+She allowed her hand to remain in his for a moment or two; then
+withdrawing it, said hurriedly, with a slight colour showing in her
+cheeks:
+
+"I think I understand." Then changing her tone abruptly, and dropping
+into the business-like manner of a V. A. D., she said, "So, we'll go
+to-morrow. It will be a splendid run, if the day is fine. We had better
+start by nine o'clock to give us a long day." Then, as if forgetting she
+was a V. A. D., she added with a little catch in her voice, "Oh, I shall
+love it!"
+
+The day proved to be fine,--one of those golden days of spring that have
+given to the land its name of "sunny France." It was a day for life and
+youth and hope. A day on which war seemed more than ever a cruel outrage
+upon humanity. But across the sunniest days, across the shining face of
+France, and across their spirits, too, the war cast its black shadow.
+They both, however, seemed to have resolved that for that day at least
+they would turn their eyes from that shadow and let them rest only where
+the sun was shining.
+
+The V. A. D. with her mind intent upon her wheel could only contribute,
+as her share in the conversation, descriptive and somewhat desultory
+comments upon points of interest along the way. Barry, because it
+harmonised with his mood, talked about his father and all their years
+together but ever without obtrusion of his grief. The experiences of
+the past three days, which they had shared, seemed to have established
+between them a sense of mutual confidence and comradeship such as in
+ordinary circumstances would have demanded years of companionship to
+effect. This sense of sympathy and of perfect understanding on the part
+of the girl at his side, together with the fascinating charm of her
+beauty, and her sweetness, was to Barry's stricken heart like a healing
+balm to an aching wound.
+
+They were in sight of Etaples before Barry imagined they could have made
+more than half the journey.
+
+"Etaples, so soon! It cannot be!"
+
+"But it is," said the girl, throwing a bright smile at him, "and that's
+the hospital, on the hill yonder, where the flag is flying."
+
+"Why," exclaimed Barry, "that's the American flag! What's the American
+flag doing there?"
+
+"It's flying over an American hospital," said the V. A. D. "I think it's
+such a beautiful flag. In the breeze, it seems to me the most beautiful
+of all the flags. The stripes seem to flow out from the stars. Of
+course," she added hurriedly, "the Union Jack with all its historic
+meaning and its mingled crosses, is splendidly glorious and is more
+decorative, but I always think, when I see those floating stripes, that
+the Americans have the most beautiful flag."
+
+"I admit," said Barry, "it's a beautiful flag, but--well, I'm a
+Britisher, I suppose, and see it with British eyes. But why is that flag
+flying here in France? How do the authorities allow that? It's a neutral
+flag--awfully neutral, too."
+
+"I understand they have permission from the French authorities to fly
+that flag over every American institution in France. And you know,"
+continued the girl with rising enthusiasm, "if they are neutral, they
+have immensely helped us, too, haven't they?--in munitions and that sort
+of thing."
+
+"That's true enough," agreed Barry, "and it's all the more wonderful
+when you think of the millions of Germans that they have in their
+country. I heard a very fine thing, not long ago, from a friend of
+mine. A Pittsburgh oil man about to close a deal, with a traveller,
+with millions in it, suddenly discovered that his oil was to go to
+the Germans. At once the deal was off, and, though the price was
+considerably raised, there was, in his own words, 'Nothing 'doing!' 'No
+stuff of mine,' he said, 'shall go to help an enemy of the Anglo-Saxon
+race.' That's the way I believe the real Americans feel."
+
+"This is a wonderful hospital," said the V. A. D. "Whenever I see it, I
+somehow feel my heart grow warm to the American people for the splendid
+way in which they have helped poor France, for, you know, in the first
+months of the war, the French hospitals were perfectly ghastly."
+
+"I know, I know!" cried Barry. "And the Canadians, too, have chipped in
+a bit. We have a Canadian hospital in Paris, for the French, and others
+are being organised."
+
+They turned in at the gate and found themselves in a beautiful
+quadrangle, set out with grass plots and flowers and cement walks. The
+building itself, an ancient royal palace, had been enlarged by means of
+sun-parlours and porches which gave it an air of wonderful cheeriness
+and brightness.
+
+"I will run in and see if any of my friends are about," said the V. A.
+D. "Wait here for me. Unless you care to come in," she added.
+
+"No, I will wait here. I don't just feel like meeting strangers but,
+if there are Canadians in the hospital, I should like to see them.
+And perhaps you can discover where my chief can be found, if you don't
+mind."
+
+Hardly had she passed within the door, when another car came swiftly to
+the gate and drew up a little in front of Barry's. A girl leaped from
+the wheel and with a spring in her step, which spoke of a bounding
+vitality, ran up the steps.
+
+What thought caught her it is difficult to say, but on the topmost step
+she spun around and looked straight into Barry's eyes.
+
+"Paula!" he shouted, and was out of the car and at the foot of the
+steps, with hand outstretched, when, with a single touch of her foot to
+the steps, she was at him, with both hands reaching for his.
+
+"Barry, oh, Barry! It can't be you!" she panted. Her face went red, then
+white, then red again. "Oh, it's better than a drink to see you. Whence,
+how, why, whither? Oh, never mind answering," she went on. "It's enough
+to see you."
+
+A step behind her diverted her attention from Barry. Barry ran up the
+steps, and taking the V. A. D. by the hand, led her down.
+
+"I want you to meet a friend of mine," he said and introduced Paula.
+
+Paula's eyes, keen as a knife-point, were upon the V. A. D.'s face.
+
+"I'm glad to know you," she said frankly, offering her hand.
+"Principally," she added, with a little laugh, "because you know Barry."
+
+The V. A. D. bowed with the slight reserve characteristic of her, and
+took Paula's hand.
+
+"I, too, am pleased," she said, "to meet a friend of Captain Dunbar."
+Then she added with increased cordiality, "and I'm glad to meet an
+American in France. I know your matron, and some of the nurses."
+
+"Good!" cried Paula. "Now, then, you'll both of you take lunch with me."
+
+The V. A. D. demurred.
+
+"Of course you will," cried Paula. "Oh, Barry, I'm just ready to die
+from seeing you again. Come along!" she cried, impulsively, catching
+the V. A. D. by the arm. "Come along and park your buzzwagon here beside
+mine."
+
+She ran to her car, sprang in and whirled it into place before the V. A.
+D. had hers well started.
+
+Barry waited where they had left him. The sudden appearing of Paula had
+stirred within him depths of feeling that almost overpowered him. His
+mind was far away in Athabasca, once more he was seeing the dark pool,
+the swiftly flowing water, the campfire, and his father bending over it.
+His heart was quivering as if a hand had been rudely thrust into a raw
+wound in it.
+
+The V. A. D. held Paula a few moments beside her car, speaking quickly
+and earnestly. When they rejoined Barry, Paula's eyes were soft with
+unshed tears, and her voice was very gentle.
+
+"I know, Barry," she said. "Miss Vincent just told me. Oh, what terrible
+changes this war brings to us all. We see so many sad things here every
+day. It's terribly sad for you, Barry."
+
+"Yes, it is sad, Paula, and it is going to be lonely. You have brought
+back to me that bright day on the Athabasca. But," he added earnestly,
+"after all, in this war everything personal is so small. Besides, he was
+so splendid, you know, and the boys told me he played the game up there
+right to the end. So I'm not going to shame him; at least, I'm trying
+not to."
+
+But bright as was Barry's smile, Paula caught the quivering of his lips,
+and turned quickly away from him.
+
+After a moment or two of silence, she cried, with her old impulsiveness,
+"Now you will both lunch with me. I'm the quartermaster of this outfit,
+and have a small parlour of my own. We shall have a lovely, cosy time,
+just Miss Vincent, you and myself together."
+
+"But," replied the V. A. D., "I have just arranged with the matron to
+lunch with her."
+
+"Oh, rubbish! I'll cut that out, all right. What's the use of being
+quartermaster if I can't arrange a lunch party to suit myself?"
+
+Still the V. A. D. demurred. With her, breaking an engagement for lunch
+was a serious affair--was indeed taking a liberty which no English girl
+would think of doing.
+
+"Oh, that's nonsense!" cried Paula. "I'll make it perfectly all right.
+Look here," she cried, wheeling upon the V. A. D., "you Britishers
+are so terribly correct. I'll show you a little shirtsleeve diplomacy.
+Besides, if you don't come in on this you can have the matron, and I'll
+take Barry," she said with a threatening smile. "Watch me!" she added,
+as she ran away.
+
+"What a splendid girl!" said the V. A. D. "And that captivating American
+way she has. Perfectly ripping, I call it. I do hope we shall be
+friends."
+
+In a short time Paula came rushing back into the room, announcing
+triumphantly that arrangements had been made according to her programme,
+with the matron in hearty accord.
+
+"And she sends her love," she said to the V. A. D. "She would not have
+you on any account miss this party. She is desperately grieved that she
+cannot accept my invitation to join us. Of course, I knew the old dear
+couldn't. And we are to meet her afterwards."
+
+The little lunch party was, on the whole, a success. To the conversation
+Paula contributed the larger part, Barry doing his best to second her.
+But in spite of his heroic efforts, his mind would escape him, far away
+to the sunny Athabasca plains, and the gleaming river and the smooth
+slipping canoe, and then with swift transition to the little British
+plot in the cemetery at Boulogne.
+
+At such times, Paula, reading his face, would momentarily falter in
+her gay talk, only to begin again with renewed vivacity. On one topic,
+however, she had no difficulty in holding Barry's attention. It was when
+she told of the organising and despatching of the American Red Cross
+units to France, and more especially of her own unit, organised and
+financed by her father.
+
+"I am awfully sorry he is not here to-day. He would have loved to have
+seen you again, Barry."
+
+"And I to have seen him," said Barry. "He is a big man, and it is
+fine of him to do this thing. It's just like the big, generous-hearted
+Americans--they are so unstinted in their sympathies, and they back them
+up for all they are worth."
+
+"And how efficient they are," added the V. A. D. in warm admiration.
+"This hospital, you know," turning to Barry, "is perfectly wonderful.
+Its equipment! Its appliances! I have often heard our O. C. speak in the
+most rapturous envy of the Etaples American Red Cross unit."
+
+"And why should not it be?" cried Paula. "It's a question of money after
+all. We are not at war. We put in a few little hospitals here in France.
+We have more money thrown at us than we can use. And you talk about
+efficiency," she added, turning to the V. A. D. "Good Lord! My pater has
+just come back from London, where he was rubbering around with lords and
+dukes and things in a disgustingly un-American way I told him, and now
+he raves from morning until night over the efficiency of the British.
+He's been allowed to see some of their munition works, you know. I
+simply had to declaim the American Declaration of Independence to him
+three times a day to revive his drooping Democratic sentiments, and I
+had to sew Old Glory on to his pajamas so that he might dream proper
+American dreams. No, to tell you the truth," here Paula's voice took
+a deeper note, "every last American of us here in France is hot with
+humiliation and rage at his country's attitude,--monkeying with those
+baby-killing, woman-raping devils."
+
+As she ended, her voice shook with passion, her cheeks were pale, and in
+her eyes shone two bright tears. Impulsively the V. A. D. rose from her
+place, ran around to Paula, and putting her arm around her neck, said:
+
+"Oh, I do thank you, and I love you for your words," while Barry stood
+at attention, as if in the presence of his superior officer. "I salute
+you," he said with grave earnestness. "You worthily represent your brave
+and generous people."
+
+"Oh, darn it all!" cried Paula, brushing away her tears. "I'm a fool,
+but you don't know how we Americans feel--real Americans, I mean, not
+the yellow hyphenated breed."
+
+After lunch, Barry went to look up his chief, the assistant director of
+chaplain service, while Paula took charge of the V. A. D., saying:
+
+"Run away, Barry, and see your Brass Hat. I'll show Miss Vincent how a
+quartermaster's department of a real hospital should be run."
+
+His hour with the A. D. C. S. was a most stimulating experience for
+Barry. He found himself at once in touch with not an official thinking
+in terms of military regulations and etiquette, but a soldier and a man.
+For the A. D. C. S. was both. Through all the terrible days at Ypres,
+where the Canadians, in that welter of gas and fire and blood, had won
+their imperishable fame as fighting men, he had been with them, sharing
+their dangers and ministering to their wants with his brother officers
+of the fighting line. Physically an unimpressive figure, small and
+slight, yet he seemed charged with concentrated energy waiting release.
+
+As Barry listened to his words coming forth in snappy, jerking phrases,
+he was fascinated by the bulldog jaw and piercing eyes of the little
+man. In brief, comprehensive, vigorous sentences, he set forth his
+ideals for the chaplain service in the Canadian army.
+
+"Three things," he said, "I tell my men, should mark the Canadian
+chaplain service. The first, Unity--unity among themselves, unity
+with the other departments of the army. Two words describe our
+chaplains--Christian and Canadians. I am an Anglican myself, but on this
+side of the channel there are no Anglican, no Presbyterian, no Methodist
+chaplains, only Christian and Canadian chaplains. I have had to fight
+for this with high officials both in the army and in the church. I have
+won out, and while I'm here this will be maintained. The second thing is
+Spirituality. The Chaplain must be a Christian man, living in touch with
+the Divine--alive toward God. Third, Humanity. He must be 'touched
+with the feeling of our infirmity,' sharing the experiences of the men,
+getting to know their feelings, their fears, their loneliness, their
+misery, their anxieties, and God knows they have their anxieties for
+themselves and for their folks at home."
+
+As Barry listened, he heard again his father's voice. "They need you.
+They are afraid. They are lonely. They need God."
+
+"And remember," said the A. D. C. S., as he rose to close the interview,
+"that I am at your back. If you have any difficulty, let me know. If you
+are wrong, I promise to tell you. If you are right, I'll back you up.
+Now, let us go and look over the hospital. There are some of our fellows
+there. If you feel like saying anything in the convalescent ward, all
+right, but don't let it worry you."
+
+As they went through the wards, Barry could not but notice how the faces
+of the patients brightened as his chief approached, and how their eyes
+followed him after he had passed.
+
+They moved slowly through those long corridors, sanctified by the
+sufferings and griefs and hidden tears of homesick and homelonging men,
+to many of whom it seemed that the best of life was past.
+
+When they had gone the length of the convalescent ward, the A. D. C.
+S. turned and, after getting permission of the medical superintendent,
+briefly introduced Barry to the wounded men, as "a man from the wild and
+woolly Canadian west, on his way up the line, and therefore competent to
+tell us about the war, and especially when it will end."
+
+Beside them stood a piano, and on it lay a violin in its open case.
+Barry took up the violin, fingered its strings in an absent-minded way,
+and said:
+
+"I don't know anything about the war, men, but I do know when it
+will end, and that is when we lick those Huns good and plenty, as our
+American friends would say," bowing to the doctor at his side. "I'm an
+awfully poor speaker, boys," he continued in a confidential tone, "but I
+can make this thing talk a bit."
+
+Without further preface he began to play. He had not held a violin in
+his hands since he had played with his father at home. Unconsciously his
+fingers wandered into the familiar notes of Handel's Largo. He found the
+violin to possess an exceptionally rich and pure quality of tone.
+
+As he began to play, a door opened behind them, admitting Paula, the
+V. A. D. and two or three young doctors, who took their places in the
+corner about the piano.
+
+"Do you know this?" whispered Paula to the V. A. D., as she caught the
+strains of the Largo.
+
+"Yes. I used to play it with my brother."
+
+"Go to it, then," said Paula.
+
+But the V. A. D. hesitated.
+
+"Go on! Look at the boys, and look at his face."
+
+The V. A. D. glanced about the room at the lines of pale and patient
+faces, which, in spite of the marks of pain, were so pathetically and
+resolutely bright. Then she glanced at Barry's face. He had forgotten
+all about his surroundings, and his face was illumined with the light
+from those hidden lamps that burn deep in the soul of genius, a light
+enriched and warmed by the glow of a heart in sympathy with its kind.
+
+In obedience to Paula's command and a little push upon her shoulder, the
+V. A. D. sat down at the piano and touched the notes softly, feeling for
+the key, then fell in with the violin.
+
+At the first note, Barry turned sharply about and as she found her key
+and began to follow, he stepped back to her side. Immediately, from his
+instrument, there seemed to flow a richer, fuller stream of melody. From
+the solemn and stately harmonies of the Largo, he passed to those old
+familiar airs, that never die and never lose their power over the human
+heart--"Annie Laurie" and "Ben Bolt," and thence to a rollicking French
+chanson, which rather bowled over his accompanist, but only for the
+first time though, for she had the rare gift of improvisation, and
+sympathetic accompaniment.
+
+Then with a full arm bowing, he swept them into the fiercely majestic
+strains of the "Marseillaise," bringing the blue-coated orderlies about
+the door, and such patients as could stand, and the group about the
+piano to rigid attention. From the "Marseillaise" it was easy to pass
+into the noble simplicity of his own national song, "Oh, Canada!"
+where again his accompanist was quite able to follow, and thence to the
+Empire's National Anthem, which had for a hundred years or more lifted
+to their feet British soldiers and sailors the world over.
+
+As he drew his bow over the last chord, Paula stepped to his side, and
+whispered in his ear:
+
+"Where's America in this thing?"
+
+Without an instant's break in the music, he dropped into a whimsical and
+really humorous rendering of "Yankee Doodle." Quickly the V. A. D. moved
+from the stool, caught Paula and thrust her into the vacant place. Then
+together the violin and piano rattled into a fantastic and brilliant
+variation of that famous and trifling air. Again, with a sudden change
+of mood, Barry swung into that old song of the homesick plantation
+negro, "The Suwanee River"--a simple enough air, but under the
+manipulations of a master lending itself to an interpretation of the
+deep and tender emotions which in that room and in that company of
+French, British, Canadian, American folk were throbbing in a common
+longing for the old home and the "old folks at home." Before he had
+played the air once through, the grey-haired American doctor was openly
+wiping his eyes, and his colleagues looking away from each other,
+ashamed of the tears that did them only honour.
+
+Paula's flushed face and flashing eyes were eloquent of her deep
+emotion, while at her side the V. A. D. stood quiet, controlled, but
+with a glow of tender feeling shining in her face and in her soft brown
+eyes.
+
+Not long did Barry linger amid those deeps of emotion, but straightening
+his figure to its full height, and throwing up his head, he, in full
+octaves, played the opening bars of what has come to be known as
+America's national anthem, "The Star Spangled Banner."
+
+Instantly the A. D. C. S., the orderlies about the door, the wounded
+French, British and Canadian soldiers that could stand, sprang
+to attention and so remained while the violin, with its piano
+accompaniment, throbbed forth the sonorous chords. With the last bar,
+Barry dropped his bow to his side, but held the violin still at his
+chin. Not one of that company moved, but stood with their eyes fastened
+upon his face. After a moment's pause, he quietly lifted his bow again,
+and on the silence, still throbbing to the strains of that triumphant
+martial air, there stole out pure, sweet, as from some ethereal source,
+the long drawn, trembling notes of that old sacred melody, which,
+sounding over men and women in their hours of terror and anguish and
+despair, has lifted them to peace and comfort and hope--"Nearer, My God,
+to Thee."
+
+The tension which had held the company was relaxed, the wounded men sank
+to their seats, the A. D. C. S. removed his hat, which, according to
+military regulations, he had worn to this moment. On all sides, heads
+dropped in an attitude of reverence, and so continued until Barry had
+drawn the last deep, vibrating note to a close.
+
+When he had laid his violin in its case, the old American doctor came
+forward, with his hand extended.
+
+"Let me, as an American and a Christian, thank you, sir," he said.
+
+One by one the group of Americans came to shake hands with him, the last
+being Paula, who held his hand a moment and said softly:
+
+"Thank you, Barry. I believe all that stuff now. I have learned it
+here."
+
+The last of all to come was the V. A. D. Shyly, with a smile radiant
+through her tears, she offered her hand, saying: "Thank you! He would
+have liked that, I know."
+
+"Captain Dunbar, where's your own violin?" The abrupt tone of the A. D.
+C. S. startled them all.
+
+"At home, sir. I didn't think a chaplain would need one."
+
+"Whose violin in this?" asked the A. D. C. S. in his brusque manner.
+
+"I rather think this is mine," said one of the doctors.
+
+"Will you sell it? I'll buy it from you, at any price you say. I want it
+for him."
+
+"You can't buy it, colonel," said the doctor. "It's his now. I never
+knew it had all that heart stuff in it."
+
+He took up the violin, and handed it to Barry. But Barry drew back in
+astonishment. Then the old doctor came forward.
+
+"No, Travis," he said, "we'll do better than that. What did your fiddle
+cost?"
+
+"A hundred and fifty dollars, I think."
+
+"Travis, this company of Americans, representing their country here in
+France, as a token of their sympathy with the allies and their sacred
+cause, and of gratitude to you, sir," bowing to Barry, "will buy this
+instrument and present it to this young man, on condition that he repeat
+in similar circumstances the service he has rendered this afternoon. Am
+I right?" he asked, looking about him.
+
+"You bet you are! Right you are!" said the doctors.
+
+"Oh, doctor, you are a dear old thing!" exclaimed Paula.
+
+Barry stood holding the instrument in his hand, unable to find his
+voice. The A. D. C. S. came to his aid.
+
+"In the name of my chaplain, and in the name of thousands of Canadian
+soldiers to whom I promise you he will bring the blessing that he has
+brought us this afternoon, I thank you for this very beautiful and very
+characteristic American act."
+
+"Well," said the old doctor, "I don't know how you folks feel, but I
+feel as if I had been to church."
+
+"Now, sir," said the A. D. C. S. to Barry, in his military tone, "I am
+organising a company of musicians who will go through our camps and help
+the boys as you have helped us to-day. I would like you to be one of
+them. What do you say?"
+
+"Oh, sir," exclaimed Barry hastily, laying the violin upon the piano and
+standing back from it, "don't make that an order, sir. I want to stay
+with my men."
+
+His face was quivering with deep emotion. The A. D. C. S. looked into
+the quivering face.
+
+"All right, Dunbar," he said, with a little laugh, and putting his hand
+on Barry's shoulder. "I guess you are all right."
+
+"Some boy! What?" said the American doctor. "Here I think you had better
+take your fiddle along," handing Barry the violin. "It doesn't belong to
+any one in this bunch."
+
+The burst of laughter that followed, all out of proportion to the humour
+of the remark, revealed the tensity of the strain through which they had
+passed.
+
+Through the little town of Etaples they drove together in almost
+complete silence, until they had emerged into the country, lying spread
+out about them in all the tender beauty of the soft spring evening. As
+the car moved through the sweet silence of the open fields, the V. A. D.
+said softly:
+
+"Oh, Captain Dunbar, I--"
+
+"My name is Barry," he said gently.
+
+A quick flush came into the beautiful face and a soft light to the brown
+eyes, as she answered:
+
+"And mine is Phyllis." Then she hurried to add, "I was going to say
+that you helped me this afternoon as nothing has since my dear brothers
+went."
+
+"Thank you, Phyllis. What you have been to me through all these days, I
+wish I could tell, but I can't find words."
+
+Then they rode together in silence that was more eloquent than any words
+of theirs could be. At length Barry burst forth enthusiastically:
+
+"Those Americans! What a beautiful and gracious act of kindness that was
+to me."
+
+"Oh," replied Phyllis, with answering enthusiasm, "aren't they fine!
+That was perfectly ripping of them."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+INTENSIVE TRAINING
+
+
+Barry's return to the battalion was like a coming home. In the mess
+there was no demonstration of sympathy with him in his loss, but the
+officers took occasion to drop in casually with an interesting bit of
+news, seeking to express, more or less awkwardly, by their presence what
+they found it impossible to express in actual words.
+
+It was to Barry an experience as new as it was delightful. Hitherto,
+as far as any real fellowship was concerned he had lived a life of
+comparative isolation among his fellow officers, and while they were
+careful to preserve the conventions and courtesies imposed by their
+mutual relations, he had ever been made to feel that in that circle he
+was an outsider.
+
+Among the officers who came to call upon him, none surprised him more
+than did Major Bayne. While that officer had always been careful to
+maintain an attitude toward him, at once correct and civil, there had
+never been any approach to friendliness. As a matter of fact, Major
+Bayne was too entirely occupied with his own interests to have either
+the leisure or the inclination for anything but a casual concern for the
+chaplain and his affairs. That was not to be wondered at. Life in the
+army, notwithstanding all its loyalties and its fine unselfishnesses,
+is, in some of its phases, a brutally self-centred form of existence.
+Its routine consists in the continual performance of "duties" under an
+authority ruthless in its exactions and relentless in its penalties.
+Only after months of experience of its iron rigidity does the civilian,
+accustomed as he is to self-determination, with a somewhat easygoing
+regard for the conventions of his community, arrive at the state of mind
+in which unconsciously and as a matter of second nature he estimates the
+quality of the most trivial act by its relation to the standard set by
+the Military High Command. Like a spectre does that solemn, impalpable,
+often perfectly unreasonable omniscient and omnipotent entity lurk in
+the shadow ready to reach out a clutching hand, and for some infraction
+of regulations, wilful or inadvertent, hale the luckless and shivering
+defaulter to judgment. It therefore behooves a man to take heed to
+himself and to his ways, for, with the best intention, he may discover
+that he has been guilty of an infraction, not of a regulation found in
+K. R. & O., with which he has painfully made himself familiar and which
+he has diligently exercised himself to observe, but of one of those
+seventeen hundred and sixty-nine "instructions" and "informations" which
+from time to time have appeared in those sacred writings known as Army,
+Divisional, Brigade, or Battalion Orders.
+
+In consequence, an officer with a conscience toward his duty, or an
+ambition for promotion, gives himself so completely to the business of
+"watching his step" that only by a definite exercise of his altruistic
+faculties can he indulge himself in the commendable civilian luxury of
+caring for his neighbour.
+
+And so it came about that Major Bayne, possessing in a large measure the
+quality of "canniness" characteristic of his race--a quality which for
+the benefit of the uninitiated Saxon it may be necessary to define as
+being a judicious blending of shrewdness and caution,--and being
+as well, again after the manner of his race, ambitious for his own
+advancement, and, furthermore, being a man of conscience, had been so
+entirely engrossed in the absorbing business of "watching his step" that
+he had paid slight heed to the affairs of any other officer, and least
+of all to those of the chaplain, whose functions in the battalion he had
+regarded, it must be confessed, as more or less formal, if not merely
+decorative.
+
+But, in spite of all this, in the major the biggest thing was his heart,
+which, however, true to his race type again, he kept stored in the
+deepest recesses of his system. To "touch" the major's "heart" was an
+operation of more than ordinary difficulty. It was that very thing,
+however, which the letter to the battalion Commanding Officer from the
+A. D. C. S. had achieved. The effect of this letter upon the members of
+the mess, and most especially upon the junior major in regard to their
+relation to their chaplain, was revolutionary. Hence the major's visit
+to Barry upon the evening of his return.
+
+It was with an unusually cordial handshake that he greeted the chaplain.
+
+"We are glad to have you back with us, Captain Dunbar," he said. "We
+missed you, and we have discovered that we need you. Things have
+been moving while you were away. This battalion is undergoing a
+transformation. The O. C. is tightening down the screws of discipline.
+He sees, and we all are beginning to see, that we are up against a
+different proposition from what we had imagined, and right here, Captain
+Dunbar, I want to say for myself, and I believe for the rest of the
+boys, that we have not given you a square deal."
+
+His attitude and his words astounded Barry.
+
+"Don't say that, major," he said, in a voice husky with emotion. "Don't
+say that. I have been all wrong. I am not going to talk about it, but I
+am awfully glad to get a second chance."
+
+"If you need a second chance, Pilot," said the major, for the first time
+using the friendly western sobriquet, "believe me, you'll get it."
+
+The major sat down, pulled out his pipe, and began to impart some
+interesting bits of news.
+
+"Things are moving rather swiftly with us these days. There are many
+changes taking place. Duff has gone permanently to the transport, and is
+in the way for a captaincy. Hopeton has gone for a machine gun course.
+Sally is to be company commander in his place. Booth takes charge of the
+bombers. Your friend, Sergeant Knight, is slated for a commission. He
+is doing awfully well with the signallers, and, by the way, there is
+something I want to show you to-morrow, something quite unique and
+remarkable, our new instructor in bayonet fighting. Do you know we were
+rather stuck on our bayonet fighting, but he has made the boys feel that
+they didn't know anything about bayonet fighting, or, for that matter,
+about anything else. I think you will enjoy him. The boys are all up on
+their toes. There is nothing like the scream of a live shell 'coming in'
+to speed up the training."
+
+When the major had departed, he left Barry in a maze of wonder and
+gratitude. That the battalion were glad to have him back, that all the
+old feeling of latent hostility of which he had been conscious was gone,
+and that they felt that they really needed him stirred in his heart a
+profound sense of humility and gratitude.
+
+Late as it was he felt he must go out for a stroll about the camp just
+to see the men and give them greeting.
+
+Wherever he went he was greeted with a new respect and a new cordiality.
+It was as if he had passed through some mystic initiation ceremony and
+had been admitted into a magic circle of comradeship with the common
+soldier, than which no privilege is more dearly coveted by the officers,
+from the colonel himself to the youngest sub, and which is indeed, in
+the last analysis, the sine qua non of effective leadership.
+
+As Barry was passing the sergeants' mess-room the door opened and there
+came out Sergeant Major McFetteridge himself, with two others of the
+mess.
+
+"Good evening, sergeant major," said Barry quietly passing on his way.
+
+"Good evening, sir," said the sergeant major with his usual stiff
+salute. "Oh, it's you, sir," he cried as the light fell upon Barry's
+face. "We're glad to see you back, sir."
+
+"Thank you, sergeant major," replied Barry, offering his hand, "and I'm
+glad to be back with you all again."
+
+"Thank you, sir. I assure you we're glad to have you. Won't you come
+in, sir? The boys will all want to see you," and so saying the sergeant
+major threw wide open the door.
+
+Nowhere is class privilege more appreciated and more jealously guarded
+than in the sergeants' mess. It is the most enclusive of all military
+circles. Realising this, Barry was glad to accept the invitation. The
+hut was filled with sergeants in easy deshabille, smoking, lounging,
+playing various games.
+
+"The chaplain, boys," announced the sergeant major, and instantly every
+man was on his feet, and at attention.
+
+"It's all right, boys," said the sergeant major. "The chaplain has just
+dropped in for a minute for a friendly call, and we want you to feel,
+sir," he added, for the sergeant major loved a little ceremonial, "that
+we respectfully sympathise with you in your loss, and that we consider
+ourselves honoured by your presence here tonight."
+
+Barry was so deeply touched by the unexpected warmth of their welcome,
+and by the reference to his recent sorrow, that he could not trust
+himself to speak. Without a word he passed around the group, shaking
+hands with each man in turn. By the time he had finished the round, he
+had his voice in control, and said:
+
+"Sergeant major, this is very kind of you. I thank you for this welcome,
+and I am grateful for your sympathy." He hesitated a moment or two;
+then, as if he heard his father's voice, "Tell them! Tell them! They
+don't know Him," he added: "And, sergeant major, if you will allow me,
+I have something I want to say to all the men when I get a chance. I
+cannot say it all to-night to the sergeants, but this much I would like
+to say: That since I saw you, I believe I have got a new idea of my work
+in the battalion. I got it from a sergeant major whose men told me that
+he was a fine soldier and a brave man, and more than that, that he was
+'like a father to them.' That, sergeant major, was my own father. From
+him I learned that my job was not to jump on men for their faults, but
+to help men to know God, who is our Father in Heaven, and, men, I think
+if I can do this, I shall count myself happy, for He is worth knowing,
+and we all need Him."
+
+His words gripped them hard. Then he added, "Before I say 'good night,'
+may I have the privilege of leading you to Him in words that you have
+all learned at your mother's knee?" Then simply he spoke the words of
+that immortal prayer, the men joining in low and reverent voices.
+
+After the prayer, he quietly said, "Good night!" and was passing out of
+the hut. He had not got to the door, however, when the sergeant major's
+voice arrested him.
+
+"Sir, on behalf of the sergeants, I thank you for coming in and I thank
+you for your words. You have done us all good."
+
+The following morning, a sergeant from a neighbouring battalion,
+visiting the transport lines, and observing Barry passing along with
+Major Bayne on the battalion parade ground, took occasion to remark:
+
+"That is your padre, ain't it? He checks you fellows up rather short,
+don't he?"
+
+"Yes, that is our padre, or Pilot, as we like to call him," was Sergeant
+Mackay's answer, "but I want to tell you that he can just check us up
+until our heads touch the crupper, and it's nobody's damned business but
+our own."
+
+"Well, you needn't get so blasted hot over it. I ain't said nothing
+against your padre that I haven't heard from your own fellows."
+
+"That's all right, sergeant. That was before we got to the war. I'm not
+huntin' for any trouble with anybody, but if any one wants to start up
+anything with any one, sergeant, in this battalion, he knows how to do
+it."
+
+And this came to be recognised as an article in the creed of the
+sergeant's mess.
+
+The bayonet-fighting squad were engaged in some preliminary drill of
+the more ordinary kind when Major Bayne and the chaplain arrived on the
+ground.
+
+"We'll just watch the little beggar a while from here and go up later,"
+said the major.
+
+As Barry watched the drill sergeant on his job, it seemed to him that
+he had never seen a soldier work before. In figure, in pose, in action
+there was a perfection about him that awakened at once admiration and
+envy. Below the average height, yet not insignificant, erect, without
+exaggeration, precise in movement without angularity, swift in action
+without haste, he was indeed a joy to behold.
+
+"Now, did you ever see anything like that?" enquired the major, after
+their eyes had followed the evolutions of the drill sergeant for a time.
+
+"Never," said Barry, "nor do I hope to again. He is a--I was going to
+say dream, but he's no dream. He's much too wide awake for that. He's a
+poem; that's what he is."
+
+Back and forth, about and around, stepped the little drill sergeant,
+a finished example of precise, graceful movement. He was explaining in
+clean cut, and evidently memorised speech the details of the movements
+he wished executed, but through his more formal and memorised vocabulary
+his native cockney would occasionally erupt, adding vastly to the
+pungency and picturesqueness of his speech.
+
+"He knows we are here all right," said the major, "but he would not let
+on if it were King George himself. I'll bet you a month's pay, though,
+that we can't get one foot beyond what he considers the saluting point
+before he comes to attention, and as for his salute, there is nothing
+like it in the whole Canadian army. Talk about a poem, his salute has
+Shakespeare faded. Now he's going to move them off. Watch and listen!"
+
+"Ye-a-ou-w!" came the long-drawn cry, fiercely threatening, representing
+in English speech the word "squad." Then followed an expletive, "Yun!"
+which for explosive quality made a rifle crack seem a drawl, and which
+appeared to release in the men a hidden spring drawn to its utmost
+tension. The slack and sagging line leaped into a rigid unit, of
+breathless, motionless humanity.
+
+"Aw-e-ou-aw!" a prolonged vocalisation, expressive of an infinite and
+gentle pity, and interpreted to the initiated ear to mean "As you were!"
+released the rigid line to its former sagging state.
+
+"N-a-w then," said the voice in a semi-undertone, slow and tense, "this
+ain't no arter dinner bloomin' siester. A little snap--ple--ease!" The
+last word in a sharply rising inflection, tightening up the spring
+again for the explosive "Ye-a-ou-w--yun!" (Squad attention.)
+"Aw-e-ou-r--yun!!! Aw-e-ou-r--yun!!!"
+
+Without warning came the commands, repeating "As you were!" "Attention!"
+He walked up and down before the rigid line, looking them over and
+remarking casually,
+
+"Might be a little worse," adding as an afterthought, "per-haps!" After
+which, with a sharp right turn, and a quick march, he himself
+leading with a step of clean-cut, easy grace, he moved them to the
+bayonet-fighting ground.
+
+"By Jove!" breathed Barry. "Did you ever imagine anything like that?"
+
+"The result of ten years in the regular army," said the major.
+
+"It's almost worth it," answered Barry.
+
+Arriving at the bayonet-fighting ground, the little sergeant major
+put the squad through their manual as if they had been recruits, to
+a running comment of biting pleasantries. After bringing them to
+attention, he walked slowly down the line, then back again, and remarked
+after due deliberation:
+
+"I have seen worse--not often--" Then, in a tone of resignation, he gave
+the order:
+
+"Stan-a-yeh!!!"
+
+The men "stood at ease," and then "stood easy."
+
+"Now, then," said the major, "we'll steal in on him, if we can." They
+moved forward toward the little sergeant major, who remained studying
+the opposite horizon in calm abstraction until their toes had reached a
+certain line, when, like the crack of a whip, there came once more the
+long-drawn cry with its explosive termination:
+
+"Ye-a-ou-w!--Yun!!!" with the result that the line was again thrown into
+instantaneous, breathless and motionless rigidity.
+
+Toward the advancing officers the sergeant major threw himself into a
+salute with one smooth, unbroken movement of indescribable grace and
+finish.
+
+"Good morning, sergeant major," said Major Bayne. "Captain Dunbar, this
+is Sergeant Major Hackett."
+
+Again came the salute, with a barely perceptible diminution of snap, as
+befitted a less formal occasion.
+
+"Sergeant major," said Barry, "I would give a great deal to be able to
+do that."
+
+"Wot's that, sir?" enquired the sergeant major.
+
+"That salute of yours."
+
+"Quite easy wen you knaow 'ow!" permitting himself a slight smile.
+
+"You are doing some bayonet-fighting, I see, sergeant major," said Major
+Bayne.
+
+"Yes, sir, goin' to do a bit, sir," replied the sergeant major.
+
+"Very well, carry on!"
+
+And the sergeant major "carried on," putting into his work and into his
+every movement and utterance an unbelievable amount of concentrated and
+even vicious energy.
+
+On the bayonet-fighting ground, the first line of the enemy was
+represented by sacks stuffed with straw, hung upon a frame, the
+second by stuffed sacks deposited on the parapet of a trench. In
+bayonet-fighting the three points demanding special emphasis are the
+"guarding" of the enemy's attack, a swift bayonet thrust and an equally
+swift recovery, each operation, whether in case of a living enemy or in
+the stuffed effigy, being attended with considerable difficulty. Barry
+was much interested in the psychological element introduced into the
+exercises by the drill master.
+
+"You must halways keep in mind that the henemy is before you. It's
+important that you should visualise your foe. The henemy is hever before
+you. Anything be-ind a British soldier won't trouble anybody, and you
+are to remember that hit's either you or 'im."
+
+In moments of rapid action the sergeant major evidently had difficulty
+with his aspirates.
+
+"The suspended sacks before you represent the henemy. You are to treat
+'em so."
+
+Having got his line within striking distance of the swinging sacks,
+the exercise was directed by two commands, "On guard!" and "Point!" the
+first of which was supposed to knock off the enemy's thrust, and the
+second to drive the bayonet home into his vitals, after which, without
+command, there must be a swift recovery.
+
+"Naw then, Hn-gah!--Pint!!!"
+
+For some moments, in response to these orders, the squad practised
+"guarding" and "pointing," not, however, to the complete satisfaction of
+the sergeant.
+
+"Naw, then, number five, stick it hinto 'im. Ye ain't 'andin' a lidy an
+unbreller!"
+
+Another attempt by number five being still suggestive of the amenities
+proper to a social function, the sergeant major stepped up to the
+overgentle soldier.
+
+"Naw, then," he said, "hobserve! There's my henemy. See 'is hugly mug.
+Hn-gah! Pint!!!"
+
+At the words of command, the sergeant major threw himself into his guard
+and attacked with such appalling ferocity as must have paralysed an
+ordinary foe, sending his bayonet clean through to his guard, and
+recovering it with a clean, swift movement.
+
+Having secured a fairly satisfactory thrust, the sergeant major devoted
+his attention to the recovery of the bayonet.
+
+"Fetch it hout!" he cried fiercely. "There's another man comin'. Fetch
+it hout! Ye may fetch 'is spinial column with it. No matter, 'e won't
+need it."
+
+The final act in this gruesome drama was the attack upon the second line
+represented by the sacks lying upon the parapet of the trench beyond.
+The completed action thus included the guard, thrust, recovery, the
+leap forward past the swinging line of sacks, and a second thrust at
+the figure prone upon the parapet, with a second recovery of the weapon,
+this second recovery being effected by stamping the foot upon the
+transfixed effigy, and jerking back the bayonet with a violent upward
+movement.
+
+This last recovery appeared to cause number five again some difficulty.
+
+"Now then, number five, put a little aight (hate) into it. Stamp your
+bleedin' 'obnyles (hobnails) on his fice, and fetch it hout! This wye!"
+As he took the rifle from number five, the sergeant major's face seemed
+to be transformed into a living embodiment of envenomed hate, his
+attack, thrust, recovery, gathering in intensity until with unimaginable
+fury he leaped upon the prostrate figure, drove his bayonet through to
+the hilt, stamped his hobnails upon the transfixed enemy, jerked
+his weapon out, and stood quivering, ready for any foe that dared to
+approach. The savage ferocity of his face, the fierce energy in his
+every movement, culminating in that last vicious leap and stamp,
+altogether constituted such a dramatic and realistic representation of
+actual fighting that the whole line burst into a very unsoldierly but
+very hearty applause, which, however, the sergeant major immediately and
+sternly checked.
+
+"What do you think of that?" enquired the major. "Isn't he a scream?"
+
+"He is perfectly magnificent," said Barry, "and, after all, he is right
+in his psychology. There is no possibility of training men to fight,
+without putting the 'aight into it!'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A TOUCH OF WAR
+
+
+The period of intensive training was drawing to a close. The finishing
+touches in the various departments that had come to be considered
+necessary in modern warfare had been given. With the "putting on the
+lacquer" the fighting spirit of the men had been sharpened to its
+keenest edge. They were all waiting impatiently for the order to "go
+up." The motives underlying that ardour of spirit varied with the
+temperament, disposition and education of the soldier. There were those
+who were eager to "go up" to prove themselves in that deadly struggle
+where their fellow Canadians had already won their right to stand as
+comrades in arms with the most famous fighting battalions of the British
+army. Others, again, there were in whose heart burned a deep passion to
+get into grips with those hellish fiends whose cruelties, practised upon
+defenceless women and children in that very district where they were
+camped, and upon wounded Canadians, had stirred Canada from Vancouver to
+Halifax with a desire for revenge.
+
+But, with the great majority there was little of the desire either for
+military glory or for revenge. Their country had laid upon them a duty
+for the discharge of which they had been preparing themselves for many
+months, and that duty they were ready to perform. More than that, they
+were eager to get at it and get done with it, no matter at what cost.
+With all this, too, there was an underlying curiosity as to what the
+thing would be like "up there." Far down below all their feelings
+there lay an unanswered interrogation which no man dared to put to his
+comrade, and which indeed few men put to themselves. That interrogation
+was: "How shall I stand up under the test?"
+
+The camp was overrun with rumours from returning battalions of the
+appalling horrors of the front line. Ever since that fateful 22nd of
+April, 1915, that day of tragedy and of glory for the Canadian army, and
+for the Canadian people, the Ypres salient, the point of honour on the
+western front from Dixmude to Verdun, had been given into the keeping of
+the Canadian army. During those long and terrible months, in the face of
+a continued bombardment and of successive counter-attacks, with the
+line growing thinner, week by week, hacked up by woefully inadequate
+artillery, the Canadian army had held on with the grim tenacity of death
+itself. There was nothing that they could do but hold on. To push the
+salient deeper into the enemy lines would only emphasise the difficulty
+and danger of their position. The role assigned them was that of simply
+holding steady with what ultimate objective in view no one seemed to
+know.
+
+Week by week, and month after month, the Canadian battalions had
+moved up into the salient, had done their "tours," building up their
+obliterated parapets, digging out their choked-up water-courses,
+revetting their crumbling trenches, and rebuilding their flimsy dugouts,
+and then returning to their reserve lines, always leaving behind them in
+hastily dug graves over the parados of their trenches, or in the little
+improvised cemeteries by Hooge, or Maple Copse or Hill 60, a few more of
+their comrades, and ever sending down the line their maimed and broken
+to be refitted for war or discharged again to civilian life. It
+was altogether a ghastly business, a kind of warfare calling for an
+endurance of the finest temper and a courage of the highest quality.
+
+From this grim and endless test of endurance, the Canadians had
+discovered a form of relief known as a "trench raid," a special
+development of trench warfare which later came to be adopted by their
+comrades of the French and British armies. It was a form of sport, grim
+enough, deadly enough, greatly enjoyed by the Canadian soldiers; and
+the battalion which had successfully pulled off a trench raid always
+returned to its lines in a state of high exaltation. They had been able
+to give Fritz a little of what they had been receiving during these
+weary months.
+
+While the battalion waited with ever-growing impatience for the order
+that would send them "up the line," a group of officers was gathered
+in the senior major's hut for the purpose of studying in detail some
+photographs, secured by our aircraft, of the enemy trenches immediately
+opposite their own sector of the front line. They had finished their
+study, and were engaged in the diverting and pleasant exercise of
+ragging each other. The particular subject of that discussion was their
+various sprinting abilities, and the comparative usefulness of various
+kinds of funk-holes as a protection against "J.J.s" (Jack Johnsons),
+"whizzbangs," or the uncertain and wobbling "minniewafers."
+
+Seldom had Barry found occasion to call upon Major Bustead, with whom he
+had been unable to establish anything more than purely formal relations.
+A message, however, from the orderly room to Lieutenant Cameron, which
+he undertook to deliver, brought him to the senior major's hut.
+
+"Come in, padre," said the major, who of late had become more genial,
+"and tell us the best kind of a funk-hole for a 'minniewafer.'"
+
+"The deepest and the closest for me, major, I should say," said Barry,
+"from what I have heard of those uncertain and wobbling beasts."
+
+"I understand that chaplains do not accompany their battalions to the
+front line, but stay back at the casualty clearing stations," suggested
+the major. "Wise old birds, they are, too." The major had an unpleasant
+laugh.
+
+"I suppose they go where they are ordered, sir," replied Barry, "but
+if you will excuse me, I have here a chit for Lieutenant Cameron, sir,
+which has just come in," and Barry handed Cameron his message.
+
+"Will you allow me, sir?" said Cameron.
+
+"Certainly, go on, read it," said the major.
+
+Cameron read the message, and on his face there appeared a grave and
+anxious look.
+
+"It's from the casualty clearing station, sir. One of our chaps from
+Edmonton is there dangerously wounded, and wants to see me. I'd like to
+go, sir, if I might."
+
+"Oh, certainly. I'll make it all right with the O. C. Get a horse from
+the transport. Which casualty clearing station is it?"
+
+Cameron looked at his message.
+
+"Menin Mill, sir."
+
+"Menin Mill! By gad, I thought it was Brandthoek, but Menin Mill, good
+Lord, that's a different proposition. That's way beyond Ypres, you know.
+Right up on the line. You can't take a horse there. Do you think you
+ought to go up at all?"
+
+"I think I should like to go, sir," replied Cameron. "I know the chap
+well. Went to school and college with him."
+
+"Then," said the major, "you had better hurry up and attach yourself to
+one of the transports going in. You will barely be in time."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Cameron, and left the room.
+
+Barry went out with him. "Who is it, Cameron?" he said. "Do I know him?"
+
+"I don't know, sir, whether you do or not. It's young McPherson of
+Edmonton, an awfully decent chap, and my very best friend."
+
+"May I go up with you, Duncan? I know Colonel Tait and Captain Gregg,
+who are at the Mill, I understand."
+
+"I would be awfully glad if you would, but I hardly liked to ask you. It
+hasn't the reputation of being a very healthy place, I hear."
+
+"All right, Cameron. I'm going up," said Barry.
+
+Upon enquiry they found that they were too late for the transports, and
+again the question arose as to whether, in view of the major's order,
+they should make the attempt by themselves.
+
+"It was not really an order, I think, sir," said Cameron. "It was more
+in the way of a suggestion. I think I'll go. The note said, 'dangerously
+wounded,' and he sent for me."
+
+"All right," said Barry, "we'll go on, and we'll almost certainly pick
+up some one who will be able to direct us to the Mill."
+
+Their road, which took them to Vlammertinghe, led through level
+fields, lying waste and desolate with rank, overgrowing weeds. As they
+approached that historic village, they saw on every hand the cruel marks
+of war. On either side of the road were roofless and shattered cottages,
+grown around with nettles and briars. Among these ruins, as they found
+on a later day, were the old garden flowers, pansies and daisies,
+bravely trying to hold their own. Among the rank weeds was to be seen
+the half-hidden debris of broken farm gear. Here and there stood the
+ruins of what had been a thrifty homestead, with its stone-flagged
+courtyard, around which clustered its stables. Now nettles and briars
+grew around the broken walls and shattered, staring windows. At rare
+intervals, a great house appeared, with pretentious gateway, and
+grass-grown drive winding up between stately and mutilated trees. Over
+the whole countryside hung a melancholy and weird desolation, cottages,
+homesteads, fields, the very trees crying aloud to high heaven for pity
+and vengeance.
+
+At Vlammertinghe, itself, the church tower still stood whole, but
+the church itself was wrecked, as were most of the village shops and
+dwellings. In the village was to be seen no living thing except some
+soldiers, who in the broken cellars were making their bivouacs. The
+village stood deserted of its inhabitants, ever since the terrific
+onslaught of the Huns, on the 22nd of April, 1915, which had driven them
+forth from their homes, a panic-stricken, terror-hunted crowd of old
+men, women and little babes, while over them broke, with a continuous
+and appalling roar, a pitiless rain of shells.
+
+At the cross-roads stood a mounted officer, directing the traffic,
+which here tended to congestion. As they entered the village, the sentry
+halted them to enquire as to their bona fides. Having satisfied him,
+they enquired their way to the Menin Mill.
+
+"Menin!" The rising inflection of the sentry's voice expressed a mild
+surprise. "The old Mill! Are you going there?"
+
+"Yes," said Barry, answering his inflection. "Why not?"
+
+"Well, sir, you know, it's rather a bad road. Warm bit of country up
+there, but--" He shrugged his shoulders in quite a French manner as if
+to say it was no business of his. "If you are going to Menin, you keep
+this road straight through past Wipers past the Cloth Hall, out by the
+Menin Gate. A hot place, that, sir. Then straight on, taking the right
+incline for about a mile and a half. You will see a big cemetery on your
+left. The Mill stands near a big school on your right. But why not drop
+into the dressing station, here, sir, right here in this old mill, which
+stands at the cross-roads? You may catch an ambulance going straight up
+to the Mill."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Barry. "We'll do that very thing."
+
+"Good luck, sir," said the sentry, saluting.
+
+They found an ambulance about to start, and asked for a lift.
+
+"All right, sir," said the driver, "but you'd better step in and ask the
+officer."
+
+They passed into a large and high-vaulted stone building, which in peace
+days had been a mill. The old-fashioned, massive machinery was still
+standing intact. Obtaining permission from the officer, they took their
+places beside the driver of the ambulance, and were soon on their way.
+
+It was already growing dark, but, although the surface of the stone pave
+was frequently broken with shell-holes, the ambulance, dodging round the
+holes, rushed without pause along at a high rate of speed.
+
+"You don't use your lights?" asked Barry.
+
+"No, not lately, sir," said the driver. "That's the newest order," he
+added in a tone of disgust.
+
+The road lay between double rows of once noble trees, centuries old,
+with the first delicate green of spring softening their bare outlines.
+Now, splintered, twisted, broken, their wounds showing white in the
+darkening light through the delicate green, they stood silently eloquent
+of the terrific force of the H. E. shell.
+
+As they went speeding along the shell-marked road they came upon a huge
+trunk of a mighty elm, broken clear from its stump, lying partially
+cross their track, which soldiers were already busy clearing away.
+Without an instant's pause, the driver wheeled his car off the 'pave',
+crashed through the broken treetops, and continued on his way.
+
+Barry looked upon the huge trunk with amazement.
+
+"Did a single shell break that tree off like that?" he asked.
+
+"You bet," was the reply, "and all these you see along here. It's
+the great transport road for our front line, and the boches shell it
+regularly. Here comes one now," he added, casually.
+
+There was a soft woolly "whoof" far away, a high, thin whine, as from a
+vicious insect overhead, with every fractional second coming nearer and
+yet nearer, ever deepening in tone, ever increasing in volume, until,
+like an express train, with an overwhelming sense of speed and power,
+and with an appalling roar, it crashed upon them. In the field on their
+left, there leaped fifty yards into the air a huge mass of earth and
+smoke. Then a stunning detonation.
+
+Insensibly Barry and Cameron both crouched down in the car, but the
+driver held his wheel, without the apparent quiver of a muscle.
+
+"There'll be three more, presently, I guess," he said, putting on full
+speed.
+
+His guess proved right. Again that distant woolly "whoof," the
+long-drawn whine, deepening to a scream, the appalling roar and crash,
+and a second shell fell in the road behind them.
+
+"Two," said the driver coolly. "There will be a couple more."
+
+Again and yet again, each time the terror growing deeper in their souls,
+came the two other shells, but they fell far behind.
+
+"Oh, Fritzie," remonstrated the driver, "that's rotten bad work. You'll
+have to do better than that."
+
+Again and again, in groups of four, the shells came roaring in, but the
+car had passed out of that particular zone of danger, and sped safely on
+its way.
+
+"Do you have this sort of thing every night?" enquired Barry.
+
+"Oh, no," cheerfully replied the driver. "Fritzie makes a lot better
+practice than that, at times. Do you see this?" He put his finger upon
+a triangular hole a few inches above his head. "I got that last week.
+We don't mind so much going up, but it's rather annoying when you're
+bringing down your load of wounded."
+
+As they approached Ypres, the road became more and more congested, until
+at length they had to thread their way between two continuous streams
+of traffic up and down, consisting of marching battalions, transports,
+artillery wagons, ambulances, with now and then a motor or a big gun.
+
+About a mile from the city, they came to a large red brick building,
+with pretentious towers and surrounded by a high brick wall.
+
+"An asylum," explained the driver. "Now used as a dressing station.
+We'll just run in for orders."
+
+At what seemed to Barry reckless speed, he whirled in between the brick
+posts, and turned into a courtyard, on one side of which he parked his
+ambulance.
+
+"Better come inside, sir," said the driver. "They sometimes throw a few
+in here, seeing it's a hospital."
+
+They passed down the wide stairs, the centre of which had been converted
+into a gangway for the passage of wheeled stretchers, into a large
+basement, with concrete floors and massive pillars, lit by flaring
+gasjets. Along the sides of the outer room were rows of wounded
+soldiers, their bandaged heads and arms no whiter than their faces, a
+patient and pathetic group, waiting without complaint for an ambulance
+to carry them down the line.
+
+In an inner and operating room, Barry found two or three medical
+officers, with assistants and orderlies, intent upon their work. While
+waiting there for their driver, they heard overhead again that ominous
+and terrifying whine, this time, however, not long drawn, but coming in
+with terrific speed, and ending with a sharp and shattering crash.
+Again and again and again, with hardly a second between, there came the
+shells. It seemed to Barry as if every crash was fair upon the roof
+of the building, but no man either of the medical attendants or of the
+waiting wounded paid the slightest heed.
+
+At length there came a crash that seemed to break within the very room
+in which they were gathered. The lights flickered, some of them went
+out, there was a sound as if a tower had crashed down upon the roof.
+Dust and smoke filled the room.
+
+"Light up that gas," said the Officer Commanding. An orderly sprang to
+obey. The gasjets were once more lighted and the work went on.
+
+"Rather near, wasn't that one?" asked Barry of a wounded man at his
+side.
+
+"Yes," he replied casually, "they got a piece that time," and again he
+sunk into apathetic silence.
+
+In a few moments the driver had obtained his orders and was ready to set
+forth.
+
+"Better wait a bit," said the sergeant at the door, "until their Evening
+Hate is over."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said the driver. "I guess Fritz is pretty well
+through. They are rather crowded there at the mill, and I guess we'll go
+on."
+
+In his heart, Barry earnestly hoped that the sergeant would interpose
+with a more definite command, but, inasmuch as the bombardment had
+apparently ceased, and as if it were all in a day's work, the driver,
+buttoning up his coat, said:
+
+"We'll go, sir, if you are ready."
+
+A few minutes' run brought them to the gate of the ruined city. As
+the car felt its way through the ghostly town, Barry was only vaguely
+conscious in the darkness of its ghostly skeletonlike ruins. Fifteen
+minutes brought them to the Menin gate.
+
+"Sounds rather hot out there," remarked the driver. "Well, Fritzie,
+I guess we won't join your party this time. We prefer to wait, if you
+don't mind, really."
+
+He ran the car into the lee of the ramparts, by the side of the gateway,
+waited there half an hour or so, until the "Evening Hate" was past; then
+onward again to the Menin Mill.
+
+They lifted the blanket covering the sandbagged entrance, passed through
+a dark corridor and came into a cellar, lit by lanterns, swinging from
+the roof, and by candles everywhere upon ledges or upon improvised
+candlesticks.
+
+No sooner had they come into the light, than Barry saw across the room
+his friend, Dr. Gregg, his coat off, and his shirtsleeves rolled to his
+elbows.
+
+"Hello, Dunbar," said the doctor, coming forward. "I guess I won't shake
+hands just now. Sit down. Won't you have a cup of coffee? Jim," turning
+to an orderly, "give Captain Dunbar a cup of coffee."
+
+Barry presented Cameron to his friend, and together they sat down and
+waited. When the doctor was through with his patient, he came and sat
+down with them.
+
+"We came up to see a young chap named McPherson. I think you sent a note
+down about him to-day."
+
+"McPherson," said the doctor. "I don't remember, but I will see."
+
+He turned to a desk and turning over the pages of a record, apparently
+found the name, and returned to Barry.
+
+"I am sorry to say that McPherson died this afternoon," he said.
+
+"Dead," said Barry. He turned to Cameron. "I'm awfully sorry, Duncan."
+
+"Was there anybody with him?" he enquired of the doctor. "He was
+Lieutenant Cameron's very close friend, and college companion."
+
+"Oh, awfully sorry," replied the doctor. "Yes, I think Captain Winter,
+the chaplain of the --th, was with him at the last. He's not here just
+now. I can tell you where to get him. To-morrow is his day here."
+
+"Is--is--is his body still here?" enquired Cameron, after a few moments'
+silence.
+
+"Yes, it's in the next room. Do you want to see it? He was pretty badly
+smashed up, I'm afraid."
+
+"I think I should like to see him," said Cameron. "I know his people,
+you see, and I would like to tell them that I saw him."
+
+"Oh, all right," said the doctor. He called an orderly.
+
+"Come this way, sir," said the orderly.
+
+Together they followed the orderly into the next room, apparently a
+storehouse for grain. There lying upon the floor they saw three silent
+shapes, wrapped in grey blankets.
+
+"This is Mcpherson, sir," said the orderly, looking at the card attached
+to the blanket.
+
+He stooped, drew down the blanket from the face and stepped back. In
+civil life, both Barry and Cameron had seen the faces of the dead, but
+only in the coffin, after having been prepared for burial by those whose
+office it is to soften by their art death's grim austerities.
+
+Cameron gave one swift glance at the shapeless, bloody mass, out of
+which stared up at him wide-open glassy eyes.
+
+"Oh, my God, my God!" he gasped, gripping Barry by the arm, and
+staggering back as if he had received a blow. He turned to the door as
+if to make his escape, but Barry, himself white and shaken, held him
+firmly.
+
+"Steady, old boy," he said. "Steady, Duncan!"
+
+"Oh, let me go! Let me get out of here!"
+
+"Duncan, there are a lot of wounded chaps out there."
+
+The boy--he was only nineteen--was halted at the word, stood motionless
+and then muttered:
+
+"You are right, sir. I was forgetting."
+
+"And, Duncan, remember," said Barry, in a quiet and solemn voice,
+"there's more than that to McPherson. That fine young chap whom you knew
+and loved is not that poor and battered piece of clay. Your friend has
+escaped from death and all its horrors."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," whispered Cameron, still shaking. "We'll go out now,
+sir. I'll be all right. I assure you I'm all right."
+
+They passed out into the dressing-room again, where the wounded were
+continuing to arrive. Cameron was for departing at once, but Barry
+held him back, unwilling that the lad should be driven away beaten and
+unnerved by what he had seen.
+
+"I say, Duncan, let's see some of these boys. We can perhaps cheer them
+up a bit. They need it badly enough, God knows."
+
+"All right," muttered Cameron, sitting down upon a bench in the shadow.
+They waited there till Dr. Gregg came along.
+
+"Hello, Dunbar, you are looking seedy. Feeling rotten, eh?" said the
+doctor, eying him critically for a few moments.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," said Barry. "The truth is, I've just been in there
+with young Cameron. Rather a ghastly sight. Cameron's badly knocked up.
+Can you do anything for him?"
+
+"Sure thing," said the doctor cheerfully. "Stay right there where you
+are. I'll bring you something in a moment or two. Now sit right there,
+do you hear? Don't move."
+
+In a few moments he returned, bringing hot coffee for them both.
+
+"There," he said in a cheerful matter-of-fact voice, "drink that."
+
+Barry gulped it down, Cameron taking his more slowly, and with evident
+distaste. The doctor continued to converse with them in tones of
+cheerful and, as Barry thought, of almost careless indifference.
+
+"Now, I must leave you," said the doctor. "I see there's a case of shell
+shock. We didn't know how to handle that for a while. The British R. A.
+M. C. for some months declined to recognise it as requiring treatment at
+all. You might care to look at this chap. Poor devil!"
+
+Barry had been looking at the man ever since he had come into the room,
+supported by two of his comrades. He was indeed an object of pity.
+Of splendid physique, six feet and powerfully built, with the fine
+intelligent face of an educated man, he stood there white, twitching in
+every muscle, in a state of complete nerve-collapse.
+
+Colonel Tait, who had been observing him keenly ever since his entering
+the room, now approached him, greeted him with a cheerful "Hello!" took
+him by the hand and felt his pulse.
+
+"How are you, old chap? Feeling a little better than you were, aren't
+you?"
+
+"Yes--doc--tor. Rather--rotten--though--Be all right--to-morrow--"
+
+"Sure you will! Still a little rest won't do you any harm. We'll send
+you down for a couple of weeks, and then you will be fit enough to have
+another go at the boche."
+
+So saying he turned him over to an assistant, and went on with his work.
+At this point Cameron, from whose eyes the look of horror had not yet
+faded, leaned over to Barry and whispered:
+
+"Let's get out of this. For Heaven's sake, this thing is getting me." He
+glanced at Barry. "What, are you ill, too?"
+
+"Ill," answered Barry between his clenched teeth. "Ill? No, why should
+I be ill? Look at these boys. I see myself ill. By Jove!" he added under
+his breath, "here's another shell shock. Sit down, Cameron!" His voice
+took on a sterner tone. "Sit down. Don't be an ass!"
+
+Once more Colonel Tait took in hand the shell-shock man. This second was
+a stretcher case. The man was very violent, requiring two men to hold
+him on his stretcher.
+
+"Oh, let him go! Let him go!" said Colonel Tait. "What's wrong with
+you?" he said to the man. "Have you any wounds?"
+
+"No, sir," chattered the man miserably. "Shell--shock,--sir.
+Buried--twice--by a shell. Oh! Ah!"
+
+The colonel had a few moments' conversation with Gregg, who came over to
+where Barry was sitting and said:
+
+"I say, Dunbar, watch this case. You will see some fun."
+
+"Fun," echoed Barry, shaken and indignant. "Not much fun for that poor
+chap."
+
+"Stand up," said the colonel sharply.
+
+The man stood up without much apparent difficulty.
+
+"Ah!" said the colonel. "Shell shock. Bad case, too." His voice was kind
+and sympathetic. He gripped the man by the arm and ran his hand down his
+spine until he came to the small of his back.
+
+"Pain there, eh?" he said, giving the man a poke.
+
+"Yes, yes! Ouw! Doctor. Awful."
+
+"Thought so," said the doctor. "Bad case! Poor chap! A curious feeling
+in the legs, eh?"
+
+The man nodded vigorously, still twitching violently and making animal
+moanings.
+
+Still pursuing his investigations and continuing to sympathise with his
+patient, the doctor enquired as to other symptoms, to all of which the
+patient promptly confessed. When the examination was completed, the
+doctor gave his man a hearty slap on the back and said:
+
+"You're all right, my boy. Go treat yourself to a cup of cocoa, and a
+good, thick slice of bread and raspberry jam--raspberry, remember--and
+to-morrow you can report to your battalion medical officer."
+
+"What!" exclaimed the man. "Doctor, I can't go up again. I'm not fit to
+go up."
+
+"Oh, yes, you can, my boy. You'll be in good fighting trim to-morrow.
+You'll see! You'll see! Come back here some day, perhaps, with a V. C."
+
+Thereupon the man began to swear violently.
+
+"Here, none of that," said the doctor sharply, "or up you go to-night."
+
+A grin ran around the dressing station, in which none joined more
+heartily than the first shell-shock man, waiting to be conveyed down the
+line.
+
+"They don't get by the old man often, nowadays," was Dr. Gregg's
+comment.
+
+"You don't often get cases like this, though, do you?" enquired Barry.
+
+"Not often. We have passed through this dressing station some thousands
+of cases, and we may have had eight or ten malingerers. But this is not
+all sham. There is a strong mixture of hysteria and suggestion with the
+sham. A chap with a highly organised temperament gets buried by a shell.
+That is a terrific nerve shock. He sees two or three chaps blown to
+bits. Another nerve shock. Now he has heard about shell shock as a
+result of a similar experience. Immediately the suggestion begins to
+work and the man discovers in himself the well known symptoms of genuine
+shell shock, and, begad! I don't wonder. What we have just given him is
+part of the treatment for hysteria--a little nerve tonic. A good sleep
+may put him all right by to-morrow morning. The chances are, however,
+that the O. C. will send him down for a few days' rest and change. If
+so, the chap will be as happy as a clam. The boys will rag him half to
+death down there, so that he will be keen to get back again, and the
+chances are may get his V. C. Oh, we all get scared stiff," laughed
+Gregg. "We are none of us proud about here. That hero stuff that you
+read about in the home papers, we don't know much about. We just 'carry
+on'."
+
+"By Jove, Gregg! That's all right, but to just 'carry on' in this
+business, it seems to me, calls for some pretty fine hero stuff."
+
+"Well, we don't call it so," said Gregg. "Now I'll see about your
+ambulance. I believe there's one about ready to go. I think I can find a
+place for you and your friend, and it will save you a long walk."
+
+They came away from the old mill with mingled feelings. Barry had to a
+certain extent recovered from his shock, and had himself somewhat firmly
+in hand. Cameron was still silent and obviously shaken.
+
+It was grey dawn when they arrived at the camp, physically weary,
+nervously exhausted, and sick at heart. Barry wakened Hobbs, who greeted
+them with the news that the battalion was under orders to go up that
+night. By his own state Barry was able to gauge that of his friend
+Cameron. The experiences of the last ten hours had been like nothing in
+his previous life. The desolation wrought by war upon the face of the
+country, upon the bodies of men, upon their souls, had sickened and
+unnerved him; and this he remembered was an experience of only a brief
+ten hours. He was conscious of a profound self-distrust and humiliation,
+as he thought of those other men, those medical officers, with their
+orderlies, the ambulance drivers, those wounded soldiers. How could they
+endure this horror, day in and day out, for weeks and for months? In a
+few hours he would have to meet his fellow officers and the men. They
+could not fail to read in his face all this that he carried in his
+heart.
+
+By his grey, haggard face he knew that the same horror and fear had gone
+deep into his friend's soul. There came to him the sudden thought that
+Cameron, too, must meet his fellow officers, and must endure their
+searching chaff, and that he would reveal himself to his undoing; for
+no man can ever live down in his battalion the whisper that he is
+a "quitter." That very night Cameron would be forced to lead up his
+platoon into the front line, and must lead them step by step over that
+same Vlammertinghe road, where the transports were nightly shelled. In
+the presence of any danger soever, he must not falter. When the shells
+would begin to fall, he knew well how the eyes of his men would turn to
+their leader and search his very soul to see of what quality he was.
+Far better a man should die than falter. He had not failed to notice the
+startled look in Cameron's eyes when Hobbs blurted out his news. Some
+way must be found for the bracing up of the nerve, the steadying of the
+courage of his friend.
+
+"Come in with me, Cameron," he said, standing at the door of his hut.
+"I'm dead beat and so are you. We'll have coffee and some grub, and then
+sleep for a couple of hours until reveille."
+
+Cameron hesitated. The thing he most longed for at that moment was to be
+alone.
+
+"Come on!" insisted Barry. "Hobbs will have a fire going, and hot coffee
+in ten minutes. Come on, old chap. I want you to."
+
+He threw his arm around Cameron's shoulder and dragged him in. The boy
+dropped onto Barry's cot, and, as he was, boots and coat on, was asleep
+before the coffee was ready. His boyish face, with its haggard look,
+struck pity to Barry's heart, and recalled his father's words, "These
+boys need their mothers." If ever a lad needed his mother, it was young
+Cameron, and just in that hour.
+
+He woke the boy up, gave him his coffee, had Hobbs remove his boots,
+made him undress and covered him up in his blankets. Then, taking his
+own coffee, he lay down on Hobbs' bed.
+
+"Harry," he said, "give us every minute of sleep you can. Wake us just
+one-half hour before reveille with coffee and everything else good you
+can rustle, and, Harry, waken me before Mr. Cameron."
+
+When he lay down to sleep he made an amazing discovery--that his own
+horror and fear and self-distrust had entirely passed away. He felt
+himself quite prepared to "carry on." How had this thing come to pass?
+His physical recuperation by means of coffee and food? This doubtless in
+part, but only in part. In his concern for his friend he had forgotten
+himself, and in forgetting himself he had forgotten his fear. It was an
+amazing discovery.
+
+"Thank the good God," he said. "He never forgets a fellow, and I won't
+forget that."
+
+He woke to find Hobbs at his side, with coffee, toast and bacon, and on
+the floor beside his cot his tub awaiting him--the tub being a rubber
+receptacle exactly eighteen inches in diameter.
+
+He hurried through his dressing, and his breakfast, all the while
+Cameron lying like a dead man, and with almost a dead man's face.
+
+Barry hated to waken him, but reveille was but a bare thirty minutes
+off, and he had an experiment to work upon his friend.
+
+"Bring the coffee, Harry. Not the bacon, yet," he ordered.
+
+"Hello, Cameron, old boy! Wake up."
+
+Cameron rolled over with a groan and opened his eyes, still dull and
+heavy with sleep.
+
+"Here you are. Pipe this down your tunnel and look lively, too. You have
+got thirty minutes--twenty-five, really--to reveille, and you have your
+toilet to perform--shave, massage, manicure and all the rest--so go to
+it. Here's your tub. You can't get into it, but soap yourself over, and
+Hobbs will sluice you with a pail or two outside."
+
+"Why all this Spartan stuff? It's awfully cold. I think I'll content
+myself with a nose rub this morning."
+
+"Get out of bed, and be quick about it," commanded Barry, "unless you'd
+rather take your tub where you are."
+
+So saying he jerked the clothes clear off the cot, threatening Cameron
+with the tub. Cameron sprang up, stripped, soaped himself over, groaning
+and shivering the while; then stood outside in the open, while Hobbs
+administered the order of the bath, and after a vigorous rub, came in
+glowing.
+
+"By jingo! That's bully! It's a pity a fellow can't always feel just how
+bully it is before he takes it."
+
+"Na-a-w then! a little snap!" ordered Barry, in attempted imitation of
+the inimitable Sergeant Major Hackett. "A little speed, ple-ease! That's
+better. I've seen worse--not often!"
+
+And so he rattled on through Cameron's dressing and shaving operations.
+
+"Now then, 'Obbs, a little Delmonico 'ere. Shove this bacon against your
+fice, Cameron."
+
+"What about yours, sir?" said Cameron, as he sat down to the luxuries
+which somehow Hobbs had "rustled."
+
+"Had it, you slacker." Then with a swift change of voice and manner he
+added: "Listen to me, Cameron. I'm going to have my prayers. You won't
+bother me any, and if you don't mind I'll do them out loud. Don't you
+stop eating, though. Hobbs, stop your wandering around there and sit
+down and listen." Barry took his Bible.
+
+"Cameron," he said, "one comfort in reading the Bible to a chap with a
+father like yours is that you know all about the thing already--context,
+historical references and theological teaching--therefore, no need of
+comment. Also you have a good imagination to see things. Turn on the
+juice while I read. Hobbs, you waken up, too."
+
+Then he began to read the vivid words which picture as in miniature
+etchings the life stories of the heroes of Faith who in their day held
+their generation steady and pointed the way to duty and victory. As he
+read his face became alight, his dark eyes glowed, his voice thrilled
+under the noble passion of the words he read. Then he came to this
+stately peroration:
+
+"And what shall I more say? For the time would fail me to tell of
+Gideon," and so on through the list of heroes, "Who through faith
+subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the
+mouths of lions, (of whom the world was not worthy). Wherefore seeing we
+also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay
+aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let
+us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus,
+the author and finisher of our faith, who, for the joy that was set
+before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at
+the right hand of the throne of God."
+
+Both reader and hearers were swept along upon the tide of dramatic
+passion. They were themselves a part of the great and eternal conflict
+there pictured; they, too, were called upon to endure the cross.
+
+Cameron had forgotten his breakfast, and with his kindling eyes
+fastened upon the reader's face, was listening to the noble music of the
+thrilling words.
+
+Barry closed his book and laid it down.
+
+"Great, eh! Wonderful company! All the finest and the best of the war's
+heroes are in it. Now, then, prayer--" He dropped on his knees, Cameron
+and Hobbs following his example.
+
+It was a prayer chiefly of thanksgiving for those who in their day
+and in the face of anguish and terror and death had kept the faith; of
+thanksgiving, too, for all who in this present day of sacrifice in the
+home land and of sacrifice upon the field of battle were keeping that
+same faith for the Empire and for this same sacred cause of humanity.
+The prayer closed with a simple petition that they in the battalion
+might be found worthy of a humble place in that great company.
+
+As they were repeating together the prayer "Our Father," the notes of
+the reveille sounded shrilly over the camp.
+
+"Go out, Hobbs, for a minute," said Barry after they had risen from
+their prayer. He knew well that Cameron would want a few minutes with
+him alone.
+
+"Sir," said the boy, and his voice was quiet and steady, "I'm not going
+to try to thank you, but I believe I can 'carry on' now."
+
+"You bet you can," said Barry, gripping his hand. "You bet you can! It's
+the point of view after all, old man, isn't it? For ourselves it doesn't
+matter, but we have got to think of the boys, and we have got to stay
+with the game."
+
+Eighteen hours later the relief was completed, and the battalion was
+in its place in the line, all but the sentries asleep in their flimsy
+dugouts and behind their rotten parapets.
+
+An hour later, Barry, who was sleeping with the M. O. in the regimental
+aid post, was wakened from a dead sleep by the M. O.
+
+"There's something doing out there," he said. "Listen!"
+
+There was a quick succession of sharp explosions.
+
+"Bombs!" said the M. O.
+
+The explosions were followed by the rat-tat-tat--tat-tat--tat-tat-tat of
+the machine guns. Instantly they were both on their feet and out in the
+trench.
+
+"I guess Fritzie is trying to put something over on us, being our first
+night," said the M. O. "I'll get my boys out."
+
+He ran to the adjoining dugout, where his corporal and stretcher bearers
+were sleeping, roused them and sent them up the trench. There was
+the sound of subdued voices and of quick marching feet along the
+communication trench a few yards away. They stood together listening for
+a few minutes.
+
+"I'm going," said Barry, hurrying off in the direction of the sound.
+"Come on."
+
+"Captain Dunbar," called the M. O. sharply, "my place is here, and I
+think this is where you will be most useful as well. They will bring the
+wounded to us right here."
+
+In a few minutes all was still again, except for the machine guns, which
+still kept up their incessant tattoo.
+
+The M. O. was correct in his forecast. In a few minutes down the
+communication trench came a wounded man walking, jubilant in spite of
+his wounds.
+
+"Fritzie tried to put one over on us," he exclaimed, while the doctor
+was dabbing with iodine and tying up his wounded arm, "but I think he's
+got another guess coming. You ought to have seen our officer," he added.
+"The first one in the bunch to be 'at 'em.' With a bayonet, too, mind
+you. Grabbed one from a private as he ran past, and bombs bursting like
+hell all around. Beg pardon, sir," he added, turning to Barry. "He's
+some kid, poor chap. He's got his, I guess."
+
+"Who is he?" asked the M. O.
+
+"Lieutenant Cameron, sir."
+
+"Cameron!" cried Barry. "Where is he?"
+
+"They are carrying the stretcher cases right down to the dressing
+station, I hear," said the man.
+
+"I'm going, doc," said Barry, and was off at a run.
+
+At the casualty clearing station there was no excitement, the doctors
+and orderlies "carrying on" as usual, receiving the wounded, dressing
+their wounds, sending them down with the smoothness and despatch
+characteristic of their department.
+
+"Cameron?" said the doctor in answer to Barry's question. "Why
+certainly, I'll show you." And he led him to Cameron's cot.
+
+"Well, old chap," said the doctor cheerily, "we're going to send you
+down in a minute or two. Now don't talk."
+
+Cameron's eyes welcomed Barry.
+
+"Dear old boy," said Barry, dropping on his knees beside him. "I'm
+awfully sorry."
+
+"It's all right," whispered Cameron. "They--never--knew.--You'll write
+dad--and tell him--I kept--" The voice trailed off into silence. The
+morphia was doing its merciful work.
+
+"Kept the faith," said Barry.
+
+"Yes," whispered Cameron with a smile, faint but exultant.
+
+"Good old boy," whispered Barry.
+
+"Yes, I--kept--I kept--"
+
+The bearers came to carry out the stretcher.
+
+"Will he recover?" whispered Barry to the doctor.
+
+"Recover? Surest thing you know," said the doctor in a loud cheery
+voice. "We can't spare this kind of stuff, you know."
+
+And again Barry leaned over the stretcher and said, patting Cameron on
+the shoulder:
+
+"Good old boy. You make us proud of you. You kept the faith."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THINNING RANKS
+
+
+"Three months in that hell-hole of the salient have made their mark on
+this battalion," said Transport Sergeant Mackay.
+
+"Yes, there's quite a lot of these round the first line and back about
+here," replied the pioneer sergeant, who was putting the finishing
+touches upon some crosses, that were to be sent up the line that night.
+
+"That's so, Fatty. Whose is that cross you are finishing?"
+
+"That's Lieutenant Salford's, a fine young officer he was, too. Always
+had a smile. The deeper the mud the more Sally smiled. And this here
+is Lieutenant Booth's. There's a chap now that picked up wonderful. Two
+months ago everybody thought he was a big soft slob, and those bombers
+say that he was all, right. And here's the M. O.'s. Poor old doc! There
+was a man, now, if there ever was one. He wasn't afraid of nothing. He
+would go walking about with a smile when a bombardment was on, and in
+that last big show the other day, they say him and the chaplain--there's
+another peach--they 'carried on' wonderful. I wasn't around there at the
+time, but the boys at the dressing station told me that them two worked
+back and forward getting out the wounded, I think they had about thirty
+injured up at that time, as if it was a kind of er summer shower that
+was falling, let alone H. E.'s and whizzbangs, and then after they got
+the last man out, the M. O. went in with some stretcher bearers, just
+lookin' around before he left, and a shell came and got 'em all, and
+they say it was about the last shell that was throwed. And that's where
+poor Harry Hobbs got his, too. The Pilot went out just a minute before,
+and when he came back that's what he saw. They say he was terrible cut
+up over the M. O. Funny thing, the M. O.'s face was just as quiet as if
+he had gone to sleep, but the rest of the boys, well you could hardly
+get 'em together, and the Pilot walkin' up and down there lookin' like a
+lost man. We buried 'em right there by Maple Copse. I want to tell
+you, sergeant, that that's the hardest job I ever done in this war. The
+Pilot, he broke right down in the middle of the service. It must have
+been hard for him. I've been with him now at every funeral and he stands
+up to his work like a man. He takes it kind of cheery almost, but when
+we was puttin' down the M. O. and poor Harry, the Pilot just couldn't
+appear to stand it. I cried like a baby, and you ought to have seen the
+crowd, the O. C. and the adjutant and the pioneers, and they are all
+pretty hardened up by this time. They have done enough plantin' anyhow.
+They just all went to pieces. The shells was goin' overhead among the
+trees, something awful, but nobody minded more than if they had been
+pea-shooters. First time I ever seen the Pilot break, and I have been
+with him ever since the first one we buried, and that was big Jim Berry.
+A sniper got him. You don't remember? I guess you don't see much or get
+much of the news back here."
+
+"Back here!" exclaimed Sergeant Mackay. "What do you mean, 'back here'?
+Don't I have to go up every night with the transport, and through that
+barridge, too. This aint no 'safety first' job."
+
+"I know, sergeant. I'm not sayin' you ain't at war. Believe me, I'd
+rather be up front than to go up round Hell Fire Corner and come back
+by the Menin Gate every night like you fellows. I ain't sayin' nothing
+about that, but you don't see things that I see, and you don't get the
+news same as I do. Now, about Jim Berry, you know, he was goin' to do
+some snipin' in place of McCuaig, who went to the machine gun company."
+
+"McCuaig, in the machine gun company! I never heard that."
+
+"Well, that's what I'm sayin'," said Sergeant Matthews, "you don't get
+some of the chances to get news down here, same as me. You see, when
+we're sewin' up the boys and fixin' 'em up like, and when we're fixin'
+up the graves and puttin' on the crosses, you get kind of thinkin' about
+things, and kind of lonesome, and so the boys keep telling the news
+to cheer themselves up, and that's how I heard about McCuaig. You see,
+McCuaig was snipin' the first tour, and he's a killer, you bet, and he
+had only cut three natches in his rifle. The boys say he had got four
+of the Huns, but he had only put down three natches on his rifle to be
+sure, and after he seen the machine gun work, stoppin' a raid, he comes
+to the officer, and says he, givin' him his rifle: 'Say, this is all
+right for sport, but it ain't good enough for killin' these devils. I'd
+like to get on to your gang, if I can,' and they put him right onto the
+machine gun. Say, he's sleepin' with that Lewis gun ever since. Just
+pets it like a baby. What was I tellin' you? Oh, yes, about McCuaig and
+Jim Berry. Well, he took McCuaig's place snipin' and a good sniper he
+was too. He used to hunt, you know, up in the mountains with Jim Knight
+every fall. Well, he started out snipin' the day after McCuaig quit, and
+McCuaig gave him his rifle too, and took him up to the 'hide.' Well, big
+Jim was always a careless cuss, you know. He gets his eye on the hole,
+sightin' his rifle, and McCuaig was watchin' through one of them new
+things--"
+
+"Perry's scope."
+
+"Yes, that's it, Paris cope. Them French is mighty smart fellows,
+you bet. When along walks a Hun. 'There he comes!' sings out McCuaig.
+'Didn't see him until he got past,' says Jim, pretty mad, because Jim
+hated to show that he'd got 'buck fever,' or something, and waited for
+the next. 'Here he comes!' says McCuaig, again. 'Bang!' goes Jim. 'I've
+got him,' he shouts, hoppin' up to get a good look, when McCuaig grabs
+him and jerks him down, swearin' somethin' awful, and tellin' him he
+wasn't shootin' no mountain goats. 'Oh shaw!' says Jim. 'They can't get
+me.' 'You keep your head down, Jim,' said McCuaig. That's the very last
+words he said to him, just as he was leavin' him. He wasn't down the
+next day when bang! goes Jim's rifle, and again up he jumps to see what
+he'd got, when ping! goes a Boche bullet right through his head. You
+know McCuaig was real mad, and he stood quiet at that hole for three
+hours. Then he got Corporal Thom to shove up a hat on a rifle, when
+ping! comes the bullet and bang! goes Jim's rifle. 'Guess he won't shoot
+no more, unless there's shootin' in hell,' says he, and makes another
+natch. Say, the boys all felt bad about Jim and so did the Pilot. Well,
+we had to plant him that night, as we was goin' out next day. It was out
+beyond the Loop. You don't know where that is, I guess."
+
+"Of course, I do," asserted Mackay indignantly. "I've been all around
+that front line. What are you givin' us!"
+
+"Oh, you have, eh! Well, I wouldn't unless I had to, you bet. It's no
+place for a man with a waist line like mine. Well, as I was sayin', that
+cemetery was right out in the open, right under observation, and exposed
+to machine guns, snipers, whizbangs, all the hull bloody lot of 'em.
+Wasn't no place for a cemetery anyway, I say. I'm not after any bomb
+proof job but a cemetery should be--"
+
+"Should be a quiet and retired spot," suggested one of the transport
+boys.
+
+"Yes. What's the use of getting livin' men shot up when they're buryin'
+dead men, I want to know. Not saying anything about the officers that's
+always round, and the chaplain. I say a cemetery should be somewhere out
+of sight, like Maple Copse; now, there's a good place, except that the
+roots make it hard diggin'. Up against a railway bank like that down at
+Zillebeck, by the Railway Dugouts, there's a lovely place."
+
+"How would the Ramparts do, sergeant?" enquired another transport lad.
+
+"Ramparts? You mean at Ypres? Yes," said the sergeant, with a grin, "but
+I'd hate to turn out the Brigade Headquarters Staff."
+
+"Go on, sergeant."
+
+"Well, as I was sayin', that's no place for a cemetery up there beyond
+the Loop, but I didn't know so much about it then, you bet. That's where
+we had to bury Jim. It was a awful black night, and of course, just as
+we got out to the trench to go 'overland' to the cemetery, them flares
+started up something awful. I don't know what they was lookin' for, but
+when they went up, I want to tell you, I felt about the size of a tree,
+and I wisht I was one. Well, Jim, you know, was pretty heavy, an awful
+heavy carry he was for the boys. I was tryin' to hurry 'em along, but
+that Pilot, he heads the procession, and on he goes at a funeral march
+pace. Now I believe in doin' things right. I've heard of some pioneers
+that hurries their job. I don't believe in that, but when you are
+going across the open on a dark night, with them flares going up, I
+say between flares is a good time to get a move on, but, no, that there
+Pilot, he just goes that pace and no more. I want to tell you the boys
+was nervous and the officers too. The O. C. and Major Bustead was there.
+I could see the major fussin' to get on. Well, we got Jim down all
+right, and just as the Pilot got started, darned if they didn't open up
+the biggest kind of a machine gun chorus you ever heard."
+
+"What did you do, sergeant?"
+
+"Me? Well, I started huggin' mud and saying all the good words I could
+think of. Even the O. C. got down on his knees, and the major, he near
+got into the grave, but that darned Pilot stood up there getting taller
+every minute, and goin' on with his prayer, and the boys sayin' 'Amen!'
+that loud and emphatic that I thought he'd take the hint and cut out
+somethin', but cut out nothin'! Seemed as if his memory was workin'
+over time, the way he kept a fetchin' up things that he could a easily
+forgot, and when he comes to the benediction, the whizbangs begin to
+come. Up goes his hand, the way they do. I thought to myself that that
+was a kind of unnecessary display. I looks up and there he was, more
+like a tree than ever. In fact, I says to myself--it's queer how you
+think things at times like that--darned if they won't think the darned
+fool is a tree, for nothin' but a darned tree would stand up in the
+flare light and look so much like a tree anyhow. I guess that's what
+saved him. He never moved until he was done, and then didn't he stay
+with us pioneers after the rest had gone until we filled up. Say, he's
+all right."
+
+"You bet he's all right," said Sergeant Mackay, "and he's gettin' in his
+work with the boys."
+
+"What do you mean, 'gettin' in his work'?" enquired the pioneer
+sergeant.
+
+"Oh, well, you know," said Sergeant Mackay awkwardly, "he's makin' 'em
+think a lot different about things. I know he has 'em tied up all right
+in their language." And this was as near to a confession of faith as the
+sergeant cared to go.
+
+"Oh, I can see a difference myself up the line," said the pioneer
+sergeant. "The boys used to get out of his way. He used to jump on 'em
+something fierce. You remember?"
+
+"Huh-uh!"
+
+"Well, they just love to have him drop in now and they tell him things.
+I saw Corporal Thom the other night showin' him his girl's picture, and
+the Pilot thought she was a fine girl too, and got her address down,
+and said he was going to write her and tell her what a fine chap the
+corporal was, and you ought to see Corporal Thom swell up until he 'most
+bust his tunic."
+
+"Oh, I know the corporal's dippy about the Pilot," said Sergeant Mackay.
+
+"Yes, and the officers, too," said the pioneer sergeant. "There's
+Captain Duff. Well, you know what a holy terror he is."
+
+"He's all right," said Sergeant Mackay stoutly. "He was my chief for
+about a month here, and he was the first one to get this transport
+licked into shape, you bet."
+
+"I'm not saying anything against Captain Duff, but he was a roughneck,
+you know well enough, and I guess he hadn't much use for the Pilot."
+
+"Oh, I know all about that," said Sergeant Mackay. "The Pilot used to go
+up with us on the transport. It was awful hard on Captain Duff, handlin'
+the column and the mules and all the rest, to hold in when the Pilot was
+along. The captain, he had to come round now and then to the rear. There
+he would have a lovely time for a few minutes, with the Pilot safe up in
+front. But the Pilot calmed him down all right."
+
+"Yes, and there's that young Captain Fraser," said the pioneer sergeant,
+with a note of enthusiasm in his monotonous voice. "There a soldier. He
+just loved fightin'. I remember the night he got his wound. It was on
+a raid of course. If there was a raid on, Captain Neil was sure to be
+there. He just about got his arm blown off, but they say he's goin' to
+be all right. I was at the regimental aid post when they fetched him in.
+Oh, he was a dirty mess, face all cut up, and his arm hangin', and not a
+word out of him until the Pilot comes along. Then he begins to chirp up
+and the Pilot starts jollyin' him along one minute and sayin' Psalms to
+him the next minute, and little prayers, and the boys around listenin',
+sometimes grinnin' and sometimes all choked up, but I'm awful glad
+Captain Neil is comin' round all right."
+
+By this time the pioneer sergeant had his crosses finished.
+
+"Well," he said, as he set the crosses against the wall, "there's three
+of the finest officers we ever had in this battalion. You take 'em up
+to-night when you go, sergeant."
+
+"We're not going up to-night. The boys are coming out this evening,"
+replied Sergeant Mackay.
+
+"No? Is that so? I never heard that. Guess I'll have to go up with
+some other outfit. Comin' out this evening? Well, it's time they were.
+They've had one hell all the time, I hear, this tour."
+
+"Yes," continued Sergeant Mackay, "and the highlanders are sending up
+their band to meet them and play them out. I call that a mighty fine
+thing to do. You know our own band had to go up with water and rations
+last night, and they can't get out until to-night. So the Highlanders'
+band--"
+
+"Pretty good band, too, isn't it?"
+
+"Best pipe band in the army," said Sergeant Mackay with enthusiasm.
+
+"Oh, a pipe band!" exclaimed the pioneer sergeant in a disappointed
+tone.
+
+"Yes, a pipe band, what else?" enquired Sergeant Mackay truculently.
+
+"Why don't they send up their real band, when they're doin' it, anyway?"
+
+"What!" shouted Sergeant Mackay. "I'll tell you. For the same reason
+that they don't make you O. C. in this battalion, you damned fat
+lobster! There now, you've started me swearin' again, and I was quittin'
+it."
+
+Sergeant Mackay's wrath at the slur cast upon the pipe band, the
+only band, in his opinion, worthy of any real man's attention, was
+intensified by his lapse into his habit of profanity, which, out of
+deference to the Pilot, he for some weeks had been earnestly striving to
+hold in check.
+
+"Oh well, Scotty, don't spoil your record for me. I guess a pipe band is
+all right for them that likes that kind of music. For me, I can't ever
+tell when they quit tunin' up and begin to play."
+
+Sergeant Mackay looked at him with darkening face, evidently uncertain
+as to what course he should adopt--whether to "turn himself loose" upon
+this benighted Englishman or to abandon him to his deserved condition
+of fatuous ignorance. He decided upon the latter course. In portentous
+silence he turned his back upon Fatty Matthews and walked the whole
+length of the line to get a mule back over the rope. It took him some
+little time for the mule had his own mind about the manoeuvre and
+the sergeant was unwontedly deliberate and gentle with him. Then, the
+manoeuver executed, he walked slowly back to the pioneer sergeant and in
+restrained and carefully chosen speech addressed him.
+
+"Look here, Fatty, I'm askin' you, don't you ever say things like that
+outside of these lines, for the sake of the regiment, you know. I'd
+really hate the other battalions to know we had got such--" He halted
+himself abruptly and then proceeded more quietly, "A man as you in this
+battalion. My God, Fatty, they'd think your brains had run down into
+your pants. I know they haven't, because I know you haven't any." He
+took a fresh breath, and continued his address in a tone of patient
+remonstrance. "Why, man, don't you know that wherever the British Army
+has gone, its Highland regiments have cleared the way; and that when the
+pipes get playin' the devil himself couldn't hold them back?"
+
+"I don't wonder," said Fatty innocently. "They make a man feel like
+fightin' all right."
+
+Sergeant Mackay scanned his face narrowly, uncertain as to whether
+he should credit the pioneer sergeant with intelligence sufficient to
+produce a sarcasm.
+
+"What I mean is," exclaimed Fatty, seeking to appease the wrathful
+transport sergeant, "when you hear them pipes, you get so stirred up,
+you know, that you just feel like kullin' somebody."
+
+This apparently did not improve matters with Sergeant Mackay.
+
+"Oh, darn it, you know what I mean!"
+
+"No, Fatty," said the sergeant solemnly. "I don't know what you mean,
+but I'll suggest this to you, Fatty. You go down to that Pete mule, down
+there at the end of the line and talk to him. I guess he'll understand
+you. I'm busy just now."
+
+"I don't see what you're so hot about," said the pioneer sergeant in an
+aggravated voice, "but I'm going to see the boys come in anyway."
+
+When the distant sound of the pipes coming from the direction of the
+front line was heard in camp, men of the various transport lines and
+base units lined up to watch the battalion come in. For the rumour had
+run that they had had a bad go, that they had beaten back no less than
+three rather formidable raids of the enemy and had been badly cut up.
+More than that, by reason of the lack of reinforcements, they had had
+to do a double tour, so that they were returning from an experience of
+thirteen days, in what was indeed the veritable mouth of hell.
+
+"I guess they are all pretty well all in," said Sergeant Matthews, who,
+standing with his pioneers, had been carefully avoided by his friend
+Sergeant Mackay. That enthusiastic Scot had for the time being abandoned
+his transport, and was fraternising with the transport men of the
+Highlanders, with whom he was sure he would feel himself in more
+complete accord.
+
+"Here they come, boys," said a Scot, as the sound of the pipes grew
+louder. "There's a drummer for ye. Listen 'til that double roll, wull
+ye?"
+
+"Ay, Danny, the boys will be shovin' out their chests and hitchin' their
+hips about something awful."
+
+"Ye may say that, Hec. Will ye look at young Angus on the big drum, man,
+but he has got the gr-rand style on him."
+
+"Ay, boys, they are the la-ads," said Sergeant Mackay, yielding to the
+influence of his environment and casually dropping into the cadence of
+the Highlanders about him, which, during his ten years in the west,
+his tongue had well-nigh lost. "It's a very fine thing, your pipers are
+doing, playing our boys out in this way, and we won't be forgetting that
+in a hurry."
+
+"Why for no?" enquired Hec, in surprise. "It's the Highlanders
+themselves that love a bonny fighter."
+
+Down the road, between lines of silent men, came the pipers with waving
+kilts and flying tartans, swinging along in their long swaying stride,
+young Angus doing wonders on the big drum, with his whirling sticks, and
+every piper blowing his loudest, and marching his proudest. Behind them
+came the men of the battalion marching at attention, their colonel at
+their head, grave of face and steady. Behind the colonel marched Major
+Bayne, in place of the senior major, whom illness had prevented from
+accompanying the battalion on this last tour, no longer rotund and
+cheery as was his wont, but with face grey, serious and deep lined.
+After him at the head of A Company marched Captain Duff, his rugged,
+heavy face looking thinner and longer than its wont but even fiercer
+than ever. With eyes that looked straight before then, heedless of the
+line of silent onlookers, the men marched on, something in their set,
+haggard faces forbidding applause. At the rear of the column marched the
+chaplain alone, and every one knew that he had left up in the Salient
+behind him his friend and comrade, the M. O., whose place in all other
+marching had been at his right hand. All knew too how during this last
+go, in the face of death in its most terrifying form, they had carried
+out their wounded comrades one by one until all were brought to safety.
+And all knew too, how the chaplain carried with him that day a sore and
+lonely heart for the loss of one who was more to him than batman, and
+who had become his loyal and devoted friend. The chaplain's face was
+gaunt and thin, with hollow cheeks, but for all that, it wore a look of
+serene detachment.
+
+"Say, he looks awful tough," said a voice in Sergeant Mackay's ear.
+
+Sergeant Mackay turned sharply around upon Fatty Matthews.
+
+"Tough! Tough!" he exclaimed, with a choke in his voice. "You're a
+damned liar, that's what you are. He looks fine. He looks fine," he
+added again furiously. "He looks as if hell itself couldn't scare him."
+
+In the sergeant's eyes strange lights were glistening.
+
+"Yes, you're right, sergeant," said Fatty Matthews humbly. "You're
+right, and that's where he's been, too, I guess."
+
+Bravely and gallantly, with the historic and immortal "Cock o' the
+North" shrilling out on the evening air, the pipers played them on to
+the battalion parade ground, where they halted, silent still and with
+that strange air of detached indifference still upon them. They had been
+through hell. Nothing else could surprise them. All else, indeed, seemed
+paltry.
+
+Briefly, but with heart-reaching words, the colonel thanked the pipers
+for what he called "an act of fine and brotherly courtesy." Then turning
+to his men, he spoke a few words before dismissal.
+
+"Men, you have passed through a long and hard time of testing. You have
+not failed. I am not going to praise you, but I want you to know that
+I am proud of you. Proud to be your commanding officer. I know that
+whatever is before us, you will show the same spirit of endurance and
+courage.
+
+"We have lost this time twenty-nine men, eleven of them killed, and with
+these three very brave and very gallant officers, among them our medical
+officer, a very great loss to this battalion. These men did their duty
+to the last. We loved them. We shall miss them, but to-day we are proud
+of them. Let us give three cheers for our gallant dead."
+
+With no joyous outburst, but with a note of fierce, strained
+determination, came the cheers. In spite of all he could do, Barry could
+not prevent a shudder as he heard the men about him cheering for those
+whom he had so recently seen lying, some of them sorely mutilated, in
+their grey blankets.
+
+"Now, men," concluded the O. C., "we must 'carry on.' You will have a
+couple of hours in which to clean up and have supper, and then we shall
+have to-night a cinema show, to which I hope you will all come, and
+which I hope you will all greatly enjoy."
+
+The colonel's little speeches, as a rule, elicited appreciative cheers,
+but this afternoon there was only a grave silence. After dismissal, the
+men went to their huts and were soon busy giving themselves a "high mark
+scrub" preliminary to the hot bath and "jungle hunt" in which they would
+indulge themselves to-morrow.
+
+As Barry was moving off the parade ground, the junior major caught up to
+him, and took him by the arm and said:
+
+"I have sent around my batman to your hut. He will look after you until
+I can pick out a man from the new draft. We all know how you feel about
+Hobbs, old man."
+
+"Thank you, major," said Barry quietly. "I appreciate that."
+
+"You will be around to-night," continued the major.
+
+"No, I think not. I have a lot of things to do. All those letters to
+write." Barry shuddered as he spoke. For nothing in all his ministerial
+experience was to him a more exhausting and heartbreaking task than
+the writing of these letters to the relatives and friends of his dead
+comrades.
+
+"I think you had better come," said the major earnestly. "I know the O.
+C. would like it, and the boys would like it too."
+
+"Do you think so?" said Barry. "Then I'll be there."
+
+"Good man," said Major Bayne, patting him on the shoulder. "That's the
+stuff we like in this battalion."
+
+Barry found his hut in order, his things out for airing, his tub ready,
+and supper in preparation.
+
+"Thanks, Monroe," he said to Major Bayne's batman, as he passed into his
+hut.
+
+As he entered his hut and closed the door, for the first time there
+swept over his soul an appalling and desolating sense of loneliness. It
+was his first moment of quiet, his first leisure to think of himself for
+almost two weeks. With the loss of his batman there had been snapped
+the last link with that old home life of his, now so remote but all the
+dearer for that. It came to him that while he remained a soldier, this
+was to be his continual experience. Upon his return from every tour
+new gaps would stare at him. Up in the lines they did not so terribly
+obtrude themselves, but back here in rest billets they thrust themselves
+upon him like hideous mutilations upon a well loved face. He could
+hardly force himself to remove his muddy, filthy clothes. He would
+gladly have laid himself down upon his cot just as he was, and given
+himself up to the luxury of his grief and loneliness, until sleep should
+come, but his life as a soldier had taught him something. These months
+of discipline, and especially these last months of companionship with
+his battalion through the terrible experiences of war, had wrought into
+the very fibre of his life a sense of unity with and responsibility for
+his comrades. His every emotion of loss, of grief, of heart-sickness
+carried with it the immediate suggestion and remembrance that his
+comrades too were passing through a like experience, and this was his
+salvation. Weary, sick, desolate as he felt himself in this hour, he
+remembered that many of his comrades were as he, weary, and sick and
+desolate. He wondered how the major's batman felt.
+
+"Well, Monroe," he said with an attempt at a voice of cheer, "pretty
+tough go this time."
+
+"Yes, sir, very tough," said Monroe. "I lost my chum this time," he
+added after a few moments' silence.
+
+"Poor chap," said Barry. "I'm awfully sorry for you. It's hard to leave
+a friend up there."
+
+"It is that, sir," replied Monroe, and then he added hurriedly but with
+hesitation, "and if you will pardon me, sir, we all know it's awful
+tough for you. The boys all feel for you, sir, believe me."
+
+The unexpected touch of sympathy was too much for Barry's self-control.
+A rush of warm tears came to his eyes and choked his voice. For some
+minutes he busied himself with his undressing, but Monroe continued
+speaking.
+
+"Yes, sir, the Wapiti bunch is getting pretty small. Corporal Thom was
+with me--"
+
+"Corporal Thom!" cried Barry. "Was Corporal Thom your chum?"
+
+"Yes, sir, for six years we was on the Bar U. M. together. We was awful
+close friends. He was a good chum."
+
+"Corporal Thom!" exclaimed Barry again; "he was your chum! He was a
+great friend of mine too. You have indeed suffered a great loss."
+
+"He thought a lot of you, sir," said Monroe. "He has often talked to me
+about you."
+
+"But what a splendid death!" cried Barry. "Perfectly glorious!"
+
+"I didn't hear, sir," said Monroe; "I came down three days ago, and only
+heard that a bomb got him."
+
+"Oh, splendid," said Barry. "Nothing finer in the war. Let me tell you
+about it. There was an enemy raid coming up. The corporal had got wind
+of it and called his men out. They rushed into the front line bay. Just
+as they got there, eight or ten of them, a live bomb fell hissing among
+them. They all rushed to one end of the bay, but the corporal kicked the
+bomb to the other end, and then threw himself on top of it. He was blown
+to pieces, but no one else was hurt."
+
+During the recital of this tale, Monroe stood looking at Barry and when
+he had finished his eyes were shining with tears.
+
+"Ay, sir, he was a man, sir," he said at length.
+
+"Yes, you have said it, Monroe. He was a man, just a common man, but
+uncommonly like God, for He did the same thing. He gave Himself for us."
+
+Monroe turned away to his work in silence.
+
+"Monroe," said Barry, calling him back, "look here, lad, it would not
+be right for us to grieve too much for Corporal Thom. We ought to be
+thankful for him and proud of him, should we not?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I know, sir, but," he added while his lip trembled, "you hate
+to lose your chum."
+
+Only under compulsion of his conscience did Barry go to the cinema show
+that night, which in this camp was run under the chaplain service and by
+a chaplain. He knew what the thing would be like. His whole soul shrunk
+from the silly, melodramatic films which he knew would constitute the
+programme as from a nauseating dose of medicine. The billboard announced
+a double header, a trite and, especially to Canadians, a ridiculous
+representation of the experiences of John Bull and his wife and pretty
+daughter as immigrants to the Canadian Northwest, which was to be
+followed by the immortal Charlie Chaplin.
+
+The cinema hut was jammed--the whole battalion, now much reduced in
+numbers, officers and men being present, and with them the men of the
+base units and transports of other battalions. It was in some senses an
+unusual gathering. There was an entire absence of the wonted chaff and
+uproarious horseplay; instead a grave and almost bored air rested upon
+the men's faces. The appalling experiences of the past thirteen days
+seemed to dwarf all other things in comparison. They had been in the
+presence of the Big Thing; all else seemed petty; they had been looking
+into death's cold eyes; after that other sights seemed trivial. Many of
+them carried sore hearts for their comrades with whom they had at other
+times foregathered in just such circumstances as these, but nevermore
+again.
+
+It was the custom in the battalion, as the officers came into such
+gatherings as this, to receive them with a ripple of applause, but
+to-night there was silence. Barry arrived late. When he appeared there
+fell upon the men a hush, and then as he moved toward the front seats
+reserved for the officers, the men began to rise until the whole
+battalion was standing silent and motionless, and so remained until he
+had found a seat. It was Major Bayne who called his attention to this
+unusual demonstration, which was reserved only for great occasions and
+for nothing less than a battalion commander.
+
+"They are saluting you, Pilot," said Major Bayne in a whisper, himself
+standing with the other officers.
+
+Barry quickly lifted his eyes, saw the men standing, with all eyes
+directed toward him, slowly looked over the rows of faces, smiled a
+bright but slightly wavering smile, turned and saluted the Commanding
+Officer, and sat down all trembling and shaken by this most touching
+tribute of sympathy and affection.
+
+The show began with some pictures of great allied leaders which excited
+a mild interest and drew some perfunctory applause. Then came the tragic
+comedy of John Bull's experiences as an immigrant, when just as the
+interest began to deepen, the machine blew up, and the pictures were off
+for the night.
+
+Ordinarily such a contretemps would have been by no means fatal to the
+evening's enjoyment, for in the battalion there was no lack of musical
+and other talent, and an impromptu entertainment was easily possible.
+Ordinarily, too, in such an emergency there would at once have arisen
+a demand for the chaplain, who had come to be recognised as a great
+standby in times of need such as this. To-night, however, everything
+seemed changed. The mild suggestion of one of the men that the chaplain
+should take the piano was promptly discouraged by the dissenting growls
+of the others present. They knew well how their chaplain was feeling.
+
+"What shall we do?" asked Major Bayne of Barry.
+
+"Get Coleman to the piano. He is a perfect wizard," suggested Barry,
+indicating a young lieutenant who had come to the battalion with the
+recent draft, and who had done some accompaniments for Barry's violin
+playing.
+
+Lieutenant Coleman, on being called for, went to the piano, and began
+to play. He was indeed a wizard as Barry had said, with a genius for
+ragtime and popular music hall ditties, and possessed also of the
+further gift of improvisation that made his services invaluable on just
+such an occasion as this.
+
+From one popular air to another he wandered, each executed with greater
+brilliance than the last, but he failed to excite anything more than a
+mild interest and approval. The old songs which on other occasions had
+been wont to let loose the song birds of the battalion seemed to have
+lost their power. It was not gloom, but a settled and immovable apathy
+which apparently nothing could break.
+
+"This is going awfully slow," said Major Bayne to Barry. "I wish
+something could be done."
+
+"The boys are tired out," answered Barry, himself weary and sick of the
+performance and longing more than anything else for solitude and his
+cot.
+
+The Commanding Officer came over and sat beside them. He was obviously
+worried and uneasy.
+
+"I don't like this," he said to the major. "Coleman is doing his best,
+and is doing mighty well, but there is no heart in the boys, and it
+isn't entirely due to physical weakness. I wish we could start something
+that would wake them up before they leave. They would sleep much
+better."
+
+"The Pilot here can do it," said Major Bayne in an undertone, "but I
+rather hate to ask him for he is pretty much all in."
+
+They sat a little while longer listening to the men's half hearted
+drawling of "The Tulip and the Rose."
+
+"This won't do," said the O. C. abruptly. "Get Dunbar over here."
+
+"Dunbar," said the O. C. when Barry had come to him. "This thing is as
+dull as ditchwater. I want to get the boys started up a bit. They are
+hopelessly dull. Look at their eyes. Do you know what they are seeing?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Barry, "they are seeing what they have been looking at
+for the last thirteen days."
+
+"You are right, Dunbar, and that's what I want them to forget. Now I
+know you don't feel very fit, and I hate to ask you, but I believe you
+can do something for the men with that violin of yours. What do you
+say?"
+
+"I have already sent a man for it," said Major Bayne. "I knew he'd do
+it, and his violin lies there under the piano."
+
+Without announcement or preface Barry walked straight to the stage where
+Coleman, having miserably failed to strike fire with "The Tulip and the
+Rose," was grinding out, with great diligence and conscientious energy,
+"Irish Eyes." Barry picked up his violin from the floor, mounted the
+stage, laid his violin on the piano, then he took his place behind the
+pianist and, bending over him, reached down, caught him under the legs
+and while still in full tide of his performance, lifted him squarely off
+the stool and deposited him upon a chair at one side of the stage. Then,
+ignoring the amazed look upon Coleman's face, he proceeded gravely to
+tune his violin to the piano. The act itself, the cool neatness with
+which it was performed, the astonished face of the outraged pianist,
+all together created a situation excessively funny. The effect upon
+the audience was first one of surprise, then of unalloyed delight.
+Immediately every man in the hall was wide awake, and as the humour
+of the situation grew upon them, they began to cheer in quite a lively
+manner.
+
+When Barry put his violin to his chin they cheered again, for often had
+he bewitched them with the magic of his instrument.
+
+Before he began to play, he glanced over his shoulder at the discomfited
+Coleman and remarked in an undertone, perfectly audible throughout the
+hall, "Now we'll have some music."
+
+Again the audience went off in a perfect storm of delighted cheers,
+which were renewed from time to time as Barry would turn looking with a
+grave face upon the still amazed Coleman, not yet quite recovered from
+his first astonishment.
+
+When quiet was finally restored, Barry began to play. For his opening
+number he made a daring choice. It was the intricate but altogether
+tuneful Ballade and Polonaise by Vieuxtemps. Throughout the somewhat
+lengthy number he held his audience fixed under the mastery of his art.
+It was a triumph immediate and complete. When he had finished the
+last brilliant movement of the Polonaise, the men burst again into
+enthusiastic cheering, moved not only by the music but more by the
+spirit of their chaplain, which they could not fail to understand and
+appreciate.
+
+He had already achieved what the O. C. had desired, but he was not yet
+done with them. Having finished his classical selection, which he was
+quite well aware Coleman could not touch, he turned to the latter and
+gravely motioned him to the piano stool. Coleman hesitated, not knowing
+quite what would be demanded of him.
+
+"Come on, Coleman, be a sport," shouted a young officer, the audience
+joining once more in encouraging cheers.
+
+Still Coleman hesitated. One never knew just what vagary the chaplain
+might put on. Failing to move him by imploring gesture, Barry finally
+approached him, and with elaborate, courteous formality, offered him his
+hand, and finally conducted him to the piano stool. Again the delighted
+audience went into a roar of cheers.
+
+From that moment, and for a full hour, Barry had them at his will, now
+listening spellbound to some simple old heart song, now beating hand and
+foot to a reel, now roaring to the limit of their lung power some old
+and well-loved popular air.
+
+"Ain't he a bird?" said the major to the Commanding Officer.
+
+"He's fine," assented the Commanding Officer with a great sigh. "I can't
+tell you what a burden he has lifted from me. It's worth a week's rest
+to the men, and, poor chaps, they need it." Lowering his voice, he
+leaned over to the major and said, "We may be going up again to-morrow
+night."
+
+"To-morrow night, colonel!" exclaimed the major, aghast.
+
+"Not a word, but I have exceedingly grave news. The front line is driven
+in. One of the battalions holding is completely wiped out."
+
+"Wiped out? Good God, and where are the enemy?"
+
+"As far as I can hear, although I haven't the particulars, they have
+broken through from Hooge to Hill 60, are through Sanctuary Wood, and
+down to Maple Copse. Two relief battalions have gone up and are holding.
+The chances are we shall have to go to back them up to-morrow evening.
+It's hard on the boys, for they have come through a long and bitter
+experience, but not a word of this, major, to any one. We shall let
+them have their rest to-night. That's why I was so anxious about this
+entertainment. That's why I am particularly grateful to that Pilot of
+ours. He is a wonder, and by the look of him he is about all in. He is
+staying magnificently with the game. And now, major, I am going to do
+something that will please him immensely. At least I think it will."
+
+At a pause in the music, the O. C. arose and moved toward the stage.
+Barry at once stepped back to the rear. Standing before the men, the O.
+C. spoke briefly:
+
+"I wish to thank in your name, men, our chaplain, and his assistant, Mr.
+Coleman, for the very delightful evening they have given us. I know how
+you feel by the way I feel myself. I need say no more, and now, seeing
+that we have missed our parade service for the last two Sundays, and as
+I should not like the chaplain to become rusty in his duty, I'm going
+to ask him to bring our very pleasant evening to a close with a little
+service such as he himself would suggest."
+
+Hardly were the words out of his mouth, when Barry took up his violin
+and said:
+
+"Boys, did you have a good time to-night?"
+
+"Yes, sir; you bet we had, sir."
+
+"Well, then, if you had, sing this," and recited for them the first
+verses of the old hymn,
+
+
+"Abide with me, fast falls the even tide."
+
+
+When they had sung the first verse, he said again:
+
+"Now sing these words," and once more he recited the stirring verse:
+
+
+"I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless."
+
+
+When they had finished the verse, he said to them
+
+"Shall we have another?"
+
+"Go on, sir!" they said. "Sure thing!" "Finish it up!"
+
+"Then," said Barry, "sing these words":
+
+
+     "I need Thy presence every passing hour,
+      What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power."
+
+
+Then when he had finished the verse, he dropped the violin and, moving
+to the edge of the platform, said, in a voice vibrant with emotion:
+
+"Don't sing these words, but say them as I play them for you."
+
+He then recited the moving words with which the old hymn closes:
+
+
+     "Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
+      Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies;
+      Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee,
+      In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me."
+
+
+"I want every one of you to say the words to himself as I play them."
+
+In long-drawn, tremulous notes he voiced the beautiful plea for aid in
+the hour of man's supreme need, which finds expression in the first
+two lines. Then, with his bow gripping the strings in a great sweeping
+crescendo, he poured forth in full strong chords the triumphant faith
+with which the hymn closes.
+
+He laid his violin on the piano, stood quite a few moments looking upon
+them, then said:
+
+"Men, listen to these great words. They might have been written for
+us, and for these days;" and he recited to them the words of the Hebrew
+psalm, eloquent of courage in the face of a crumbling world:
+
+
+"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
+
+Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the
+mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
+
+Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains
+shake with the swelling thereof. Selah.
+
+There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God,
+the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
+
+God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved. God shall help her
+and that right early.
+
+The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved; he uttered his voice, the
+earth melted.
+
+The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.
+
+Come, behold the words of the Lord, what desolations he hath made in the
+earth.
+
+He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the bow,
+and cutteth the spear in sunder: he burneth the chariot in the fire.
+
+Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the heathen, I
+will be exalted in the earth.
+
+The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge."
+
+
+Then they followed him in the General Confession, and the Lord's prayer.
+
+"Captain Dunbar," said the O. C., offering him his hand, "you have
+done for us to-night a greater thing than you know just now. You will
+understand better tomorrow. With all my heart I thank you on the men's
+behalf and on my own behalf, for I assure you I needed it as much as
+they did. I want to assure you, too, sir, that I received to-night the
+thing I needed."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Barry simply, too weary to utter another word,
+and staggered out, half dead with exhaustion.
+
+Half an hour later, as he was leisurely undressing, and drinking the cup
+of cocoa which Monroe had prepared for him, a message summoned him to
+the orderly room. There he found Colonel Leighton with Major Bayne and
+the company commanders.
+
+"I have a communication here for you, Captain Dunbar," said the O. C.,
+"from your D. A. C. S.," and he passed him a little slip.
+
+It was the announcement of his "leave."
+
+"Well, what do you think of that?" said the O. C. "How does that suit
+you?"
+
+"Well, sir," said Barry, uncertainty and hesitation in his voice, "I'd
+like the leave, all right, but can I conveniently be spared just now?"
+
+"Most certainly," said the O. C., "and, what's more, I want you to go
+to-night. Can you get ready?"
+
+"I suppose so, sir," said Barry, wearily.
+
+"By Jove! listen to him," said the O. C. "He hates to leave us, doesn't
+he?" And they all laughed. "Now, Dunbar," he said, "no more posing. You
+catch the leave train to-night at Poperinghe. As a matter of fact, I
+think it starts somewhere about twelve."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Barry. "I think I can catch it."
+
+"Then good luck!" said the O. C., rising from his chair. "Every one
+of us here would like to be in your place, but since it isn't himself,
+every man is glad that it should be you."
+
+Still Barry hesitated.
+
+"I really hate to leave you, sir, just now," he said. "I mean that," he
+added with a little nervous laugh.
+
+"Oh, come on, Dunbar," said the O. C. in a voice whose gruffness might
+signify almost any emotion, but with a touch upon his shoulder that
+Barry knew meant comradeship. "Say good-bye to the boys here, and get
+out."
+
+They had just finished the plan for the campaign of the next night, and
+every man in that little company knew that for him this might be his
+last "Good-bye" to the chaplain. It only added to the depth of their
+feeling that they knew that of all this Barry was unconscious. But,
+whether it was that unconsciously he had gathered something of the real
+significance of the situation, or whether it was that he himself had
+reached the limit of emotional control, as he passed from man to man,
+shaking hands in farewell, his lips refused to utter a single word, but
+in his eyes were unshed tears that spoke for him.
+
+Major Bayne followed him to the door, and outside:
+
+"Take my horse and Monroe with you, and good-bye, old man. All sorts of
+good luck. Remember that we all feel to-night that you are really one of
+us, and that we are better men because we have known you. Goodbye."
+
+Again Barry was conscious of that strange suggestion, almost of
+impending calamity.
+
+"I hate to go, major," he said. "I believe I'll wait."
+
+"Nonsense," said the major impatiently. "Take your leave when you get
+your chance, and have a good time. You have earned it."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PASSING OF McCUAIG
+
+
+At Poperinghe the leave train was waiting in the station, and a
+little company of officers and men were having their papers examined
+preparatory to their securing transportation. Some of the officers were
+from his own brigade and were known to Barry.
+
+"A big push on at the front, I hear," said one of them to a friend.
+
+"Yes, major," said his friend. "They have been having a perfect hell of
+a time."
+
+"By the way, your men are going in to-morrow, I understand," said the
+major, turning to Barry.
+
+"I don't think so, major," replied Barry. "We have just come out."
+
+"Oh, well, I had it from fairly good authority that they were going in
+to-morrow night."
+
+Barry hunted up Monroe, whom he found talking to a signaller of the
+battalion.
+
+"Did you boys hear anything about the battalion going up to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the signaller promptly. "We had it over the wires. They
+are going in, all right, to-morrow night."
+
+Monroe kicked the signaller on the ankle.
+
+"Did you hear anything about it, Monroe?" enquired Barry.
+
+"No, sir. I don't believe these rumours at all. They are always flying
+about."
+
+"But you say you got it over the wires?" said Barry to the signaller.
+
+"Yes, sir. That is, sir, of course, we get a lot of messages. Perhaps
+I'm mixed up," said the signaller in very evident confusion.
+
+"And you haven't heard anything, Monroe?" said Barry.
+
+"No, sir, not a thing, and I think I would have heard if there had been
+any truth in it."
+
+Something in the childlike expression of innocence upon Monroe's face
+wakened Barry's suspicion.
+
+"Look here, Monroe," he said, "don't lie to me. Now, I'm talking to you
+as your chaplain. Tell me the truth. Have you heard of the battalion
+going in to-morrow?"
+
+Under Barry's eye Monroe began to squirm.
+
+"Well, sir, to tell you the truth, I did hear a rumour of that kind."
+
+"And you?" said Barry, turning upon the signaller, "tell me the truth."
+
+"Well, sir, it's just as I said. We had it over the wires. The battalion
+is going in."
+
+"Very well, get my stuff, Monroe," said Barry, quietly. "I'm going
+back."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir."
+
+"Do you hear me? Get my stuff; I'm not going out to-night." Barry's tone
+admitted no further talk, and Monroe, swearing deeply at his friend the
+signaller and at his own stupidity, and especially at his own "lack
+of nerve to see his lie through," hunted out Barry's baggage and stood
+ready for his officer to return.
+
+"Hello, Dunbar," said the major, as he saw Barry about to mount his
+horse. "What's up? Forgotten something? You'll surely miss your train."
+
+"I'm not going," said Barry briefly, getting himself settled in his
+saddle.
+
+"Not going!" exclaimed the major. "What do you mean? I thought you were
+on leave."
+
+"Changed my mind," said Barry cheerfully.
+
+"I say, old man," said the major, "there may be nothing in what I told
+you about the push. Anyway, you know we cannot postpone our leave until
+all the fighting is over."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," replied Barry. "There are lots of you combatant
+chaps in a battalion, but there is only one chaplain."
+
+"Oh, hang it all," cried the major, "take your leave. Well," seeing that
+Barry paid no heed to his advice, "the best of luck, old man," he said,
+offering his hand. "I guess you're all right after all."
+
+The exhilaration that had sustained Barry during the evening suddenly
+fled, leaving him flat in spirit and limp in body. What he wanted most
+of all was sleep, and morning was not so far away. He rode back to his
+hut, and, bidding Monroe let him sleep all day, he tumbled into bed and
+knew nothing until late in the afternoon. Monroe, too, had slept in,
+and, after rising, had been busy about the hut, so that he had no
+further information as to the battalion's movements. The chaplain's hut
+was some distance from Headquarters and from the battalion camp. Hence
+it came that while Barry was writing hard at his letters throughout
+the remainder of the afternoon, he was quite unaware of what was taking
+place. Monroe, however, returned about six o'clock to say that the
+battalion had been "standing to" all afternoon, but that the general
+feeling was that there would be no advance until late at night.
+
+Glad of the opportunity to catch up with his correspondence, Barry paid
+little heed to the passing of time. His last letter was to the V. A. D.,
+in which he poured out the bitterness of his disappointment that he was
+not even now on his way to Boulogne and to her, and expressing the hope
+that after this "show" was over, he would be granted leave, upon
+which happy event he would with all speed proceed to her. She had been
+speaking of a trip to England. Would it not be a very wise and proper
+proceeding that she should make her leave to synchronise with his? Now
+he must be off, and so with love to her, and with the hope that they
+might see London together--
+
+Just then Monroe came with the startling news that the battalion had
+"moved up" hours ago.
+
+"Which road?" enquired Barry, springing to his feet.
+
+"Don't know, sir," replied Monroe, who had evidently his own opinion
+about matters. "But I met a padre," he continued, "who told me that
+there was a stream of wounded passing through the Brandhoek Clearing
+Station. He said they were very short-handed there, sir," and Monroe
+regarded his officer with anxious eyes.
+
+"I hate to take you up there, Monroe," said Barry with a smile.
+
+"Oh, that's all right, sir," said Monroe, hastily, "but I guess we'll
+have to hurry."
+
+"I remember, Monroe, that your major and you would have sent me out
+of this, but you know well enough that there's only one place for me
+to-night, and the question is, where is the battalion--Ypres Barracks,
+Chateau Beige, Zillebeck, or where?"
+
+"I enquired at the transports, sir," said Monroe, "and no one appeared
+to know. They moved out quietly and left no word behind."
+
+"All right, we'll go up to Chateau Belge, and if they are not there,
+we'll make a shot at Zillebeck," said Barry. "We'll go right away. We
+don't need a lot of truck this trip."
+
+It was a long and tiresome march, but Barry found himself remarkably
+fit, and already under the exhilaration of what was before him. At
+the Chateau Belge they found no word of their battalion, but they were
+informed that the shelling on the Kruisstraat road had been bad all
+afternoon, and was still going on. The Boches were paying particular
+attention indeed to the crossroads.
+
+"All right," said Barry. "We'll go up and have a look at it, anyway."
+
+A hundred yards further up the road they were held up by a sudden burst
+of H. E. shells, which fell in near proximity to the crossroads before
+them.
+
+"Well, we'll just wait here a few minutes until we can time these
+things," said Barry, sitting down by the roadside.
+
+As they were waiting there, three soldiers passed them at quick march.
+
+"Better wait, boys," called Barry; "they are dropping quite a few shells
+at the crossroads."
+
+"We are runners, sir," said one of them. "I guess we'll just take a
+chance, thank you, sir."
+
+"All right, boys, if you think best," replied Barry. "Good luck!"
+
+"Thank you, sir," they said, and set off at a smart pace.
+
+While Barry sat listening to the sound of their footsteps upon the
+pavement, there came that terrific whine, followed by an appalling
+crash, as a H. E. shell landed full upon the road. Barry sprang to his
+feet. Three other shells followed in quick succession, then there came
+the sound of hurrying feet and a man appeared, bleeding horribly and
+gasping.
+
+"Oh, my God! My God! They are gone! They are gone!"
+
+"Sit down," said Barry. "Now, where's your wound?"
+
+"My arm, sir," said the man.
+
+Barry cut off the blood-soaked sleeve, ripped open his first aid
+dressing, and bound the wound up tightly. Then he put a tourniquet upon
+the arm above the wound.
+
+"The other boys killed, you say?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, sir, blown to pieces. Oh, my God!" he groaned, shuddering. "My
+chum's whole head was blown off, and the other has his belly all torn
+up."
+
+"Now look here, old man," said Barry, "you lie down here where you are,
+and keep perfectly still," for the man was throwing himself about, more
+from shock than from pain. "We'll get you to the dressing station in a
+few minutes. Monroe, run and get the stretcher bearers, and I'll go and
+see how things are up yonder."
+
+He threw his coat over the wounded man, and set off at a run toward the
+crossroads. He found matters as the man had said, the two bodies lying
+in a dark patch of bloodsoaked dust, one with head quite blown off, and
+the other with abdomen horribly torn.
+
+He hurried back to the wounded man, who had recovered somewhat from his
+shock and was now lying on his side quietly moaning. Barry got from him
+the names and units of the men who had been killed.
+
+"I will drop a note to your mother, too, my boy," he said, "and tell her
+about your wound."
+
+"Oh, sir," said the boy quickly--he was only a boy after all--"don't
+tell her--at least, tell her I'm all right. I'll be all right, won't I?"
+
+"Sure thing," said Barry, "don't you fear. I won't alarm her, and I'll
+tell her what good stuff you are, boy."
+
+"All right, sir. Thank you, sir," said the boy quietly.
+
+"And I'll tell her, too, that you are not worrying a bit, and that you
+know that you are in the keeping of your Heavenly Father. How is that?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the boy in a low voice. "I will be glad to have you
+tell her that. She taught me all that, sir. Poor mother, she'll worry
+though, I know," he added with a little catch in his throat.
+
+"Now you brace up," said Barry firmly. "You have got off mighty well.
+You have got a nice little blighty there, and you are going to be all
+right. I'll give your mother the best report about you, so that she
+won't worry."
+
+"Oh, thank you," said the boy, with fervent gratitude, "that will be
+fine. And you are right," he added, a note of resolution coming into
+his voice. "I got off mighty well, and it's only my left arm, thank
+goodness. I'll brace up, sir, never fear," he added between his teeth,
+choking back a groan.
+
+Barry accompanied the stretcher-bearer back to the chateau and gave the
+man over into the care of the C. A. M. C.
+
+"Can you put a squad on to digging a grave?" he inquired of the officer
+in charge. "If so, though I'm in an awful hurry, I'll stay to bury those
+poor chaps."
+
+"Sure thing, we can," said the officer. "We'll do the very best we can
+to hurry it."
+
+In about an hour and a half Barry was on his way again. He dodged
+the shelling at the crossroads, and following a track across the open
+fields, arrived at the Zillebeck Bund without adventure.
+
+Here to his relief he found the battalion. He made his way at once to
+Headquarters, and walked in upon a meeting of officers.
+
+"Well, I'm--" exclaimed Colonel Leighton, checking himself hard, "who
+have we here! What in hell are you doing here, Pilot? I thought you
+would be safely in old Blighty by this time," he added, shaking him
+warmly by the hand.
+
+"Oh, you couldn't work that game on me, colonel," said Barry cheerily,
+going round the group of men, who gave him an eager welcome. "You
+thought you had shipped me off, just as the fun was starting, but I got
+on to you."
+
+"Well, I'll be darned," said Major Bayne. "How did you find out?"
+
+Barry told him, adding, "You will have to train your man to lie more
+cheerfully."
+
+"That's what comes of a man's environment," said the major, disgustedly.
+"I was always too truthful, anyway."
+
+"Well, sir," said Barry, turning to the colonel. "I'm awfully glad to
+find you here. I was afraid I'd lost you."
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said the colonel, "you have all got your orders. Does
+any one want to ask a question? Well, then, it's pretty simple after
+all. Two companies advance as far as Maple Copse, and gradually work up
+until they feel the enemy, then put in a block and hold against attack,
+at all costs. The other two companies are to follow up in support at
+Zillebeck Village. Later on, when our reserves come up, and when our
+guns return--I hear they are pushing them up rapidly--we are promised
+a go at those devils. Meantime we have got to hold on, but I expect the
+battalion will be pulled out very shortly."
+
+The flickering candles lit up the faces of the men crowding the dugout.
+They were elaborately careless and jolly, but their eyes belied their
+faces. Under the careless air there was a tense and stern look of
+expectation. They were all sportsmen, and had all experienced the
+anxious nervous thrill of the moments preceding a big contest. Once the
+ball was off, their nervousness would go, and they would be cool and
+wary, playing the game for all they had in them.
+
+"Now, gentlemen," said the colonel, as they prepared to leave the
+dugout, "before I let you go, there is one thing I want to say. It's a
+tradition of the British army that any soldier or officer who has lost
+his unit marches toward the sound of the guns. I am proud to-night that
+we have an example of that old tradition here. We left our chaplain
+behind, and he didn't know where his battalion had gone, but he moved
+toward the sound of the guns. That is what I would expect from any
+of you, gentlemen, but it's none the less gratifying to find one's
+expectations realised."
+
+Only his flaming face revealed Barry's emotion as the colonel was
+speaking.
+
+"Now then, gentlemen, carry on, and the best of luck."
+
+"Sir," said Barry, "what about a little prayer?"
+
+"Fine," said the colonel heartily, while round the room there ran a
+murmur of approval.
+
+Barry pulled out his little Bible and read, not one of the "fighting
+psalms" but the tenderly exquisite words of the Shepherd's song. His
+voice was clear, steady and ringing with cheery confidence. His prayer
+was in the spirit of the psalm, breathing high courage and calm trust,
+even in the presence of the ultimate issue.
+
+In a single sentence he commended his comrades to the keeping of the
+Eternal God of Truth and Justice and Mercy, asking that they might be
+found steadfast in their hour of testing and worthy of their country and
+their cause.
+
+Together they joined in the Lord's prayer; then lifting over them his
+hands, he closed the little service with that ancient and beautiful
+formula of blessing, which for two thousand years has sent men out from
+the Holy Place of Meeting to face with hearts resolved whatever life
+might hold for them.
+
+One by one, as they passed out the officers shook hands with Barry,
+thanking him for the service, and expressing their delight that he was
+with them again.
+
+"What are we going to do with you, Pilot?" inquired the colonel.
+
+"I thought I'd stick around with the boys," said Barry.
+
+"Well," said the colonel, gravely, "of course, there's no use of your
+going up to the attack. You would only be in the way. You would be an
+embarrassment to the officers. That reminds me, there was a call from
+Menin Mill for you this afternoon. They are having an awful rush there.
+Our own R. A. P. will be in Zillebeck Village, and our Headquarters will
+be there."
+
+"I'll go there, sir, if you agree," said Barry, and after some
+discussion the matter was so arranged.
+
+In a ruined cellar in the village of Zillebeck, a mile and a half
+further in, the R. A. P. was established and there carried on during
+the desperate fighting of the next three days. Through this post a
+continuous stream of wounded passed, the stretcher cases all night, the
+walking cases all day and all night. In spite of its scenes of horror
+and suffering the R. A. P. was a cheery spot. The new M. O. was strange
+to his front line business, but he was of the right stuff, cool, quick
+with his fingers, and undisturbed by the crashing of bursting shells.
+The stretcher bearers and even the wounded maintained an air of resolute
+cheeriness, that helped to make bearable what otherwise would have been
+a nightmare of unspeakable horror. Attached to the R. A. P. was an outer
+building wherein the wounded men were laid after treatment. Thither in a
+pause of his work, Barry would run to administer drinks, ease the strain
+of an awkward position, speak a word of cheer, say a prayer, or sing
+snatches of a hymn or psalm. There was little leisure for reflection,
+nor if there had been would he have indulged in reflection, knowing well
+that only thus could he maintain his self-control and "carry on."
+
+With each wounded man there came news of the progress of the fighting.
+The boys were holding splendidly, indeed were gradually eating into
+the enemy front. They brought weird stories of his comrades, incidents
+pathetic, humorous, heroic, according to the temperament of the
+narrator. But from more than one source came tales of Knight's machine
+gun section to which McCuaig was attached. Knight himself had been
+killed soon after entering the line, and about his men conflicting tales
+were told: they were holding a strong point, they were blown up,
+they had shifted their position, they were wiped out, they were still
+"carrying on." McCuaig was the hero of every tale. He was having the
+time of his life. He had gone quite mad. He was for going "out and over"
+alone.
+
+The first authentic account came with young Pickles, now a runner, who
+made his way hobbling to Headquarters with a message from A Company, and
+who reported that he had fallen in with McCuaig by the way, and by
+him had been commandeered to carry ammunition, under threat of instant
+death.
+
+"Where did you see McCuaig first, Pickles?" Barry inquired, anxious to
+learn the truth about his friend.
+
+"Way up Lover's Walk," said young Pickles, who was in high spirits,
+"under a pile of brush and trees. I though it was a wildcat, or
+something moving and snarling--the light was kind of dim--and when I
+went up there was McCuaig. He was alone. Two or three men were lying
+near him, dead, I guess, and he was swearing, and talking to himself
+something fierce. I was scart stiff when he called me to him. I went
+over, and he says to me, 'Say, youngster,' just like that, 'you know
+where this walk used to drop down into the trench? Well, there's a lot
+of machine gun ammunition over there, all fixed up and ready. You go
+and bring it up here.' I tried to get out of it, sayin' I was bringing
+a 'hurry up' message down, but he turns his machine gun on me, and says,
+'Young man, it's only a couple of hundred yards down there, and fairly
+good cover. They can't see you. Go and bring that stuff here. If you
+don't I'll blow you to hell just where you stand.' You bet I promised.
+I got that ammunition so quick. Oh, of course, he's crazy, all right,"
+said young Pickles, "but he is fighting like hell. I beg pardon, sir."
+
+"Doctor, I'm going after him," said Barry. "He will stay there until he
+bleeds to death. He is my oldest friend."
+
+"All right, padre, if you say so," said the M. O., "but it's a nasty
+job. I should not care for it."
+
+Barry knew the area thoroughly. He got from young Pickles an exact
+description of the location of the spot where McCuaig had last been
+seen, and with the returning stretcher bearers set off for the wood,
+which was about a thousand yards further on.
+
+The communication trench leading up to the wood, which had been
+constructed with such care and of which the Canadians were so proud, had
+been blown up from end to end by the systematic and thorough bombardment
+of the three days before. The little party, therefore, were forced to
+make their way overland by the light of the star shells.
+
+They reached the wood in safety. Barry looked about him in utter
+bewilderment. Every familiar feature of the landscape was utterly
+blotted out. The beautiful ambrosial wood itself, of heavy trees and
+thick tinder-brush, was a mat of tangled trunks, above which stood
+splintered stubs. Not a tree, not a branch, hardly a green leaf was
+left. Under that mat of fallen trunks were A and C Companies, somewhere,
+holding, blocking, feeling up toward the Hun.
+
+The shells were whining overhead, going out and coming in, but mostly
+coming in. None, however, were falling on the wood because here friend
+and foe were lying almost within bayonet length of each other. Only an
+occasional burst from a machine gun broke the silence that hung over
+this place of desolation and death.
+
+"That's the company Headquarters," said the stretcher bearer, pointing
+to what looked like a bear den, under some fallen trees. Barry pushed
+aside the blanket and poking his head in, found Duff and a young
+lieutenant working at a table by the light of a guttering candle.
+
+"For the love of God, Pilot," exclaimed Duff, springing up and gripping
+Barry's hand, "it's good to see you, but what are you doing here?"
+
+"I came up for McCuaig," said Barry, after a warm greeting to both.
+
+"Oh, say, that's good. We have got him as far as the next dugout here,
+the old bear. I've been trying to get him out for half a day. There's a
+soldier for you! He's been potting Boches with his blessed machine gun,
+scouting from one hole to another for the last two days, and he's got a
+nasty wound. I'm awfully glad you have come."
+
+"How are things going, Duff?"
+
+"We have got the ----s so that they can't move a foot, and we'll hold
+them, unless they bring up a lot of reserves."
+
+"By Jove! Duff, you boys are wonderful."
+
+"I say," said Duff, brushing aside the compliment, "did young Pickles
+get through? That young devil is the limit. You'd have thought he was
+hunting coyotes."
+
+"Yes, he got through. Got a blighty though, I guess. It was he that told
+me about McCuaig."
+
+"Well, Pilot, old man," said Duff, taking him by the arm, "get out!
+Get out! Don't waste time. There may be a break any minute. Get out of
+here."
+
+Duff was evidently in a fever of anxiety. "You had no right to come up
+here anyway; though, by Jove, I'm glad to see you."
+
+"What's the fuss, Duff?" said Barry. "Am I in any more danger than you?
+I say," he continued, with tense enthusiasm, "do you realise, Duff, that
+as long as Canada lasts they will talk of what you are doing up here
+these days?"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Pilot, get out," said Duff crossly. "You make me
+nervous. Besides, you have got to get that wounded man out, you know.
+Come along."
+
+He hustled Barry out and over to the neighbouring dugout, where they
+found McCuaig with his beloved machine gun still at his side. The
+wounded man was very pale, but extremely cheerful, smoking a cigarette.
+
+"I'm glad to see you, sir," he said quietly, reaching out his hand.
+
+"Good old man," said Barry, gripping his hand hard, "but you are a
+blamed old fool, you know."
+
+McCuaig made no reply, but there was a happy light on his face. Under
+Duff's compelling urging they got the wounded man on a stretcher and
+started on their long and painful carry.
+
+"Now, boys," warned Duff, "you are all right up here, except for machine
+guns, but don't take any chances further out. That's where the danger
+is. When the shells come, don't rush things. Take your time. Now,
+good-bye, Pilot, it's worth a lot to have seen you anyway."
+
+"Good-bye, old man," said Barry, smiling at him. "You're the stuff. Good
+luck, old man. God keep you."
+
+Duff nodded, and waved him away. The return trip was made in comparative
+quiet.
+
+"What do you think, doctor?" said Barry, after the M. O. had completed
+his examination.
+
+"Oh, we'll pull him through all right," said the M. O. "When did you get
+this, McCuaig?" he continued, touching a small wound over the kidney.
+
+"Dunno, rightly. Guess I got it when we was blown up, yesterday."
+
+"Then why didn't you come in at once?" inquired the M. O. indignantly.
+
+McCuaig looked at him in mild surprise.
+
+"Why, they was all blown up, and there wasn't anybody to run the gun."
+
+The M. O. examined the wound more closely and shook his head at Barry.
+
+"We won't touch that now. We'll just bandage it up. Are you feeling
+pretty comfortable?"
+
+"Fine," said McCuaig with cheerful satisfaction. "We held them up,
+I guess. They thought they was going to walk right over us. They was
+comin' with their packs on their backs. But the boys changed their minds
+for them, I guess."
+
+A reminiscent smile lingered upon the long, eaglelike face.
+
+Half an hour later Barry found a minute to run into the adjoining room
+where the wounded lay.
+
+"Anything you want, McCuaig?" he asked.
+
+"A drink, if you ain't too busy, but I hate to take your time."
+
+"Oh, you go to thunder," said Barry. "Take my time! What am I for? Any
+pain, Mac?"
+
+"No, not much. I'm a little sleepy."
+
+Barry turned the flash-light on his face. He was startled to find it
+grey and drawn. He brought the M. O., who examined the wounded man's
+condition.
+
+"No pain, eh, Mac?"
+
+"No, sir," said McCuaig cheerfully.
+
+"All right, boy, just lie still," said the M. O., beckoning Barry after
+him.
+
+"He is going out," he said when they reached the dressing room, "and
+he's going fast. That wound in the back has been bleeding a long time."
+
+"Oh, doctor, can't anything be done? You know he's got a remarkable
+constitution. Can't something be done?"
+
+"There are times when a doctor wishes he had some other job," said the
+M. O., "and this is one of them."
+
+"I say, doctor, will you get along without me for a while?" said Barry.
+
+"Go on," said the M. O., nodding to him.
+
+Barry took a candle and went in beside his friend. As he sat there
+gazing upon the greying face, the wounded man opened his eyes.
+
+"That you, Barry?" he asked with a quiet smile.
+
+Barry started. Only in the very first weeks of their acquaintance had
+McCuaig called him by his first name, and never during the past months
+had he used anything but his rank title. Now all rank distinctions were
+obliterated. They were as man to man.
+
+"Yes, Mac, it's me. Do you know what I was thinking about? I was
+thinking of the first time I saw you coming down that rapid in your
+canoe."
+
+"I remember well, Barry. I often think of it. It's a long time ago,"
+said McCuaig in his soft, slow voice. "I've never been sorry but once
+that I come, and that time it was my own fault, but I didn't understand
+the game."
+
+"You've made a great soldier, Mac. We are all proud of you," said Barry,
+putting his hand upon McCuaig's. McCuaig's long thin fingers tightened
+upon Barry's hand.
+
+"I think I'm going out," he said, with his eyes on Barry's face. "What
+do you think?"
+
+It was the time for truth telling.
+
+"Oh, Mac, old man," said Barry, putting his head down close to him to
+hide from him the rush of tears that came to his eyes, "I'm afraid you
+are, and I hate to have you go."
+
+"Why, Barry, you crying for me?" asked McCuaig in a kind of wonder.
+"Say, boy, I'm awful glad you feel that way. Somehow I don't feel quite
+so lonely now."
+
+"Oh, Mac, you are my oldest, my best friend in the battalion, in all the
+world," said Barry.
+
+"Oh, I just love to hear you say that, boy. Do you know I wanted to tell
+you how I felt about that time on the boat, you remember?" Barry nodded.
+"Barry, tell me, honest Injun, did I make good as a soldier?"
+
+"The best ever," said Barry. "They all say so, officers and men. I heard
+the colonel say so the other day."
+
+Again the smile came.
+
+"Barry, it was you that done that for me. You showed me, and you done it
+so nice. I never forgot that, and I always wanted to tell you how I felt
+about it. Barry, you done a lot for me."
+
+"Oh, Mac, don't talk like that," said Barry, trying to keep his voice
+steady. "I did so little and I wanted to do so much."
+
+"Say, I like to hear you. I'd like to stay a little longer just to be
+with you, Barry. I've watched you just like you was my own boy, and I've
+been awful proud of you, but I didn't like to say so."
+
+The uncovering of the great love of this simple, humble hearted man
+broke down Barry's self-control. He made no effort to check his falling
+tears.
+
+"I'm getting--kind of weak, Barry," whispered McCuaig. "I guess I won't
+be long, mebbe."
+
+His words recalled Barry's nerve.
+
+"Mac, would you like me to say a prayer?" he asked. "Just as you feel
+about it, you know."
+
+"Yes--I would--but I ain't--your religion--you know--though--I
+like--awful well--the way--you talk about--Him."
+
+"I know you are R. C., Mac, but after all you know we have just the one
+Father in Heaven and the one Saviour."
+
+"Yes,--I know, Barry. It's all the same."
+
+Barry had a sudden inspiration.
+
+"Wait, Mac, a minute," he said.
+
+He hurried out to the dressing room, seeking a crucifix, but could find
+none there.
+
+"I'll run across to Headquarters," he said.
+
+"Say, there's a machine gun playing that street awful," said the M. O.'s
+sergeant, "to say nothing of whizzbangs."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Barry. "I'll make a dash for it."
+
+But at Headquarters he was no more successful. He went out into the
+garden in the rear of the R. A. P., and returned with two small twigs.
+The M. O. bound them together in the form of a cross. Barry took it and
+hastened to McCuaig's side.
+
+The hurried breathing and sunken cheeks of the wounded man showed that
+the end was not far. As Barry knelt beside him, he opened his eyes.
+There was a look of distress upon his face, which Barry understood. God
+was near. And God was terrible. He wanted his priest.
+
+"Barry," he whispered, "I've not--been a good man. I haven't been--mean
+to anybody,--but I used--to swear--and fight, and--"
+
+"Mac, listen to me. We're all the same," said Barry, in a quiet, clear
+voice. "Suppose I'd injured you."
+
+"You wouldn't--Barry."
+
+"But suppose I did some real mean thing to you, and then came and said I
+was sorry, would you forgive me?"
+
+"Would I--I'd never think--of anything--you did--to me, Barry."
+
+"Mac, that's the way your Father in Heaven feels to you. We have all
+done wrong, but He says, 'I will blot out all your sins.' You needn't
+fear to trust Him, Mac."
+
+"I guess--that's so, Barry--I guess that's--all right."
+
+"Yes, it's all right. Now I'll say a prayer. Look, Mac!"
+
+He held up the little wooden cross before his eyes. A smile of joy and
+surprise transfigured the dying face.
+
+"I see it!--I see--it!" he whispered, and made a movement with his lips.
+Barry laid the cross upon them, and with that symbol of the Divine love
+and of the Divine sacrifice pressed to the dying lips, he prayed in
+words such as a child might use.
+
+For some time after the prayer McCuaig lay with his eyes shut, then
+with a sudden accession of strength, he opened them and looking up into
+Barry's eyes, said:
+
+"Barry, I'm all right now. . . . You helped me again."
+
+The long thin hands, once of such iron strength, began to wander weakly
+over the blanket, until touching Barry's they closed upon it, and held
+it fast.
+
+"I--won't--forget--you--ever--" he whispered. The nerveless fingers with
+difficulty lifted Barry's hand to the cold lips. "Good--bye--Bar--ry--"
+he said.
+
+"Good-bye, dear old comrade. Good-bye, dear old friend," said Barry in
+a clear quiet voice, gazing through his falling tears straight into the
+dying eyes.
+
+"Good--night--" The whisper faded into silence. A quiet smile lay on
+the white face. The eyes closed, there was a little tired sigh, and the
+brave tender spirit passed on to join that noble company of immortals
+who abide in the Presence of the Eternal God of Truth and Love, and "go
+no more out forever," because they are akin to Him.
+
+In the sorely tortured graveyard, beside the little shell-wrecked
+Zillebeck church, in a hole made by an enemy shell, they laid McCuaig--a
+fitting resting place for one who had lived his days in the free wild
+spaces of the Canadian west, a fitting tomb for as gallant a soldier as
+Canada ever sent forth to war to make the world free.
+
+That night the battalion was relieved. Worn, spent, but with spirit
+unbroken, they crawled out from under that matted mass of tangled
+trunks, sending out their wounded before them, and leaving their buried
+dead behind them, to hold with other Canadian dead the line which from
+St. Julien, by Hooge, Sanctuary Wood, and Maple Copse, and Mount Sorel,
+and Hill 60, and on to St. Eloi, guards the way to Ypres and to the sea.
+To Canada every foot of her great domain, from sea to sea, is dear, but
+while time shall last Canada will hold dear as her own that bloodsoaked
+sacred soil which her dead battalions hold for Honour, Faith and
+Freedom.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+LONDON LEAVE AND PHYLLIS
+
+
+The leave train pulled into the Boulogne station exactly twenty-six
+hours late. As Barry stepped off the train he was met by the R. T. O.,
+an old Imperial officer with a brisk and important military manner.
+
+"You are the O. C. train, sir?" he inquired.
+
+"I am, sir," replied Barry, saluting.
+
+"You have had a hard time, I understand," said the R. T. O., drawing him
+off to one side and speaking in a low tone.
+
+"Yes sir, we HAVE had a hard time," replied Barry, "at least the men
+have. This is my report, sir."
+
+The R. T. O. took the document, opened it, glanced hurriedly through it.
+
+"Ah," he said, "ninety-seven casualties, thirteen fatal. Very bad. Six
+burned. This is truly terrible."
+
+"There were only two soldiers burned, sir," replied Barry, "but it IS
+terrible, especially when you think that the men were going on leave and
+were supposed to have got quit of the danger zone."
+
+"Very, very terrible," said the officer. "You ran off the track, I
+understand."
+
+"No, sir, it was a collision. There must have been gross carelessness,
+sir," said Barry. "I trust there will be an investigation. I have taken
+the liberty to suggest that, sir, in my report."
+
+Barry's voice was stern.
+
+"You need have no apprehension on that score, sir," said the R. T. O.,
+with his eyes still upon the report. "This is very clear and concise.
+I see you make no mention of your own services in connection with the
+affair, but others have. I have had a most flattering telegram from
+the officer commanding the R. A. M. C., as also from the Divisional
+Commander, mentioning your initiative and resourcefulness. I assure you
+this will not be forgotten. I understand you are a padre?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Barry, who was getting rather weary of the
+conversation.
+
+"All I have to say, then, sir, is that the Canadian army must be rich in
+combatant officers for, if you will pardon me, it strikes me that there
+is a damned good combatant officer lost in you."
+
+"If I were a better padre," replied Barry, "I would be content."
+
+"I fancy you have little ground for complaint on that score," said the
+R. T. O., for the first time smiling at him.
+
+"May I ask, sir," replied Barry, "if my responsibility ends here?"
+
+"Yes, unless you want to take charge of the boat."
+
+"I'd rather not, sir, if you please. How long before she sails?"
+
+"About three hours. Have you anything to do?"
+
+"I should like to visit the R. A. M. C. hospital. I should also like to
+phone the American hospital at Etaples."
+
+"Very well, you can easily do both. I will run you up in my car, if you
+care to wait a few moments until I put through some little matters here.
+Then if you will be good enough to join me at breakfast, I can drive you
+up afterwards to the hospital. This is my car. I think you had better
+step in and sit down; you look rather used up."
+
+"Will you allow me to speak to some of the men first, sir?"
+
+"Oh, certainly. Do anything you like. There are your men."
+
+As Barry moved along the line of men drawn up on the platform, he was
+followed by a rising murmur of admiration, until, as he reached a group
+of officers at the end, a little Tommy, an English cockney, lifting high
+his rifle, sang out:
+
+"Naow then, lads, 'ere's to our O. D," adding after the cheers, "'e's a
+bit ov ol raa-ght, 'e is!"
+
+"Men," said Barry, "I thank you for your cheers, but I thank you more
+for your splendid behaviour night before last. It was beyond praise. You
+couldn't save all your comrades, but you would willingly have given
+your lives to save them. That's the true spirit of the Empire. It's
+the spirit of Humanity. It's the spirit of God. If I were a combatant
+officer--"
+
+"You'd be a good 'un, sir," cried a voice.
+
+"If I were a combatant officer, I should like to lead men like you into
+action."
+
+"We'd follow you to 'ell, sir," shouted the little cockney.
+
+"Oh, I hope not," replied Barry. "I'm not going that way. May I say, in
+wishing you every good luck, that you are a credit to your country, and
+I can say nothing higher. I wish to thank the officers who so splendidly
+did their duty and gave such valuable service. Good luck to you, boys,
+and give my love to all at home."
+
+Again the men broke into cheers, and Barry, shaking hands with the
+officers, turned away toward the car. As he was entering the car,
+Sergeant Matthews came over to him.
+
+"I want to thank you, sir, for getting me free of the R. A. M. C. up
+there. I feel rather bad, but since my wife is waiting to meet me in
+London, I was anxious to get through."
+
+"All right, sergeant," replied Barry. "I'll get you to a hospital in
+London, when we arrive. You are not feeling too badly, I hope."
+
+"A little shook up, sir," said the sergeant.
+
+At the R. A. M. C. hospital a bitter disappointment awaited him. He
+found that the V. A. D. had departed for England, but just where no one
+seemed to know. In her last letter to him, received before the last tour
+in the trenches, she had mentioned the possibility of a visit to London,
+and had promised him further information before her departure, but no
+further word had he received.
+
+His inquiry at Etaples was equally unproductive of result. Paula and her
+father had also gone to England. They had taken the V. A. D. with them,
+and their address was unknown. The matron of the hospital believed that
+they had planned a motor trip to Scotland, for they had carried Captain
+Neil Fraser off with them, and were planning a visit to his home. They
+expected to return in about three weeks.
+
+By the bitterness of his disappointment, Barry realised how greatly he
+had counted on this meeting with his friends. Were it not for the hope
+of being able to discover them in England, he would have turned back
+up the line, there and then, and found among the only friends he had on
+this side of the ocean relief from the intolerable weight of loneliness
+that was bearing him down.
+
+He walked out to the cemetery, and stood beside his father's grave.
+There for the first time it came over him that henceforth he must go all
+the way of his life without the sight of that face, without the touch
+of that hand on his shoulder, without the cheer of that voice. In floods
+his sense of loss swept his soul. It took all his manhood to refrain
+from throwing himself prone upon the little mound and yielding to the
+agony that flooded his soul, and that wrought in his heart physical
+pain. By a resolute act of will, he held himself erect. While he blamed
+and despised himself for his weakness, he was unable to shake it off. He
+did not know that his mental and emotional state was in large measure
+a physical reaction from the prolonged period of exhausting strain,
+his treble tour in the trenches, with its unrelieved sense of impending
+destruction, that its endless procession of broken, torn bodies, with
+its nights of sleepless activity, with its eternal struggle against
+depression, consequent upon the loss of his comrades, its eternal
+striving after cheeriness and more than all the shock of the train
+wreck, with its scenes of horror; all this had combined to reduce his
+physical powers of resistance to the point of utter exhaustion.
+
+As he stood there in that cemetery with its rows of crosses, silently
+eloquent of heroism and of sacrifice, the spirit of the place seemed to
+breathe into him new life. As his eyes fell upon the cross bearing his
+father's name, he seemed to see again that erect and gallant figure,
+instinct with life and courage. There came to him the memory of a scene
+he had never forgotten. Again he was with his father in the little home
+cottage. How dear it had been to him then! How dear to him, today! Once
+more he felt the strong grip of his father's hand and heard his father's
+voice:
+
+"Good night, boy. We don't know what is before us, defeat, loss,
+suffering, that part is not in our hands altogether, but the shame of
+the quitter never need and never shall be ours."
+
+Unconsciously as if he were in the presence of a superior officer, he
+lifted his hand in salute, and with a sense of renewal of his vital
+energies he returned to the boat.
+
+During the crossing his mind was chiefly occupied with the problem of
+discovering the whereabouts of the V. A. D. or his American friends.
+He had never learned her London address, if indeed she had one. He
+remembered that she had told him that her home had been turned into a
+hospital. He had some slight hope that he might be able to trace her by
+the aid of her uncle.
+
+Arrived in London, his first duty was to see Sergeant Matthews, whose
+injuries in the wreck were apparently more serious than at first
+supposed, safely disposed in a hospital ambulance. Thereupon he
+proceeded to the Hotel Cecil, and set himself seriously to the solution
+of his problem. He was too weary for clear thinking and as the result of
+long, confused and very vexing cogitation, he resolved upon a letter to
+Commander Howard Vincent, R. N. R. This, after much labour, he succeeded
+in accomplishing. Thereafter, much too weary for food, he proceeded to
+his room, where he gave himself up to the unimaginable luxury of a bath
+in a clean tub, and with an unstinted supply of clean towels, after
+which riotous indulgence, he betook himself to bed. As he lay stretched
+between the smooth clean sheets, he found it impossible to recall a
+state of existence when clean sheets had been a nightly experience. The
+chief regret of these semi-unconscious moments preceding slumber was
+that sleep would rob him of this delicious sense of physical cleanness
+and well-being.
+
+He was wakened by a knock at his door, followed by a hesitating apology
+for intrusion. Rejoicing in the luxury of his surroundings, and in the
+altogether satisfying discovery that he might sleep again, he turned
+over and once more was lost in profound slumber. A second time he was
+aroused by a mild but somewhat anxious inquiry as to his welfare.
+
+"I want nothing, only a little more sleep," and again luxuriating for
+a few moments in his clean sheets and his peaceful environment, he
+resigned himself to sleep, to waken with a comfortable sense of pleasant
+weariness, which gradually passed into a somewhat acute sense of hunger.
+
+He decided, after due consideration, that he would plumb the depths of
+bliss, unmeasured and unknown, and have breakfast in bed. He went to the
+window and looked out upon the murky light of a London day. He decided
+that it was still early morning, and rang for the waiter. He was
+informed by that functionary that breakfast was impossible, but that if
+he desired he could be supplied with an early dinner.
+
+"Dinner!" exclaimed Barry.
+
+He looked at his watch, but found that he had neglected to wind it, and
+that consequently it had stopped.
+
+"What time do you make it, waiter?"
+
+"Half after six, sir."
+
+He decided that he would rise for dinner, 'phoned for a paper and his
+mail, and lay back between the sheets once more, striving to recapture
+that rapturous sense of welfare that had enwrapped him the night before.
+Luxuriating in this delightsome exercise, he glanced lazily at the
+heading of his paper, and then cried, as the paper boy was leaving the
+room,
+
+"Hello! here, boy! what day is this?"
+
+"Friday, sir," said the boy, gazing at him in astonishment.
+
+"Friday? Are you sure?"
+
+"Yes, sir, Friday, sir. What does the paper say, sir?"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course. All right."
+
+He had gone to bed on Wednesday night. He knew that because he
+remembered the date of his letter to Commander Howard Vincent, R. N.
+R. He made the astounding discovery that he had slept just forty-four
+hours. Then he made a second discovery and that was that of his precious
+eight days' leave, three were already gone.
+
+After he had dined he inquired at the desk for his mail, and searched
+through the telegrams, but there was nothing for him.
+
+Then he betook himself to the streets, aware that the spectre of
+loneliness was hard on his trail, and swiftly catching up with him.
+London was roaring around him in the dark, like a jungle full of wild
+beasts, of whose shapes he could catch now and then horrid glimpses.
+Among all the millions in the city, he knew of no living soul to whom he
+could go for companionship, nor was there anything in form of amusement
+that specially invited him.
+
+There was Grand Opera, of course, but from its associations with his
+father he knew that that would bring him only acute misery. Gladly would
+he have gone to the hospitals, but they would be shut against him at
+this hour. He bought an evening paper, and under a shaded lamp studied
+the amusement columns. Some of the Revues he knew to be simply tiresome,
+others disgusting. None of them appealed to him. Aimlessly he wandered
+along the streets, heedless of his direction, conscious now and then of
+an additional pang of wretchedness as he caught a glimpse now and then
+at a theatre door of young officers passing in with sweet faced girls on
+their arms.
+
+At length in desperation he followed one such pair, and found himself
+listening to Cinderella. Its light and delicate fancy, its sweet pathos,
+its gentle humour lured him temporarily from his misery, but often there
+came back upon him the bitter memory of his comrades in their horrid
+environment of filth, danger and wretchedness.
+
+He found some compensation in the thought that these officers beside him
+were like himself on leave, and while he envied them, he did not grudge
+them their delight in the play, and their obviously greater delight in
+their lovely companions beside them, but this again was neutralised by
+the bitter recollection of his own hard fate which denied him a like
+joy.
+
+After the play he stood in the entrance hall, observing the crowd,
+indulging his sense of ill-usage at the hands of fate as he saw the
+officers lingering with many unnecessary touches over the cloaking of
+their fair partners, and as he caught the answering glances and smiles
+that rewarded their attentions.
+
+His eyes followed the manoeuvrings of the painted ladies as they hovered
+about the doors, boldly busy with their profession. He understood as
+never before the nature of their lure and the overpowering subtlety of
+the temptation cast by them over the lonely soldier in London.
+
+Close at his side he heard a voice:
+
+"How do you like it, boy? Not bad, eh?"
+
+"Awfully jolly, dad. It's perfectly fine of you."
+
+He turned and saw a grey-haired gentleman, with upright soldierly
+figure, and walking with him, arm in arm, a young officer, evidently his
+son. He followed them slowly to the door, and eager to share if he might
+the joy of their comradeship, he listened to their talk. Then as they
+disappeared into the darkness, sick at heart, he passed out of the door,
+stood a moment to get his bearings, and sauntered beyond the radius of
+the subdued light about the entrance, into the darkness further on.
+
+He had gone but a few paces, and was standing beneath a shaded corner
+light, meditating the crossing of the roaring street, when he heard
+behind him an eager voice crying,
+
+"Captain Dunbar! Captain Dunbar!"
+
+Swiftly he turned, and saw in the dim light a dainty figure, opera coat
+flowing away from gleaming arms and shoulders, a face with its halo of
+gold brown hair, with soft brown eyes ashine and eager parted lips, a
+vision of fluttering, bewildering loveliness bearing down upon him with
+outstretched hands.
+
+"What," he gasped, "you! Oh, you darling!"
+
+He reached for her, gathered her in his arms, drew her toward him, and
+before either he or she was aware of what he intended to do, kissed her
+parting lips.
+
+"Oh, how dare you!" she cried, aghast, pushing him back from her, her
+face in a red flame. "Oh, I'm so glad. I was afraid I should lose you."
+
+Barry, appalled at his own temerity, his eyes taking in the sweet beauty
+of her lovely face, stood silent, trembling.
+
+"Well, aren't you going to tell me you are glad to see me?" she cried,
+smiling up at him saucily.
+
+"Phyllis," he murmured, moving toward her.
+
+"Stop," she said, putting her hands out before her, as if to hold him
+off. "Remember where you are. I ought to be very angry, indeed."
+
+She drew him toward a dark wall.
+
+"But you aren't angry, Phyllis. If you only knew how I have wanted you
+in this awful place. Oh, I have wanted you."
+
+She saw that he was white and still trembling.
+
+"Have you, Barry?" she asked, gently. "Oh, you poor boy. I know you have
+been through horrible things. No, Barry, don't. You awful man," for his
+hands were moving toward her again. "You must remember where you are.
+Look at all these people staring at us."
+
+"People," he said, as if in a daze. "What difference do they make? Oh,
+Phyllis, you are so wonderfully lovely. I can't believe it's you, but
+it is, it is! I know your eyes. Are you glad to see me?" he asked shyly,
+his hungry eyes upon her face.
+
+"Oh, Barry," she whispered, the warm flush rising again in her cheeks,
+"can't you see? Can't you see? But what am I thinking about? Come and
+see mamma, and there's another dear friend and admirer of yours with
+her."
+
+"Who? Not Paula?"
+
+"No, not Paula," she said, with a subtle change in her voice. "Come and
+see!"
+
+She took his arm and brought him back to a motor standing at the theatre
+entrance.
+
+"Oh, mamma, I have had such a race," she cried excitedly, "and I have
+captured him. Barry, my mother."
+
+Barry took the offered hand, and gazed earnestly into the sad brown eyes
+that searched his in return.
+
+"And here's your friend," said Phyllis.
+
+"Hello, Pilot," said a voice from a dark corner of the car.
+
+"What, Neil! Oh, you boy," he cried in an ecstasy, pushing both hands at
+him. "You dear old boy. How is the arm, eh? all right?"
+
+"Oh! doing awfully well," said Captain Neil. "And you?"
+
+"Oh, never so well in all my life," cried Barry. "Yet, to think of it,
+ten minutes ago, or when was it, I was in there a miserably homesick
+creature, envious of all the happy people about me, and now--"
+
+While he was speaking, his eyes were on Mrs. Vincent's face, but his
+hand was holding fast to her daughter's arm. "Now it's a lovely old
+town, and full of dear people."
+
+"Where are you putting up?" asked Mrs. Vincent.
+
+"The Cecil."
+
+"Let us drive you there then," she said.
+
+During the drive Barry sat silent for the most part, listening to
+Phyllis talking excitedly and eagerly beside him, answering at random
+the questions which came like rapid fire from them all, but planning
+meanwhile how he should prolong these moments of bliss.
+
+"How about supper?" he cried, as they arrived in the courtyard of the
+hotel. "Come in. I want you to; you see I have so much to ask and so
+much to tell Captain Fraser here, and three of my days are gone already.
+Besides, I want you to awfully."
+
+Mrs. Vincent looked at his face, which for all its brightness was worn
+and deep-lined, and her compassionate motherly heart was stirred.
+
+"Of course we'll come. We want to see you and to hear about your
+experiences."
+
+"Oh, bully!" cried Barry. "I shall always remember how good you are to
+me to-night."
+
+He was overflowing with excitement.
+
+"Oh, this is great, Neil. It's like having a bit of the old battalion
+here to see you again."
+
+While waiting for their orders to be filled at the supper table, Captain
+Neil turned suddenly to Barry and said, "What's all this about a train
+wreck and the gallant O. C. train?"
+
+"Yes, and this rescuing of men from burning cars," exclaimed Phyllis.
+
+"And knocking out insubordinates."
+
+"And being mentioned in despatches."
+
+"And receiving cheers at the station."
+
+"Now where did you get all that stuff?" inquired Barry.
+
+"Why, all London is ringing with it," said Captain Neil.
+
+"Nonsense," said Barry; "who's been stuffing you?"
+
+"Well," said Phyllis, "we came across your sergeant to-day in the
+hospital. Such a funny man."
+
+"Who? Fatty Matthews?" asked Barry, turning to Captain Neil.
+
+"Yes, it was Fatty," said Captain Neil, "and if you had your rights by
+his account, you ought to be in command at this moment of an army corps
+at the very least. But you were O. C. leave train, were you not?"
+
+"Yes, to my dismay I was made O. C., but I met a chap, Captain Courtney,
+a very decent fellow, my adjutant, and made him carry on."
+
+"My word, that was a stroke!"
+
+"We had a wreck, a ghastly affair it was, though it might have been a
+lot worse. The R. A. M. C. people did magnificently, and the men behaved
+awfully well, so that we managed to get through."
+
+"And what about the O. C.?" inquired Captain Neil.
+
+"Oh, nothing special. He just saw that the others carried on. Now tell
+me about you people. What have you been doing and what are you going to
+do?"
+
+"Well, 'we're here, because we're here,'" chanted Captain Neil.
+
+"And why didn't you send me word as to your movements?" said Barry.
+"What hours of agony you would have spared me!"
+
+"But I did," replied Phyllis. "I sent you our town address and told you
+everything."
+
+"Now isn't that rotten!" exclaimed Barry. "Never mind, I've found you,
+and now what's the programme?"
+
+"Well," cried Captain Neil with great enthusiasm, "we are all off to
+Edinburgh to-morrow, where we meet the Howlands, and then for a motor
+trip through the Highlands and to my ancestral home."
+
+Barry's face fell. "To-morrow?" he said blankly, with a quick look at
+Phyllis. "And you are all going?"
+
+"Not I," said Mrs. Vincent, "but why should you not join the party? You
+need just such a change. It would do you good."
+
+"Sure thing he will," cried Captain Neil.
+
+During the supper they had firmly resolved to taboo the war. They talked
+on all manner of subjects, chiefly of the proposed motor trip, but in
+spite of the ban their talk would hark back to the trenches. For Captain
+Neil must know how his comrades were faring, and how his company was
+carrying on, and Barry must tell him of their losses, and all of the
+great achievements wrought by the men of their battalion. And Barry
+because his own heart was full of all their splendid deeds let himself
+go. He told how Sally and Booth had met their last call, of the M. O.
+and his splendid work in rescuing the wounded.
+
+"No word in all of this of the Pilot, I observe," interjected Captain
+Neil.
+
+"Oh, he just carried on!"
+
+Then he told how at last the M. O. went out, and how on his face there
+was only peace. He had to tell of Corporal Thom, and how he gave himself
+for his comrades and how Cameron kept the faith, a long list of heroes
+he had to enumerate, of whom the world was not worthy, whose deeds are
+unknown to fame, but whose names are recorded in the books of God. And
+then reverently he told of McCuaig.
+
+As Barry talked, his heart was far away from London. He was seeing
+again that line of mud bespattered men, patiently plodding up the
+communication trench. He was looking upon them sleeping with worn and
+weary faces, in rain and mudsoaked boots and puttees, down in their
+flimsy, dark dugouts. He was hearing again the heavy "crash" of the
+trench mortar, the earth shaking "crumph" of the high explosive, the
+swift rush of the whizbang. Before his eyes he saw a steady line of
+bayonets behind a crumbling wall, then a quick rush to meet the attack,
+bomb and rifle in hand. He saw the illumined face of his dying friend.
+
+As he told his tale, his face was glowing, his eyes gleaming as with an
+inner fire.
+
+"Oh, God's Mercy!" he cried, "they are men! They are men! Only God could
+make such men."
+
+"Yes, only God," echoed Mrs. Vincent after a long pause. "They are God's
+men, and to God they go at last. Truly they are God's own men."
+
+While Barry was speaking, Phyllis, her hands tightly clasped, was
+leaning forward listening with glistening eyes and parted lips. Suddenly
+she rose, and went hurriedly to the door.
+
+"Forgive me," said Barry, turning to Mrs. Vincent. "I should not have
+talked about these things. It's Neil here that drew me out. It's his
+fault."
+
+In a few minutes Captain Neil arose and saying, "I'll see where Phyllis
+has gone," went out at the same door.
+
+"They are very great friends," said Mrs. Vincent. "We are very fond of
+Captain Fraser. Indeed, he is like one of our family."
+
+"A fine, brave chap he is," said Barry warmly, but with a queer chill at
+his heart.
+
+"Phyllis has made some very delightful friends in France. Those
+Americans at Etaples were very good to her," and she continued to chat
+in her soft, gentle voice, to which Barry gave a courteous hearing
+but very casual replies. His heart and his ears were attentive for the
+returning footsteps of those who had so abruptly deserted them. While
+Mrs. Vincent was talking, an ugly question was thrusting itself upon his
+attention, demanding an answer. He could see--any one with eyes could
+see--that there was between Phyllis and his friend Captain Neil some
+understanding. Just what was between them Barry longed to know. It
+flashed upon him that upon the answer to that question his whole future
+hung, for if this girl was more than friend to Captain Neil, then the
+joy of life had for him been quenched. No motor trip for him to-morrow.
+He had had enough heart-wrenching to bear as it was without that. No!
+If between these two a closer relation than that of mere friendship
+existed, his way was clear. He would return to the trenches to-morrow.
+
+"Oh, here you are, dear," said Mrs. Vincent, as Phyllis and Captain Neil
+returned to the room. "You found the air too close, I fear."
+
+"No," said Phyllis with simple sincerity, "it was Barry. I saw those
+men, and I could not bear it. I can't bear it now." Her lips were still
+trembling, and her eyes were filled with tears.
+
+"And yet," said Barry, "when you were over there in the midst of it all,
+you never once weakened. That's the wonder of it. You just go on, doing
+what you must do. You haven't time to reflect, and it's God's mercy that
+it is so. Thank God we have our duty to do no matter what comes. Without
+that life would be unbearable."
+
+"Now, what about to-morrow?" said Captain Neil briskly, as Mrs. Vincent
+rose from the table. "We must settle that. What about it, Barry?"
+
+"I don't know. Do you think I should go? It's your party and it's
+already made up."
+
+"Not quite," said Phyllis, looking shyly at him. "You belong to the
+party more than any of us, you know."
+
+"Then what about Paula?" said Barry. "This is her party, is it not?"
+
+Phyllis was silent.
+
+"I think, Captain Dunbar," said Mrs. Vincent, "if you would like it,
+you ought to go. You need something of the kind, and you will fit in
+admirably with the party, I am quite sure. To-day," she added with a
+little laugh, "I was doubtful as to the propriety of these young people
+going off all the way to Edinburgh by themselves, but you know in these
+war times we do extraordinary things, but now if you join them, my
+scruples will be removed."
+
+"Some chaperon," whispered Captain Neil audibly to Phyllis. Then he
+added briskly, "Well, then, that's settled. To-morrow at 8:37 we meet at
+King's Cross, 8:37, remember."
+
+But for Barry the matter was far from settled.
+
+"I can't quite make up my mind to-night," he said. "I shall be at King's
+Cross, however, in the morning at any rate."
+
+"But, Barry," began Phyllis, protesting, "you must--I want--"
+
+She ceased speaking abruptly, her face flushing and then going suddenly
+white.
+
+"Oh, rot, old man," said Captain Neil, impatiently, "you will come. Of
+course he'll come," he added to Phyllis.
+
+They moved together out of the room, Mrs. Vincent and Captain Neil
+leading the way.
+
+"Oh, Barry, aren't you going?" said Phyllis in a low voice.
+
+"How can I answer that?" he replied, almost in anger. "Do YOU ask me to
+go? Do YOU want me to go?"
+
+"Of course, we all want you to go," said the girl.
+
+"Is that your answer?" His voice was tense; his face strained. "If that
+is all, Phyllis, I must say 'Good-bye' to-night. Why should I go with
+you? Why should I stay here in London? There's nothing for me here. The
+war is the only place--"
+
+"Oh, Barry," she said, her eyes bright with tears, "how unkindly, how
+terribly you talk." Then with a swift change of mood she turned upon
+him. "What right have you to talk like that?" she cried in sudden wrath.
+"What have I done--what have we done to you?"
+
+"Wait, Phyllis," he cried desperately. "Oh, let them go on," he added
+impatiently. "For Heaven's sake, is there no place about here where I
+can talk to you?" They were both pale and trembling. "I must talk to you
+to-night--now--at once." He stood between her and the door. "Can't
+you see I love you? I love you, do you hear? If you don't love me, why
+should I live?"
+
+"Oh, Barry," said the girl, in a hurried voice. "You must not talk like
+this. Come this way. I know this place." She hurried out by a side door,
+down a corridor, and into a small parlour, with cosy corners, where they
+were alone.
+
+"Now, Phyllis," said Barry, facing her, with a settled fierceness in
+his voice and manner. "I am quite mad, I know, to love you, but I do. I
+can't help it any more than breathing. I have no right to tell you this,
+perhaps. I am nobody, and I have nothing to offer any girl. I see that
+now. Oh, I see that clearly now, but I never thought of that part of
+it before. I only loved you. How could I help it? I hardly knew myself
+until tonight. But I know now," he added in a voice of triumph, the
+gloom lifting from his face, and the fierce light fading from his eyes.
+"Yes, I know now, Phyllis. I love you. I shall always love you. I love
+you and I am glad to love you. Nothing can take that from me."
+
+All this time she was standing before him, her face white, her lips
+parted, a look of wonder, almost of fear, in the brown eyes, so bravely
+holding his, her hands pressed hard upon her bosom, as if to stay its
+tumult.
+
+"I have no right to say this to you," said Barry again. "You belong to a
+great family. Perhaps you are rich. Great Heavens!" he groaned. "I never
+thought of that. You are beautiful. Many men will love you, great men
+and rich men will love you. You are so wonderful. Why, there's Captain
+Neil, he--"
+
+"Captain Neil," echoed Phyllis, with infinite scorn in her voice.
+
+"Well, many men."
+
+"Many men," she repeated, her lips beginning to tremble. "Oh, Barry,
+can't you see? You blind boy. There's only one man for me, Barry, and
+that's you, just you." She came near to him, laid her hands upon his
+breast, her eyes looking into his.
+
+"Phyllis," he said, putting his arms round her, a great wonder in his
+voice. "It can't be true! Oh, it can't be true! Yet your eyes, your dear
+eyes say so. Phyllis, I do believe you love me."
+
+The little hands slid up around his neck; he drew her close.
+
+"Phyllis, my dear, dear, love," he whispered.
+
+He felt her body suddenly relax, and as she leaned backwards in his
+arms, still clinging to him, he bent over her and his lips met hers in a
+long kiss.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A WEDDING JOURNEY
+
+
+"Just a moment, if you please, Paula. I should like to get down a
+few notes of this bit. Oh, what a view! Lake, moor, hills, mountains,
+village!"
+
+Mr. Howland sprang from the car, sketchbook in hand, and ran forward
+to a jutting rock that commanded the wide valley, flanked by hills, in
+whose bosom lay a loch, shimmering in the morning light. The car drew
+up on the brow of a long and gently sloping incline, which the road
+followed until it disappeared in a turn at the village at the loch's
+end.
+
+"Get the little church tower in, father, and a bit of the castle. I can
+see it from here," said Paula, standing upon the motor seat.
+
+"I shall try this further rock," said her father. "Ah, here it is. Do
+come, all of you, and get this. Oh, what a perfectly glorious view!"
+
+The little group gathered about him in silence, upon a little headland
+that overlooked the valley, and feasted upon the beauty that spread
+itself out before them, the undulating slope and shimmering loch, the
+wide moors and softly rounded hills, the dark green masses of ragged
+firs, and the great white Bens in the far distance, and below them,
+in the midst the human touch, in a nestling village with its
+Heaven-pointing spire.
+
+"Hark!" said Paula.
+
+From across the loch there floated up to them, soft and mellow as an
+angel's song, the sound of a bell.
+
+Mr. Rowland dropped his sketchbook, took off his hat, and stood as if in
+worship. The other men followed his example.
+
+"Father," said Paula, "let's go to church."
+
+"Hush," said her father, putting up his hand, and so stood for some
+moments.
+
+"Oh, Scotland, Scotland!" he cried, lifting his arms high above his
+head, "no wonder your children in exile weep for their native land."
+
+"And your men fight and die for you," added Paula, glancing at Captain
+Neil.
+
+"Thank you," said Captain Neil, turning quickly away.
+
+"Yes," said Paula, "we shall go to church here, father."
+
+The church stood against a cluster of ancient firs, in the midst of
+its quiet graves, yew shaded here and there. Beside it stood the manse,
+within its sweet old garden, protected by a moss covered stone wall.
+
+At its gate the minister stood, a dark man with silvering hair, of some
+sixty years, but still erect and with a noble, intellectual face.
+
+"Let us speak to him," said Paula, as they left their car.
+
+With characteristic reserve, Barry and Neil shrank from greeting a
+stranger, but with fine and easy courtesy Mr. Howland bared his head,
+and went up to the minister.
+
+"We heard your bell's invitation, sir," he said, "and we came to worship
+with you."
+
+A grave smile touched the dark face.
+
+"You rightly interpreted its message," he said. "Let me repeat its
+welcome."
+
+"We are Americans, at least my daughter and I are," said Mr. Howland,
+presenting Paula, a frank smile upon her beautiful face, "and this is
+her young friend from London, Miss Vincent, and these young officers are
+of the Canadian army."
+
+"Canadians!" exclaimed the minister, meeting them with both hands. "Oh,
+you are indeed welcome."
+
+"We are all in the war, sir, I would have you know," added Mr. Howland.
+
+The minister looked puzzled.
+
+"Let me explain," said Barry. "Mr. Rowland and his daughter are on leave
+from their own hospital which they have set up in France. Miss Vincent
+is from the base hospital in Boulogne."
+
+Like the sun breaking upon the loch in a dull day, a smile broke over
+the dark face. He threw the gate wide open.
+
+"In the name of my country, in this its dark hour, let me give you
+welcome," and once more he shook them each by the hand. "We have still
+half an hour before worship," he continued. "Pray do me the honour of
+entering my manse."
+
+They followed him up the shrubbery-flanked gravel walk to the door.
+
+"Enter," he said, going before them into the manse. "Jean! Jean!" he
+called.
+
+"Yes, dear," came a voice like the sound of a silver bell, and from
+another room issued a lady with a face of rare and delicate loveliness.
+Her soft, clinging black gown, with a touch of white at her throat,
+served to emphasise the sweet purity of her face, but cast over it a
+shade of sadness at once poignant and tender.
+
+"My dear, this is Mrs. Robertson," he said simply; "these friends,
+Americans and Canadians, are from the war."
+
+At that word she came to greet them, her face illumined by a smile
+inexpressibly sweet, but inexpressibly sad. "You are welcome, oh, very
+welcome," she said, in a soft Scotch voice. "Come in and rest for a few
+moments."
+
+"Our young friend here, Captain Dunbar, is chaplain of a distinguished
+Canadian regiment."
+
+"They are all distinguished," said the lady.
+
+"A chaplain?" said the minister. "My dear sir, we should be grateful for
+a message for our people from the front--"
+
+"Oh, yes, if you would," added his wife.
+
+"But," protested. Barry, "I want to hear some one else preach. One
+gets very tired of one's own preaching, and besides I'm a very poor
+preacher."
+
+"I'll take that risk, but I will not press you," said the minister
+courteously.
+
+"Do, Barry," said Paula in a low voice, but he shook his head.
+
+"I see you have some soldier friends at the front," said Mr. Rowland,
+pointing to a photograph on the mantel of a young officer in Highland
+dress.
+
+"Our son, sir," said the minister quietly.
+
+"Our only son," added his wife quietly. "He was in the Black Watch."
+Her voice, with its peculiar bell-like quality, was full of pride and
+tenderness.
+
+"Oh," said Phyllis, turning to her with quick tears in her eyes and
+holding out her hand.
+
+"Ah," said the lady, "you too? Your brother?"
+
+"My two brothers."
+
+"My dear child! My dear child!" said the minister's wife, kissing her.
+"Your mother was greatly privileged," she added gently.
+
+It was a deeply moving scene.
+
+"Madam," said Mr. Howland, wiping his eyes, "forgive me, but you mothers
+are the wonder of the war."
+
+"There are many of us in this glen, sir," she replied. "We cannot give
+our lives, sir. We can only give what is dearer than our lives, our
+dear, dear sons, and, believe me, we don't grudge them."
+
+"Madam," said Mr. Howland, "the whole world honours you and wonders at
+you."
+
+"Sir," said Barry, obeying a quick impulse, "I cannot preach, but may I
+tell your people something about their boys and how splendid they are?"
+
+"Thank you," said the minister.
+
+"Oh, would you?" cried his wife. "There are many there who feel only the
+loss and the sorrow. You can tell them something of its splendour."
+
+By this time in the eyes of all the visitors there were tears, but on
+the faces of the minister and his wife there was only the serene peace
+of those who within the sacred shrine of sacrifice have got a vision of
+its eternal glory.
+
+"Barry," said Paula, drawing him aside, "I love you for this, but do
+talk about something, or I shall surely cry. These people break my
+heart."
+
+"Oh, no," said Barry, looking at them, "there are no tears there. They
+have been all the way through."
+
+"Like people, like priest!" The folk that gathered in the little church
+that morning were simple people of the glen, shepherds and cotters from
+the countryside, humble villagers. They were women for the most part,
+with old men and children. The girls were away at the munition plants,
+the young men at the war, fighting or lying under their little crosses
+or in their unknown and unmarked graves, on one of Britain's five battle
+fronts, or under the tossing waters of the Seven Seas where Britain's
+navy rides, guarding the world's freedom. Simple peasant folk they were,
+but with that look of grave and thoughtful steadfastness with which
+Scotland knows how to stamp her people.
+
+The devotions were conducted by the minister with simple sincerity,
+and with a prophet's mystic touch and a prophet's vision of things
+invisible.
+
+Barry made no attempt at a sermon. He yielded himself to the spirit
+of the place, the spirit of the manse and its people, whose serene
+fortitude under the burden of their sorrow had stirred him to his soul's
+depths. Their spirit recalled the spirit of his own father and the
+spirit of the men he had known in the trenches. He made a slight
+reference to the horrors of the war. He touched lightly upon the
+soldiers' trials but he told them tales of their endurance, their
+patience, their tenderness to the wounded, their comradeship, their
+readiness to sacrifice. Before he closed, he lifted them up to see the
+worth and splendour of it all and gave them a vision of the world's
+regeneration through the eternal mystery of the cross.
+
+They listened with uplifted face, on which rested a quiet wonder,
+touched with that light that only falls where sacrifice and sacrament
+are joined. There were tears on many faces, but they fell quietly,
+without bitterness, without passion, without despair.
+
+A woman with a grief worn face waited for him at the foot of the pulpit
+stairs, the minister's wife and Phyllis beside her.
+
+"Mrs. Finlayson wishes to speak to you," she said.
+
+"Ay, ay! I jist want to say that you had the word for me the day. I
+see it better the noo. A'm mair content that ma mon sud be sleepin' oot
+yonder." She held Barry's hand while she spoke, her tears falling on it,
+then kissed it and turned away.
+
+"And this," said the minister's wife, "is Mrs. Murray, who has given
+three sons, and who has just sent her last son away this week."
+
+"Three sons," echoed Barry, gazing at the strong face, beaten and brown
+with the winds and suns of fifty years, "and you sent away your last.
+Oh, I wonder at you. How could you?"
+
+"A cudna haud him back wi' his three brithers lyin' oot there, and," she
+added, with a proud lift of her head, "and wudna."
+
+It took some minutes for Barry to make his way through to the door. He
+wanted to greet them all. He had a feeling that he was there not in his
+own person but as a representative standing between two noble companies
+of martyrs, those who had gone forth to die, and those who had sent
+them.
+
+"You have done us a great service to-day, sir," said the minister in
+bidding Barry good-bye.
+
+"It was a privilege to do it," said Barry as he shook hands with the
+minister and his wife. "I shall tell the men about you and your people."
+
+"My dear, my dear, is he your man?" asked the minister's wife as she
+held Phyllis' hand.
+
+"He is," said Phyllis, glancing at Barry with shy pride.
+
+"And he leaves you soon?"
+
+"In two days," replied the girl, with a quick breath.
+
+"Don't let him away till you give yourself wholly to him. Why not
+to-morrow? It's a mother's word."
+
+"That's what I say," cried Paula impulsively, seeking to cover the
+girl's blushing confusion. "Neil," she added, turning to him, "I should
+love to be married in just such a dear little church as this."
+
+"All right," said Neil. "I know another just like it, and I shall show
+it to you next week."
+
+They wandered down by the loch's side. Passing a boat-renting
+establishment, Paula suddenly exclaimed,
+
+"My Land of Liberty, look there, Barry!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"A canoe," she cried, running toward it. "A Canadian canoe!"
+
+"A genuine Peterboro," he cried, following her. "Where did you get
+this?" he inquired, turning to the boatman.
+
+"My boy brought it with him from Canada, sir. He is an engineer. I have
+his whole outfit in the house--tent, camp things and all. He is at the
+war himself."
+
+"Oh, Barry, look at the dear thing. What does it make you think of?" She
+glanced at Barry's face and added quickly, "Oh, I know. Forgive me. I'm
+a fool!"
+
+"Come along, Phyllis," said Barry, drawing her away with him. "I want to
+talk to you."
+
+"We shall take lunch in half an hour, Barry," called Mr. Howland after
+him. "We're due at Pitlochry, you know, for dinner."
+
+"All right, sir," said Barry. "We'll be on hand."
+
+"I wonder if she's got the nerve," said Paula to Captain Neil as they
+stood looking after them.
+
+"I wonder," said Captain Neil, looking at her. "Would you?"
+
+"Would I," said Paula, with sudden shyness. "I--but you are not going
+away in two days."
+
+"No, thank the good Lord," said Captain Neil, fervently, "but, Paula,
+I'll not forget."
+
+At Pitlochry they found their mail awaiting them.
+
+"A telegram for you, Barry," said Paula, who had assumed the duty of
+postman.
+
+They all paused in examining their mail to watch Barry open his wire.
+
+"Guess," he shouted, holding his telegram high.
+
+"Oh, glory, I know!" exclaimed Paula. "Extended leave. How much?"
+
+"'Oh, excellent young maid, how much elder art thou than thy looks!'"
+
+"Oh, Barry!" exclaimed Phyllis. "How much?"
+
+"Five days, five whole days."
+
+"Humph! It's the least they could do. They might have made it ten,"
+grumbled Paula.
+
+"Mr. Howland, may I speak to you a moment?" Barry's look and voice were
+eloquent of resolve.
+
+"Certainly, Barry. Immediately?"
+
+"If you please, sir."
+
+They retired to a corner, where Barry could be seen with ardent look
+and vehement gesture putting his proposition to Mr. Howland, whose face
+showed mingled pleasure and perplexity. The others waited patiently for
+the conference to end.
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said Paula, "Barry ought to know by this time that the
+pater simply can't make up his mind without me. I know what they are
+at."
+
+She moved over to them.
+
+"Now, father, of course you will do as Barry wishes," she declared.
+"Oh, I know what he wants. Now listen to me. Just wire Mrs. Vincent that
+everything is perfectly all right, that you can guarantee Barry,
+and that it's the sensible thing, the only thing to do under the
+circumstances. Oh, we'll have it in that dear little church. Splendid.
+Perfectly ripping! Eh, Phyllis? Come over here at once. Now, father, get
+busy on the wire. Why waste a perfectly good hour in just talking about
+it? What do you say, folks? How many say 'Ay'?"
+
+Up went Barry's two hands, and with them Neil's and Paula's.
+
+"What about you, miss?" asked Paula, turning wrathfully toward Phyllis.
+
+Phyllis walked quietly to Barry's side.
+
+"Barry," she said, giving him her hand, "I have decided to be married
+to-morrow. I shall wire mamma."
+
+Barry answered her only with his eyes.
+
+"By Jove!" said Paula, "you Britishers are the limit, for stolid,
+unemotional people. Here am I shouting my head off like a baseball fan,
+to get this thing put through, and you quietly walk up and announce that
+everything's fixed but the band."
+
+The wires to London that afternoon were kept busy, a message going to
+Mrs. Vincent from each member of the party, but it was felt that that
+from Phyllis to her mother was really all that was necessary.
+
+
+"Dearest Mamma--Barry and I are to be married tomorrow. English law
+makes London impossible, as Barry has only five days. I am very happy,
+feeling sure you approve. Our dearest, dearest love.
+
+"Phyllis."
+
+
+A long wire also went from Barry to Mr. Robertson, the minister of the
+little church, where they had spent such a delightful hour that morning,
+but this wire Barry showed to no one.
+
+The bride's bouquet was from the manse garden, a shower of white roses,
+no purer and no sweeter than the bride herself. At the church door, the
+party stood shrinking from the moment of parting. At length Paula took
+matters in hand.
+
+"As usual," she said, "the heavy work falls to me. Dear Mrs.
+Robertson"--to the minister's wife--"goodbye. I shall always love you
+and your dear little church."
+
+She put her arms around the minister's wife and kissed her.
+
+"Oh, we're going to see them off," said that lady. "Lead the way,
+Captain Dunbar, please," she added, with a bright smile, giving him a
+little push.
+
+"Come, Phyllis," said Barry offering his wife his arm, and they started
+off down the street toward the lake.
+
+"Will you permit me?" said the minister, offering his arm to Paula, who
+in mystified silence took it without a word.
+
+"May I have the pleasure?" said Mr. Howland, offering his arm to Mrs.
+Robertson.
+
+"Come, Captain Fraser," she said gaily, offering him the other arm.
+
+"Just what is happening to me, I don't pretend to know," said Paula,
+"but whatever it is, America is in this thing to the finish."
+
+Barry stopped at the boathouse landing. There, tied to the dock, floated
+the Canadian canoe, laden with tent and camp outfit, and with extra
+baskets provided from the manse.
+
+"Oh, Barry, how wonderful! How perfectly wonderful!" cried Paula in an
+ecstasy of delight.
+
+In that farewell there were tears and smiles, but more smiles than
+tears. The last to touch their hands was Paula. She managed to draw them
+apart from the others, with her eyes glistening with unaccustomed tears.
+"You deserve each other. Phyllis," she whispered, alternately shaking
+and kissing her, "there was a day when I would have fought you for him,
+until Neil came. Barry, you dear boy, you may kiss me goodbye, and oh,
+may you both live forever."
+
+"Goodbye, dear Paula," cried Phyllis. "You have been so lovely to me
+from the very first. I shall never, never forget you."
+
+"Goodbye, Paula," said Barry, "dearest of all dear friends."
+
+She stooped to steady the canoe, while Phyllis stepped to her place in
+the bow.
+
+"Goodbye to all of you. God love you and keep you all," said Barry.
+
+He took his paddle and stepped into the canoe, Paula still stooping over
+it to keep it steady.
+
+"Dear, dear Barry," she whispered, and for the first time her tears
+fell. "Goodbye! Goodbye!"
+
+Together the little company stood watching them away, Phyllis in the
+bow, not paddling, sat with her face toward them, Barry swinging his
+paddle with graceful, powerful strokes, until just at a curve of the
+shore, where some birches overhung the water, he swung the canoe half
+round, and with paddle held Voyageur fashion in salute, they passed out
+of sight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE PILOT'S LAST PORT
+
+
+The little Canadian army was done with The Salient. The British
+tradition established in the third month of the war, in that first
+terrific twenty-two days' fight by Ypres, that that deadly convex should
+be no thoroughfare to Calais for the Hun, was passed on with The Salient
+into Canadian hands in the early months of 1915. How the little Canadian
+army preserved the tradition and barred "the road-hog of Europe" from
+the channel coast for seventeen months, let history tell, and at what
+cost let the dead declare who lie in unmarked graves which, following
+the curving line of trenches from Langemarck through Hooge and Sanctuary
+Wood over Observation Ridge to St. Eloi, and the dead under those little
+crosses that crowd the cemeteries of The Salient and of the clearing
+stations in the rear, and the living as well, who through life will
+carry the burden of enfeebled and mutilated bodies.
+
+For seventeen months the Canadians in shallow dugouts and behind flimsy
+trenches endured the maddening pounding of the Huns' guns, big and
+little, without the satisfaction of reprisal, except in raid or
+counter-attack, suffering the loss of two-thirds of their entire force,
+but still holding. Now at length came the welcome release. They were
+ordered to the Somme. Welcome not simply because of escape from an
+experience the most trying to which an army could be subjected, but
+welcome chiefly because there was a chance of fighting back.
+
+They had no illusions about that great battle area of the south, echoes
+of whose titanic struggle had reached them, but they longed for a chance
+to get back at their foe. Besides, the Somme challenged their fighting
+spirit. That glorious assault of the first of July of the allied
+armies which flung them upon the scientifically prepared, embattled
+and entrenched "German Frontier," with its fortified villages, its gun
+stuffed woods, its massed parks of artillery, and defended by highly
+disciplined and superbly organised soldiery, stirred them like a bugle
+call. For two years the master war-makers of the world had employed
+scientific knowledge, ingenuity and unlimited resources upon the
+construction of a system of defence by means of which they hoped to defy
+the world, and upon which when completed they displayed the vaunting
+challenge, "We are ready for you; come on!"
+
+In that great conflict there was no element of surprise. It was a
+deliberate testing out of strength, physical and moral. For the first
+time in the war the British army stood upon something like even terms
+in manpower and in weight of metal, with, however, the immense handicap
+still resting upon it that it was the attacking force. The result
+settled forever the question of the fighting quality of the races. When
+the first day's fight was done, on a battle front of twenty miles the
+British armies had smashed a hole seven miles wide, while their gallant
+allies, fighting on an eight-mile front, had captured the whole line.
+In two weeks' time, the seven-mile hole was widened to ten. Fortified
+villages, entrenched redoubts, woods stuffed with guns, great and small,
+had gone down before that steady, relentless, crushing advance. The
+full significance of the Somme had not dawned as yet upon the world. The
+magnitude of the achievement was not yet estimated, but already names
+hitherto unknown were flung up flaming into the world's sky in letters
+of eternal fire, Ovillers, Mametz Wood, Trones Wood, Langueval, Mouquet
+Farm, Deville Wood for the British, with twenty-one thousand prisoners,
+and Hardecourt, Dompierre, Becquin-Court, Bussu and Fay for the French
+allies, with thirty-one thousand prisoners.
+
+On that line of carefully chosen and elaborately fortified defences, the
+proudest of Germany's supermen of war had been beaten at their own game
+by the civilian soldiers of "effete and luxury loving Britain," and the
+republican armies of "decadent France," and still the Homeric fight was
+raging. Foot by foot, yard by yard, the Hun was fighting to hold the
+line which should make good his insolent claim to the hegemony of the
+world. Step by step, yard by yard, that line was being torn from his
+bloody fingers. Into that sea of fire and blood, the Canadians were to
+plunge. They remembered Langemarck and Sanctuary Wood and St. Eloi, and
+were not unwilling to make the plunge. They thought of those long
+months in The Salient, when the ruthless Hun from his vantage ground of
+overwhelming superiority had poured his deadly hail from right flank,
+left flank, front and rear, upon them, holding, suffering, dying, day by
+day, month by month, and they were grimly jubilant over the chance which
+the Somme offered them of evening somewhat the score.
+
+"We have something to hand Fritzie," young Pickles was heard to remark
+when he had learned of the quality of the Somme fighting, "and I hope
+he'll like it, for he's got to take it."
+
+The battalion ranks, both officers and men, had once more been filled
+up. They had a brief fortnight's training in the new open fighting under
+barrage and then set off cheerfully for the "Big Game." Ten days they
+marched and countermarched in the back country, keeping clear of those
+two mighty streams "up" and "down," that flowed between ditches and
+hedges along the road that led to the great arena, and catching glimpses
+and echoes as they marched until, hard, fit, keen, they joined the
+"upstream" flowing toward Albert. That stream was made up of those
+various and multifarious elements that go to constitute, equip and
+maintain a modern army.
+
+There were marching battalions, with their mounted officers, bearing
+names and insignia famous in the world's wars for two hundred years, and
+with them battalions who a few brief months ago were peaceful citizens,
+knowing nothing of war. There were transport columns, ammunition
+columns, artillery columns, with mounted escorts. There were big guns,
+on huge caterpillar trucks, shouldering the lighter traffic to the
+ditches, and little guns slipping meekly in their rear. There were motor
+lorries, honking and thundering their insistent way through dodging,
+escaping, cursing infantry, forty-six miles of them to a single army
+corps. There were strings of mules and horses with weirdly shaped
+burdens on their pack saddles. There were motor cars bearing "Brass
+Hats," gentle looking individuals, excessively polite, yet somehow
+getting men to jump when they spoke, and everywhere ambulances, silent
+and swift moving, before whose approach the stream parted in recognition
+of the right of way of these messengers of mercy over all the enginery
+of war.
+
+The "down stream" was much the same, with here and there differences.
+That stream flowed more swiftly. The battalions marched with more
+buoyant tread. They had done their part and without shame. They had met
+their foes and seen their backs. The trucks, transport and ammunition
+wagons were empty and coming with a rush. Only the ambulances moved more
+slowly. Carefully, with watchful avoidance of ruts and holes, which,
+in spite of the army of road-mending Huns, broke up the surface of the
+pavements these ambulances made their way. They must get through no
+matter what was held up.
+
+And as they flowed these streams ever and anon broke their banks and
+flooded over in little eddies into villages and fields, there to tarry
+for a day and a night, only to be caught up again in either one of those
+resistless inevitable currents of war.
+
+"Look before you, major," said Barry, who was riding with the
+Headquarters Company at the head of the column, as often now at the
+invitation of the O. C.
+
+The column was slowly climbing a long gentle sloping hill that reached
+its apex some two or three miles away. On either side, spread out over
+the fields, as far as the eye could reach, were military encampments, in
+tents, in huts and in the open. Infantry units, horse lines, motor
+truck parks, repair camps for motors and for guns, ammunition dumps
+with shells piled high, supply sheds bulging with their canvas-covered
+contents, Red Cross huts and marquees, and Y. M. C. A. tents with their
+cues of waiting soldiers, getting "eats" and drinks, and comforts of
+various kinds. The whole countryside was one mighty encampment packed
+with munitions and supplies and thronging with horses, mules and men.
+
+"This is war on the 'grand scale,'" said the O. C. dropping back beside
+them. "From the top of this hill we can see Albert and a part of the
+most famous battle-field of all time. We camp just outside of Albert
+on what is known as the 'brick field,' and in a couple of days more
+we shall be in it. Well," he continued, with a glance over the column
+following, "the boys never were more fit."
+
+"And never more keen," said the major. "They are right on their toes."
+
+"Major, I expect to meet the divisional commander down here, and I want
+you to be there. Captain Dunbar, you know him, I believe. He has asked
+especially that you should be there as well."
+
+"Yes, sir, I have met the General. To my mind he is an ideal soldier."
+
+"Yes, and an ideal officer," said the O. C. "He knows his job and he is
+always fit and keen."
+
+At the top of the hill, a traffic officer, a young lieutenant from the
+Imperial forces, diverted the column from the road into a field.
+
+"Why is this?" inquired the O. C.
+
+"There's the answer, sir," said the officer coolly.
+
+There was a long drawn whine which rapidly grew into a shriek and an H.
+E. shell dropped fair in the road, a short distance in front.
+
+"Oh, I see, you have some of these birds down in this country, too."
+
+"Yes, sir, this is their breeding ground," said the young lieutenant.
+
+Once more came the long whining shriek and the terrific blast of the H.
+E., this time closer.
+
+"I would not delay, sir, if I were you," said the young chap coolly,
+pulling out his cigarette case. "They get rather ugly at times."
+
+"What about you?" inquired the O. C. moving off.
+
+"Part of my job, sir," replied the youth, saluting.
+
+"Well, good luck, boy," said the O. C., trotting to the head of the
+column.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said the youth, turning to his job again.
+
+They rode a hundred yards, when another shell came, there was a terrific
+explosion, apparently just at the spot where the young officer had been
+standing.
+
+"By Jove! I'm afraid that's got him," said the O. C.
+
+"I'll go and see, sir," said Barry, spurring his horse back to the spot.
+
+"Come back here, Barry," called the major. "Darn him for a fool! What's
+the use of that? That isn't his job," he added angrily.
+
+"He thinks it is, probably," said the O. C.
+
+Barry found a great hole in the road with the officer's horse lying
+disembowelled beside it, kicking in his death agony. There was no sign
+of his rider anywhere. Fortunately there was a gap in the column, so
+that no one else was near enough to be injured.
+
+As Barry stood gazing about, a voice hailed him from the ditch, which
+was several feet deep.
+
+"I say, sir," said the voice, "I wouldn't just stay there. They
+generally send over four of 'em. That's only the third. I find this
+ditch very convenient, though somewhat mucky."
+
+Barry looked at him in astonishment. He was white and shaken, covered
+with mud, but trying to get his cigarette case open.
+
+"I'd get off, sir, if I were you," he said, "until the next one comes.
+Quick, sir, I hear it now."
+
+Barry needed no second invitation. He flung himself headlong into the
+ditch beside the young fellow, but the shell dropped into the field
+beyond.
+
+"That's as near as I like 'em," said the young officer, scraping the
+mud off his clothes. "My poor, old gee-gee got it though." He drew his
+revolver and shot the wounded animal. "It's hard on the horses. You see,
+they can't dodge," he added.
+
+"I say, my boy," said Barry, for the lieutenant was only a boy, "that
+was a near thing for you. What are you going to do now?"
+
+"Oh, just carry on," said the boy. "The relief will be along in a few
+hours. Beastly mess, eh?" he continued, but whether he referred to the
+disembowelled horse or the state of his own uniform, Barry could not
+say.
+
+"You are sure you are all right?" said Barry, as he shook hands with
+him. "I'm awfully glad you weren't hurt."
+
+"So am I," said the boy heartily. "Awfully rotten to be potted out here
+playing a bally policeman, eh? What? Well, good luck, sir," and Barry
+rode off to join his column with a deep admiration in his heart for the
+English school boy who, when war began, was probably a fifth form lad,
+in whose life the most dangerous episode would be a ball taken full off
+bat at point, or a low tackle on the Rugby field.
+
+At Divisional Headquarters, they met the general, who after a
+conversation with the O. C. greeted Barry warmly.
+
+"So you have gone and done it, young man. Well, I admire your nerve, and
+I congratulate you. I happen to know the family very well. As a matter
+of fact there is some remote connection, I believe. By the way, I have a
+communication from London for you," he added, drawing Barry to one side,
+and giving him a little slip. "I happen to know about it," he continued,
+while Barry was reading his telegram, "and say, if I can be of any
+assistance, I shall be very glad. It's a step up, you see. I have no
+doubt it can be put through quite easily and quickly, and I believe the
+step is coming to you."
+
+Barry stood with his eyes upon the dispatch. It was an offer of a
+hospital appointment at the base, and carried with it his majority.
+
+"I have no doubt the missus will be pleased, eh?" said the general with
+a grin.
+
+Barry pulled out a letter from his pocket, opened it and handed it to
+the general, pointing to a paragraph. The general took it and read,
+
+"And Barry, dear, remember that though you have a wife now, your duty to
+your country is still your first duty. I would hate that any thought of
+me should make it harder for you to carry on."
+
+The general folded up the letter, put it slowly into its envelope, and
+handed it back to Barry.
+
+"I know her," he said simply. "I should expect nothing else from her.
+You are a lucky dog, but, of course," he added, with a swift glance at
+Barry's face, "some one must take that job."
+
+"I fancy, sir, there are many for it, who are hardly fit for this work
+up here," replied Barry quietly. "I think, sir, I'll just carry on where
+I am."
+
+"You are quite sure?" inquired the general. "Don't you want a day or two
+to think it over?"
+
+"I am quite sure, sir," said Barry, "I am quite sure that my wife would
+approve."
+
+"Very well, then," said the general, "let me handle this for you, and
+let me say, sir, that I am proud to have you in my division."
+
+So saying, he gripped Barry's hand hard, and turned abruptly away to the
+others.
+
+They rode to their camp in almost complete silence, except for a grunt
+or two from the O. C. who seemed in a grumpy mood.
+
+When they arrived at Headquarters, the O. C. drew up his horse and
+turning to the major, said,
+
+"I don't know just what to do with this Pilot of ours. He is a fool in
+some ways."
+
+"A darned fool, sir," said the major emphatically.
+
+"And," continued the major, "I am selfish enough to say that I am damned
+glad--I won't apologise, Pilot--that he decided to stay with us. It
+would have been just a little harder to carry on if he had left us."
+
+"Yes," growled the major, "but, oh, well, we have got to stick it I
+guess. The Pilot is a soldier all right."
+
+There was nothing further said about the matter, but next day as Barry
+walked about the camp, among the men, their eyes followed him as he
+passed, and every officer in the mess seemed to discover an errand that
+took him to Barry's tent.
+
+Two days later the Canadians moved up into the line and took over from
+the Australians. They followed the Bapaume Road toward Pozieres, passing
+through a country which had seen the heaviest fighting in the war.
+
+"This," said the O. C., drawing aside from the road, and riding to a
+slightly rising ground, "is La Boiselle, or at least where it was, and
+that I fancy is the famous mine crater. Sixty thousand pounds of gun
+cotton blew up that hole."
+
+There was absolutely no sign of the village, the very foundations of the
+houses, and the cellars having the appearance of a ploughed field.
+
+"That was a desperate fight," continued the O. C. "It was here that
+the Middlesex men made their great charge. Fifty men reported from the
+battalion when it was over. In that village they had a whole division
+fighting before they were through, Middlesex men, Royal Scots and Irish,
+for three days and three nights."
+
+As they rode along, the guns on either side began their evening
+chorus and from the far rear came the roaring rush of the H. E.'s like
+invisible express trains hurtling through the air. It was music to their
+ears, and they rode forward with a new feeling in their hearts, for
+there appeared to be almost no reply from the enemy guns.
+
+The battalion took to the trenches at the crossing of the Pozieres Road,
+and so effective was the counter-battery work that they were able to
+settle down into their battle positions without casualties. The R. A. P.
+was in a deep German dug-out thirty feet below the surface, with double
+entrances and heavily timbered. It had been most elaborately prepared,
+planked on sides and floor, and fitted with electric lights. There were
+two main rooms, with a connecting corridor, leading to each entrance.
+They found an Australian medical officer in charge.
+
+"These chaps were regular settlers, weren't they?" said Barry, after
+they had exchanged greetings.
+
+"Yes, sir, they intended to sty, apparently," said the Australian, in
+his slow drawl. "We found some letters on a wounded officer indicating
+their intention to remyn for the durytion, but we wanted the
+plyce--couldn't carry on without it in fact. It's quite a good plyce,
+too," he added with a cheerful grin.
+
+"Why, it's just bully," said the M. O. "I am only sorry that we can't
+promise you as good in The Salient."
+
+"I hear it is rather rotten, eh, sir?" said the Australian.
+
+"Not as bad as Gallipoli, though," said Barry. "By Jove! You Australian
+chaps did magnificently down there. Must have been a perfect hell."
+
+"Oh, yes, quite hot for a while, but I fancy you Canydians didn't have
+any afternoon tea party in The Sylient, eh? My word, there was some
+fighting there. Oh, there it comes," he added.
+
+As he spoke a muffled explosion was heard, and the dug-out rocked, and
+the candles flickered.
+
+"Can they get you down here?" inquired the M. O.
+
+"I fancy a direct hit from a really big H. E. would disturb our little
+home, but nothing else would. Of course, a shell in the door wye would
+be a bit awkward, you knaow," replied the Australian.
+
+The night, however, passed quietly, and except for a few slightly
+wounded walking cases, there was little work to do. The Canadians
+decided that in coming to the Somme, they had made a most happy
+exchange.
+
+A quiet day followed the night, but the whole battalion was keyed up
+with intense expectation for the attack which they knew was fixed for
+the night following. With expectation mingled curiosity. They knew all
+about raiding; that was their own specialty, but they were curious as
+to the new style of fighting which they knew to be awaiting them, the
+capturing, holding and consolidating of a line of enemy trenches.
+
+Nightfall brought the opportunity to gratify their curiosity. For two
+hours before the attack, their guns put down the barrage to cover the
+front line of enemy trenches, and to dispose of his wire.
+
+The M. O. and Barry, with the Australian and their whole staff, made
+their way to a ridge a few yards distant to see the show.
+
+"Great Heaven, what is that?" inquired the M. O., pointing to what
+seemed to be a line of flickering watch fires upon the crest of a
+neighbouring rising ground.
+
+"Guns! Ours," said the Australian, surprised at the M. O.'s excitement.
+
+"Guns! My Lord, guns, Barry," shouted the M. O.
+
+"Guns? And in the open! And on a hill! And wheel to wheel!" cried Barry.
+"Thank the good Lord I have lived to see this day. Look at the boys," he
+added in a low tone, to the Australian beside him.
+
+They glanced over their shoulders and saw two of the orderlies executing
+a fox-trot in the heavy shell-ploughed soil.
+
+"What's the row?" inquired the Australian.
+
+"Why, my dear chap," replied the M. O., "don't you know we have never
+seen a gun in action in the open that way. Our guns operated only from
+holes and corners, from hedges and cellars. Otherwise they'd be spotted
+and knocked out in an hour."
+
+"Ow!" said the Australian, "our bird men attended to that the first dye
+of the fight. They sye there was a double line of observation balloons
+along the lines, ours and theirs up to the 30th of June. The next
+morning not a Boche balloon was to be seen. Our plynes put their eye out
+in a single afternoon. Since that time, we hold over them in the air.
+Ah! There are the heavies coming up now. The full chorus will be on in
+half a minute."
+
+A few seconds later, the truth of the Australian's prophecy was
+demonstrated. The full chorus was on. For two hours the barrage raged,
+and the din was such that they had to shout in each other's ears to be
+heard. The hilltops were ringed with darting tongues of red flame as
+though belched out by a thousand fabled dragons. It was as if the air
+above was filled with millions of invisible demons, whining, moaning,
+barking, shrieking in a fury of venomous hate, while at regular
+intervals came the express train roar of the twelve, fifteen and sixteen
+inch guns.
+
+"It's almost worth while to have lived through those months in The
+Salient," said Barry, "to get the full enjoyment of this experience.
+Well do I remember the day when our O. C. asked for 'retaliation,' and
+was told he could have six rounds, I think it was, or eight. Meanwhile
+our trenches and dug-cuts were going up in bloody mud."
+
+"I think we might as well go below," said the Australian. "They will be
+coming in presently."
+
+But Barry and the M. O. remained long after the first coming in shells
+began to drop around. That barrage so long waited for, and so ardently
+desired, was worth some risk.
+
+Soon the wounded began to arrive, and throughout the whole night, the
+M. O. and his staff were busy at their work. On the arrival of the zero
+hour, the barrage lifted.
+
+"Well, good luck go with the boys," said the Australian, fervently.
+"They are out and over now. We'll get some of them presently."
+
+Throughout the night, a stream of walking wounded kept flowing in.
+Jubilant, exultant in spite of their pain, they bore with them the
+joyful report that they had shifted the Hun from his trenches and his
+deep dug-outs, and were still advancing. Singing at the top of their
+voices, they came limping in, bloody and muddy, but wild with exultation
+and joy. The day long looked for by the Canadians had arrived. They were
+getting something of their own back.
+
+The next day revealed the full extent of the achievement. The whole
+Canadian line had swept forward for over a thousand yards, had captured
+strong points, a fortified sunken road, the famous "sugar refinery" and,
+overrunning their objective, had captured the village of Courcelette, as
+well. It was a gallant little fight, and quite a notable achievement.
+
+After two days the battalion was pulled out, having suffered
+comparatively slight losses, and more than ready to return when the
+opportunity should come.
+
+The next three weeks were spent in minor operations, consolidating
+positions, repelling counter-attacks, and preparing for the real "big
+go," in which the Canadians were to take their part in the advance of
+the whole allied line, after which the battalion was sent into reserve
+for a few days' respite.
+
+The Canadian line was gradually wearing thin, but the spirit of those
+who survived was the spirit of the whole allied line,--the spirit that
+claimed victory and was not to be denied. As to the nature of the task
+awaiting them, however, they well knew that it was to be a fight in
+which the last ounce of resolution and only the last ounce would carry
+them through to their objective.
+
+The experiences of the allies during the past months had wrought in
+them a settled conviction that victory was awaiting them, and a settled
+resolution that that victory they would secure at all cost soever.
+
+At length the day arrived, a dull October day, overhung with rain clouds
+and thick with chill mist. On the parade ground the battalion was drawn
+up for the service which always preceded an attack.
+
+The operations of the past month had reduced the battalion to about half
+its fighting strength. Only some five hundred men, with officers barely
+sufficient to direct their movements, looked back at Barry through the
+mist as he faced them for the service.
+
+"Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation," he read.
+The psalm might have been written for the occasion.
+
+"He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence: I shall not be
+moved.
+
+"My soul, wait thou only upon God: for my expectation is from him.
+
+"He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence: I shall not be
+moved.
+
+"In God is my salvation, and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my
+refuge is in God.
+
+"Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him.
+God is a refuge for us."
+
+Barry made only a single comment upon the psalm, "Men, nothing can move
+God, and nothing can move those whose trust is in God. Remember God is
+to be trusted."
+
+The reading was followed by the General Confession, the Absolution and
+a brief extemporary prayer, concluding with the Lord's Prayer. As Barry
+was mounting his horse a runner brought him an order from his divisional
+chief, directing him to report at the casualty clearing station in
+Albert for immediate duty. He carried the order to the O. C.
+
+"Look at this!" he stormed.
+
+"Too bad! Too bad!" said the O. C. "Rotten luck for you."
+
+"Look here, sir," said Barry, "I have always gone up with the battalion,
+and I think--"
+
+"I fancy they are getting on to you, Dunbar. You know you have rather
+shirked the C. C. S. duty," said the O. C. with a smile.
+
+"Isn't there some way out of this? If I got a substitute--"
+
+"A soldier obeys orders, Captain Dunbar," said the O. C. gravely.
+
+"Yes, sir, I know, but--"
+
+"And he doesn't say 'but'," continued the O. C. "No, Barry," he added in
+a kindly voice, "I have no responsibility or authority in this. I'd be
+glad to have you come up with us. We are going into the 'big thing' this
+time, I know, but perhaps it's just as well. You go your way and we'll
+go ours. I'd like to say this to you, however, my boy, you have been a
+great help to me with the men."
+
+His tone was grave but kind, and it sent to Barry's heart a chill of
+foreboding. "Good-bye, Barry," he added, shaking hands with him.
+
+"Good-bye, sir. Good luck, sir. May I say, sir," said Barry, "that you
+have helped me immensely with my duty."
+
+"Do you say so, Barry?" said the O. C., a note of surprise in his voice.
+"I'm delighted to know that."
+
+"God keep you, sir," said Barry earnestly.
+
+"Thank you, sir. We are in His keeping, aren't we?" and turning in his
+saddle, he gave the order to advance.
+
+Barry rode with the column to the very mouth of the communication trench
+running to Pozieres, dropping into step with each company commander for
+a time, and leaving each with a cheery word of farewell. At the mouth
+of the trench, he stood watching the men as they stepped down and out
+of his sight, giving them a word of good cheer and good luck as they
+passed, and receiving in return answering smiles and greetings. Then
+with eyes unseeing, he rode back to camp, heavy of heart, for he knew
+well that many of these faces he would see no more.
+
+The zero hour was fixed for five a. m. the following morning. As the
+hour drew near, Barry at his work in the C. C. S., found in his heart
+the words of the psalm, "My soul wait thou only upon God . . . I shall
+not be moved." That wounds and death were awaiting many of them he well
+knew, and his prayer was that they might meet the fate appointed them
+with unshaken faith and courage.
+
+By seven o'clock the wounded began to arrive and an hour later the C.
+A. M. C. marquee was filled to overflowing with a cue of wounded men
+forming outside in the falling rain. The suffering in their pale and
+patient faces stirred in him a poignant sympathy. There was the chaplain
+service tent adjoining. He ran to find the chaplain in charge.
+
+"Tell me," he said, "may we use your marquee for wounded men?"
+
+"Sure thing. It will never be used for a better purpose."
+
+Barry returned to the O. C. of the C. C. S.
+
+"Why not direct that a part of this stream be sent to the adjoining tent
+for registration, and for anti-tetanus hypodermics? These poor chaps are
+standing out in the rain, chilled to the bone and ready to drop."
+
+"For Heaven's sake do it," said the O. C. "We are really up against it
+here. Can you take that off my hands?"
+
+"I'll try," said Barry.
+
+In a few minutes the congestion at the door of the marquee was relieved
+and the wounded men, to their own vast comfort, were bestowed upon the
+benches and chairs in the chaplain service tent. But something further
+was necessary to their comfort.
+
+"Draper," said Barry to the chaplain in charge of the tent, "you see
+these men? They have had nothing to eat since last night. They have
+fought a battle, been wounded, and walked out some five miles or so,
+since then. It's eight o'clock now. What about it?"
+
+"What about it?" exclaimed the chaplain. "You watch me!"
+
+He ran to the Y. M. C. A. tent, enlisted the secretary's aid and in
+twenty minutes they together had transported to the chaplain service
+tent coffee and cocoa urns, and with an organised band of assistants
+were supplying the wounded with warming and comforting nourishment.
+Never had those splendid services more quickly and effectively justified
+their place in the army.
+
+With the wounded came rumours, more or less fantastic, of disaster.
+Something terrible had befallen the whole Canadian line. It was
+difficult to get at the truth. As with all rumours, they contradicted
+each other and left the mind in a chaos of perplexity. The battalion had
+run into wire, where the machine guns had found it, the battalion was
+practically wiped out, it had found cover in a trench and was still
+holding on, the O. C. was wounded, the O. C. was killed, and with him
+every company commander.
+
+Again and again, Barry sent men to the signals to learn the truth, but
+it was found impossible to get a message through. That an overwhelming
+disaster had befallen his battalion was abundantly evident from the
+numbers of wounded. With his heart growing numb with pain he struggled
+with his work. Gradually, he was forced to accept as true that a large
+proportion of the battalion were casualties, that the O. C. was wounded,
+possibly dying, that many of the officers had fallen and that the
+remainder were still holding a precarious position, and fighting for
+their lives.
+
+"I shall not be moved," he had read to them last night. The promise was
+being fulfilled in the men of his battalion. They could die at the
+wire or in the trench, but they could not be moved. While mechanically
+carrying on his work, his mind was with the fighting, dying remnant
+of his comrades. The O. C. of the C. C. S. passing on his rounds found
+Barry carrying on with tears blinding his eyes so that he could hardly
+see the figures he was entering in his record.
+
+"Your men are having a hell of a time, I hear," said the O. C. "I say,
+boy," he added, glancing at Barry's haggard face, "let up for a while."
+
+"I'm all right, sir," said Barry, through his teeth. "Excuse me, really
+I'm all right. It is a bit difficult to carry on when you know that your
+friends are being cut to pieces, but I'm all right, sir."
+
+"All right, my boy," said the O. C., "we're up against it to-day. I'll
+come for you in a few minutes, and we'll have a bit to eat."
+
+Barry shook his head. He was too sick to eat, but the O. C. knew better
+than he just what he wanted. In a few minutes he returned with an
+assistant who took Barry's place.
+
+"Come along, boy," said the O. C. cheerfully. "We have got to feed the
+living that we may care for the wounded and dying."
+
+"You are quite right, sir," said Barry. "I am ashamed of myself. I'll be
+fit in a few minutes."
+
+"Don't apologise for one moment," said the colonel, "if you felt any
+less deeply than you do, you'd be something less than a man. We'll get
+into touch with the Divisional Headquarters, and try to get the facts."
+
+He had no sooner reached his private room than his signaller informed
+him that Divisional Headquarters had just been trying to get him. It
+took some time, however, to get the message through. Meantime, the
+Colonel was handling Barry with a wise and skillful touch. He made him
+eat and eat heartily, seeking to divert his mind in the meantime from
+the disaster that had befallen the battalion to the big issues at stake,
+and pointing out with resolute cheerfulness that the calamity that had
+befallen the battalion was only a temporary setback.
+
+"We're winning, my boy, and we're paying the price," he said.
+
+At length signals got the D. H. Q. and called the colonel to the phone.
+After a few minutes' conversation, the O. C. called Barry.
+
+"The general wants to speak to you, padre," and Barry with an
+apprehensive heart went to the phone.
+
+"Oh, that you, Captain Dunbar?" It was the general's voice and somehow
+it carried with it an atmosphere of calm and cheerful confidence. "How
+are you getting on?"
+
+"Oh, sir, very well. We are terribly anxious, of course."
+
+"That's natural," said the general quietly. "We have had rather a
+serious reverse. Your whole brigade met with wire, and I fear they
+suffered heavily. The men behaved with great steadiness and are still
+splendidly holding. We are, of course, making every effort to relieve
+them, and with good hope of success."
+
+"Have you heard of my O. C.?" inquired Barry.
+
+"I fear rather bad news, Dunbar. Indeed, I fear he is seriously wounded.
+We have sent him straight on to Contay. Your officers have suffered
+quite severely."
+
+"Have you heard what the casualties are, sir?"
+
+"Not exactly," replied the General. "We shall not know until evening,
+but we must be prepared for a heavy loss. By the way, can you be spared
+from the casualty clearing station? I hear you are doing fine work
+there. If you can run up, I can send my car for you."
+
+"I'm afraid not, sir, just now. Perhaps later on in the afternoon."
+
+"Let me speak to Colonel James," said the general.
+
+The O. C. came to the phone.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said.--"Well, we are short handed just now.--He is really
+necessary at the present moment.--Yes, later on we'll send him up.--Very
+well, sir.--We are doing our best."
+
+The calm and confident bearing of his superior officer, made Barry
+ashamed of the unnerving emotion from which he had been suffering all
+morning. He returned to his work resolved to put aside all personal
+considerations. The thing in which they were engaged was vastly more
+important than the fate of any individual or of any battalion. Victory
+was necessary, was guaranteed, and was demanding its price. That price
+was being paid, and to that price every man must make his contribution.
+
+Toward night the stream of wounded gradually grew less, and the O. C.
+sent Barry, in a returning ambulance, up to the Divisional Headquarters.
+The serenity with which the general received him did much to restore
+Barry's poise, which had been severely shaken by the strain of the night
+and day with the wounded in the casualty clearing station and by the
+heartracking agony he had suffered over the loss of his comrades.
+
+"Come in, Dunbar," said the general kindly. "Take a seat for a few
+minutes. Have a cigar. These you will find are good, I think."
+
+"Thank you, sir. I will take a cigarette, if I may," said Barry, helping
+himself from a box on the table.
+
+He had not been many minutes in the dug-out until he began to catch
+the reactions of the place. The spirit was one of controlled but
+concentrated energy. It was the spirit of the divisional commander,
+and it passed from him to the humblest orderly in the room. There
+was swiftness of action, alertness of mind, and with these a complete
+absence of hurry or confusion. Runners were continually arriving with
+urgent messages, phones insisting upon immediate answer, officers coming
+in with business of vast importance, but with no sign of flurry, the
+work of the Divisional Headquarters went swiftly and smoothly on.
+
+At length there was a pause in the rush of calls upon the general's
+attention.
+
+"Come in this way," he said to Barry, and led him to a smaller room at
+the back of the dug-out.
+
+"Very comfortable quarters these. They seem to have done themselves
+quite well, haven't they? It is most convenient, for we certainly should
+not have taken pains to construct such elaborate dug-outs as these
+we have fallen heir to. Find a seat, Dunbar. I have got the latest
+reports." His voice was very gentle and very kindly. "Yes," he
+continued, "we have had a bad night's work. Uncut wire and an enfilade
+from a redoubt which should have been blown up. The casualties are very
+heavy."
+
+"What are they?" Barry asked.
+
+"Quite heavy, Dunbar, I'm afraid. Only some fifty have reported so far."
+
+"Fifty!" cried Barry. "Out of five hundred!"
+
+"There will doubtless some more drop in," added the general, "but we
+must be prepared for a heavy loss, far heavier, both in officers and
+men, than we can afford. The Battalion Headquarters was terribly wrecked
+by a succession of direct hits. Only a few of the staff escaped unhurt.
+Colonel Leighton was a fine officer. I had a great admiration, indeed,
+affection, for him. I know how you felt towards him, and he to you."
+
+The steadiness in his voice brought quiet, but the kindness in it
+brought strength, and comfort. Barry became suddenly aware of the
+crushing load of responsibility upon this gentle-voiced man. He was
+eager to help.
+
+"I wish I could help you, sir," he said. "I am sure we are all ready to
+do our best."
+
+"I know that, Dunbar, and all are needed. Major Duff has gone out badly
+injured. The only officers remaining unhurt in the front line are Major
+Bayne and Captain Fraser, both of whom are splendidly carrying on. And
+you, too, have given great help to-day. Colonel James assures me that
+your initiative and resourcefulness were of the greatest service to him.
+Oh, by the way, a message came through in a letter the other day, that I
+should have sent you, but other things put it out of my mind, I am sorry
+to say." He touched a bell. "You see I had to tell your wife, Dunbar,
+of your determination to stay by us," he added with a smile. "Get me my
+private post-bag, please," he said to the orderly. He selected a letter
+from a packet, opened it, and pointed to a page. Barry recognised the
+handwriting as his wife's. He read:
+
+"I need not assure you it was none of my family's doing to get that
+appointment for Barry. I was not surprised that he declined it, but then
+you see I know Barry. He is at the place where I would want him to be."
+
+Barry kept his eyes steadily upon the words until he should be sure of
+his voice. His heart was thrilling with pride in the girl who had given
+herself to him. As the moments passed, he there and then vowed that by
+God's grace, he would not shame her nor belie her trust in him.
+
+"Thank you, sir," he said quietly, handing the letter back.
+
+"Helps a bit, eh, what?" said the general. "We can't let our women down,
+can we?"
+
+"No, sir," said Barry. "Is there nothing I can do?" His voice was as
+steady and quiet as the general's.
+
+"Oh, thank you, just the C. C. S., I fancy, at present."
+
+At that point the door opened, and the corps commander came in, wearing
+a very tired and anxious face.
+
+"Bad business, general," he said, with a single word of greeting and
+ignoring Barry.
+
+"Yes, a very bad business, sir," said the divisional commander, and
+Barry fancied he caught a new note in his voice, a note of sternness,
+almost of challenge.
+
+"Seems that we missed that wire, eh, along here?" said the corps
+commander, putting his finger upon a map which lay on the table.
+
+"We must have that patrolled very carefully, you know." There was a note
+of criticism in his voice.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the corps commander courteously. "I wasn't at all
+sure that the wire was cut, and so reported."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"This strong point should have been removed," continued the divisional
+commander, putting his finger upon a point of junction. "That I asked to
+be done, but McDowell seems to have missed it."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"The enfilade got us from that point, of course." There was no mistaking
+the implication in the general's words.
+
+"Ah! You reported that, eh?"
+
+"You will find it in my report, sir. My division has suffered very
+heavily from that strong point."
+
+The corps commander turned, and apparently observing Barry for the first
+time started and said,
+
+"You are--"
+
+"My friend, Captain Dunbar," said the general.
+
+"Ah, Captain Dunbar," said the corps commander, obviously annoyed at his
+presence at the interview. "I trust Captain Dunbar is quite--"
+
+"Captain Dunbar's reticence," said the general with quiet courtesy, "can
+be entirely trusted. He has just been doing some fine work at the C. C.
+S."
+
+"Ah, yes. You are a padre, Dunbar? Oh, I remember to have heard about
+you. Very glad, indeed, to meet you, sir. Well, I must be off. We'll see
+to that strong point at once, general. Good-night--good-night, Dunbar."
+
+The general returned from seeing his visitor out. "Of course, we keep
+these things to ourselves."
+
+"Of course," answered Barry.
+
+"And now," said the general with a kindly smile, "I have kept the good
+news to the last. Your majority is coming through, and here is a letter
+which came in my care. Now, if you will excuse me, I'll leave you to
+take a bit of a rest. There's a cot, if you want to lie down. Then we'll
+have a bite to eat later."
+
+"Oh, thank you very much," said Barry eagerly, taking the letter. "This
+is good news, indeed. My letters have been going astray somehow. I have
+not had one for a week."
+
+"As long as that," said the general with uplifted brows.
+
+One sentence in his letter made music in Barry's heart.
+
+"And oh, my heart's beloved, God has been good to me and to you, for
+when the war is over, I hope there will be two of us to welcome daddy
+back." To which sentence Barry in his letter, written in immediate
+reply, said,
+
+"Yes, dear, dear heart, God has been good to us, in that he has given us
+to each other, and to us both this wonderful new life to carry on when
+we are done."
+
+When the general returned, he found Barry with his face on his arms and
+dead asleep.
+
+"Poor chap," he said to his batman, "he is done up. Let him rest a bit."
+
+They gave him an hour, after which they had their bite together.
+
+"Now, general," said Barry, "I should like to run up to Battalion
+Headquarters. I might be of use there."
+
+"That's quite all right," said the general. "You will be glad to know
+that that strong point has already been attended to. You didn't hear the
+row, did you?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Well the relief is going in and your men will soon be out."
+
+When Barry entered the Battalion Headquarters, he found only Major Bayne
+and Captain Neil, with a signaller and a couple of runners, completing
+the arrangements for the relief.
+
+"You! Pilot!" exclaimed the major, as he gripped his hand. "Now what the
+devil brought you here?"
+
+"Couldn't help it, major. Simply had to come. I have been trying to get
+you all day," said Barry.
+
+"Awfully glad to see you, old chap," said Captain Neil, for the major
+was finding difficulty with his speech.
+
+"How many left, major?" said Barry.
+
+"Five officers and seventy men," said the major in a husky voice. "My
+God, how those boys stuck."
+
+"I shall not be moved," quoted Barry.
+
+"That's it! That's it!" said the major. "Not the devil himself, let
+alone the Huns, could move them back from that wire. What is it,
+Sergeant Matthews?" he inquired of the sergeant who came in at that
+moment. "Have you completed your work?"
+
+Sergeant Matthews was pale, panting and exhausted. "Yes, sir," he said,
+"I think so. I didn't--I didn't--go quite the full length of the trench.
+The boys said there was no one up there."
+
+"But, Sergeant Matthews," thundered the major, "your orders were to go
+to the very end of the trench. You know this battalion never goes out
+leaving its wounded behind."
+
+"We had a full load, sir," said the sergeant, leaning against the wall.
+
+"Well, you will have to go back," said the major, "and complete the job.
+Can you carry on?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I think so, sir."
+
+As he spoke Sergeant Matthews swayed along the wall and collapsed onto a
+bench.
+
+"Give him a shot of rum," said the major curtly to a runner.
+
+"Let me go, major. I'll take the party," said Barry eagerly. "The
+sergeant is all in. I've had an hour's sleep and a feed and I feel quite
+fit."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, the sergeant will be all right soon," said the major
+impatiently.
+
+"But, major, I should like to go. The sergeant is played out and I am
+perfectly fit. We can't take the risk of leaving wounded men up there
+in that trench. Besides, there's little danger now. The strong point is
+blown up, so the general told me before I left."
+
+"No, Barry, I won't allow it. I won't take the chance," said the major.
+"My God, man! there are only five officers left. I have lost every
+friend I have got in the battalion, except Neil here and you. I'm damned
+if I'm going to let you go out over No Man's Land."
+
+"Steady, now, major," said Barry. "I'm going to take a walk to the end
+of that trench, just in case one of the boys should be there. Don't say
+no. It must be done and done carefully."
+
+"All right, Barry," said the major, suddenly yielding. "Better take the
+sergeant with you. He knows the way, and I guess he's all right now."
+
+The major and Captain Neil followed the party up the stairs and out into
+the trench. It was a beautiful starry night, and all was quiet now along
+the front.
+
+"I don't like it," said the major, as he and Captain Neil stood together
+watching the party away. "I feel queer about it, Neil. I tell you I wish
+I hadn't let him go, but he is so darned stubborn about what he thinks
+is his duty."
+
+"By Jove! Major, he always bucks me up somehow," said Captain Neil.
+
+"Bucks us all up," said the major, and he turned to take up again the
+heavy burden of responsibility so suddenly and so terribly laid upon
+him. The relief had been completed, and the last N. C. O. had just
+reported "all clear." The Headquarters Company, now reduced to a poor
+half dozen, were standing ready to move, when the telephone rang.
+
+"Yes, doctor," said the major, answering it. "Oh, my God! My God! Not
+that, doctor! Oh, God help us all! I'll be right down. It's the Pilot,
+Neil," he said, turning to his friend. "Just take charge, will you
+please. I must run."
+
+Breathless he arrived at the R. A. P.
+
+"Any chance, doctor?" he asked of the M. O. who was standing awaiting
+him at the door.
+
+"Not the very least, major, and he only has a few minutes. He wants
+you."
+
+"Now, may God help me," said the major standing quite still a moment or
+two. "How did he get it?" he asked of a stretcher bearer. "Do you know?"
+
+"Yes, sir, we had just picked up the last man. Sergeant Matthews got a
+wound in the leg, and we had to carry him. Just as we started, they
+got to shelling pretty bad and we dropped into a hole. I looked over my
+shoulder and there was the Pilot, the chaplain, sir, I mean, with his
+body spread over Sergeant Matthews, to keep off the shrapnel. It was
+there he got it."
+
+"Damn Sergeant Matthews," exclaimed the major, and passed on.
+
+Barry was lying on a stretcher, very white and very still, but the smile
+with which he welcomed the major was very bright.
+
+"Awfully sorry--for you,--old chap," he whispered. "Couldn't
+really--help--it--you know--we--got--them all--I'm--awfully--glad--to
+see you--just a minute--before--before--"
+
+The major, by this time, was weeping quietly.
+
+"You have--been--a good friend--to me--major--. We--have had--a
+good--time--together--. Say--goodbye--to--the boys--for--me--and----to
+to--Neil."
+
+"Oh, Barry, boy," said the major, brokenly. "It's hard to have you go.
+You have helped us all."
+
+Barry fumbled with weak fingers at his breast. The major opened his
+tunic thinking that he needed air.
+
+"My--my--let-ter--" he whispered.
+
+The major took the letter from his breast pocket, and put it in his
+hand. Barry held it a moment, then carried it to his lips.
+
+"Now--that's--all--major," he whispered.
+"Tell--her--I--thank--God--for--her--and--for--the--other.
+Major--tell--the boys--that--God--is good--. Never--to be--afraid--but
+to--carry on--"
+
+It was his last word, and there could be no better. "God is good. Never
+be afraid but carry on."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+"CARRY ON"
+
+
+The next day but one they carried the Pilot to his grave in the little
+plot outside the walled cemetery on the outskirts of the city of Albert.
+It had been arranged that only a small guard should follow to the grave.
+But this plan was changed. Sergeant Mackay, who was the only sergeant
+left after consulting "the boys," came to Major Bayne.
+
+"The boys feel bad, sir," he said, "that they can't go with the Pilot,
+excuse me, sir, the chaplain."
+
+"Do they?" said the major. "We want to avoid congestion in the streets,
+and besides we don't want to expose the men. They are still shelling the
+city, you know."
+
+"I know, sir," replied the sergeant. "The boys have heard the shells
+before, sir. And there's not so many of them that they will crowd the
+streets much."
+
+"Let them go, sergeant," said the major, and Sergeant Mackay went back
+with the word to the men. "And I want you to look like soldiers," said
+the sergeant, "for remember we are following a soldier to his grave."
+
+And look like soldiers they did with every button and bayonet shining,
+as they had never shone for battalion inspection.
+
+They had passed through an experience which had left them dazed; they
+had marched deliberately into the mouth of hell and had come back
+stunned by what they had seen and heard, incapable of emotion. So they
+thought, till they learned that the Pilot had been killed. Then they
+knew that grief was still possible to them. With their grief mingled a
+kind of inexplicable wrath at the manner of his death.
+
+"If it had been the O. C. now, or any one else but Fatty Matthews," said
+Sergeant Mackay in disgust, expressing the general opinion. "It is an
+awful waste."
+
+Under the figure of the Virgin and Child, leaning out in pity and appeal
+over the shattered city, through marching battalions "going in" and
+"coming out," the little pitiful remnant made its way, the band leading,
+the Brigade and Divisional Headquarters Staffs bringing up in the rear.
+The service was brief and simple, a brother chaplain reading at the
+major's suggestion the Psalm which Barry had read at his last Parade
+Service with the battalion.
+
+At the conclusion of the service, the divisional commander stepped
+forward and said,
+
+"May I offer the officers and men of this battalion my respectful
+sympathy with them in the loss of their chaplain? During these last
+weeks, I had come to know him well. Captain Dunbar was a chaplain in
+his brigade. He was more. He was a gallant officer, a brave soldier,
+a loyal-hearted Canadian. The morale of this division is higher to-day
+because he has been with us. He did his duty to his country, to his
+comrades, to his God. What more can we ask than this, for ourselves and
+for our comrades?"
+
+Then there was a little pause and Major Bayne began to speak. At first
+his voice was husky and tremulous, but as he went on, it gathered
+strength and clearness. He reminded them how, when the chaplain came to
+them first, they did not understand him, nor treat him quite fairly, but
+how in these last months, he had carried the confidence, and the love,
+of every officer and man in the battalion.
+
+"Were the Commanding Officer here to-day, he would tell, as I have
+often heard him tell, how greatly the chaplain had contributed to the
+discipline and to the morale of this battalion. He helped us all to be
+better soldiers and better men. He never shrank from danger. He never
+faltered in duty. He lived to help his comrades and to save a comrade he
+gave his life at last."
+
+The major paused, looked round upon the gallant remnant of a once
+splendid battalion, his lips quivering, his eyes running over with
+tears. But he pulled himself together, and continued with steady voice
+to the end.
+
+"But not to say these things am I speaking to you today. I wish only to
+give you this last message from our Sky Pilot. This is the Pilot's last
+message: 'Tell the boys that God is good, and when they are afraid, to
+trust Him, and "carry on."' And for myself, men, I want to say that he
+was the only man that showed me what God is like."
+
+In that company of men who had looked steadfastly into the face of
+death, there were no eyes without tears, many of them were openly
+weeping.
+
+When the major had finished, the officers present, beginning with the
+divisional commander, came and stood at the head of the open grave for a
+single moment, then silently saluted and turned away. It was the duty
+of Bugler Pat McCann to sound "The Last Post," but poor Pat was too
+overcome with his sobbing at once to perform this last duty. Whereupon
+the runner Pickles, standing with rigid, stony face beside his chum,
+took the bugle from his hands and there sounded forth that most
+beautiful and most poignant of all musical sounds known to British
+soldiers the world over, "The Last Post," ending with that last, high,
+long-drawn, heart-piercing note of farewell.
+
+Then, because the war was yet to be won, they "carried on," the
+battalion marching away to a merry tune.
+
+Beside Barry's grave there still lingered three men, the divisional
+commander, Major Bayne, and Captain Neil.
+
+"I am thinking of that little girl in London," said the divisional
+commander, and for the first time his voice broke. The others waited,
+looking at him. "We will hold back this news for a couple of days, and I
+think, major, you ought to go and--"
+
+"No, general!--My God, no! Don't ask me!" The major was profoundly
+agitated. "Send Neil, here. He knows her well, and his wife is her great
+friend."
+
+"Very well, major, I think that will be better," said the general in his
+courteous, gentle voice. "You know her, Captain Fraser, and you can be
+better spared."
+
+And so it was arranged. Captain Neil telegraphed Paula to meet him at
+Boulogne, and together they made the journey to London, carrying with
+them sad and fearful hearts.
+
+They found Phyllis in a little flat which her mother had taken. When
+she saw them her face went white, and her hands flew to her bosom.
+Speechless, and with a great fear in her wide-open brown eyes, she stood
+looking from one to the other, waiting for their message. Paula went to
+her and without a word put her arms round her, and held her close.
+
+"I know, Paula," she said, putting her gently away from her. "I know
+what you have to tell me. Barry is dead. My dear love is dead!" Her
+voice was tender, soft and low. "Don't fear to tell me, Neil," she said.
+"See, I am quite steady." She put out her hand that he might see that
+there was no tremour in it.
+
+"Sit down, darling," besought Paula, again winding her arms about her.
+
+"No, no, let me stand, Paula dear. See, I am quite strong. Now tell me
+about it, Neil--all about it. You were his dear friend, you know."
+
+Her voice, so sweet, so soft, so perfectly controlled, helped Captain
+Neil with his task. It seemed an offence that he should intrude any
+exhibition of grief or emotion upon the serene calm of this young girl,
+standing so straight, so proud, and regarding him with such brave eyes.
+
+Then Captain Neil told his tale. He began with the last service upon the
+Parade Ground before the battalion moved into action. He told of Barry's
+bitter disappointment, and of their relief that he was not allowed to
+accompany them to the front line. He told of Barry's long day at the
+casualty clearing station, and of his service to the wounded, and of how
+good the divisional commander had been to him that night.
+
+"It was there he got your letter, Phyllis."
+
+"Oh, he got my letter. I'm so glad," whispered the girl, with a quick
+breath and a sudden flushing of her pale cheeks. "He knew! He knew!"
+
+"I have his letter in reply here," said Captain Neil, handing it to her.
+
+She took it in both her hands, kissed it tenderly, as if caressing a
+child, and put it in her bosom.
+
+"Please go on," she said, and Captain Neil took up his tale again. He
+told how the major tried to persuade him not to go out after the wounded
+that night.
+
+"But, of course, he would go," the girl said with a proud little smile,
+at which Captain Neil's self-control quite gave way, and he could only
+look at her piteously through his tears.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said gently. "Can't you go on? I want to hear so
+much every bit, but if you can't--"
+
+At which, Captain Neil gripped himself hard and went on, "and so he went
+out, and they searched the trench from end to end. They found one poor
+chap, whose leg was badly smashed--"
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad they found him," whispered Phyllis.
+
+"Then Sergeant Matthews got his wound, and the shells began to fall.
+They took refuge in a shell hole, and there, while covering Fatty
+Matthews from the breaking shrapnel, Barry got his wound."
+
+Captain Neil was forced to pause again in the recital of his story.
+After a few minutes, he told of how they carried him to his grave, and
+laid him in the cemetery outside the city of Albert.
+
+"The boys were all there. There were not many of them left," he said.
+
+"How many?" she asked.
+
+"Seventy only, out of five hundred and four who went over the parapet
+two nights before."
+
+"Ah, poor, gallant boys! I love them, I love them all!" said the girl,
+clasping her hands together.
+
+"They were all terribly broken up as they stood about the grave, and no
+wonder! No wonder! Then the divisional commander made a little speech,
+and then our own major gave them Barry's last message."
+
+"Tell me," said the girl gently, as Captain Neil paused.
+
+"It was this," said Captain Neil. "'Tell the boys that God is good, and
+when they are afraid, to trust Him, and "carry on."'"
+
+"That was like him," she said. "That was like Barry! Oh, Paula," she
+cried, turning to her friend. "I'm so happy! It was a beautiful closing
+to a beautiful life. He was a beautiful boy, Paula, wasn't he? His body
+was beautiful, his soul was beautiful, his life was beautiful, and the
+ending, oh, was beautiful. Oh, Paula, God is good. I am so glad he gave
+Barry to me, and gave me to him. Oh, I'm so--happy--so--happy." Her
+voice sank into a whisper. Then after a few moments of silence, with a
+little piteous cry, she suddenly broke forth, "But Paula! Paula! he is
+gone. I shall never see him again."
+
+Paula held her arms tightly about her, sobbing as if her own heart were
+broken, but Phyllis recovered herself quickly.
+
+"No, no," she said softly, as if counselling her own heart. "I must
+remember. 'God is good,' he said, and so, Paula, I must not be afraid.
+God was good to him. He will be good to me. He will be good to his
+child." Her voice sank again into a whisper. She stood silent with eyes
+looking into the far distance. Then, in a clear, firm voice, she said,
+"I will not be afraid! God is good! I will 'carry on.'"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land, by Ralph Connor
+
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land
+#11 in our series by Ralph Connor
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+Title: The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land
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+Author: Ralph Connor
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+This etext was produced by Donald Lainson, charlie@idirect.com.
+
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+
+
+
+THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN'S LAND
+
+by RALPH CONNOR
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+
+CHAPTER
+
+I.  ONLY A MISSIONARY
+
+II.  ON THE RED PINE TRAIL
+
+III.  A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE
+
+IV.  REJECTED
+
+V.  THE WAR DRUM CALLS
+
+VI.  THE MEN OF THE NORTH
+
+VII.  BARRICADES AND BAYONETS
+
+VIII.  A QUESTION OF NERVE
+
+IX.  SUBMARINES, BULLPUPS AND OTHER THINGS
+
+X.  FRANCE
+
+XI.  THE NEW MESSAGE
+
+XII.  A MAN OF GOD
+
+XIII.  INTENSIVE TRAINING
+
+XIV.  A TOUCH OF WAR
+
+XV.  THINNING RANKS
+
+XVI.  THE PASSING OF McCUAIG
+
+XVII.  LONDON LEAVE AND PHYLLIS
+
+XVIII.  A WEDDING JOURNEY
+
+XIX.  THE PILOT'S LAST PORT
+
+XX.  "CARRY ON"
+
+
+
+
+THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN'S LAND
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+ONLY A MISSIONARY
+
+
+High upon a rock, poised like a bird for flight, stark naked, his
+satin skin shining like gold and silver in the rising sun, stood a
+youth, tall, slim of body, not fully developed but with muscles
+promising, in their faultless, gently swelling outline, strength
+and suppleness to an unusual degree.  Gazing down into the pool
+formed by an eddy of the river twenty feet below him, he stood as
+if calculating the distance, his profile turned toward the man who
+had just emerged from the bushes and was standing on the sandy
+strand of the river, paddle in hand, looking up at him with an
+expression of wonder and delight in his eyes.
+
+"Ye gods, what a picture!" said the man to himself.
+
+Noiselessly, as if fearing to send the youth off in flight, he laid
+his paddle on the sand, hurriedly felt in his pockets, and swore to
+himself vigorously when he could find no sketch book there.
+
+"What a pose!  What an Apollo!" he muttered.
+
+The sunlight glistening on the beautiful white skin lay like pools
+of gold in the curving hollows of the perfectly modelled body, and
+ran like silver over the rounded swellings of the limbs.  Instinct
+with life he seemed, something in his pose suggesting that he had
+either alighted from the golden, ambient air, or was about to
+commit himself to it.  The man on the sand continued to gaze as if
+he were beholding a creature of another world.
+
+"Oh, Lord!  What lines!" he breathed.
+
+Slowly the youth began to move his arms up to the horizontal, then
+to the perpendicular, reaching to the utmost of his height upon his
+toe tips, breathing deep the while.  Smoothly, slowly, the muscles
+in legs and thighs, in back, in abdomen, in chest, responding to
+the exercise moved under the lustrous skin as if themselves were
+living things.  Over and over again the action was repeated, the
+muscles and body moving in rhythmic harmony like some perfect
+mechanism running in a bath of oil.
+
+"Ye gods of Greece!" breathed the man.  "What is this thing I see?
+Flesh or spirit?  Man or god?"  Again he swore at himself for
+neglecting to bring his sketch book and pencil.
+
+"Hello, father!  Where are you?"  A girl's voice rang out, high,
+clear, and near at hand.
+
+"Good Lord!" said the man to himself, glancing up at the poised
+figure.  "I must stop her."
+
+One startled glance the youth flung down upon him, another in the
+direction of the voice, then, like a white, gleaming arrow he shot
+down, and disappeared in the dark pool below.
+
+With his eyes upon the water the man awaited his reappearing.  A
+half minute, a full minute he waited, but in vain.  Swiftly he ran
+toward the edge of the pool.  There was no sign anywhere of the
+youth.
+
+Ghastly pale and panting, the man ran, as far round the base of the
+rock as the water would allow him, seeking everywhere signs of the
+swimmer.
+
+"Hello, father!  Oh, there you are!"  Breaking through the bushes,
+a girl ran to him.
+
+"What is it, pater?  You are ill.  What is the matter?"
+
+"Good heavens! he was there!" gasped the man, pointing to the high
+rock.  "He plunged in there."  He pointed to the pool.  "He hasn't
+come up.  He is drowned."
+
+"Who?  What are you saying?  Wake up, father.  Who was there?"
+
+"A boy!  A young man!  He disappeared down there."
+
+"A young man?  Was he--was he--dressed?" inquired the girl.
+
+"Dressed?  No.  No."
+
+"Did he--did he--hear me--calling?"
+
+"Of course he did.  That's what startled him, I imagine.  Poor boy!
+I fear he is gone."
+
+"Did he fall in, or did he dive?"
+
+"He seemed to dive, but he has not come up.  I fear he is gone."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, father," said the girl.  "I bet you he has swum
+round the bend.  Just go over the rock and see."
+
+"God grant it!" said her father.
+
+He dropped his paddle, ran up over the rock and down into the
+little dell on the other side that ran down to the water's edge.
+There he saw a tent, with all the accompaniments of a well ordered
+camp, and a man cooking breakfast on a small fire.
+
+"Well, I'll be combusticated!" he said to himself, weakly holding
+to a little poplar tree.
+
+"I say!" he cried, "where is he?  Has he come in?  Is he all
+right?"
+
+"Who?" said the man at the fire.
+
+"The boy on the rock."
+
+The man gazed at him astonished, then as if suddenly grasping his
+meaning, replied,
+
+"Yes, he came in.  He's dressing in the tent."
+
+"Well, I'll be condumbusticated!" said the man.  "Say! what the
+devil does he mean by scaring people out of their senses in that
+way!"
+
+The man at the fire stood gazing at him in an utterly bewildered
+way.
+
+"If you will tell me exactly what you are after, I may be able to
+help you."
+
+The other drew slowly near the fire.  He was still pale, and
+breathing quickly.
+
+"Hello, dad, is breakfast ready?" came a cheery voice from the
+tent.
+
+"Thank God, he is alive apparently," said the man, sinking down on
+a log beside the fire.  "You must pardon me, sir," he said.  "You
+see, I saw him take a header into the pool from that high rock over
+yonder, and he never came up again.  I thought he was drowned."
+
+The man at the fire smiled.
+
+"The young villain gave you a fright, did he?  One of his usual
+tricks.  Well, as his father, and more or less responsible for him,
+I offer the most humble apology.  Have you had breakfast?"
+
+"Yes.  But why did he do such a thing?"
+
+"Ask him.  Here he comes."
+
+Out from the tent came the youth in shorts, the warm glow of his
+body showing through the filmy material.
+
+"Hello!" he cried, backing toward the tent door.  "You are the man
+with the paddle.  Is there by any chance a lady with you, or did I
+hear a lady's voice over there?  I assure you I got a deuce of a
+fright."
+
+"You gave me the supreme fright of my life, young man, I can tell
+you that."
+
+"But I surely heard a lady's voice," said the youth.
+
+"You did.  It was my daughter's voice, and it was she who suggested
+that you had swum around the bend.  And she sent me over here to
+investigate."
+
+"Oh, your daughter.  Excuse me," said the youth.  "I shall be out
+in a few minutes."  He slid into the tent, and did not reappear.
+
+The man remained chatting with the youth's father for a few
+minutes, then rising said,
+
+"Well, I feel better.  I confess this thing gave me something of a
+shock.  But come round and see us before we go.  We shall be
+leaving in an hour."
+
+The man at the fire promised to make the visit, and the other took
+his departure.
+
+A few minutes later the youth reappeared.
+
+"Is breakfast ready?" he cried.  "My, but I'm hungry!  But who is
+he, dad?"
+
+"Sit down," said his father, "and get your breakfast while it is
+hot."
+
+"But who is he, dad?" persisted the youth.
+
+"Who is he?" said his father, dishing up the bacon.  "An oil
+explorer, an artist, a capitalist, an American from Pittsburgh, the
+father of one child, a girl.  Her mother is dead.  Nineteen years
+old, athletic, modern type, college bred, 'boss of the show'
+(quotation).  These are a few of the facts volunteered within the
+limited space of his visit."
+
+"What's he like, dad?"
+
+"Like?  Like an American."
+
+"Now, dad, don't allow your old British prejudices to run away with
+your judgment."
+
+"On the contrary, I am perfectly charmed.  He is one of those
+Americans who capture you at once, educated, frank, open, with that
+peculiar charm that Britishers will not be able to develop for many
+generations.  An American, but not of the unspeakable type.  Not at
+all.  You will like him."
+
+"I am sure I shall," replied the youth.  "I liked his voice and his
+face.  I like the Americans.  I met such nice chaps at college.  So
+clever, and with such a vocabulary."
+
+"Vocabulary?  Well, I'm not too sure as to the vocabulary part of
+it."
+
+"Yes, such bright, pat, expressive slang, so fresh and in such
+variety.  So different from your heavy British slang, in which
+everything approaching the superlative must be one of three things,
+'ripping,' with very distinct articulation on the double p, or 'top
+hole,' or 'awfully jolly.'  More recently, I believe, a fourth
+variation is allowed in 'priceless.'
+
+"Ah, my boy, you have unconsciously uttered a most searching
+criticism on your American friends.  Don't you know that a
+vocabulary rich in slang is poverty stricken in forceful and well
+chosen English?  The wealth of the one is the poverty of the
+other."
+
+"Where is he going?" enquired the boy.
+
+"Out by way of Edmonton, Calgary, Moose Jaw, Minneapolis, so on to
+Pittsburgh.  Partner with him, young lawyer, expert in mines,
+unmarried.  He is coming back in a couple of months or so for a big
+hunt.  Wants us to join him.  Really extraordinary, when you come
+to think of it, how much information he was able to convey in such
+a short space of time.  Marvellous gift of expression!"
+
+"What did you say, dad?"
+
+"Say?  Oh, as to his invitation!  Why, I believe I accepted, my
+boy.  It seemed as if I could do nothing else.  It's a way he has."
+
+"Is--is the daughter to be along?"
+
+"Let me see.  What did he say?  Really, I don't know.  But I should
+judge that it would be entirely as she wished.  She is--"
+
+"Boss of the show, eh?"
+
+"Exactly.  Most vivid phrase, eh?"
+
+"Very.  And no doubt aptly descriptive of the fact."
+
+In half an hour the breakfast was finished, and the elder man got
+his pipe a-going.
+
+"Now, dad, you had better go along and make your call, while I get
+things together here."
+
+"What!  You not going!  No, no, that won't do, my boy.  It was
+about you they were concerned.  You were the occasion of the
+acquaintanceship.  Besides, meeting in the wilderness this way we
+can't do that sort of thing, you know."
+
+"Well, dad, frankly, I am quite terrified of the young lady.
+Suppose she should start bossing us.  We should both be quite
+helpless."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, boy!  Come along.  Get your hat."
+
+"All right, I'll come.  On your head be the consequences, dad.  No.
+I don't need a hat.  Fortunately I put on a clean shirt.  Will I
+do, dad?  You know I'm 'scairt stiff,' as Harry Hobbs would say."
+
+His father looked him over, but there was nothing critical in his
+glance.  Pride and love filled his eyes as they ran over his son's
+face and figure.  And small wonder!  The youth was good to look
+upon.  A shade under six feet he stood, straight and slim, strength
+and supple grace in every move of his body.  His face was beautiful
+with the beauty of features, clean cut and strong, but more with
+the beauty of a clear, candid soul.  He seemed to radiate an
+atmosphere of cheery good nature and unspoiled simplicity.  He was
+two years past his majority, yet he carried the air of a youth of
+eighteen, in which shyness and fearlessness looked out from his
+deep blue eyes.  It was well that he wore no hat to hide the mass
+of rich brown hair that waved back from his forehead.
+
+"You'll do, boy," said his father, in a voice whose rigid evenness
+of tone revealed the emotion it sought to conceal.  "You'll take
+all the shine from me, you young beggar," he added in a tone of
+gruff banter, "but there was a time--"
+
+"WAS a time, dad?  IS, and don't tell me you don't know it.  I
+always feel like a school kid in any company when you're about.
+
+
+     'When the sun comes out
+      All the little stars run in,'"
+
+
+he sang from a late music hall effusion.  "Why, just come here and
+look at yourself," and the boy's eyes dwelt with affectionate pride
+upon his father.
+
+It was easy to see where the boy got his perfect form.  Not so tall
+as his son, he was more firmly knit, and with a kind of dainty
+neatness in his appearance which suggested the beau in earlier
+days.  But there was nothing of weakness about the erect, trim
+figure.  A second glance discovered a depth of chest, a thickness
+of shoulder and of thigh, and a general development of muscle such
+as a ring champion might show; and, indeed, it was his achievements
+in the ring rather than in the class lists that won for Dick Dunbar
+in his college days his highest fame.  And though his fifty years
+had slowed somewhat the speed of foot and hand, the eye was as sure
+as ever, and but little of the natural force was abated which once
+had made him the glory of the Cambridge sporting youth, and which
+even yet could test his son's mettle in a fast bout.
+
+On the sandy shore of the river below the eddy, they found the
+American and his party gathered, with their stuff ranged about them
+ready for the canoes.
+
+"Ah, here you are, sir," said the American, advancing hat in hand.
+"And this is your son, the young rascal who came mighty near giving
+me heart failure this morning.  By the way, I haven't the pleasure
+of knowing your name."
+
+"My name is Richard Dunbar, and this is my son Barry."
+
+"My name is Osborne Howland, of Pittsburgh, and this is my daughter
+Paula.  In bloomers, as you see, but nevertheless my daughter.
+Meet also my friend and partner, Mr. Cornwall Brand."
+
+The party exchanged greetings, and spent some moments giving
+utterance to those platitudes which are so useful in such
+circumstances, a sort of mental marking time preparatory to further
+mutual acquaintance.
+
+The girl possessed that striking, dashing kind of brunette beauty
+that goes with good health, good living, and abundance of outdoor
+exercise.  She carried herself with that air of assured self-
+confidence that comes as the result of a somewhat wide experience
+of men, women and things.  She quite evidently scorned the
+conventions, as her garb, being quite masculine, her speech being
+outspoken and decorated with the newest and most ingenious slang,
+her whole manner being frankly impulsive, loudly proclaimed.
+
+But Barry liked her at once, and made no pretence of concealing his
+liking.  To her father, also, he was immediately drawn.  As to
+Cornwall Brand, between whom and the girl there seemed to exist a
+sort of understanding, he was not so sure.
+
+For half an hour or so they stood by the river exchanging their
+experiences in these northern wilds, and their views upon life in
+the wilderness and upon things in general.  By a little skilful
+managing the girl got the young man away from the others, and then
+proceeded to dissect and classify him.
+
+Through the open woods along the river bank they wandered, pausing
+here and there to admire the view, until they came to an overhanging
+bank at the entrance to a somewhat deep gorge, through which the
+river foamed to the boiling rapids below.  It was indeed a beautiful
+scene.  The banks of the river were covered with every variety of
+shrub and tree, except where the black rocks broke through; between
+the banks the dark river raged and fretted itself into a foam
+against its rocky barriers; over them arched the sky, a perfect
+blue.
+
+"What a lovely view!" exclaimed the girl, seating herself upon the
+edge of the bank.  "Now," she said, "tell me about yourself.  You
+gave my pater a fearful fright this morning.  He was quite
+paralysed when I came on him."
+
+"I am very sorry," said the youth, "but I had no intention--"
+
+"I know.  I told him not to worry," replied the girl.  "I knew you
+would be all right."
+
+"And how, pray?" said the young man, blushing at the memory of his
+startling appearance upon that rock.
+
+"I knew that any fellow who could take that dive wouldn't likely
+let himself drown.  I guessed, too, that if you heard me hoot--"
+
+"I did," said the youth.
+
+"You sure would get slippy right away."
+
+"I did."
+
+"I guess you were pretty well startled yourself, weren't you?" said
+the girl, pursuing the subject with cool persistence.
+
+"Rather," said the young man, blushing more violently, and wishing
+she would change the subject.  "You are going out?" he enquired.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"To-day?"
+
+"Now--right away."
+
+"Too bad," he said, his disappointment evident in his tone.
+
+"When are you going out?  But who are you, anyway?" asked the girl.
+"You have to tell me that."
+
+"My life story, so to speak?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"It's very short and simple, like the annals of the poor," he
+replied.  "From England in infancy, on a ranch in northern Alberta
+for ten years, a puny little wretch I was, terribly bothered with
+asthma, then"--the boy hesitated a moment--"my mother died, father
+moved to Edmonton, lived there for five years, thence to Wapiti,
+away northwest of Edmonton, our present home, prepared for college
+by my father, university course in Winnipeg, graduated in theology
+a year ago, now the missionary in charge of Wapiti and the
+surrounding district."
+
+"A preacher!" said the girl, her face and her tone showing her
+disappointment only too plainly.
+
+"Not much of a preacher, I fear," said the young man with a smile.
+"A missionary, rather.  That's my story."
+
+She noticed with some chagrin that he did not ask for hers.
+
+"What are you doing here?" she enquired.
+
+He hesitated a moment or two.
+
+"Dad and I always take a trip into the wilds every summer."  Then
+he added after a few moments' pause, "But of course we have other
+business on hand up here."
+
+"Business?  Up here?"
+
+"Yes.  Dad has some."  He made as if to continue, but changed his
+mind and fell into silence, leaving her piqued by his reserve and
+by his apparent indifference to the things concerning herself.  She
+did not know that he was eagerly hoping that she would supply this
+information.
+
+At length he ventured, "Must you go away to-day?"
+
+"I don't suppose there's any 'must' about it."
+
+"Why not stay?"
+
+"Why should I?"
+
+"Oh, it would be jolly," he cried.  "You see, we could--explore
+about here--and,"--he ended rather lamely,--"it's a lovely country."
+
+"We've seen a lot of it.  It IS lovely," she said, her eyes upon
+his face as if appraising him.  "I should like to know you better,"
+she added, with sudden and characteristic frankness, "so I think we
+will stay.  But you will have to be awfully good to me."
+
+"Why, of course," he cried.  "That's splendid!  Perfectly jolly!"
+
+"Then we had better find father and tell him.  Come along," she
+ordered, and led the way back to the camp.
+
+The young man followed her, wondering at her, and giving slight
+heed to the chatter she flung over her shoulder at him as she
+strode along through the bushes.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" she cried, facing round upon him.
+"You were thinking about me, I know.  Confess, now."
+
+"I was," he acknowledged, smiling at her.
+
+"What were you thinking?  Tell me," she insisted.
+
+"I was thinking--"  He paused.
+
+"Go on!" she cried.
+
+"I was thinking of what your father said about you."
+
+"My father?  About me?  What did he say?  To you?"
+
+"No.  To dad."
+
+"What was it?  Tell me.  I must know."  She was very imperious in
+her manner.  The youth only smiled at her.
+
+"Go on!" she said impatiently.
+
+"I think possibly your father was right," he replied, "when he said
+you 'boss the show.'"
+
+"Oh, that's what he said, eh?  Well, I guess he's about right."
+
+"But you don't really?"
+
+"Don't what?  'Boss the show'?  Well, I boss my own show, at any
+rate.  Don't you?"
+
+"Don't I what, exactly?  Boss the show?  Well, I don't think we
+have any 'show,' and I don't believe we have any 'boss.'  Dad and I
+just talk things over, you see."
+
+"But," she insisted, "some one in the last analysis must decide.
+Your menage, no matter how simple, must have a head.  It is a law
+of the universe itself, and it is the law of mankind.  You see, I
+have done some political economy."
+
+"And yet," said the young man, "you say you run your own show?"
+
+"Exactly.  Every social organism must have a head, but every
+individual in the organism must live its own free life.  That is
+true democracy.  But of course you don't understand democracy, you
+Canadians."
+
+"Aha!  There you are!  You Americans are the most insular of all
+the great peoples of the world.  You know nothing of other people.
+You know only your own history and not even that correctly, your
+own geography, and your own political science.  You know nothing of
+Canada.  You don't know, for instance, that the purest form of
+democracy on this American continent lies outside the bounds of the
+U. S. A."
+
+"In Canada?" she asked scornfully.  "By the way, how many Canadians
+are there?"
+
+"Yes, I know.  We are a small people," he said quietly, "but no more
+real democracy exists anywhere in the world than in this country of
+mine.  We are a small people, but," he said, with a sweep of his
+hand toward the west and the north, "the future is with us.  The
+day is coming when along this waterway great cities shall be, with
+factories and humming industries.  These plains, these flowing
+hills will be the home of millions of men, and in my lifetime,
+too."
+
+His eyes began to glow, his face to shine with a rare and
+fascinating beauty.
+
+"Do you know the statistics of your country?  Do you know that
+during the last twenty years the rate of Canada's growth was three
+times greater than ever in the history of the United States?  You
+are a great commercial nation, but do you know that the per capita
+rate of Canada's trade to-day is many times that of the United
+States?  You are a great agricultural people, but do you know that
+three-quarters of the wheat land on this continent is Canadian, and
+that before many years you will be coming to Canada for your wheat,
+yes, and for your flour?  Do you see that river?  Do you know that
+Canada is the richest country in the world in water power?  And
+more than that, in the things essential to national greatness,--not
+these things that you can see, these material things," he said,
+sweeping his hand contemptuously toward the horizon, "but in such
+things as educational standards, in administration of justice, in
+the customs of a liberty loving people, in religious privileges, in
+everything that goes to make character and morale, Canada has
+already laid the foundations of a great nation."
+
+He stopped short, abashed, the glow fading from his face, the light
+from his eyes.
+
+"Forgive me," he said, with a little laugh.  "I am a first class
+ass.  I fear I was blowing like a fog horn.  But when you touch
+Canada you release something in me."
+
+While he was speaking her eyes never left his face.  "Go on!" she
+said, in a voice of suppressed emotion, "go on.  I love to hear
+you."
+
+Her wonted poise was gone; she was obviously stirred with deep
+emotion.
+
+"Go on!" she commanded, laying her hand upon his arm.  "Don't stop.
+Tell me more about--about Canada, about anything," she added
+impatiently.
+
+A warm, eager light filled her eyes.  She was biting her lips to
+still their tremor.
+
+"There's plenty to tell about Canada," he said, "but not now.  What
+started me?  Oh, democracy.  Yes, it was you that began it.
+Democracy?  After all, it is worth while that the people who are
+one day to fill this wide land should be truly democratic, truly
+free, and truly great."
+
+Once more the light began to burn in his eyes and in his face.
+
+"Ah, to have a hand in that!"
+
+"And you," she said in a low voice, "you with all that in you, are
+only a preacher."
+
+"A missionary," he corrected.
+
+"Well, a missionary.  Only a missionary."
+
+Disappointment and scorn were all too evident in her voice.
+
+"ONLY a missionary.  Ah, if I could only be one.  A missionary!
+With a mission and a message to my people!  If only I had the gift
+of tongues, of flaming, burning, illuminating speech, of heart-
+compelling speech!  To tell my people how to make this country
+truly great and truly free, how to keep it free from the sordid
+things, the cruel things, the unjust, the unclean, the loathsome
+things that have debased and degraded the older nations, that are
+debasing and degrading even your young, great nation.  Ah, to be a
+missionary with a tongue of fire, with a message of light!  A
+missionary to my people to help them to high and worthy living, to
+help them to God!  ONLY a missionary!  What would you have me?  A
+money-maker?"
+
+He turned swiftly upon her, a magnetic, compelling personality.
+From the furious scorn in his voice and in his flaming face she
+visibly shrank, almost as if he had struck her.
+
+"No!" she breathed.  "Nothing else.  Only a missionary."
+
+Silent she stood, as if still under the spell of his words, her
+eyes devouring his face.
+
+"How your mother would have loved you, would have been proud of
+you," she said in a low tone.  "Is--is there no one else to--to
+rejoice in you?" she asked shyly, but eagerly.
+
+He laughed aloud.  "There's dad, dear old dad."
+
+"And no one else?"  Still with shy, eager eyes she held him.
+
+"Oh, heaps," he cried, still laughing.
+
+She smiled upon him, a slightly uncertain smile, and yet as if his
+answer somehow satisfied her.
+
+"Good-bye," she said impulsively, offering her hand.
+
+"But you are not going!  You're staying a few days!" he gasped.
+
+"No, we're going.  We're going right away.  Goodbye," she said.  "I
+don't want those others to see.  Goodbye.  Oh, it's been a
+wonderful morning!  And,--and--a friend is a wonderful discovery."
+
+Her hand held his in a strong, warm grasp, but her eyes searched
+his face as if seeking something she greatly desired.
+
+"Good-bye.  I am sorry you are going," he said, simply.  "I want to
+know you better."
+
+"Do you?" she cried, with a sudden eagerness in her voice and
+manner.  Then, "No.  You would be disappointed.  I am not of your
+world.  But you shall see me again," she added, as if taking a new
+resolve.  "We are coming back on a big hunt, and you and your
+father are to join us.  Won't you?"
+
+"Dad said we should," said the youth, smiling at the remembrance.
+
+"And you?" she said, with a touch of impatience.
+
+"If things can so arrange themselves--my work, I mean, and dad's."
+
+"But, do you want to?  Do you really want to?" she asked.  "I wish
+I knew.  I hate not to understand people.  You are hard to know.  I
+don't know you.  But you will come?"
+
+"I think so," said the young man.  "Of course a fellow's work comes
+first, you know."
+
+"Work?" she cried.  "Your work?  Oh, your missionary work.  Oh,
+yes, yes.  I should like to see you at it.  Come, let us go."
+
+Mr. Cornwall Brand they found in a fever of impatience.  He had the
+trip scheduled to a time table, and he hated to be forced to change
+his plans.  His impatience showed itself in snappy commands and
+inquiries to his Indian guides, who, however, merely grunted
+replies.  They knew their job and did it without command or advice,
+and with complete indifference to anything the white man might have
+to say.  To Paula the only change in his manner was an excess of
+politeness.
+
+Her father, however, met her with remonstrances.
+
+"Why, Paula, my dear, you have kept us waiting."
+
+"What's the rush, pater?" she enquired, coolly.
+
+"Why, my dear, we are already behind our schedule, and you know
+Cornwall hates that," he said in a low voice.
+
+"Cornwall!" said Paula, in a loud voice of unmistakable ill temper.
+"Does Cornwall run this outfit?"
+
+"My dear Paula!" again remonstrated her father.
+
+She turned to him impatiently, with an angry word at her lips,
+caught upon Barry's face a look of surprise, paused midway in her
+passion, then moved slowly toward him.
+
+"Well," she asked, in an even, cold voice, "what do you think about
+it?  And anyway," she dropped her voice so that none heard but
+himself, "why should you halt me?  Who are you, to give me pause
+this way?"
+
+"Only a missionary," he answered, in an equally low tone, but with
+a smile gentle, almost wistful on his face.
+
+As with a flash the wrathful cloud vanished.
+
+"A missionary," she replied softly.  "God knows I need one."
+
+"You do," he said emphatically, and still he smiled.
+
+"Come, Paula," called Cornwall Brand.  "We are all waiting."
+
+Her face hardened at his words.
+
+"Good-bye," she said to Barry.  "I am coming back again to--to your
+wonderful Canada."
+
+"Of course you are," said Barry, heartily.  "They all do."
+
+He went with her to the canoe, steadied her as she took her place,
+and stood watching till the bend in the river shut them from view.
+
+"Nice people," said his father.  "Very fine, jolly girl."
+
+"Yes, isn't she?" replied his son.
+
+"Handsome, too," said his father, glancing keenly at him.
+
+"Is she?  Yes, I think so.  Yes, indeed, very," he added, as if
+pondering the matter.  "When do we move, dad?"
+
+A look of relief crossed the father's face.
+
+"This afternoon, I think.  We have only a few days now.  We shall
+run up Buffalo Creek into the Foothills for some trout.  It will be
+a little stiff, but you are fit enough now, aren't you, Barry?"
+His voice was tinged with anxiety.
+
+"Fit for anything, dad, thanks to you."
+
+"Not to me, Barry.  To yourself largely."
+
+"No," said the boy, throwing his arm round his father's shoulder,
+"thanks to you, dear old dad,--and to God."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ON THE RED PINE TRAIL
+
+
+On the Red Pine trail two men were driving in a buckboard drawn by
+a pair of half-broken pinto bronchos.  The outfit was a rather
+ramshackle affair, and the driver was like his outfit.  Stewart
+Duff was a rancher, once a "remittance man," but since his marriage
+three years ago he had learned self-reliance and was disciplining
+himself in self-restraint.  A big, lean man he was, his thick
+shoulders and large, hairy muscular hands suggesting great physical
+strength, his swarthy face, heavy features, coarse black hair,
+keen dark eyes, deepset under shaggy brows, suggesting force of
+character with a possibility of brutality in passion.  Yet when he
+smiled his heavy face was not unkindly, indeed the smile gave it a
+kind of rugged attractiveness.  He was past his first youth, and on
+his face were the marks of the stormy way by which he had come.
+
+He drove his jibing bronchos with steady hands.  No light touch was
+his upon the reins, and the bronchos' wild plunging met with a
+check from those muscular hands of such iron rigidity as to fling
+them back helpless and amazed upon their hocks.
+
+His companion was his opposite in physical appearance, and in those
+features and lines that so unmistakably reveal the nature and
+character within.  Short and stout, inclined indeed to fat, to his
+great distress, his thick-set figure indicated strength without
+agility, solidity without resilience.  He had a pleasant, open
+face, with a kindly, twinkling blue eye that goes with a merry
+heart, with a genial, sunny soul.  But there was in the blue eye
+and in the open face, for all the twinkles and the smiles, a
+certain alert shrewdness that proclaimed the keen man of business,
+and in the clean cut lips lay the suggestion of resolute strength.
+A likable man he was, with an infinite capacity for humour, but
+with a bedrock of unyielding determination in him that always
+surprised those who judged him lightly.
+
+The men were friends, and had been comrades more or less during
+those pioneer days that followed their arrival in the country from
+Scotland some dozen years ago.  Often they had fallen out with each
+other, for Duff was stormy of temper and had a habit of letting
+himself swing out upon its gusts of passion, reckless of
+consequences; but he was ever the one to offer amends and to seek
+renewal of good relations.  He had few friends, and so he clung the
+more closely to those he had.  At such times the other would wait
+in cool, good-tempered but determined aloofness for his friend's
+return.
+
+"You can chew your cud till you're cool again," he would say when
+the outbreak would arise.  But invariably their differences were
+composed and their friendship remained unbroken.
+
+The men sat in the buckboard, leaning forward with hunched
+shoulders, swaying easily to the pitching of the vehicle as it
+rattled along the trail which, especially where it passed over the
+round topped ridges, was thickly strewn with stones.  Before them,
+now on the trail and now ranging wide over the prairie, ran a
+beautiful black and white English setter.
+
+"Great dog that, Sandy," said Duff.  "I could have had a dozen
+birds this afternoon.  A wonderful nose, and steady as a rock."
+
+"A good dog, Stewart," assented Sandy, but with slight interest.
+
+"There ain't another like him in this western country," said the
+owner of the dog with emphasis.
+
+"Oh, I don't know about that.  There are some very good dogs around
+here, Stewart," replied Sandy lightly.
+
+"But I know.  And that's why I'm saying there ain't his like in
+this western country, and that's as true as your name is Sandy
+Bayne."
+
+"Well, my name is Sandy Bayne, all right, but how did he come out
+at the Calgary trials?"
+
+"Aw, those damned gawks!  They don't know a good dog from a he-
+goat!  They don't know what a dog is for, or how to use him."
+
+"Oh, now, Stewart," said Sandy, "I guess Willocks knows a dog when
+he sees one."
+
+"Willocks!" said his friend with scorn.  "There's where you're
+wrong.  Do you know why he cut Slipper out of the Blue Ribbon?
+Because he wouldn't range a mile away.  Darned old fool!  What's
+the good of a point a mile away!  Keeps you running over the whole
+creation, makes you lose time, tires yourself and tires your dog;
+and more than that, in nine cases out of ten you lose your bird.
+Give me a close ranger.  He cleans up as he goes, keeps your game
+right at your hand, and gets you all the sport there is."
+
+"Who beat you, Stewart, in the trials?"
+
+"That bitch of Snider's."
+
+"Man! Stewart, that's a beautiful bitch!  I know her well.  She's a
+beautiful bitch!"  Sandy began to show enthusiasm.
+
+"Oh, there you go!  That's just what those fool judges said.
+'Beautiful dog!  Beautiful dog!'  Suppose she is!  Looks ain't
+everything.  They're something, but the question is, does she get
+the birds?  Now, Slipper there got three birds to her one.  Got 'em
+within range, too."
+
+"Ah, but Stewart, yon's a good bitch," said Sandy.
+
+"Look here!" cried his friend, "I have bred more dogs in the old
+country than those men ever saw in their lives."
+
+"That may be, Stewart, but yon's a good bitch," persisted Sandy.
+
+For a mile more they discussed the merits of Slipper and of his
+rivals, Sandy with his semi-humorous chaff extracting quiet
+amusement from his friend's wrath, and the latter, though
+suspecting that he was being drawn, unable to restrain his
+passionate championship of his dog.
+
+At length Sandy, wearying of the discussion, caught sight of a
+figure far before them on the trail.
+
+"Who is that walking along there?" he enquired.
+
+Together they ran over the names of all who in this horse country
+were unfortunate enough to be doomed to a pedestrian form of
+locomotion.
+
+"Guess it's the preacher," said Duff finally, whose eyes were like
+a hawk's.
+
+"He's been out at my place Sunday afternoon," said Sandy, "but I
+haven't met him myself.  What sort is he?"
+
+"Don't ask me.  I sometimes go with the madame to church, but
+generally I fall asleep.  He's no alarm clock."
+
+"Then you can't tell what sort of a preacher he is," said Sandy
+with a twinkle in his eye.  "You can't hear much when you are
+asleep."
+
+"I hear enough to know that he's no good as a preacher.  I hear
+they're going to fire him."
+
+"I tell you what it is, Stewart," said Sandy, "I don't believe you
+would know a good sermon if you heard one."
+
+"What's that you say?  I've heard the best preachers in the country
+that breeds preachers, in the country where preachers grow like the
+berries on the bramble bushes.  I know preaching, and I like good
+preaching, too."
+
+"Oh, come off, Stewart!  You may be a good judge of dogs, but I'm
+blowed if I am going to take you as a judge of preachers."
+
+"The same qualities in all of them, dogs, horses, preachers,"
+insisted Duff.
+
+"How do you make that out?"
+
+"Well, take a horse.  He must be a good-looker.  This preacher is a
+good-looker, all right, but looks ain't everything.  Must be quick
+at the start, must have good action, good style, staying power, and
+good at the finish.  Most preachers never know when to finish, and
+that's the way with this man."
+
+"Are you going to take him up?" inquired Sandy, for they were now
+close upon the man walking before them.
+
+"Oh, I guess not," replied Duff.  "I haven't much use for him."
+
+"Say, what's the matter with him?  He looks rather puffed out,"
+said Sandy.  "Better take him up."
+
+"All right," replied Duff, pulling up his bronchos.  "Good day.
+Will you have a ride?  Mr. Barry Dunbar, my friend Mr. Bayne."
+
+"Glad to meet you, Mr. Bayne," said Barry, who was pale and panting
+hard.  "Thanks for the lift.  The truth--is--I'm rather--done up.
+A touch of asthma--the first--in five years.  An old trouble of
+mine."
+
+"Get up here," said Sandy.  "There's room for three in the seat."
+
+"No--thank you,--I should--crowd you,--all right behind here.
+Beastly business--this asthma.  Worse when--the pollen--from the
+plants--is floating--about--so they say.  I don't know--nobody
+does--I fancy."  They drove on, bumping over the stones, Barry
+gradually getting back his wind.  The talk of the men in the front
+seat had fallen again on dogs, Stewart maintaining with ever
+increasing vehemence his expert knowledge of dogs, of hunting dogs,
+and very especially of setter hunting dogs; his friend, while
+granting his knowledge of dogs in general, questioning the
+unprejudiced nature of his judgment as far as Slipper was
+concerned.
+
+As Duff's declarations grew in violence they became more and more
+elaborately decorated with profanity.  In the full tide of their
+conversation a quiet voice broke in:
+
+"Too many 'damns.'"
+
+"What!" exclaimed Duff.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" said Sandy.
+
+"Too many 'damns,'" said Barry, looking quietly at Duff.
+
+"Dams?  Where?" said Duff, looking about.
+
+"Beaver dams, do you mean?" enquired Sandy.  "I don't see any."
+
+"Too many 'damns,'" reiterated Barry.  "You don't need them.  You
+really don't need them, you know, and besides, they are not right.
+Profanity is quite useless, and it's wicked."
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" said Stewart in a low voice to his friend.
+"He means us."
+
+"And quite right, too," said Sandy solemnly.  "You know your
+English is rotten bad.  Yes, sir," he continued, turning round to
+Barry, "I quite agree with you.  My friend is quite unnecessarily
+free in his speech."
+
+"Yes, but you are just the same, you know," said Barry.  "Not quite
+so many, but then you are not quite so excited."
+
+"Got you there, old sport," grunted Duff, highly amused at Sandy's
+discomfiture.  But to Barry he said, "I guess it's our own business
+how we express ourselves."
+
+"Yes, it is, but, pardon me, not entirely so.  There are others in
+the world, you know, and you must consider others.  The habit is a
+bad habit, a rotten habit, and quite useless--silly, indeed."
+
+Duff turned his back upon him.  Sandy, giving his friend a nudge,
+burst into a loud laugh.
+
+"You are right, sir," he said, turning to Barry.  "You are quite
+right."
+
+At this point Slipper created a diversion.
+
+"Hello!" said Duff.  "Say!  Look at him!"  He pointed to the dog.
+"Ain't he a picture!"
+
+A hundred yards away stood Slipper, rigid, every muscle, every hair
+taut, one foot arrested in air.
+
+"I'll just get those," said Duff, slipping out of the buckboard and
+drawing the gun from beneath the seat.  "Steady, old boy, steady!
+Hold the lines, Sandy."
+
+He moved quickly toward the dog who, quivering with that mysterious
+instinct found in the hunting dog, still held the point with taut
+muscles, nose and tail in line.
+
+"Hello!" Barry called out.  "It isn't the season yet for chicken.
+I say, Mr. Duff," he shouted, "it isn't the chicken season, you
+know."
+
+"Better leave him alone," said Sandy.
+
+"But it isn't the season yet!  It is against the law!" protested
+Barry indignantly.
+
+Meantime Stewart Duff was closing up cautiously behind Slipper.
+
+"Forward, old boy!  Ste-e-e-ady!  Forward!"  The dog refused to
+move.  "Forward, Slipper!"
+
+Still the dog remained rigid, as if nailed to the ground.
+
+"On, Slipper!"
+
+Slowly the dog turned his head with infinite caution half round
+toward his master, as if in protest.
+
+"Hello, there!" shouted Barry, "you know--"
+
+Just as he called there was on all sides a great whirring of wings.
+A dozen chicken flew up from under Duff's feet.  Bang! Bang! went
+his gun.
+
+"Missed, as I'm a sinner!" exclaimed Sandy.  "I thought he was a
+better shot than that."
+
+Back came Duff striding wide toward the buckboard.  Fifty yards
+away he shouted:
+
+"Say! what the devil do you mean calling like that at a man when
+he's on the point of shooting!"  His face was black with anger.  He
+looked ready to strike.  Barry looked at him steadily.
+
+"But, I was just reminding you that it was not the season for
+chicken yet," he said in the tone of a man prepared to reason the
+matter.
+
+"What's that got to do with it!  And anyway, whose business is it
+what I do but my own?"
+
+"But it's against the law!"
+
+"Oh, blank the law!  Besides--"
+
+"Besides it isn't--well, you know, it isn't quite sporting to shoot
+out of season."  Barry's manner was as if dealing with a fractious
+child.
+
+Duff, speechless with his passion, looked at him as if not quite
+sure what form his vengeance should take.
+
+"He's quite right, Stewart," said his friend Sandy, who was hugely
+enjoying himself.  "You know well enough you are down on the farmer
+chaps who go pot hunting before season.  It's rotten sport, you
+know."
+
+"Oh, hell!  Will you shut up!  Can't I shoot over my dog when he
+points?  I'm not out shooting.  If I want to give my dog a little
+experience an odd bird or two don't matter.  Besides, what the--"
+
+"Oh, come on, Stewart!  Get in, and get a move on!  You know you
+are in the wrong.  But I thought you were a better shot than that,"
+added Sandy.
+
+His remark diverted Duff's rage.
+
+"Better shot!" he stormed.  "Who could shoot with a--a--a--" he was
+feeling round helplessly for a properly effective word,--"with a
+fellow yelling at you?" he concluded lamely.  "I'd have had a brace
+of them if it hadn't been for him."
+
+"In that case," said Barry coolly, "I saved you from the law."
+
+"Saved me from the law!  What the devil do you mean, anyway?" said
+Stewart.  "If I want to pick up a bird who's to hinder me?  And
+what's the law got to do with it?"
+
+"Well, you know, I'm not sure but it might have been my duty to
+report you.  I feel that all who break the game laws should be
+reported.  It is the only way to stop the lawless destruction of
+the game."
+
+Barry spoke in a voice of quiet deliberation, as if pondering the
+proper action in the premises.
+
+"Quite right, too," said Sandy gravely, but with a twinkle in his
+blue eye.  "They ought to be reported.  I have no use for those
+poachers."
+
+Duff made no reply.  His rage and disgust, mingled with the sense
+of his being in the wrong, held him silent.  No man in the whole
+country was harder upon the game poachers than he, but to be held
+up in his action and to be threatened with the law by this young
+preacher, whom he rather despised anyway, seemed to paralyse his
+mental activities.  It did not help his self-control that he was
+aware that his friend was having his fun of him.
+
+At this moment, fortunately for the harmony of the party, their
+attention was arrested by the appearance of a motor car driven at a
+furious rate along the trail, and which almost before they were
+aware came honking upon them.  With a wild lurch the bronchos
+hurled themselves from the trail, upsetting the buckboard and
+spilling its load.
+
+Duff, cumbered with his gun, which he had reloaded, allowed one of
+the reins to drop from his hands and the team went plunging about
+in a circle, but Barry, the first to get to his feet, rushed to the
+rescue, snatched the reins and held on till he had dragged the
+plunging bronchos to a halt.
+
+The rage which had been boiling in Duff, and which with difficulty
+had been held within bounds, suddenly burst all bonds of control.
+With a fierce oath he picked up the gun which he had thrown aside
+in his struggle with the horses, and levelled it at the speeding
+motor car.
+
+"For God's sake, Stewart, stop!" shouted Bayne, springing toward
+his friend.
+
+Barry was nearer and quicker.  The shot went off, but his hand had
+knocked up the gun.
+
+"My God, Stewart!  Are you clean crazy!" said Bayne, gripping him
+by the arm.  "Do you know what you are doing?  You are not fit to
+carry a gun!"
+
+"I'd have bust his blanked tires for him, anyway!" blustered Duff,
+though his face and voice showed that he had received a shock.
+
+"Yes, and you might have been a murderer by this time, and heading
+for the pen, but for Dunbar here.  You owe him more than you can
+ever pay, you blanked fool!"
+
+Duff made no reply, but busied himself with his horses.  Nor did he
+speak again till everything was in readiness for the road.
+
+"Get in," he then said gruffly, and that was his last word until
+they drove into the village.
+
+At the store he drew up.
+
+"Thank you for the lift," said Barry.  "I should have had a tough
+job to get back in time."
+
+Duff grunted at him, and passed on into the store.
+
+"I am very glad to have met you," said Bayne, shaking hands warmly
+with him.  "You have done us both a great service.  He is my
+friend, you know."
+
+"I am afraid I have offended him, all the same.  But you see I
+couldn't help it, could I?"
+
+Bayne looked at his young, earnest face for a moment or two as if
+studying him, then said with a curious smile, "No, I don't believe
+you could have helped it."  And with that he passed into the store.
+
+"What sort of a chap is that preacher of yours?" he asked of the
+storekeeper.
+
+"I don't know; he ain't my church.  Ask Innes there.  He's a
+pillar."
+
+Bayne turned to a long, lean, hard-faced man leaning against the
+counter.
+
+"My name is Bayne, from Red Pine, Mr. Innes.  I am interested in
+knowing what sort of a chap your preacher is.  He comes out to our
+section, but I never met him till to-day."
+
+"Oh, he's no that bad," said Innes cautiously.
+
+"Not worth a cent," said a little, red headed man standing near.
+"He can't preach for sour apples."
+
+"I wadna just say that, Mr. Hayes," said Innes.
+
+"How do you know, Innes?" retorted Hayes.  "You know you fall
+asleep before he gets rightly started."
+
+"I aye listen better with ma eyes shut."
+
+"Yes, and snore better, too, Mac," said Hayes.  "But I don't blame
+you.  Most of them go to sleep anyway.  That's the kind of preacher
+he is."
+
+"What sort of a chap is he?  I mean what sort of man?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, he's always buttin' in," volunteered a
+square-built military looking man standing near.  "If he'd stick to
+his gospel it wouldn't be so bad, but he's always pokin' his nose
+into everything."
+
+"But he's no that bad," said Innes again, "and as for buttin' in,
+McFettridge, and preachin' the gospel, I doubt the country is a
+good deal the better for the buttin' in that him and his likes have
+done this past year.  And besides, the bairns all like him."
+
+"Well, that's not a bad sign, Mr. Innes," said Sandy Bayne, "and
+I'm not sure that I don't like him myself.  But I guess he butts
+in, all right."
+
+"Oh, ay! he butts in," agreed Innes, "but I'm no so sure that
+that's no a part of his job, too."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE
+
+
+The Dunbars lived in a cottage on a back street, which had the
+distinction of being the only home on the street which possessed
+the adornment of a garden.  A unique garden it was, too.  Indeed,
+with the single exception of Judge Hepburn's garden, which was
+quite an elaborate affair, and which was said to have cost the
+Judge a "pile of money," there was none to compare with it in the
+village of Wapiti.
+
+Any garden on that bare, wind-swept prairie meant toil and infinite
+pains, but a garden like that of the Dunbars represented in
+addition something of genius.  In conception, in design, and in
+execution the Dunbars' garden was something apart.  Visitors were
+taken 'round to the back street to get a glimpse of the Dunbars'
+cottage and garden.
+
+The garden was in two sections.  That at the back of the cottage,
+sheltered by a high, close board fence covered with Virginia
+creeper, was given over to vegetables, and it was quite marvellous
+how, under Richard Dunbar's care, a quarter of an acre of ground
+could grow such enormous quantities of vegetables of all kinds.
+Next to the vegetable garden came the plot for small fruits--
+strawberries, raspberries, currants, of rare varieties.
+
+The front garden was devoted to flowers.  Here were to be found the
+old fashioned flowers dear to our grandmothers, and more particularly
+the old fashioned flowers native to English and Scottish soil.
+Between the two gardens a thick row of tall, splendid sunflowers
+made a stately hedge.  Then came larkspur, peonies, stocks, and
+sweet-williams, verbenas and mignonette, with borders of lobelia and
+heliotrope.  Along the fence were sweet peas, for which Alberta is
+famous.
+
+But it was the part of the garden close about the front porch and
+verandah where the particular genius of Richard Dunbar showed
+itself.  Here the flowers native to the prairie, the coulee, the
+canyon, were gathered; the early wind flower, the crowfoot and the
+buffalo bean, wild snowdrops and violets.  Over trellises ran the
+tiny morning-glory, with vetch and trailing arbutus.  A bed of wild
+roses grew to wonderful perfection.  Later in the year would be
+seen the yellow and crimson lilies, daisies white and golden, and
+when other flowers had faded, golden rod and asters in gorgeous
+contrast.  The approach to the door of the house was by a gravel
+walk bordered by these prairie flowers.
+
+The house inside fulfilled the promise of the garden.  The living
+room, simple in its plan, plain in its furnishing, revealed
+everywhere that touch in decorative adornment that spoke of the
+cultivated mind and refined taste.  A group of rare etchings had
+their place over the mantel above a large, open fireplace.  On the
+walls were to be seen really fine copies of the world's most famous
+pictures, and on the panels which ran 'round the walls were bits of
+pottery and china, relics of other days and of other homes.
+
+But what was most likely to strike the eye of a stranger on
+entering the living room was the array of different kinds of
+musical instruments.  At one end of the room stood a small upright
+piano, a 'cello held one corner, a guitar another; upon a table a
+cornet was deposited, and on the piano a violin case could be seen,
+while a banjo hung from a nail on the wall.
+
+Near the fireplace a curiously carved pipe-rack hung, with some
+half dozen pipes of weird design, evidently the collection of
+years, while just under it a small table held the utensils sacred
+to the smoker.
+
+When Barry entered he found the table set and everything in
+readiness for tea.
+
+"Awfully sorry I'm too late to help you with tea, dad.  I have had
+a long walk, and quite a deuce of a time getting home."
+
+"All right, boy.  Glad you are here.  The toast is ready, tea
+waiting to be infused.  But what happened?  No, don't begin telling
+me till you get yourself ready.  But hurry, your meeting hour will
+be on in no time."
+
+"Right-o, dad!  Shame to make a slavey of you in this way.  I'll be
+out in a jiffy."
+
+He threw off his coat and vest, shirt and collar, took a pail of
+water to a big block in the little shed at the back, soused his
+head and shoulders in it with loud snorting and puffing, and
+emerged in a few minutes looking refreshed, clean and wholesome,
+his handsome face shining with vigorous health.
+
+Together they stood at the table while the son said a few words of
+reverent grace.
+
+"I'm ravenous, dad.  What!  Fried potatoes!  Oh, you are a brick."
+
+"Tired, boy?"
+
+"No.  That reminds me of my thrilling tale, which I shall begin
+after my third slice of toast, and not before.  You can occupy the
+precious minutes, dad, in telling me of your excitements in the
+office this afternoon."
+
+"Don't sniff at me.  I had a few, though apparently you think it
+impossible in my humdrum grey life."
+
+"Good!" said Barry, his mouth full of toast.  "Go on."
+
+"Young Neil Fraser is buying, or has just bought, the S.Q.R.
+ranch.  Filed the transfer to-day."
+
+"Neil Fraser?  He's in my tale, too.  Bought the S.Q.R.?  Where did
+he get the stuff?"
+
+"Stuff?"
+
+"Dough, the dirt, the wherewithal, in short the currency, dad."
+
+"Barry, you are ruining your English," said his father.
+
+"Yum-yum.  Bully!  Did you notice that, dad?  I'm coming on, eh?
+One thing I almost pray about, that I might become expert in
+slinging the modern jaw hash.  I'm appallingly correct in my forms
+of speech.  But go on, dad.  I'm throwing too much vocalisation
+myself.  You were telling me about Neil Fraser.  Give us the chorus
+now."
+
+"I don't like it, boy," said his father, shaking his head, "and
+especially in a clergyman."
+
+"But that's where you are off, dad.  The trouble is, when I come
+within range of any of my flock all my flip vocabulary absolutely
+vanishes, and I find myself talking like a professor of English or
+a maiden lady school ma'am of very certain age."
+
+"I don't like it, boy.  Correct English is the only English for a
+gentleman."
+
+"I wonder," said the lad.  "But I don't want to worry you, dad."
+
+"Oh, as for me, that matters nothing at all, but I am thinking of
+you and of your profession, your standing."
+
+"I know that, dad.  I sometimes wish you would think a little more
+about yourself.  But what of Neil Fraser?"
+
+"He has come into some money.  He has bought the ranch."
+
+Barry's tone expressed doubtful approval.  "Neil is a good sort,
+dad, awfully reckless, but I like him," said Barry.  "He is up and
+up with it all."
+
+"Now, what about your afternoon?" said his father.
+
+"Well, to begin with, I had a dose of my old friend, the enemy."
+
+"Barry, you don't tell me!  Your asthma!"  His father sat back from
+the table gazing at him in dismay.  "And I thought that was all
+done with."
+
+"So did I, dad.  But it really didn't amount to much.  Probably
+some stomach derangement, more likely some of that pollen which is
+floating around now.  I passed through a beaver meadow where they
+were cutting hay, and away I went in a gale of sneezing, forty
+miles an hour.  But I'm all right now, dad.  I'm telling you the
+truth.  You know I do."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," said his father, concern and relief mingling in
+his voice, "but you don't know how to take care of yourself, Barry.
+But go on with your tale."
+
+"Well, as I was panting along like a 'heavey horse,' as Harry Hobbs
+would say,--not really too bad, dad,--along comes that big rancher,
+Stewart Duff, driving his team of pinto bronchos, and with him a
+chap named Bayne, from Red Pine Creek.  He turned out to be an
+awfully decent sort.  And Duff's dog, Slipper, ranging on ahead, a
+beautiful setter."
+
+"Yes, I have seen him."
+
+They discussed for a few moments the beauties and points of Duff's
+Slipper, for both were keen sportsmen, and both were devoted to
+dogs.  Then Barry went back to his tale and gave an account of what
+had happened during the ride home.
+
+"You see Slipper ranging about got 'on point' and beautiful work it
+was, too.  Out jumped Duff with his gun, ready to shoot, though, of
+course, he knew it was out of season and that he was breaking the
+law.  Well, just as Slipper flushed the birds, I shouted to Duff
+that he was shooting out of season.  He missed."
+
+"Oh, he was properly wrathful at my spoiling his shot," cried the
+young man.
+
+"I don't know that I blame him, Barry," said his father thoughtfully.
+"It is an annoying thing to be shouted at with your gun on a bird,
+you know, extremely annoying."
+
+"But he was breaking the law, dad!" cried Barry indignantly.
+
+"I know, I know.  But after all--"
+
+"But, dad, you can't sit there and tell me that you don't condemn
+him for shooting out of season.  You know nothing makes you more
+furious than hearing about chaps who pot chicken out of season."
+
+"I know, I know, my boy."  The father was apparently quite
+distressed.  "You are quite right, but--"
+
+"Now, dad, I won't have it!  You are not to tell me that I had no
+business to stop him if I could.  Besides, the law is the law, and
+sport is sport."
+
+"I quite agree, Barry.  Believe me, I quite agree.  Yet all the
+same, a chap does hate to have his shot spoiled, and to shout at a
+fellow with his gun on a bird,--well, you'll excuse me, Barry, but
+it is hardly the sporting thing."
+
+"Sporting!  Sporting!" said Barry.  "I know that I hated to do it,
+but it was right.  Besides talk about 'sporting'--what about
+shooting out of season?"
+
+"Yes, yes.  Well, we won't discuss it.  Go on, Barry."
+
+"But I don't like it, dad.  I don't like to think that you don't
+approve of what I do.  It was a beastly hard thing to do, anyway.
+I had to make myself do it.  It was my duty."  The young man sat
+looking anxiously at his father.
+
+"Well, my boy," said his father, "I may be wrong, but do you think
+you are always called upon to remonstrate with every law breaker?
+No, listen to me," he continued hurriedly.  "What I mean is, must
+you or any of us assume responsibility for every criminal in the
+land?"
+
+Barry sat silent a moment, considering this proposition.
+
+"I wish I knew, dad.  You know, I have often said that to excuse
+myself after I have funked a thing, and let something go by without
+speaking up against it."
+
+"Funked it!"
+
+"Yes.  Funked standing up for the right thing, you know."
+
+"Funked it!" said his father again.  "You wouldn't do that, Barry?"
+
+"Oh, wouldn't I, though?  I am afraid you don't know me very well,
+dad.  However, I rather think I had started him up before that, you
+know.  You won't like this either.  But I may as well go through
+with it.  You know, he was swearing and cursing most awfully, just
+in his ordinary talk you know, and that is a thing I can't stand,
+so I up and told him he was using too many 'damns.'"
+
+"You did, eh?"  In spite of himself the father could not keep the
+surprise out of his voice.  "Well, that took some nerve, at any
+rate."
+
+"There you are again, dad!  You think I had no right to speak.  But
+somehow I can't help feeling I was right.  For don't you see, it
+would have seemed a bit like lowering the flag to have kept
+silent."
+
+"Then for God's sake speak out, lad!  I do not feel quite the same
+way as you, but it is what you think yourself that must guide you.
+But go on, go on."
+
+"Well, I assure you he was in a proper rage, and if it hadn't been
+for Bayne I believe he would have trimmed me to a peak, administered
+a fitting castigation, I mean."
+
+"He would, eh?" said the father with a grim smile.  "I should like
+to see him try."
+
+"So should I, dad, if you were around.  I think I see you--feint
+with the right, then left, right, left! bing! bang! bung!  All over
+but the shiver, eh, dad?  It would be sweet!  But," he added
+regretfully, "that's the very thing a fellow cannot do."
+
+"Cannot do?  And why not, pray?  It is what every fellow is in duty
+bound to do to a bully of that sort."
+
+"Yes, but to be quite fair, dad, you could hardly call Duff a
+bully.  At least, he wasn't bullying me.  As a matter of fact, I
+was bullying him.  Oh, I think he had reason to be angry.  When a
+chap undertakes to pull another chap up for law breaking, perhaps
+he should be prepared to take the consequences.  But to go on.
+Bayne stepped in--awfully decent of him, too,--when just at that
+moment, as novelists say, with startling suddenness occurred an
+event that averted the impending calamity.  Along came Neil Fraser,
+no less, in that new car of his, in a whirlwind of noise and dust,
+honking like a flock of wild geese.  Well, you should have seen
+those bronchos.  One lurch, and we were on the ground, a beautiful
+upset, and the bronchos in an incipient runaway, fortunately
+checked by your humble servant.  Duff, in a new and real rage this
+time, up with his gun and banged off both barrels after the motor
+car, by this time honking down the trail."
+
+"By Jove! he deserved it," said the father.  "Those motor fellows
+make me long to do murder at times."
+
+"That's because you have no car, Dad, of course."
+
+"Did he hit him, do you think?"
+
+"No.  My arm happened to fly up, the gun banged toward the zenith.
+Nothing doing!"
+
+"Well, Barry, you do seem to have run foul of Mr. Duff."
+
+"Three times, dad.  But each time prevented him from breaking the
+law and doing himself and others injury.  Would you have let him
+off this last time, dad?"
+
+"No, no, boy.  Human life has the first claim upon our care.  You
+did quite right, quite right.  Ungovernable fool he must be!
+Shouldn't be allowed to carry a gun."
+
+"So Bayne declared," said Barry.
+
+"Well, you have had quite an exciting afternoon.  But finish your
+tea and get ready for the meeting.  I will wash up."
+
+"Not if I know it, dad.  You take your saw-horse and do me a little
+Handel or Schubert.  Do, please," entreated his son.  "I want that
+before meeting more than anything else.  I want a change of mood.
+I confess I am slightly rattled.  My address is all prepared, but I
+must have atmosphere before I go into the meeting."
+
+His father took the 'cello, and after a few moments spent in
+carefully tuning up, began with Handel's immortal Largo, then he
+wandered into the Adagio Movement in Haydn's third Sonata, from
+thence to Schubert's Impromptu in C Minor, after which he began the
+Serenade, when he was checked by his son.
+
+"No, not that, dad, that's sickening.  I consider that the most
+morally relaxing bit of music that I know.  It frays the whole
+moral fibre.  Give us one of Chopin's Ballades, or better still a
+bit of that posthumous Fantasie Impromptu, the largo movement.  Ah!
+fine! fine!"
+
+He flung his dish-cloth aside, ran to the piano and began an
+accompaniment to his father's playing.
+
+"Now, dad, the Largo once more before we close."  They did the
+Largo once and again, then springing from the piano Barry cried:
+"That Largo is a means of grace to me.  There could be no better
+preparation for a religious meeting than that.  If you would only
+come in and play for them, it would do them much more good than all
+my preaching."
+
+"If you would only take your music seriously, Barry," replied his
+father, somewhat sadly, "you would become a good player, perhaps
+even a great player."
+
+"And then what, dad?"
+
+His father waved him aside, putting up his 'cello.
+
+"No use going into that again, boy."
+
+"Well, I couldn't have been a great player, at any rate, dad."
+
+"Perhaps not, boy, perhaps not," said his father.  "Great players
+are very rare.  But it is time for your meeting."
+
+"So it is, dad.  Awfully sorry I didn't finish up those dishes.
+Let them go till I return.  I wish you would, dad, and come along
+with me."  His voice had a wistful note in it.
+
+"Not to-night, boy, I think.  We will have some talk after.  You
+will only be an hour, you know."
+
+"All right, dad," said Barry.  "Some time you may come."  He could
+not hide the wistful regret of his tone.
+
+"Perhaps I shall, boy," replied his father.
+
+It was the one point upon which there was a lack of perfect harmony
+between father and son.  When the boy went to college it was with
+the intention of entering the profession of law, for which his
+father had been reading in his young manhood when the lure of
+Canada and her broad, free acres caught him, and he had abandoned
+the law and with his wife and baby boy had emigrated to become a
+land owner in the great Canadian west.
+
+Alas! death, that rude spoiler of so many plans, broke in upon the
+sanctity and perfect peace of that happy ranch home and ravished it
+of its treasure, leaving a broken hearted man and a little boy,
+orphaned and sickly, to be cared for.  The ranch was sold, the
+rancher moved to the city of Edmonton, thence in a few years to a
+little village some twenty-five miles nearer to the Foothills,
+where he became the Registrar and Homestead Inspector for the
+district.
+
+Here he had lived ever since, training the torn tendrils of his
+heart about the lad, till peace came back again, though never the
+perfect joy of the earlier days.  Every May Day the two were wont
+to go upon an expedition many miles into the Foothills, to a
+little, sunny spot, where a strong, palisaded enclosure held a
+little grave.  So little it looked, and so lonely amid the great
+hills.  There, not in an abandonment of grief, but in loving and
+grateful remembrance of her whose dust the little grave now held,
+of what she had been to them, and had done for them, they spent the
+day, returning to take up again with hearts solemn, tender and
+chastened, the daily routine of life.
+
+That his son should grow to take up the profession of law had been
+the father's dream, but during his university course the boy had
+come under the compelling influence of a spiritual awakening that
+swept him into a world filled with new impressions and other
+desires.  Obeying what he felt to be an imperative call, the boy
+chose the church as his profession, and after completing his
+theological course in the city of Winnipeg, and spending a year in
+study in Germany, while still a mere youth he had been appointed as
+missionary to the district of which his own village was the centre.
+
+But though widely separate from each other in the matter of religion,
+there were many points of contact between them.  They were both men
+of the great out-of-doors, and under his father's inspiration and
+direction the boy had come to love athletic exercises of all kinds.
+They were both music-mad, the father having had in early youth a
+thorough musical education, the boy possessing musical talent of a
+high order.  Such training as was his he had received from his
+father, but it was confined to one single instrument, the violin.
+To this instrument, upon which his father had received the tuition
+of a really excellent master, the son devoted long hours of study
+and practice during his boyhood years, and his attainments were such
+as to give promise of something more than an amateur's mastery of
+his instrument.  His college work, however, interfered with his
+music, and to his father's great disappointment and regret he was
+forced to lay aside his study of the violin.  On the piano, however,
+the boy developed an extraordinary power of improvisation and of
+sight reading, and while his technique was faulty his insight, his
+power of interpretation were far in excess of many artists who were
+his superiors in musical knowledge and power of execution.  Many
+were the hours the father and son spent together through the long
+evenings of the western winter, and among the many bonds that held
+them in close comradeship, none was stronger than their common
+devotion to music.
+
+Long after his son had departed to his meeting the father sat
+dreaming over his 'cello, wandering among the familiar bits from
+the old masters as fancy led him, nor was he aware of the lapse of
+time till his son returned.
+
+"Hello!  Nine-thirty?" he exclaimed, looking at his watch.  "You
+have given them an extra dose to-night."
+
+"Business meeting afterwards, which didn't come off after all,"
+said his son.  "Postponed till next Sunday."  With this curt
+announcement, and without further comment he sat down at his desk.
+
+But after a few moments he rose quickly, saying, "Let us do some
+real work, dad."
+
+He took up his violin.  His father, who was used to his moods,
+without question or remark proceeded to tune up.  An hour's hard
+practice followed, without word from either except as regarded the
+work in hand.
+
+"I feel better now, dad," said the young man when they had finished.
+"And now for a round with you."
+
+"But what about your wind, boy?  I don't like that asthma of yours
+this afternoon."
+
+"I am quite all right.  It's quite gone.  I feel sure it was the
+pollen from the beaver meadow."
+
+They cleared back the table and chairs from the centre of the room,
+stripped to their shirts, put on the gloves and went at each other
+with vim.  Their style was similar, for the father had taught the
+son all he knew, except that the father's was the fighting and the
+son's the sparring style.  To-night the roles appeared to be
+reversed, the son pressing hard at the in-fighting, the father
+trusting to his foot work and countering with the light touch of a
+man making points.
+
+"You ARE boring in, aren't you?" said the father, stopping a fierce
+rally.
+
+"You are not playing up, dad," said his son.  "I don't feel like
+soft work to-night.  Come to me!"
+
+"As you say," replied the father, and for the next five minutes
+Barry had no reason to complain of soft work, for his father went
+after him with all the fight that was in him, so that in spite of a
+vigorous defence the son was forced to take refuge in a runaway
+game.
+
+"Now you're going!" shouted the son, making a fierce counter with
+his right to a hard driven left, which he side-stepped.  It was a
+fatal exposure.  Like the dart of a snake the right hand hook got
+him below the jaw, and he was hurled breathless on the couch at the
+side of the room.
+
+"Got you now!" said his father.
+
+"Not quite yet," cried Barry.  Like a cat he was on his feet,
+breathing deep breaths, dodging about, fighting for time.
+
+"Enough!" cried his father, putting down his hands.
+
+"Play up!" shouted Barry, who was rapidly recovering his wind.  "No
+soft work.  Watch out!"
+
+Again the father was on guard, while Barry, who seemed to have
+drawn upon some secret source of strength, came at him with a
+whirlwind attack, feinting, jabbing, swinging, hooking, till
+finally he landed a short half arm on the jaw, which staggered his
+father against the wall.
+
+"Pax!" cried the young man.  "I have all I want."
+
+"Great!" said his father.  "I believe you could fight, boy, if you
+were forced to."
+
+In the shed they sluiced each other with pails of water, had a rub
+down and got into their dressing gowns.
+
+"I feel fine, now, dad, and ready for anything," said Barry,
+glowing with his exercise and his tub.  "I was feeling like a
+quitter.  I guess that asthma got at my nerve.  But I believe I
+will see it through some way."
+
+"Yes?" said his father, and waited.
+
+"Yes.  They were talking blue ruin in there to-night.  Finances are
+behind, congregation is running down, therefore the preacher is a
+failure."
+
+"Well, lad, remember this," said his father, "never let your liver
+decide any course of action for you.  Some good stiff work, a turn
+with the gloves, for instance, is the best preparation I know for
+any important decision.  A man cannot decide wisely when he feels
+grubby.  Your asthma this afternoon is a symptom of liver."
+
+"It is humiliating to a creature endowed with conscience and
+intellect to discover how small a part these play at times in his
+decisions.  The ancients were not far wrong who made the liver the
+seat of the emotions."
+
+"Well," said his father, "it is a good thing to remember that most
+of our bad hours come from our livers.  So the preacher is a
+failure?  Who said so?"
+
+"Oh, a number of them, principally Hayes."
+
+"Thank God, and go to sleep," said his father.  "If Hayes were
+pleased with my preaching I should greatly suspect my call to the
+ministry."
+
+"But seriously, I am certainly not a great preacher, and perhaps
+not a preacher at all.  They say I have no 'pep,' which with some
+of them appears to be the distinctive and altogether necessary
+characteristic of a popular preacher."
+
+"What said Innes?" enquired his father.
+
+"Did you ever hear Innes say much?  From his silence one would
+judge that he must possess the accumulated wisdom of the ages."
+
+"When he does talk, however, he generally says something.  What was
+his contribution?"
+
+"'Ah, weel,' said the silent one, 'Ah doot he's no a Spurgeon, not
+yet a Billy Sunday, but ye'll hardly be expectin' thae fowk at
+Wapiti for nine hundred dollars a year.'  Then, bless his old
+heart, he added, 'But the bairns tak to him like ducks to water, so
+you'd better bide a bit.'  So they decided to 'bide a bit' till
+next Sunday.  Dad, at first I wanted to throw their job in their
+faces, only I always know that it is the old Adam in me that feels
+like that, so I decided to 'bide a bit' too."
+
+"It is a poor job, after all, my boy," said his father.  "It's no
+gentleman's job the way it is carried on in this country.  To think
+of your being at the bidding of a creature like Hayes!"
+
+He could have said no better word.  The boy's face cleared like the
+sudden shining of the sun after rain.  He lifted his head and said,
+
+"Thank God, not at his bidding, dad.  'One is your Master,'" he
+quoted.  "But after all, Hayes has something good in him.  Do you
+know, I rather like him.  He's--"
+
+"Oh, come now, we'll drop it right there," said his father, in a
+disgusted tone.  "When you come to finding something to like in
+that rat, I surrender."
+
+"Who knows?" said the boy, as if to himself.  "Poor Hayes.  He may
+be quite a wonderful man, considering all things, his heredity and
+his environment.  What would I have been, dad, but for you?"
+
+His father grunted, pulled hard at his pipe, coughed a bit, then
+looked his son straight in the face, saying, "God knows what any of
+us owe to our past."  He fell into silence.  His mind was far away,
+following his heart to the palisaded plot of ground among the
+Foothills and the little grave there in which he had covered from
+his sight her that had been the inspiration to his best and finest
+things, and his defence against the things low and base that had
+once hounded his soul, howling hard upon his trail.
+
+The son, knowing his mood, sat in silence with him, then rising
+suddenly he sat himself on the arm of his father's chair, threw his
+arm around his shoulder and said, "Dear old dad!  Good old boy you
+are, too.  Good stuff!  What would I have been but for you?  A
+puny, puling, wretched little crock, afraid of anything that could
+spit at me.  Do you remember the old gander?  I was near my eternal
+damnation that day."
+
+"But you won out, my boy," said his father in a croaking voice,
+putting his arm round his son.
+
+"Yes, because you made me stick it, just as you have often made me
+stick it since.  May God forget me if I ever forget what you have
+done for me.  Shall we read now?"
+
+He took the big Bible from its place upon the table, and turning
+the leaves read aloud from the teachings of the world's greatest
+Master.  It was the parable of the talents.
+
+"Rather hard on the failure," he said as he closed the book.
+
+"No, not the failure," said his father, "the slacker, the quitter.
+It is nature's law.  There is no place in God's universe for a
+quitter."
+
+"You are right, dad," said Barry.  "Good-night."
+
+He kissed his father, as he had ever done since his earliest
+infancy.  Their prayers were said in private, the son, clergyman
+though he was, could never bring himself to offer to lead the
+devotions of him at whose knee he had kneeled every night of his
+life, as a boy, for his evening prayer.
+
+"Good-night, boy," said his father, holding him by the hand for a
+moment or so.  "We do not know what is before us, defeat, loss,
+suffering.  That part is not in our hands altogether, but the shame
+of the quitter never need, and never shall be ours."
+
+The little man stepped into his bedroom with his shoulders squared
+and his head erect.
+
+"By Jove!  He's no quitter," said his son to himself, as his eyes
+followed him.  "When he quits he'll be dead.  God keep me from
+shaming him!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+REJECTED
+
+
+The hour for the church service had not quite arrived, but already
+a number of wagons, buckboards and buggies had driven up and
+deposited their loads at the church door.  The women had passed
+into the church, where the Sunday School was already in session;
+the men waited outside, driven by the heat of the July sun and the
+hotter July wind into the shade of the church building.
+
+Through the church windows came the droning of voices, with now and
+then a staccato rapping out of commands heard above the droning.
+
+"That's Hayes," said a sturdy young chap, brown as an Indian,
+lolling upon the grass.  "He likes to be bossing something."
+
+"That's so, Ewen," replied a smaller man, with a fish-like face,
+his mouth and nose running into a single feature.
+
+"I guess he's doin' his best, Nathan Pilley," answered another man,
+stout and stocky, with bushy side whiskers flanking around a
+rubicund face, out of which stared two prominent blue eyes.
+
+"Oh, I reckon he is, Mr. Boggs.  I have no word agin Hayes,"
+replied Nathan Pilley, a North Ontario man, who, abandoning a rocky
+farm in Muskoka, had strayed to this far west country in search of
+better fortune.  "I have no word agin Mr. Hayes, Mr. Boggs," he
+reiterated.  "In fact, I think he ought to be highly commended for
+his beneficent work."
+
+"But he does like to hear himself giving out orders, all the same,"
+persisted the young man addressed as Ewen.
+
+"Yes, he seems to sorter enjoy that, too, Ewen," agreed Nathan, who
+was never known to oppose any man's opinion.
+
+"He's doin' his best," insisted Mr. Boggs, rather sullenly.
+
+"Yes, he is that, Mr. Boggs, he is that," said Nathan.
+
+"But he likes to be the big toad in the puddle," said Ewen.
+
+"Well, he certainly seems to, he does indeed, Ewen."
+
+Clear over the droning there arose at this point another sound, a
+chorus of childish laughter.
+
+"That's the preacher's class," said Boggs.  "Quare sort o' Sunday
+School where the kids carry on like that."
+
+"Seems rather peculiar," agreed Nathan, "peculiar in Sunday School,
+it does."
+
+"What's the matter with young Pickles?" enquired Ewen.
+
+The eyes of the company, following the pointing finger, fell upon
+young Pickles standing at the window of the little vestry to the
+church, and looking in.  He was apparently convulsed with laughter,
+with his hand hard upon his mouth and nose as a kind of silencer.
+
+"Do you know what's the matter with him, Pat?" continued Ewen.
+
+Pat McCann, the faithful friend and shadow of young Pickles, after
+studying the attitude and motions of his friend, gave answer:
+
+"It's the preacher, I guess.  He's kiddin' the kids inside.  He's
+some kidder, too," he said, moving to take his place beside his
+friend.
+
+"What's he doing anyway?" said Ewen.  "I'm going to see."
+
+Gradually a little company gathered behind young Pickles and Pat
+McCann.  The window commanded a view of the room, yet in such a way
+that the group were unobserved by the speaker.
+
+"Say, you ought to seen him do the camel a minute ago," whispered
+Pickles.
+
+In the little vestry room were packed some twenty children of all
+ages and sizes, with a number of grownups who had joined the class
+in charge of some of its younger members.  There was, for instance,
+Mrs. Innes, with the two youngest of her numerous progeny pillowed
+against her yielding and billowy person; and Mrs. Stewart Duff, an
+infant of only a few weeks upon her knee accounting sufficiently
+for the paleness of her sweet face, and two or three other women
+with their small children filling the bench that ran along the
+wall.
+
+"Say! look at Harry Hobbs," said Pat McCann to his friend.
+
+Upon the stove, which in summer was relegated to the corner of the
+room, sat Harry Hobbs, a man of any age from his appearance, thin
+and wiry, with keen, darting eyes, which now, however, were
+fastened upon the preacher.  All other eyes were, too.  Even the
+smallest of the children seated on the front bench were gazing with
+mouths wide open, as if fascinated, upon the preacher who, moving
+up and down with quick, lithe steps, was telling them a story.  A
+wonderful story, too, it seemed, the wonder of it apparent in the
+riveted eyes and fixed faces.  It was the immortal story, matchless
+in the language, of Joseph, the Hebrew shepherd boy, who, sold into
+slavery by his brethren, became prime minister of the mighty empire
+of Egypt.  The voice tone of the minister, now clear and high, now
+low and soft, vibrating like the deeper notes of the 'cello, was
+made for story telling.  Changing with every changing emotion, it
+formed an exquisite medium to the hearts of the listeners for the
+exquisite music of the tale.
+
+The story was approaching its climactic denouement; the rapturous
+moment of the younger brother's revealing was at hand; Judah, the
+older brother, was now holding the centre of the stage and making
+that thrilling appeal, than which nothing more moving is to be
+found in our English speech.  The preacher's voice was throbbing
+with all the pathos of the tale.  Motionless, the little group hung
+hard upon the story-teller, when the door opened quickly, a red
+head appeared, a rasping voice broke in:
+
+"Your class report, Mr. Dunbar, please.  We're waiting for it."
+
+A sigh of disappointment and regret swept the room.
+
+"Oh, darn the little woodpecker!" said Ewen from the outside, in a
+disgusted tone.  "That's the way with Hayes.  He thinks he's the
+whole works, and that he never can get in wrong."
+
+The spell was broken, never to be renewed.  The story hurried to
+its close, but the great climax failed of its proper effect.
+
+"He's a hummer, ain't he?" exclaimed young Pickles to his friend,
+Pat McCann.
+
+"Some hummer, and then some!" replied Pat.
+
+"I'm goin' in," said Pickles.
+
+"Aw, what for?  He ain't no good preachin' to them folks.  By gum!
+I think he's scared of 'em."
+
+But Pickles persisted, and followed with the men and boys who
+lounged lazily into the church, from which the Sunday School had
+now been dismissed.
+
+It appeared that the judgment of Pat McCann upon the merits of the
+preacher would be echoed by the majority of the congregation
+present.  While the service was conducted in proper form and in
+reverent spirit, the sermon was marked by that most unpardonable
+sin of which sermons can be guilty; it was dull.  Solid enough in
+matter, thoughtful beyond the average, it was delivered in a style
+appallingly wooden, with an utter absence of that arresting,
+dramatic power that the preacher had shown in his children's class.
+
+The appearance of the congregation was, as ever, a reflection of
+the sermon.  The heat of the day, the reaction from the long week
+in the open air, the quiet monotony of the well modulated voice
+rising and falling in regular cadence in what is supposed by so
+many preachers to be the tone suitable for any sacred office,
+produced an overwhelmingly somnolent effect.  Many of them slept,
+some frankly and openly, others under cover of shading hands, bowed
+heads, or other subterfuges.  Others again spent the whole of the
+period of the sermon, except for some delicious moments of
+surreptitious sleep, in a painful but altogether commendable
+struggle against the insidious influence of the god of slumber.
+
+Among the latter was Mrs. Innes, whose loyalty to her minister,
+which was as much a part of her as her breathing, contended in a
+vigorous fight against her much too solid flesh.  It was a certain
+aid to wakefulness that her two children, deep in audible slumber,
+kept her in a state of active concern lest their inert and rotund
+little masses of slippery flesh should elude her grasp, and wreck
+the proprieties of the hour by flopping on the floor.  There was
+also a further sleep deterrent in the fact that immediately before
+her sat Mr. McFettridge, whose usually erect form, yielding to the
+soporific influences of the environment, showed a tendency
+gradually to sag into an attitude, relaxed and formless, which
+suggested sleep.  This, to the lady behind him, partook of the
+nature of an affront to her minister.  Consequently she considered
+it her duty to arouse the snoozing McFettridge with a vigorous poke
+in the small of the back.
+
+The effect was instantaneously apparent.  As if her insistent
+finger had touched a button and released an electric current, Mr.
+McFettridge's sagging form shot convulsively into rigidity, and
+impinging violently upon the peacefully slumbering Mr. Boggs on the
+extreme end of the bench, toppled him over into the aisle.
+
+The astonished Boggs, finding himself thus deposited upon the
+floor, and beholding the irate face of Mr. McFettridge glooming
+down upon him, and fancying him to be the cause of his present
+humiliating position, sprang to his feet, swung a violent blow upon
+Mr. Fettridge's ear, exclaiming sotto voce:
+
+"Take that, will you!  And mind your own business!  You were
+sleeping yourself, anyway!"
+
+Before the astonished and enraged Mr. McFettridge could gather his
+wits sufficiently for action, there rang over the astonished
+congregation a peal of boyish laughter.  It was from the minister.
+A few irrepressible youngsters joined in the laugh; the rest of the
+congregation, however, were held rigid in the grip of a shocked
+amazement.
+
+"Oh, I say! do forgive me, Mr. McFettridge!" cried the young man at
+the desk.  "It was quite involuntary, I assure you."  Then, quickly
+recovering himself, he added, "And now we shall conclude the
+service by singing the seventy-ninth hymn."
+
+Before the last verse was sung he reminded the audience of the
+congregational meeting immediately following, and without further
+comment the service was brought to a close.
+
+A number of the congregation, among them Barry's father, departed.
+
+"Sit down, Neil," said Mrs. Innes to Neil Fraser.  "You'll be
+wanted I doot."  And Neil, protesting that he knew nothing about
+church business, sat down.
+
+At the back of the church were gathered Harry Hobbs, young Pickles,
+and others of the less important attendants of the church, who had
+been induced to remain by the rumour of a "scrap."
+
+By a fatal mischance, the pliant Nathan Pilley was elected
+chairman.  This gentleman was obsessed by the notion that he
+possessed in a high degree the two qualities which he considered
+essential to the harmonious and expeditious conduct of a public
+meeting, namely, an invincible determination to agree with every
+speaker, and an equally invincible determination to get motions
+passed.
+
+In a rambling and aimless speech, Mr. Pilley set forth in a
+somewhat general way the steps leading up to this meeting, and then
+called upon Mr. Innes, the chairman of the Board of Management, to
+state more specifically the object for which it was called.
+
+Mr. Innes, who was incurably averse to voluble speech, whether
+public or private, arose and said, in rolling Doric:
+
+"Weel, Mr. Chair-r-man, there's no much to be done.  We're behind a
+few hundred dollars, but if some one will go about wi' a bit paper,
+nae doot the ar-rear-rs wad soon be made up, and everything wad be
+ar-richt."
+
+"Exactly," said Mr. Pilley pleasantly.  "Now will some one offer a
+motion?"
+
+Thereupon Mr. Hayes was instantly upon his feet, and in a voice
+thin and rasping exclaimed:
+
+"Mr. Chairman, there's business to be done, and we are here to do
+it, and we're not going to be rushed through in this way."
+
+"Exactly, Mr. Hayes, exactly," said Mr. Pilley.  "We must give
+these matters the fullest consideration."
+
+Then followed a silence.
+
+"Perhaps Mr. Hayes--" continued the chairman, looking appealingly
+at that gentleman.
+
+"Well, Mr. Chairman," said Mr. Hayes, with an appeased but slightly
+injured air, "it is not my place to set forth the cause of this
+meeting being called.  If the chairman of the board would do his
+duty"--here he glared at the unconscious Mr. Innes--"he would set
+before it the things that have made this meeting necessary, and
+that call for drastic action."
+
+"Hear!  Hear!" cried Mr. Boggs.
+
+"Exactly so," acquiesced the chairman.  "Please continue, Mr. Hayes."
+
+Mr. Hayes continued:  "The situation briefly is this:  We are
+almost hopelessly in debt, and--"
+
+"How much?" enquired Neil Fraser, briskly interrupting.
+
+"Seven hundred dollars," replied Mr. Hayes, "and further--"
+
+"Five hundred dollars," said Mr. Innes.
+
+"I have examined the treasurer's books," said Mr. Hayes in the
+calmly triumphant tone of one sure of his position, "and I find the
+amount to be seven hundred dollars, and therefore--"
+
+"Five hundred dollars," repeated Mr. Innes, gazing into space.
+
+"Seven hundred dollars, I say," snapped Mr. Hayes.
+
+"Five hundred dollars," reiterated Mr. Innes, without further
+comment.
+
+"I say I have examined the books.  The arrears are seven hundred
+dollars."
+
+"Five hundred dollars," said Mr. Innes calmly.
+
+The youngsters at the back snickered.
+
+"Go to it!" said Harry Hobbs, under his breath.
+
+Even the minister, who was sitting immediately behind Harry, could
+not restrain a smile.
+
+"Mr. Chairman," cried Mr. Hayes, indignantly, "I appeal against
+this interruption.  I assert--"
+
+"Where's the treasurer?" said Neil Fraser.  "What's the use of this
+chewin' the rag?"
+
+"Ah!  Exactly so," said the chairman, greatly relieved.  "Mr. Boggs--
+Perhaps Mr. Boggs will enlighten us."
+
+Mr. Boggs arose with ponderous deliberation.
+
+"Mr. Chairman," he said, "in one sense Mr. Hayes is right when he
+states the arrears to be seven hundred dollars--"
+
+"Five hundred dollars A'm tellin' ye," said Mr. Innes with the
+first sign of feeling he had shown.
+
+"And Mr. Innes is also right," continued Mr. Boggs, ignoring the
+interruption, "when he makes the arrears five hundred dollars, the
+two hundred dollars difference being the quarterly revenue now
+due."
+
+"Next week," said Mr. Innes, reverting to his wonted calm.
+
+"Exactly so," said the chairman, rubbing his hands amiably; "so
+that the seven hundred dollars we now owe--"
+
+This was too much even for the imperturbable Mr. Innes.
+
+He arose in his place, moved out into the aisle, advanced toward
+the platform, and with arm outstretched, exclaimed in wrathful
+tones:
+
+"Mon, did ye no hear me tellin' ye?  I want nae mon to mak' me a
+le-ear."
+
+At this point Mr. Stewart Duff, who had come to convey his wife
+home, and had got tired waiting for her outside, entered the
+church.
+
+"Oh, get on with the business," said Neil Fraser, who, although
+enjoying the scene, was becoming anxious for his dinner.  "The
+question what's to be done with the five hundred dollars' arrears.
+I say, let's make it up right here.  I am willing to give--"
+
+"No, Mr. Chairman," shouted Mr. Hayes, who was notoriously averse
+to parting with his money, and was especially fearful of a public
+subscription.
+
+"There is something more than mere arrears--much more--"
+
+"Ay, there is," emphatically declared Mr. McFettridge, rising
+straight and stiff.  "I'm for plain speakin'.  The finances is not
+the worst about this congregation.  The congregation has fallen
+off.  Other churches in this village has good congregations.  Why
+shouldn't we?  The truth is, Mr. Chairman,"--Mr. McFettridge's
+voice rolled deep and sonorous over the audience--"we want a
+popular preacher--a preacher that draws--a preacher with some pep."
+
+"Hear! hear!" cried Mr. Boggs.  "Pep's what we want.  That's it--
+pep."
+
+"Pep," echoed the chairman.  "Exactly so, pep."
+
+"More than that," continued Mr. McFettridge, "we want a minister
+that's a good mixer--one that stands in with the boys."
+
+"Hear!  Hear!" cried Mr. Boggs again.
+
+"A mixer!  Exactly!" agreed the chairman.  "A mixer!" nodding
+pleasantly at Mr. Boggs.
+
+"And another thing I will say," continued Mr. McFettridge, "now
+that I am on my feet.  We want a preacher that will stick to his
+job--that will preach the gospel and not go meddlin' with other
+matters--with politics and such like."
+
+"Or prohibition," shouted Harry Hobbs from the rear, to the
+undiluted joy of the youngsters in his vicinity.
+
+The minister shook his head at him.
+
+"Yes, prohibition," answered Mr. McFettridge, facing toward the
+rear of the church defiantly.  "Let him stick to his preaching the
+gospel; I believe the time has come for a change and I'm prepared
+to make a motion that we ask our minister to resign, and that
+motion I now make."
+
+"Second the motion," cried Mr. Boggs promptly.
+
+"You have heard the motion," said the chairman, with business-like
+promptitude.  "Are you ready for the question?"
+
+"Question," said Mr. Hayes, after a few moments' silence, broken by
+the shuffling of some members in their seats, and by the audible
+whispering of Mrs. Innes, evidently exhorting her husband to
+action.
+
+"Then all those in favour of the motion will please--"
+
+Then from behind the organ a little voice piped up, "Does this
+mean, Mr. Chairman, that we lose our minister?"
+
+It was Miss Quigg, a lady whose years no gallantry could set below
+forty, for her appearance indicated that she was long past the
+bloom of her youth.  She was thin, almost to the point of
+frailness, with sharp, delicately cut features; but the little chin
+was firm, and a flash of the brown eyes revealed a fiery soul
+within.  Miss Quigg was the milliner and dressmaker of the village,
+and was herself a walking model of her own exquisite taste in
+clothes and hats.  It was only her failing health that had driven
+her to abandon a much larger sphere than her present position
+offered, but even here her fame was such as to draw to her little
+shop customers from the villages round about for many miles.
+
+"Does this mean, sir, that Mr. Dunbar will leave us?" she repeated.
+
+"Well,--yes, madam--that is, Miss, I suppose, in a way--practically
+it would amount to that."
+
+"Will you tell me yes or no, please," Miss Quigg's neat little
+figure was all a-quiver to the tips of her hat plumes.
+
+"Well," said the chairman, squirming under the unpleasant
+experience of being forced to a definite answer, "I suppose,--yes."
+
+Miss Quigg turned from the squirming and smiling Mr. Pilley in
+contempt.
+
+"Then," she said, "I say no.  And I believe there are many here
+who would say no--and men, too."  The wealth of indignation and
+contemptuous scorn infused into the word by which the difference
+in sex of the human species was indicated, made those unhappy
+individuals glance shamefacedly at each other--"only they are too
+timid, the creatures! or too indifferent."
+
+Again there was an exchange of furtive glances and smiles and an
+uneasy shifting of position on the part of "the creatures."
+
+"But if you give them time, Mr. Chairman, I believe they will
+perhaps get up courage enough to speak."
+
+Miss Quigg sat down in her place behind the organ, disappearing
+quite from view except for the tips of her plumes, whose rapid and
+rhythmic vibrations were eloquent of the beating of her gallant
+little heart.
+
+"Exactly so," said the chairman, in confused but hearty acquiescence.
+"Perhaps some one will say something."
+
+Then Mr. Innes, forced to a change of position by the physical
+discomfort caused by his wife's prodding, rose and said,
+
+"I dinna see the need o' any change.  Mr. Dunbar is no a great
+preacher, but Ah doot he does his best.  And the bairns all like
+him."
+
+Then the congregation had a thrill.  In the back seat rose Harry
+Hobbs.
+
+"I'm near forty years old," he cried, in a high nasal tone that
+indicated a state of extreme nervous tension, "and I never spoke in
+meetin' before.  I ain't had no use for churches and preachers, and
+I guess they hadn't no use for me.  You folks all know me.  I've
+been in this burg for near eight years, and I was a drinkin',
+swearin', fightin' cuss.  This preacher came into the barn one day
+when I was freezin' to death after a big spree.  He tuk me home
+with him and kep' me there for two weeks, settin' up nights with
+me, too.  Let me be," he said impatiently to Barry, who was trying
+to pull him down to his seat.  "I'm agoin' to speak this time if it
+kills me.  Many a time I done him dirt sence then, but he stuck to
+me, and never quit till he got me turned 'round.  I was goin'
+straight to hell; he says I'm goin' to heaven now."  Here he
+laughed with a touch of scorn.  "I dunno.  But, by gum! if you fire
+him and do him dirt, I don't know what'll become of me, but I guess
+I'll go straight to hell again."
+
+"No, Harry, no you won't.  You'll keep right on, Harry, straight to
+heaven."  It was the preacher's voice, full of cheery confidence.
+
+Mrs. Innes was audibly sniffling; Mrs. Stewart Duff wiping her
+eyes.  It was doubtless this sight that brought her husband to his
+feet.
+
+"I don't quite know what the trouble is here," he said.  "I
+understand there are arrears.  I heard some criticism of the
+minister's preaching.  I can't say I care much for it myself, but I
+want to say right here that there are other things wanted in a
+minister, and this young fellow has got some of them.  If he stays,
+he gets my money; if he doesn't, no one else does.  I'll make you
+gentlemen who are kicking about finances a sporting proposition.
+I'm willing to double my subscription, if any other ten men will
+cover my ante."
+
+"I'll call you," said Neil Fraser, "and I'll raise you one."
+
+"I'm willing to meet Mr. Duff and Mr. Fraser," said Miss Quigg,
+rising from behind her organ with a triumphant smile on her face.
+
+"I ain't got much money," said Harry Hobbs, "but I'll go you just
+half what I earn if you'll meet me on that proposition."
+
+"Ah may say," said Mr. Innes, yielding to his wife's vigorous vocal
+and physical incitations, "A'm prepair-r-ed to mak' a substantial
+increase in my subscreeption--that is, if necessary," he added
+cautiously.
+
+Then Barry came forward from the back of the church and stood
+before the platform.  After looking them over for a few moments in
+silence, he said, in a voice clear, quiet, but with a ring in it
+that made it echo in every heart:
+
+"Had it not been for these last speeches, it would have been
+unnecessary to allow the motion to go before you.  I could not have
+remained where I am not wanted.  But now I am puzzled, I confess, I
+am really puzzled to know what to do.  I am not a great preacher, I
+know, but then there are worse.  I don't, at least I think I don't,
+talk nonsense.  And I am not what Mr. McFettridge calls a 'good
+mixer.'  On the other hand, I think Mr. Innes is right when he says
+the bairns like me; at least, it would break"--he paused, his lip
+quivering, then he went on quietly--"it would be very hard to think
+they didn't."
+
+"They do that, then," said Mrs. Innes, emphatically.
+
+"So you see, it is really very difficult to know what to do.  I
+would hate to go away, but it might be right to go away.  I suggest
+you let me have a week to think it over.  Can you wait that long?"
+
+His handsome, boyish face, alight with a fine glow of earnestness
+and sincerity, made irresistible appeal to all but those who for
+personal reasons were opposed to him.
+
+"You see," he continued, in a tone of voice deliberative and quite
+detached, "there are a number of things to think about.  Those
+arrears, for instance, are hardly my fault--at least, not altogether.
+I was looking over the treasurer's books the other day, and I was
+surprised to find how many had apparently quite forgotten to pay
+their church subscription.  It is no doubt just an oversight.  For
+instance," he added, in the confidential tone of one imparting
+interesting and valuable information, "you will be surprised to
+learn, Mr. Duff, that you are twenty-five dollars behind in your
+payments."
+
+At this Neil Fraser threw back his head with a loud laugh.
+"Touche!" he said, in a joyous undertone.
+
+The minister looked at him in surprise, and went on, "And while Mr.
+Innes and Miss Quigg are both paid up in full, Mr. Hayes has
+apparently neglected to pay his last quarter."
+
+"Hit him again," murmured Harry Hobbs, while Mr. Hayes rose in
+virtuous indignation.
+
+"I protest, Mr. Chairman!" he cried, "against these personalities."
+
+"Oh, you quite mistake me, Mr. Hayes," said the preacher, "these
+are not personalities.  I am simply showing how easy it is for
+arrears to arise, and that it may not be my fault at all.  Of
+course, it may be right for me to resign.  I don't know about that
+yet, but I want to be very sure.  It would be easier to resign, but
+I don't want to be a quitter."
+
+"I move we adjourn," said Neil Fraser.
+
+"I second the motion," said Stewart Duff.  The motion was carried,
+and the meeting adjourned.
+
+At the door the minister stood shaking hands with all as they
+passed out, making no distinction in the heartiness with which he
+greeted all his parishioners.  To Miss Quigg, however, he said,
+"Thank you.  You were splendidly plucky."
+
+"Nonsense!" cried the little lady, the colour flaming in her faded
+cheeks.  "But," she added hastily, "you did that beautifully, and
+he deserved it, the little beast!"
+
+"Solar plexus!" said Neil Fraser, who was immediately behind Miss
+Quigg.
+
+The minister glanced from one to the other in perplexity, as they
+passed out of the door.
+
+"But, you know, I was only--"
+
+"Oh, yes, we know," cried Miss Quigg.  "But if those men would only
+take hold!  Oh, those men!"  She turned upon Neil Fraser and shook
+her head at him violently.
+
+"I know, Miss Quigg.  We are a hopeless and helpless lot.  But
+we're going to reform."
+
+"You need to, badly," she said.  "But you need some one to reform
+you.  Look at Mr. Duff there, how vastly improved he is," and she
+waved her hand to that gentleman, who was driving away with his
+wife in their buckboard.
+
+"He is a perfect dear," sighed Mrs. Duff, as she bowed to the
+minister.  "And you, too, Stewart," she added, giving his arm a
+little squeeze, "you said just the right thing when those horrid
+people were going to turn him out."
+
+"Say!  Your preacher isn't so bad after all," said her husband.
+"Wasn't that a neat one for old Hayes?"
+
+"He rather got you, though, Stewart."
+
+"Yes, he did, by Jove!  Not the first time, either, he's done it.
+But I must look after that.  Say, he's the limit for freshness
+though.  Or is it freshness?  I'm not quite sure."
+
+"Will he stay with us?" said his wife.  "I really do hope he will."
+
+"Guess he'll stay all right.  He won't give up his job," said her
+husband.
+
+But next week proved Mr. Duff a poor prophet, for the minister
+after the service informed his people that he had come to the
+conclusion that another man might get better results as minister of
+the congregation; he had therefore handed in his resignation to the
+Presbytery.
+
+It was a shock to them all, but he adhered to his resolution in
+spite of tearful lamentations from the women, wide-eyed amazement
+and dismay from the bairns of the congregation, and indignation,
+loudly expressed, from Neil Fraser and Stewart Duff, and others of
+their kind.
+
+"Well," said Miss Quigg, struggling with indignant tears, as she
+was passing out of the church, "you won't see Harry Hobbs in this
+church again, nor me, either."
+
+"Oh, yes, Miss Quigg, Harry has promised me that he will stick by
+the church, and that he will be there every Sunday.  And so will
+you, dear Miss Quigg.  I know you.  You will do what is right."
+
+But that little lady, with her head very erect and a red spot
+burning in each faded cheek, passed out of the church saying
+nothing, the plumes on her jaunty little hat quivering defiance and
+wrath against "those men, who had so little spunk as to allow a
+little beast like Hayes to run them."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE WAR DRUM CALLS
+
+
+"Well, dad," said Barry next evening as they were sitting in the
+garden after tea, "I feel something like Mohammed's coffin,
+detached from earth but not yet ascended into heaven.  It's
+unpleasant to be out of a job.  I confess I shall always cherish a
+more intelligent sympathy henceforth for the great unemployed.  But
+cheer up, dad!  You are taking this thing much too seriously.  The
+world is wide, and there is something waiting me that I can do
+better than any one else."
+
+But the father had little to say.  He felt bitterly the humiliation
+to which his son had been subjected.
+
+Barry refused to see the humiliation.
+
+"Why should I not resign if I decide it is my duty so to do?  And
+why, on the other hand, should not they have the right to terminate
+my engagement with them when they so desire?  That's democratic
+government."
+
+"But good Lord, Barry!" burst out his father, with quite an unusual
+display of feeling; "to think that a gentleman should hold his
+position at the whim of such whippersnappers as Hayes, Boggs et hoc
+genus omne.  And more than that, that I should have to accept as my
+minister a man who would be the choice of cattle like that."
+
+"After all, dad, we are ruled by majorities in this age and in this
+country.  That is at once the glory and the danger of democratic
+government.  There is no better way discovered as yet.  And
+besides, I couldn't go on here, dad, preaching Sunday after Sunday
+to people who I felt were all the time saying, 'He's no good'; to
+people, in short, who could not profit by my preaching."
+
+"Because it had no pep, eh?" said his father with bitter scorn.
+
+"Do you know, dad, I believe that's what is wrong with my
+preaching: it hasn't got pep.  What pep is, only the initiated
+know.  But the long and the short of this thing is, it is the
+people that must be satisfied.  It is they who have to stand your
+preaching, they who pay the piper.  But cheer up, dad, I have no
+fear for the future."
+
+"Nor have I, my boy, not the slightest.  I hope you did not think
+for a moment, my son," he added with some dignity, "that I was in
+doubt about your future."
+
+"No, no, dad.  We both feel a little sore naturally, but the future
+is all right."
+
+"True, my dear boy, true.  I was forgetting myself.  As you say,
+the world is wide and your place is waiting."
+
+"Hello! here comes my friend, Mr. Duff," said Barry in a low voice.
+"He was ready to throw Mr. McFettridge out of the meeting
+yesterday, body and bones.  Awfully funny, if it hadn't been in
+church.  Wonder what he wants!  Seems in a bit of a hurry."
+
+But hurry or not, it was a full hour before Mr. Duff introduced his
+business.  As he entered the garden he stood gazing about him in
+amazed wonder and delight, and that hour was spent in company with
+Mr. Dunbar, exploring the garden, Barry following behind lost in
+amazement at the new phase of character displayed by their visitor.
+
+"I have not had such a delightful evening, Mr. Dunbar, for years,"
+said Duff, when they had finished making the round of the garden.
+"I have heard about your garden, but I had no idea that it held
+such a wealth and variety of treasures.  I had something of a
+garden myself in the old country, but here there is no time
+apparently for anything but cattle and horses and money.  But if
+you would allow me I should greatly like to have the pleasure of
+bringing Mrs. Duff to see your beautiful garden."
+
+Mr. Duff was assured that the Dunbars would have the greatest
+pleasure in receiving Mrs. Duff.
+
+"Do bring her," said Barry, "and we can have a little music, too.
+She is musical, I know.  I hear her sing in church."
+
+"Music!  Why, she loves it.  But she dropped her music when she
+came here; there seemed to be no time, no time, no time.  I wonder
+sometimes--  Well, I must get at my business.  It is this letter
+that brings me.  It is from an American whom you know, at least, he
+knows you, a Mr. Osborne Howland of Pittsburgh."
+
+Mr. Dunbar nodded.
+
+"He is planning a big trip up the Peace River country prospecting
+for oil and mines, and later hunting.  He says you and your son
+engaged to accompany him, and he asks me to complete arrangements
+with you.  I am getting Jim Knight to look after the outfit.  You
+know Jim, perhaps.  He runs the Lone Pine ranch.  Fine chap he is.
+Knows all about the hunting business.  Takes a party into the
+mountains every year.  He'll take Tom Fielding with him.  I don't
+know Fielding, but Knight does.  Mr. Howland says there will be
+three of their party.  Far too many, but that's his business.  I
+myself am rather anxious to look after some oil deposits, and this
+will be a good chance.  What do you say?"
+
+Father and son looked at each other.
+
+"It would be fine, if we could manage it," said Mr. Dunbar, "but my
+work is so pressing just now.  A great many are coming in, and I am
+alone in the office at present.  When does he propose to start?"
+
+"In six weeks' time.  I hope you can come, Mr. Dunbar.  I couldn't
+have said so yesterday, but I can now.  Any man with a garden like
+this, the product of his own planning and working, is worth
+knowing.  So I do hope you can both come.  By the way, Knight wants
+a camp hand, a kind of roustabout, who can cook--a handy man, you
+know."
+
+"I have him," said Barry.  "Harry Hobbs."
+
+"Hobbs?  Boozes a bit, doesn't he?"
+
+"Not now.  Hasn't for six months.  He's a new man.  I can guarantee
+him."
+
+"You can, eh?  Well, my experience is once a boozer always a
+boozer."
+
+"Oh," said Barry, "Hobbs is different.  He is a member of our
+church, you know."
+
+"No, I didn't know.  But I don't know that that makes much
+difference anyway," said Duff with a laugh.  "I don't mean to be
+offensive," he added.
+
+"It does to Hobbs, he's a Christian man now.  I mean a real
+Christian, Mr. Duff."
+
+"Well, I suppose there is such a thing.  In fact, I've known one or
+two, but--well, if you guarantee him I'll take him."
+
+"I will guarantee him," said Barry.
+
+"Let me have your answer to-morrow," said Duff as he bade them
+good-night.
+
+The Dunbars discussed the matter far into the night.  It was
+clearly impossible for Mr. Dunbar to leave his work, and the only
+question was whether or not Barry should make one of the party.
+Barry greatly disliked the idea of leaving his father during the
+hot summer months, as he said, "to slave away at his desk, and to
+slop away in his bachelor diggings."  He raised many objections,
+but one consideration seemed to settle things for the Dunbars.  To
+them a promise was a promise.
+
+"If I remember aright, Barry, we promised that we should join their
+party on this expedition."
+
+"Yes," added Barry quickly, "if our work permitted it."
+
+"Exactly," said his father.  "My work prevents me, your work does
+not."
+
+Hence it came that by the end of August Barry found himself in the
+far northern wilds of the Peace River country, a hundred miles or
+so from Edmonton, attached to a prospecting-hunting party of which
+Mr. Osborne Howland was the nominal head, but of which the "boss"
+was undoubtedly his handsome, athletic and impetuous daughter
+Paula.  The party had not been on the trail for more than a week
+before every member was moving at her command, and apparently glad
+to do so.
+
+The party were camped by a rushing river at the foot of a falls.
+Below the falls the river made a wide eddy, then swept down in a
+turbulent rapid for some miles.  The landing was a smooth and
+shelving rock that pitched somewhat steeply into the river.
+
+The unfortunate Harry, who after the day's march had exchanged his
+heavy marching boots with their clinging hobnails for shoes more
+comfortable but with less clinging qualities, in making preparation
+for the evening meal made his way down this shelving rock of water.
+No sooner had he filled his pail than his foot slipped from under
+him, and in an instant the pail and himself were in the swiftly
+flowing river.
+
+His cry startled the camp.
+
+"Hello!" shouted Duff, with a great laugh.  "Harry is in the drink!
+I never knew he was so fond of water as all that.  You've got to
+swim for it now, old boy."
+
+"Throw him something," said Knight.
+
+Past them ran Barry, throwing off coat and vest.
+
+"He can't swim," he cried, tearing at his boots.  "Throw him a
+line, some one."  He ran down to the water's edge, plunged in, and
+swam toward the unfortunate Harry, who, splashing wildly, was being
+carried rapidly into the rough water.
+
+"Oh, father, he will be drowned!" cried Paula, rushing toward a
+canoe which was drawn up on the shore.  Before any one could reach
+her she had pushed it out and was steering over the boiling current
+in Barry's wake.  But after a few strokes of her paddle she found
+herself driven far out into the current and away from the
+struggling men.  Paula had had sufficient experience with a canoe
+to handle it with considerable ease in smooth water and under
+ordinary conditions, but in the swirl of this rough and swift water
+the canoe took the management of its course out of her hands, and
+she had all she could do to keep afloat.
+
+"For God's sake, men, get her!" cried Brand.  "She will be drowned
+before our eyes."
+
+"Come on, Tom," cried Jim Knight, swinging another canoe into the
+water.  A glance he gave at the girl, another at the struggling
+men, for by this time Barry could be seen struggling with the
+drowning Hobbs.
+
+"Get in, Tom," ordered Knight, taking the stern.  "We will get the
+men first.  The girl is all right in the meantime."
+
+"Get the girl!" commanded Brand.  "For God's sake go for the girl,"
+he entreated in a frenzy of distress.
+
+"No," said Knight, "the men first.  She's all right."
+
+"Here," said Duff to Brand, pushing out the remaining canoe, "get
+into the bow, and stop howling.  Those men are in danger of being
+drowned, but Knight will get them.  We'll go for the girl."
+
+It took but a few minutes for Knight and Fielding, who knew their
+craft thoroughly and how to get the best out of her in just such an
+emergency, to draw up upon Harry and his rescuer.
+
+"Say, they are fighting hard," said Fielding.  "That bloody little
+fool is choking the life out of Dunbar.  My God! they are out of
+sight!"
+
+"Go on," roared Knight.  "Keep your eyes on the spot, and for
+Heaven's sake, paddle!"
+
+"They are up again!  One of them is.  It's Barry.  The other is
+gone.  No, by Jove! he's got him!  Hold on, Barry, we're coming,"
+yelled Tom.  "Stick to it, old boy!"
+
+Swiftly the canoe sped toward the drowning men.
+
+"They are gone this time for sure," cried Tom, as the canoe shot
+over the spot where the men had last been seen.
+
+"Not much!" said Knight, as reaching out of the stern he gripped
+Barry by the hair.  "Hold hard, Barry," he said quietly.  "No
+monkey work now or you'll drown us all."  Immediately Barry ceased
+struggling.
+
+"Don't try to get in, Barry.  We'll have to tow you ashore."
+
+"All right, Jim," he said between his sobbing breaths.  "Only--
+hurry up--I've got him--here."
+
+Knight reached down carefully, lifted Barry till his hand touched
+the gunwale of the canoe.
+
+"Not too hard, Barry," he said.  "I'll ease you round to the stern.
+Steady, boy, steady.  Don't dump us."
+
+"All right--Jim--but--he's under the water--here."
+
+"Oh, never mind him.  We'll get him all right.  Can you hold on
+now?" said Knight.
+
+"Yes--I think so."
+
+"Now, for God's sake, Tom, edge her into the shore.  See that
+little eddy there?  Swing into that!  You'll do it all right.
+Good man!"
+
+By this time Knight was able to get Harry's head above water.
+
+In a few minutes they had reached the shore, and were working hard
+over Harry's unconscious body, leaving Barry lying on the sand to
+recover his strength.  A long fight was necessary to bring the life
+back into Harry, by which time Barry was sufficiently recovered to
+sit up.
+
+"Stay where you are, Barry, until we get this man back to camp,"
+ordered Knight.  "We'll light a bit of a fire for you."
+
+"I'm warm enough," said Barry.
+
+"Warm enough?  You may be, but you will be better with a fire, and
+you lie beside it till we get you.  Don't move now."
+
+"There's the other canoes coming," said Fielding.  "They'll make
+shore a little lower down.  They're all right.  Say, she's handling
+that canoe like a man!"
+
+"Who?" said Barry.
+
+"Why, Miss Howland," said Fielding.  "She was out after you like a
+shot.  She's a plucky one!"
+
+Barry was on his feet in an instant, watching anxiously the
+progress of the canoes, which were being slowly edged across the
+river in a long incline toward the shore.
+
+"They'll make it, all right," said Knight, after observing them for
+a time.  "Don't you worry.  Just lie down by the fire.  We'll be
+back in a jiffy."
+
+In an hour they were all safely back in camp, and sufficiently
+recovered to discover the humorous points in the episode.  But they
+were all familiar enough with the treacherous possibilities of
+rough and rapid water to know that for Hobbs and his deliverer at
+least, there had been some serious moments during their fierce
+struggle in the river.
+
+"Another minute would have done," said Fielding to his friend, as
+they sat over the fire after supper.
+
+"A half a minute would have been just as good," said Knight.  "I
+got Barry by the hair under water.  He was at his last kick, you
+bet!  And that rat," he added, smiling good naturedly at Harry,
+"was dragging him down for the last time."
+
+"I didn't know nothin' about it," said poor Harry, who was lying
+stretched out by the fire, still very weak and miserable.  "I
+didn't know nothin' about it, or you bet I woudn't ha' done it.  I
+didn't know nothin' after he got me."
+
+"After you got him, you mean," said Fielding.
+
+"I guess that's right," said Harry, "but I wouldn't ha' got him if
+he hadn't ha' got me first."
+
+They all joined in the discussion of the event except Paula, who
+sat distrait and silent, gazing into the fire, and Barry, who lay,
+drowsy and relaxed, on a blanket not far from her side.
+
+"You ought to go to bed," said Paula at length in a low voice to
+him.  "You need a good night's sleep."
+
+"I'm too tired to sleep," said Barry.  "I feel rather rotten, in
+fact.  I ought to feel very grateful, but somehow I just feel
+rotten."
+
+"Can one be grateful and feel rotten at the same time?" said Paula,
+making talk.
+
+"Behold me," replied Barry.  "I know I am grateful, but I do feel
+rotten.  I don't think I have even thanked you for risking your
+life for me," he added, turning toward her.
+
+"Risking my life?  Nonsense!  I paddled 'round in the canoe for a
+bit, till two strong men came to tow me in, and would have, if I
+had allowed them.  Thank the boys, who got you in time."  She
+shuddered as she spoke.
+
+"I do thank them, and I do feel grateful to them," said Barry.  "It
+was rather a near thing.  You see, I let him grip me.  I choked him
+off my arms, but he slid down to my thigh, and I could not kick him
+off.  Had to practically drown him.  Even then he hung on."
+
+"Oh, don't speak about it," she said with a shudder, covering her
+face with her hands.  "It was too awful, and it might have been the
+end of you."  Her voice broke a little.
+
+"No, not an end," answered Barry, in a quiet voice.  "Not the end
+by a long way, not by a very long way."
+
+"What do you mean?  Oh, you are thinking of immortality, and all
+that," said Paula.  "It's a chilly, ghostly subject.  It makes me
+shiver.  I get little comfort out of it."
+
+"Ghostly it is, if you mean a thing of spirits," said Barry, "but
+chilly!  Why chilly?"  Then he added to himself in an undertone:
+"I wonder!  I wonder!  I wish sometimes I knew more."
+
+"Sometimes?" cried Paula.  "Always!" she added passionately.  "It's
+a dreadful business to me.  To be suddenly snatched out of the
+light and the warmth, away from the touch of warm fingers and the
+sight of dear faces!  Ah, I dread it!  I loathe the thought of it.
+I hate it!"
+
+"And yet," mused Barry, "somehow I cannot forget that out there
+somewhere there is One, kindly, genial, true,--like my dad.  How
+good he has been to me--my dad, I mean, and that Other, too, has
+been good.  Somehow I think of them together.  Yes, I am grateful
+to Him."
+
+"Oh, God, you mean," said Paula, a little impatiently.
+
+"Yes, to God.  He saved me to-day.  'Saved,' I say.  It is a queer
+way to speak, after all.  What I really ought to say is that God
+thought it best that I should camp 'round here for a bit longer
+before moving in nearer."
+
+"Nearer?"
+
+"Yes, into the nearer circle.  Life moves 'round a centre, in outer
+and inner circles.  This is the outer circle.  Nearer in there, it
+is kindlier, with better light and clearer vision.  'We shall know
+even as we are known.'"  Barry mused on, as if communing with
+himself.
+
+"But when you move in," said Paula, and there was no mistaking the
+earnestness of her tone, "you break touch with those you love
+here."
+
+"I don't know about that," answered Barry quickly.
+
+"Oh, yes you do.  You are out of all this,--all this," she swept
+her hand at the world around her, "this good old world, all your
+joy and happiness, all you love.  Oh, that's the worst of it; you
+give up your love.  I hate it!" she concluded with vehemence sudden
+and fierce, as she shook her fist towards the stars.
+
+"Give up your love?" said Barry.  "Not I!  Not one good, honest
+affection do I mean to give up, nor shall I."
+
+"Oh, nonsense!  Don't be religious.  Just be honest," said Paula,
+in a low, intense voice.  "Let me speak to you.  Suppose I--I love
+a man with all my soul and body--and body, mind you, and he goes
+out, or goes in, as you say.  No matter, he goes out of my life.  I
+lose him, he is not here.  I cannot feel and respond to his love.
+I cannot feel his strong arms about me.  My God!"  Her voice came
+with increasing vehemence.  "I want his arms.  I want him as he is.
+I want his body--I cannot love a ghost.  No! no!" she added in a
+low, hopeless voice.  "When he goes out I lose him, and lose him as
+mine forever.  Oh, what do I care for your spirit love!  The old
+Greeks were right.  They are shades--shades, mere shades beyond the
+river.  I don't want a shade.  I want a man, a strong, warm-
+hearted, brave man.  Yes, a good man, a man with a soul.  But a
+MAN, not a SOUL.  My God!" she moaned, "how terrible it all is!
+And it came so near to us to-day.  But I should not be saying this
+to you, played out as you are.  I am going to bed.  Good-night."
+
+She put out her hand and gripped his in warm, strong, muscular
+fingers.  "Thank God, yes God, if you like, you are still--still in
+this outer circle,"--she broke into a laugh, but there was little
+mirth in her laughter--"this good old outer circle, yet awhile."
+
+"Yes," said Barry simply but very earnestly, "thank God.  It is a
+good world.  But with all my soul I believe there is a better, and
+all that is best in love and life we shall take with us.  Good-
+night," he added, "and thank you, at least for the will and the
+attempt to save my life."
+
+"Sleep well," she said.
+
+"I hope so," he replied, "but I doubt it."
+
+His doubts, it turned out, were justified, for soon after midnight
+Mr. Howland was aroused by Harry Hobbs in a terror of excitement.
+
+"Will you come to Mr. Dunbar, sir?" he cried.  "I think he is
+dying."
+
+"Dying?"  Mr. Howland was out of his cot immediately and at Barry's
+side.  He found him fighting for breath, his eyes starting from his
+head, a look of infinite distress on his face.
+
+"My dear boy, what is it?  Hobbs says you are dying."
+
+"That con-con-founded--fool--shouldn't have--called you.  I forbade--
+him," gasped Barry.
+
+"But, my dear boy, what is the matter?  Are you in pain?"
+
+"No, no,--it's--nothing--only an old--friend come back--for a
+call,--a brief one--let us--hope.  It's only asthma.  Looks bad--
+feels worse--but really--not at all dangerous."
+
+"What can be done, my boy?" asked Mr. Howland, greatly relieved, as
+are most laymen, when the trouble can be named.  It is upon the
+terror inspired by the unknown that the medical profession lives.
+
+"Tell Harry--to make--a hot drink," said Barry, but Harry had
+already forestalled the request, and appeared with a steaming bowl.
+"This will--help.  Now--go to--bed, Mr. Howland.  Do, please.--You
+distress--me by remaining--there.  Harry will--look after me.
+Good-night."
+
+Next morning Barry appeared at breakfast a little washed out in
+appearance, but quite bright and announcing himself fit for
+anything.
+
+The incident, however, was a determining factor in changing the
+party's plans.  Already they were behind their time schedule, to
+Mr. Cornwall Brand's disgust.  The party was too large and too
+heavily encumbered with impedimenta for swift travel.  Besides, as
+Paula said, "Why rush?  Are we not doing the Peace River Country?
+We are out for a good time and we are having it."  Paula was not
+interested in mines and oil.  She did not announce just what
+special interest was hers.  She was "having a good time" and that
+was reason enough for leisurely travel.  In consequence their
+provisions had run low.
+
+It was decided to send forward a scouting party to the Hudson's Bay
+Post some thirty miles further on to restock their commissariat.
+Accordingly Knight and Fielding were despatched on this mission,
+the rest of the party remaining in camp.
+
+"A lazy day or two in camp is what we all need," said Mr. Howland.
+"I confess I am quite used up myself, and therefore I know you must
+all feel much the same."
+
+On the fourth day the scouting party appeared.
+
+"There's war!" cried Knight as he touched land.  He flung out a
+bundle of papers for Mr. Howland.
+
+"War!"  The word came back in tones as varied as those who uttered
+it.
+
+"War!" said Mr. Howland.  "Between whom?"
+
+"Every one, pretty much," said Knight.  "Germany, France, Russia,
+Austria, Servia, Belgium, and Britain."
+
+"Britain!" said Barry and Duff at the same moment.
+
+"Britain," answered Knight solemnly.
+
+The men stood stock still, looking at each other with awed faces.
+
+"War!" again said Barry.  "With Germany!"  He turned abruptly away
+from the group and said, "I am going."
+
+"Going!  Going where?" said Mr. Howland.
+
+"To the war," said Barry quietly.
+
+"To the war!  You?  A clergyman?" said Mr. Howland.
+
+"You?  You going?" cried Paula.  At the pain in her voice her
+father and Brand turned and looked at her.  Disturbed by what he
+saw, her father began an excited appeal to Barry.
+
+"Why, my dear sir, it would surely be most unusual for a man like
+you to go to war," he began, and for quite ten minutes he proceeded
+to set forth in fluent and excited speech a number of reasons why
+the idea of Barry's going to war was absurd and preposterous to
+him.  It must be confessed that Barry was the only one of the men
+who appeared to give much heed to him.  They seemed to be dazed by
+the stupendous fact that had been announced to them, and to be
+adjusting themselves to that fact.
+
+When he had finished his lengthy and excited speech Brand took up
+the discourse.
+
+"Of course you don't think of going immediately," he said.  "We
+have this expedition in hand."
+
+The men made no reply.  Indeed, they hardly seemed to hear him.
+
+"You don't mean to say," continued Brand with a touch of indignation
+in his voice, addressing Duff, the recognised leader of the party,
+"that you would break your engagement with this party, Mr. Duff?"
+
+Duff glanced at him, then looked away in silence, studying the
+horizon.  The world was to him and to them all a new world within
+the last few minutes.
+
+His silence appeared to enrage Brand.  He turned to Barry.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me, sir, that you approve of this?  Do you
+consider it right and fair that these men should break their
+engagement with us?  We have gone to great expense, we have
+extremely important interests at stake in this exploration."
+
+Barry stood looking at him in silence, as if trying to take in
+exactly what he meant, then in a low and awed tone he said:
+
+"It is war!  War with Germany!"
+
+"We cannot help that," cried Brand.  "What difference can this war
+make to you here a hundred miles from civilisation?  These men are
+pledged to us."
+
+"Their first pledge is to their country, sir," said Barry gravely.
+
+"But why should you, a Canadian, take part in this war?" argued Mr.
+Howland.  "Surely this is England's war."
+
+Then Barry appeared to awake as from a dream.
+
+"Yes, it is England's war, it is Britain's war, and when Britain is
+at war my country is at war, and when my country is at war I ought
+to be there."
+
+"God in heaven!" shouted Duff, striking him on the back, "you have
+said it!  My country is at war, and I must be there.  As God hears
+me, I am off to-day--now."
+
+"Me, too!" said Knight with a shout.
+
+"I'm going with you, sir," said little Harry Hobbs, ranging himself
+beside Barry.
+
+"Count me in," said Tom Fielding quietly.  "I have a wife and three
+kids, but--"
+
+"My God!" gasped Duff.  "My wife."  His face went white.  He had
+not yet fully adjusted himself to the fact of war.
+
+"Why, of course," said Mr. Howland, "you married men won't be
+called upon.  You must be reasonable.  For instance you, Mr. Duff,
+cannot leave your wife."
+
+But Duff had recovered himself.
+
+"My wife, sir?  My wife would despise me if I stayed up here.  Sir,
+my wife will buckle on my belt and spurs and send me off to the
+war," cried Duff in a voice that shook as he spoke.
+
+With a single stride Barry was at his side, offering both his
+hands.
+
+"Thank God for men like you!  And in my soul I believe the Empire
+has millions of them."
+
+"Does your Empire demand that you desert those you have pledged
+yourself to?" enquired Brand in a sneering tone.
+
+"Oh, Cornwall!" exclaimed Paula, "how can you?"
+
+"Why, Brand," said Mr. Howland, "that is unworthy of you."
+
+"We will see you into safety, sir," said Duff, swinging round upon
+Brand, "either to the Hudson's Bay Company's post, where you can
+get Indians, or back to Edmonton, but not one step further on this
+expedition do I go."
+
+"Nor I," said Knight.
+
+"Nor I," said Fielding.
+
+"Nor I," said Barry.
+
+"Nor I," said Harry Hobbs.
+
+"You are quite right, sir," said Mr. Howland, turning to Barry.  "I
+apologise to you, sir, to all of you Canadians.  I am ashamed to
+confess that I did not at first get the full meaning of this
+terrific thing that has befallen your Empire.  Were it the U.S.A.
+that was in a war of this kind, hell itself would not keep me from
+going to her aid.  Nor you either, Brand.  Yes, you are right.  Go
+to your war.  God go with you."
+
+He shook hands solemnly with them one by one.  "I only wish to God
+that my country were with you, too, in this thing," he said when he
+had performed this function.
+
+"Father," cried Paula, "do you think for one minute that Uncle Sam
+won't be in this?  You put it down," she said, swinging 'round upon
+Barry, "where it will jump at you some day:  We will be with you in
+this scrap for all we are worth."
+
+"And now for the march," said Barry, who seemed almost to assume
+command.  Then removing his hat and lifting high his hand, he said
+in a voice thrilling with solemn reverence, "God grant victory to
+the right!  God save the king!"
+
+Instinctively the men took off their hats and stood with bared and
+bent heads, as if sharing in a solemn ritual.  They stood with
+millions upon millions of their kin in the old mother lands, and
+scattered wide upon the seas, stood with many millions more of
+peoples and nations, pledging to this same cause of right, life and
+love and all they held dear, and with hearts open to that all-
+searching eye, praying that same prayer, "God grant victory to the
+right.  Amen and amen.  We ask no other."
+
+Then they faced to their hundred miles' trek en route to the war.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE MEN OF THE NORTH
+
+
+"Fifty miles--not too bad, boy, not too bad for a one day's go.
+We'll camp right here at the portage.  How is it, Knight?"
+
+"Good place, Duff, right on that point.  Good wood, good landing.
+Besides there's a deuce of a portage beyond, which we can do after
+supper to-night.  How do you feel, Barry?" asked Knight.  "Hard
+day, eh?"
+
+"Feeling fit, a little tired, of course, but good for another ten
+miles," answered Barry.
+
+"That's the stuff," replied Knight, looking at him keenly, "but,
+see here, you must ease up on the carrying.  You haven't quite got
+over that ducking of yours."
+
+"I'm fit enough," answered Barry, rather more curtly than his wont.
+
+They brought the canoes up to the landing, and with the speed of
+long practice unloaded them, and drew them upon the shore.
+
+Knight approached Duff, and, pointing toward Barry, said quietly:
+
+"I guess we'll have to ease him up a bit.  That fight, you know,
+took it out of him, and he always jumps for the biggest pack.  We'd
+better hold him back to-morrow a bit."
+
+"Can't hold back any one," said Duff, with an oath.  "We've got to
+make it to-morrow night.  There's the devil of a trip before us.
+That big marsh portage is a heartbreaker, and there must be a dozen
+or fifteen of them awaiting us, and we're going to get through--at
+least, I am."
+
+"All right," said Knight, with a quick flash of temper.  "I'll stay
+with you, only I thought we might ease him a bit."
+
+"I'm telling you, we're going to get through," said Duff, with
+another oath.
+
+"You needn't tell me, Duff," said Knight.  "Keep your shirt on."
+
+"On or off, wet or dry, sink or swim, we're going to make that
+train to-morrow, Knight.  That's all about it."
+
+Then Knight let himself go.
+
+"See here, Duff.  Do you want to go on to-night?  If you do, hell
+and blazes, say the word and I'm with you."
+
+His face was white as he spoke.  He seized a tump-line, swung the
+pack upon his head, and set off across the portage.
+
+"Come on, boys," he yelled.  "We're going through to-night."
+
+"Oh, hold up, Knight!" said Duff.  "What the hell's eating you?
+We'll grub first anyway."
+
+"No," said Knight.  "The next rapid is a bad bit of water, and if
+we're going through to-night, I want that bit behind me, before it
+gets too dark.  So come along!"
+
+"Oh, cut it out, Knight," said Duff, in a gruff but conciliatory
+tone.  "We'll camp right here."
+
+"It's all the same to me," said Knight, flinging his pack down.
+"When you want to go on, say the word.  You won't have to ask me
+twice."
+
+Duff looked over the six feet of bone and sinew and muscle of the
+young rancher, made as if to answer, paused a moment, changed his
+mind, and said more quietly:
+
+"Don't be an ass, Knight.  I'm not trying to hang your shirt on a
+tree."
+
+"You know damned well you can't," said Knight, who was still white
+with passion.
+
+"Oh, come off," replied Duff.  "Anyway, I don't see what young
+Dunbar is to you.  We must get through to-morrow night.  The
+overseas contingent is camping at Valcartier, according to these
+papers and whatever happens I am going with that contingent."
+
+Knight made no reply.  He was a little ashamed of his temper.  But
+during the past two days he had chafed under the rasp of Duff's
+tongue and his overbearing manner.  He resented too his total
+disregard of Barry's weariness, for in spite of his sheer grit, the
+pace was wearing the boy down.
+
+"We ought to reach the railroad by six to-morrow," said Duff,
+renewing the conversation, and anxious to appease his comrade.
+"There's a late train, but if we catch the six we shall make home
+in good time.  Hello, what's this coming?"
+
+At his words they all turned and looked in the direction in which
+he pointed.
+
+Down a stream, which at this point came tumbling into theirs in a
+dangerous looking rapid, came a canoe with a man in the centre
+guiding it as only an expert could.
+
+"By Jove!  He can't make that drop," said Knight, walking down
+toward the landing.
+
+They all stood watching the canoe which, at the moment, hung poised
+upon the brink of the rapid like a bird for flight.  Even as Knight
+spoke the canoe entered the first smooth pitch at the top.  Two
+long, swallow-like sweeps, then she plunged into the foam, to appear
+a moment later fighting her way through the mass of crowding,
+crested waves, which, like white-fanged wolves upon a doe, seemed to
+be hurling themselves upon her, intent upon bearing her down to
+destruction.
+
+"By the living, jumping Jemima!" said Fielding, in an awe-stricken
+tone, "she's gone!"
+
+"She's through!" cried Knight.
+
+"Great Jehoshaphat!" said Fielding.  "He's a bird!"
+
+With a flip or two of his paddle, the stranger shot his canoe
+across the stream, and floated quietly to the landing.
+
+Barry ran down to meet him.
+
+"I say, that was beautifully done," he cried, taking the nose of
+the canoe while the man stepped ashore and stood a moment looking
+back at the water.
+
+"A leetle more to the left would have been better, I think.  She
+took some water," he remarked in a slow voice, as if to himself.
+
+He was a strange-looking creature.  He might have stepped out of
+one of Fenimore Cooper's novels.  Indeed, as Barry's eyes travelled
+up and down his long, bony, stooping, slouching figure, his mind
+leaped at once to the Pathfinder.
+
+"Come far?" asked Duff, approaching the stranger.
+
+"Quite a bit," he answered, in a quiet, courteous voice, pausing a
+moment in his work.
+
+"Going out?" enquired Duff.
+
+"Not yet," he said.  "Going up the country first to The Post."
+
+"Ah, we have just come down from there," said Duff.  "We started
+yesterday morning," he added, evidently hoping to surprise the man.
+
+"Yes," he answered in a quiet tone of approval.  "Nice little run!
+Nice little run!  Bit of a hurry, I guess," he ventured
+apologetically.
+
+"You bet your life, we just are.  This damned war makes a man feel
+like as if the devil was after him," said Duff.
+
+"War!"  The man looked blankly at him.  "Who's fightin'?"
+
+"Why, haven't you heard?  It's been going on for a month.  We heard
+only three days ago as we were going further up the country.  It
+knocked our plans endways, and here we are chasing ourselves to get
+out."
+
+"War!" said the man again.  "Who's fightin'?  Uncle Sam after them
+Mexicans?"
+
+"No.  Mexicans, hell!" exclaimed Duff.  "Germany and Britain."
+
+"Britain!"  The slouching shoulders lost their droop.  "Britain!"
+he said, straightening himself up.  "What's she been doin' to
+Germany?"
+
+"What's Germany been doing to her, and to Belgium, and to Servia,
+and to France?" answered Duff, in a wrathful voice.  "She's been
+raising hell all around.  You haven't seen the papers, eh?  I have
+them all here."
+
+The stranger seemed dazed by the news.  He made no reply, but
+getting out his frying-pan and tea-pail, his only utensils, he set
+about preparing his evening meal.
+
+"I say," said Duff, "won't you eat with us?  We're just about
+ready.  We'll be glad to have you."
+
+The man hesitated a perceptible moment.  In the wilds men do not
+always accept invitations to eat.  Food is sometimes worth more
+than its weight in gold.
+
+"I guess I will, if you've lots of stuff," he said at length.
+
+"We've lots of grub, and we expect to be home by tomorrow night
+anyway, if things go all right.  You are very welcome."
+
+The man laid down his frying-pan and tea-pail, and walked with Duff
+toward his camp.
+
+"Are you goin'?" he enquired.
+
+"Going?"
+
+"To the war.  Guess some of our Canadian boys will be goin' likely,
+eh?"
+
+"Going," cried Duff.  "You bet your life I'm going.  But, come on.
+We'll talk as we eat.  And we can't stay long, either."
+
+Duff introduced the party.
+
+"My name's McCuaig," said the stranger.
+
+"Scotch, I guess?" enquired Duff.
+
+"My father came out with The Company.  I was born up north.  Never
+been much out, but I read the papers," he added quickly, as if to
+correct any misapprehension as to his knowledge of the world and
+its affairs.  "My father always got the Times and the Spectator,
+and I've continued the habit."
+
+"Any one who reads the Times and the Spectator," said Barry, "can
+claim to be a fairly well-read man.  My father takes the Spectator,
+too."
+
+As they sat down to supper, he noticed that McCuaig took off his
+old grey felt and crossed himself before beginning toast.
+
+As a matter of courtesy, Barry had always been asked to say grace
+before meals while with the Howland party.  This custom, however,
+had been discontinued upon this trip.  They had no time for meals.
+They had "just grabbed their grub and run," as Harry Hobbs said.
+
+While they ate, Duff kept a full tide of conversation going in
+regard to the causes of the war and its progress, as reported in
+the papers.  Barry noticed that McCuaig's comments, though few,
+revealed a unique knowledge of European political affairs during
+the last quarter of a century.  He noticed too that his manners at
+the table were those of a gentleman.
+
+After supper they packed their stuff over the long portage, leaving
+their tent and sleeping gear, with their food, however, to be taken
+in the morning.  For a long time they sat over the fire, Barry
+reading, for McCuaig's benefit, the newspaper accounts of the
+Belgian atrocities, the story of the smashing drive of the German
+hosts, and the retreat of the British army from Mons.
+
+"What," exclaimed McCuaig, "the British soldiers goin' back!
+Runnin' away from them Germans!"
+
+"Well, the Germans are only about ten to one, not only in men but
+in guns, and in this war it's guns that count.  Guns can wipe out
+an army of heroes as easily as an army of cowards," said Duff.
+
+"And them women and children," said McCuaig.  "Are they killing
+them still?"
+
+"You're just right, they are," replied Duff, "and will till we stop
+them."
+
+McCuaig's eyes were glowing with a deep inner light.  They were
+wonderful eyes, quick, darting, straight-looking and fearless, the
+eyes of a man who owes his life to his vigilance and his courage.
+
+Before turning in for the night, Barry went to the river's edge,
+and stood looking up at the stars holding their steadfast watch
+over the turbulent and tossing waters below.
+
+"Quiet, ain't they?" said a voice at his shoulder.
+
+"Why, you startled me, Mr. McCuaig; I never heard you step."
+
+McCuaig laughed his quiet laugh.
+
+"Got to move quietly in this country," he said, "if you are going
+to keep alive."
+
+A moment or so he stood by Barry's side, looking up with him at the
+stars.
+
+"No fuss, up there," he said, interpreting Barry's mood and
+attitude.  "Not like that there pitchin', tossin', threatenin'
+water."
+
+"No," said Barry, "but though they look quiet, I suppose if we
+could really see, there is a most terrific whirling of millions of
+stars up there, going at the rate of thousands of miles a minute."
+
+"Millions of 'em, and all whirlin' about," said McCuaig in an awe-
+stricken voice.  "It's a wonder they don't hit."
+
+"They don't hit because they each keep their own orbit," said
+Barry, "and they obey the laws of their existence."
+
+"Orbut," enquired McCuaig.  "What's that?"
+
+"The trail that each star follows," said Barry.
+
+"I see," said McCuaig, "each one keeps its own trail, its own
+orbut, and so there's peace up there.  And I guess there'd be peace
+down here if folks did the same thing.  It's when a man gets out of
+his own orbut and into another fellow's that the scrap begins.  I
+guess that's where Germany's got wrong."
+
+"Something like that," replied Barry.
+
+"And sometimes," continued McCuaig, his eyes upon the stars, "when
+a little one comes up against a big one, he gets busted, eh?"
+
+Barry nodded.
+
+"And a big one, when he comes up against a bigger one gets pretty
+badly jarred, eh?"
+
+"I suppose so," said Barry.
+
+"That's what's goin' to happen to Germany," said McCuaig.
+
+"Germany's a very powerful nation," said Barry.  "The most powerful
+military nation in the world."
+
+"What!" said McCuaig.  "Bigger than Britain?"
+
+"Britain has two or three hundred thousand men in her army; Germany
+has seven millions or more, with seventy millions of people behind
+them, organised for war.  Of course, Britain has her navy, but then
+Germany has the next biggest in the world.  Oh, it's going to be a
+terrific war."
+
+"I say," said McCuaig, putting his hand on Barry's shoulder.  "You
+don't think it will bother us any to lick her?"
+
+"It will be the most terrible of all Britain's wars," replied
+Barry.  "It will take every ounce of Britain's strength."
+
+"You don't tell me!" exclaimed McCuaig, as if struck by an entirely
+new idea.  "Say, are you really anxious, young man?"
+
+"I am terribly anxious," replied Barry.  "I know Germany a little.
+I spent a year there.  She is a mighty nation, and she is ready for
+war."
+
+"She is, eh!" replied McCuaig thoughtfully.  He wandered off to the
+fire without further word, where, rolling himself in his blanket
+and scorning the place in the tent offered him by Duff, he made
+himself comfortable for the night.
+
+At the break of day Duff was awakened by the smell of something
+frying.  Over the fire bent McCuaig, busy preparing a breakfast of
+tea, bacon and bannocks, together with thick slices of fat pork.
+
+Breakfast was eaten in haste.  The day's work was before them, and
+there was no time for talk.  In a very few minutes they stood ready
+for their trip across the portage.
+
+With them stood McCuaig.  His blanket roll containing his grub,
+with frying-pan and tea-pail attached, lay at his feet; his rifle
+beside it.
+
+For a moment or two he stood looking back up the stream by which,
+last night, he had come.  Then he began tying his paddles to the
+canoe thwarts in preparation for packing it across the portage.
+
+As he was tying on the second paddle, Duff's eye fell on him.
+
+"What's up, McCuaig?" he said.  "Aren't you going up to the Post?"
+
+"No, I guess I ain't goin' up no more," replied McCuaig slowly.
+
+"What do you mean?  You aren't going back home?"
+
+"No.  My old shack will do without me for a while, I guess.--Say,"
+he continued, facing around upon Duff and looking him squarely in
+the face, "this young chap says"--putting his hand upon Barry's
+shoulder--"Britain is going to have a hell of a time licking
+Germany back into her own orbut.  Them papers said last night that
+Canada was going in strong.  Do you think she could use a fellow
+like me?"
+
+A silence fell upon the group of men.
+
+"What!  Do you mean it, McCuaig?" said Duff at length.
+
+The man turned his thin, eagle face toward the speaker, a light in
+his eyes.
+
+"Why, ain't you goin'?  Ain't every one goin' that can?  If a
+fellow stood on one side while his country was fightin', where
+would he live when it's all over?  He read out of the papers that
+them Germans were shootin' women and children.  So--" his face
+began to work, "am I goin' to stand by and ask some one else to
+make 'em quit?  No, by God!"
+
+The men stood watching his face, curiously twisted and quivering.
+Then without a word Duff seized his pack, and swung into the trail,
+every man following him in his order.  Without pausing, except for
+a brief half hour at noon, and another later in the day for eating,
+they pressed the trail, running what rapids they could and
+portaging the others, until in the early evening they saw, far
+away, a dirty blur on the skyline.
+
+"Hurrah!" yelled Fielding.  "Good old firebus, waiting for us."
+
+"Somebody run ahead and hold her," said Duff.
+
+Barry flung his pack down and started away.
+
+"Come back here, Barry," cried Knight.  "You're not fit.  You're
+all in."
+
+"That's right, too," said McCuaig.  "I guess I'll go."
+
+And off he set with the long, shuffling, tireless trot with which,
+for a hundred years, the "runners of the woods" have packed their
+loads and tracked their game in the wilds of northwestern Canada.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BARRICADES AND BAYONETS
+
+
+The city of Edmonton was in an uproar, its streets thronged with
+excited men, ranchers and cowboys from the ranches, lumberjacks
+from the foothill camps, men from the mines, trappers with lean,
+hard faces, in weird garb, from the north.
+
+The news from the front was ominous.  Belgium was a smoking waste.
+Her skies were black with the burning of her towns, villages and
+homesteads, her soil red with the blood of her old men, her women
+and children.  The French armies, driven back in rout from the
+Belgian frontier, were being pounded to death by the German hordes.
+Fortresses hitherto considered impregnable were tumbling like
+ninepins before the terrible smashing of Austrian and German
+sixteen-inch guns.  Already von Kluck with his four hundred
+thousand of conquering warriors was at the gates of Paris.
+
+Most ominous of all, the British army, that gallant, little
+sacrificial army, of a scant seventy-five thousand men, holding
+like a bulldog to the flank of von Bulow's mighty army, fifty times
+as strong, threatened by von Kluck on the left flank and by von
+Housen on the right, was slowing down the German advance, but was
+itself being slowly ground into the bloody dust of the northern and
+eastern roads of Northern and Eastern France.
+
+Black days these were for the men of British blood.  Was the world
+to see something new in war?  Were Germans to overcome men of the
+race of Nelson, and Wellington and Colin Campbell?
+
+At home, hundreds of thousands were battering at the recruiting
+offices.  In the Dominions of the Empire overseas it was the same.
+In Canada a hundred thousand men were demanding a place in the
+first Canadian contingent of thirty-five thousand, now almost ready
+to sail.  General Sam at Ottawa was being snowed under by entreating,
+insistent, cajoling, threatening telegrams.  Already northern
+Alberta had sent two thousand men.  The rumour in Edmonton ran that
+there were only a few places left to be filled in the north Alberta
+quota.  For these few places hundreds of men were fighting in the
+streets.
+
+Alighting from their train, Duff and his men stood amazed, aghast,
+gazing upon the scene before them.  Duff climbed a wagon wheel and
+surveyed the crowd packing the street in front of the bulletin
+boards.
+
+"No use, this way, boys.  We'll have to go around.  Come on."
+
+They went on.  Up side streets and lanes, through back yards and
+shops they went until at length they emerged within a hundred yards
+of the recruiting office.
+
+Duff called his men about him.
+
+"Boys, we'll have to bluff them," he said.  "You're a party of
+recruits that Col. Kavanagh expects.  You've been sent for.  I'm
+bringing you in under orders.  Look as much like soldiers as you
+can, and bore in like hell.  Come on!"
+
+They began to bore.  At once there was an uproar, punctuated with
+vociferous and varied profanity.
+
+Duff proved himself an effective leader.
+
+"Here, let me pass," he shouted into the backs of men's heads.
+"I'm on duty here.  I must get through to Colonel Kavanagh.  Keep
+up there, men; keep your line!  Stand back, please!  Make way!"
+
+His huge bulk, distorted face and his loud and authoritative voice
+startled men into temporary submission, and before they could
+recover themselves he and his little company of hard-boring men
+were through.
+
+Twenty-five yards from the recruiting office a side rush of the
+crowd caught them.
+
+"They've smashed the barricades," a boy from a telegraph pole
+called out.
+
+Duff and his men fought to hold their places, but they became
+conscious of a steady pressure backwards.
+
+"What's doing now, boy?" shouted Duff to the urchin clinging to the
+telegraph pole.
+
+"The fusileers--they are sticking their bayonets into them."
+
+Before the line of bayonets the crowd retreated slowly, but Duff
+and his company held their ground, allowing the crowd to ebb past
+them, until they found themselves against the line of bayonets.
+
+"Let me through here, sergeant, with my party," said Duff.  "I'm
+under orders of Colonel Kavanagh."
+
+The sergeant, an old British army man, looked them over.
+
+"Have you an order, sir--a written order, I mean?"
+
+"No," said Duff.  "I haven't, but the colonel expects us.  He is
+waiting for me now."
+
+"Sorry, sir," replied the sergeant, "my orders are to let no one
+through without a written pass."
+
+Duff argued, stormed, threatened, swore; but to no purpose.  The
+N. C. O. knew his job.
+
+"Send a note in," suggested Barry in Duff's ear.
+
+"Good idea," replied Duff, and wrote hurriedly.
+
+"Here, take this through to your colonel," he said, passing the
+note to the sergeant.
+
+Almost immediately Colonel Kavanagh came out and greeted Duff
+warmly.
+
+"Where in this wide creation have you been, Duff?" he exclaimed.
+"I've wanted you terribly."
+
+"Here I am now, then," answered Duff.  "Six of us.  We're going
+with you."
+
+"It can't be done," said the colonel.  "I have only twenty places
+left; every one promised ten times over."
+
+"That makes it easy, Kavanagh.  You can give six of them to us."
+
+"Duff, it simply can't be done.  You know I'd give it to you if I
+could.  I've wires from Ottawa backing up a hundred applicants,
+actually ordering me to put them on.  No!  It's no use," continued
+the colonel, holding up his hand.  "Look here, I'll give you a
+pointer.  We have got word to-day that there's to be a second
+contingent.  Neil Fraser is out there in your district, Wapiti,
+raising a company of two hundred and fifty men.  We have stripped
+that country bare already, so he's up against it.  He wants Wapiti
+men, he says.  They are no better than any other, but he thinks
+they are.  You get out there to-night, Duff, and get in on that
+thing.  You will get a commission, too.  Now hike!  Hike!  Go!
+Honest to God, Duff, I want you with my battalion, and if I can
+work it afterwards, I'll get you exchanged, but your only chance
+now is Wapiti.  Go, for God's sake, go quick!"
+
+"What do you say, boys?" asked Duff, wheeling upon his men.
+
+"I say, go!" said Knight.
+
+In this decision they all agreed.
+
+"Go it is," said Duff.  "Right about turn.  Good luck, Kavanagh,
+damn you.  I see you have got a good sergeant there."
+
+"Who?  McDowell?  None better.  You couldn't beat him, eh?" said
+the colonel with a grin.
+
+The sergeant stood at attention, with a wooden face.
+
+"He's the kind of man they want in the front lines," said Duff.
+"The devil himself couldn't break through where he is."
+
+"That's why I have him.  Good luck.  Good-bye!"
+
+Throughout the night they marched, now and then receiving a lift
+from a ranch wagon, and in the grey of the morning, weary, hungry,
+but resolute for a place in the Wapiti company, they made the
+village.
+
+Early as it was, Barry found his father astir, with breakfast in
+readiness.
+
+"Hello, boy!" cried his father running to him with outstretched
+hands.
+
+"Hello, dad!" answered Barry.  His father threw a searching glance
+over his son's face as he shook his hand warmly.
+
+"Not a word, Barry, until you eat.  Not a word.  Go get ready for
+your bath.  I'll have it for you in a minute.  No, not one word.
+Quick.  March.  That is the only word these days.  As you eat I'll
+give you the news."
+
+Resolutely he refused to talk until he saw his son begin upon his
+breakfast.  Then he poured forth a stream of news.  The whole
+country was aflame with war enthusiasm.  Alberta had offered half a
+million bushels of oats for the imperial army, and a thousand
+horses or more.  The Calgary district had recruited two thousand
+men, the Edmonton district as many more.  All over Canada, from
+Vancouver to Halifax, it was the same.
+
+From the Wapiti district twenty-six ranchers, furnishing their own
+horses, had already gone.  Ewen Innes was in Edmonton.  His brother
+Malcolm was in uniform, too, and his young brother Jim was keen to
+enlist.  Neil Fraser was busy raising a company of Wapiti men.
+Young Pickles and McCann had joined up as buglers.
+
+And so the stream flowed, Barry listening with grave face but
+making no response.
+
+"And I'm glad you're back, my boy.  I'm glad you're back," said his
+father, clapping him on the shoulder.
+
+The rest of the meal was eaten in silence.  They were having each
+his own thoughts, and for the first time in their life together,
+they kept their thoughts to themselves.
+
+"You're going to your office, Dad," said Barry, when they had
+cleared away, and set the house in order.
+
+"No, the office is closed, and will be for some time, I imagine.
+I'm busy with Neil Fraser.  I'm acting paymaster, quartermaster,
+recruiting sergeant, and half a dozen other things."
+
+"I'll go down with you," said Barry, as his father rose to go.
+
+His father came back to him, put his hands on his shoulders, and
+said:
+
+"Barry, I want you to go to bed."
+
+"Nonsense, dad.  I'm all right.  I'm going downtown with you."
+
+"Barry," said his father, "we have hard times before us, and you
+must be fit.  I ask you to go to bed and sleep there this forenoon.
+You're half asleep now.  This afternoon we shall face up to our
+job."
+
+His father's voice was quietly authoritative and Barry yielded.
+
+"All right, dad.  I'll do as you say, and this afternoon--well,
+we'll see."
+
+At the noonday meal they were conscious of a mutual restraint.  For
+the first time in their lives they were not opening to each other
+their innermost souls.  The experience was as distressing as it was
+unusual.  The father, as if in dread of silence, was obviously
+exerting himself to keep a stream of talk flowing.  Barry was
+listening with a face very grave and very unlike the bright and
+buoyant face he usually carried.  They avoided each other's eyes,
+and paid little heed to their food.
+
+At length Barry pushed back his chair.
+
+"Will you excuse me, dad," he said.  "I think I shall step out a
+moment into the garden."
+
+"Do, Barry," said his father, in obvious relief.  "You are fagged
+out, my boy."
+
+"Thanks, dad.  I am a bit played out."
+
+"And take it easy this afternoon, Barry.  To-night you will tell me
+about your trip, and--and--we'll have a talk."
+
+"Good old dad!" said Barry.  "You do understand a chap.  See you
+later, then," he called back as he passed through the door.
+
+His father sat gazing before him for some moments with a deep
+shadow on his face.
+
+"There is something wrong with that boy," he said to himself.  "I
+wish I knew what it was."
+
+He set his house in order, moving heavily as if a sudden weight of
+years had fallen upon his shoulders, and took his way slowly down
+the street.
+
+"I wonder what it is," he mused, refusing to give form to a
+horrible thought that hovered like a spectre about the windows of
+his soul.
+
+The first glance at his son's face at the time of the evening meal
+made his heart sing within him.
+
+"He's all right again!  He's all right!" he said to himself
+jubilantly.
+
+"Hello, dad," cried Barry, as his father entered the room.
+"Supper's just ready.  How do you feel, eh?"
+
+"Better, my boy--first rate, I mean.  I'm properly hungry.  You're
+rested, I can see."
+
+"I'm all right, dad!  I'm all right!" cried Barry, in his old
+cheery way.  "Dad, I want to apologise to you.  I wasn't myself to-
+day, but now I'm all right again.  Dad, I've joined up.  I'm a
+soldier now," he said with a smile on his face, but with anxious
+eyes turned on his father.
+
+"Joined up!" echoed his father.  "Barry, you have enlisted!  Thank
+God, my boy.  I feared--I thought--  No, damned if I did!" he
+added, with such an unusual burst of passion that Barry could only
+gaze at him with astonishment.
+
+"Forgive me, my boy," he said, coming forward with outstretched
+hand.  "For a moment I confess I thought--"  Again he paused,
+apparently unable to continue.
+
+"You thought, dad," cried Barry, "and--forgive me, dad--I thought
+too.  I ought to have known you better."
+
+"And I, you, my son."
+
+They shook hands with each other in an ecstasy of jubilation.
+
+"My God, I'm glad that's through," said the older man.  "We were
+both fools, Barry, but thank God that horror is past.  Now tell me
+all about everything--your trip, your plans.  Let's have a good
+talk as we always do."
+
+"Come on then, dad," cried Barry.  "Let's have an eat first.  By
+Jove, I feel a thousand years younger.  I go to the M. O. to-morrow
+for an examination."
+
+"He is quite unusually severe in his interpretation of the
+regulations, I understand," said his father.  "He is turning men
+down right and left.  He knows, of course, that there are plenty to
+choose from.  But there is no fear of your fitness, Barry."
+
+"Not much," said Barry, with a gay laugh.
+
+Never had they spent a happier evening together.  True, the spectre
+of war would thrust itself upon them, but they faced it as men--
+with a full appreciation of its solemn reality, but without fear,
+and with a quiet determination to make whatever sacrifice might be
+demanded of them.  The perfect understanding that had always marked
+their intercourse with each other was restored.  The intolerable
+burden of mutual uncertainty in regard to each other's attitude
+toward the war was lifted.  All shadows that lay between them were
+gone.  Nothing else really mattered.
+
+The day following, Barry received a rude shock.  The M. O., after
+an examination, to his amazement and dismay, pronounced him
+physically unfit for service.
+
+"And why, pray?" cried his father indignantly, when Barry announced
+the astounding report.  "Is the man a fool?  I understood that he
+was strict.  But you! unfit!  It is preposterous.  Unfit! how?"
+
+"Heart murmur," said Barry.  "Sets it down to asthma.  You remember
+I told you I had a rotten attack after my experience last week in
+the river.  He suggested that I apply for a position in an
+ambulance corps, and he is giving me a letter to Colonel Sidleigh
+at Edmonton.  I am going to-morrow to Edmonton to see Sidleigh, and
+besides I have some church business to attend to.  I must call upon
+my superintendent.  You remember I made an application to him for
+another mission field."
+
+He found Colonel Sidleigh courteously willing to accept his
+application, the answer to which, he was informed, he might expect
+in a fortnight; and so went with a comparatively light heart to his
+interview with his superintendent.
+
+The interview, however, turned out not entirely as he had expected.
+He went with an idea of surrendering his appointment.  His
+superintendent made him an offer of another and greater.
+
+"So they turned you down," said the superintendent.  "Well, I
+consider it most providential.  You have applied for a position on
+the ambulance corps.  As fine as is that service, and as splendid
+as are its possibilities, I offer you something much finer, and I
+will even say much more important to our army and to our cause.  We
+are in need of men for the Chaplain Service, and for this service
+we demand the picked men of our church.  The appointments that have
+been made already are some of them most unsuitable, some, I regret
+to say, scandalous.  Let me tell you, sir, of an experience in
+Winnipeg only last week.  It was, my fortune to fall in with the
+commanding officer of a Saskatchewan unit.  I found him in a rage
+against the church and all its officials.  His chaplain had become
+so hilarious at the mess that he was quite unable to carry on."
+
+"Hilarious?" inquired Barry.
+
+"Hilarious, sir.  Yes, plain drunk.  Think of it.  Think of the
+crime! the shame of it!  A man charged with the responsibility of
+the souls of these men going to war--possibly to their death--
+drunk, in their presence!  A man standing for God and the great
+eternal verities, incapacitated before them!  I took the matter up
+with Ottawa, and I have this satisfaction at least, that I believe
+that no such appointment will ever be made again.  That chaplain, I
+may say too, has been dismissed.  I have here, sir, a mission field
+suitable to your ability and experience.  I shall not offer it to
+you.  I am offering you the position of chaplain in one of our
+Alberta battalions."
+
+Barry stood before him, dumb with dismay.
+
+"Of course, I want to go to the war," he said at length, "but I am
+sure, sir, I am not the man for the position you offer me."
+
+"Sir," said the superintendent, "I have taken the liberty of
+sending in your name.  Time was an element.  Appointments were
+being rapidly made, and I was extremely anxious that you should go
+with this battalion.  I confess to a selfish interest.  My own boy,
+Duncan, has enlisted in that unit, and many of our finest young men
+with him.  I assumed the responsibility of asking for your
+appointment.  I must urge you solemnly to consider the matter
+before you decline."
+
+Eloquently Barry pleaded his unfitness, instancing his failure as a
+preacher in his last field.
+
+"I am not a preacher," he protested.  "I am not a 'mixer.'  They
+all say so.  I shall be impossible as a chaplain."
+
+"Young man," said the superintendent, a note of sternness in his
+voice, "you know not what transformations in character this war
+will work.  Would I were twenty years younger," he added
+passionately, "twenty years sounder.  Think of the opportunity to
+stand for God among your men, to point them the way of duty, and
+fit them for it, to bring them comfort, when they need comfort
+sorely, to bring them peace, when they most need peace."
+
+Barry came away from the interview more disturbed than he had ever
+been in his life.  After he had returned to his hotel, a message
+from his superintendent recalled him.
+
+"I have a bit of work to do," he said, "in which I need your help.
+I wish you to join me in a visitation of some of the military camps
+in this district.  We start this evening."
+
+There was nothing for it but to obey his superintendent's orders.
+The two weeks' experience with his chief gave Barry a new view and
+a new estimate of the chaplain's work.  As he came into closer
+touch with camp life and its conditions, he began to see how great
+was the soldier's need of such moral and spiritual support as a
+chaplain might be able to render.  He was exposed to subtle and
+powerful temptations.  He was deprived of the wonted restraints
+imposed by convention, by environment, by family ties.  The
+reactions from the exhaustion of physical training, from the
+monotonous routine of military discipline, from loneliness and
+homesickness were such as to call for that warm, sympathetic,
+brotherly aid, and for the uplifting spiritual inspiration that it
+is a chaplain's privilege to offer.  But in proportion as the
+service took on a nobler and loftier aspect, was Barry conscious
+to a corresponding degree of his own unfitness for the work.
+
+When he returned to the city, he found no definite information
+awaiting him in regard to a place in the ambulance corps.  He
+returned home in an unhappy and uncertain frame of mind.
+
+But under the drive of war, events were moving rapidly in Barry's
+life.  He arrived late in the afternoon, and proceeding to the
+military H.Q., he found neither his father nor Captain Neil Fraser
+in the office.
+
+"Gone out for the afternoon, sir," was the word from the orderly in
+charge.
+
+Wandering about the village, he saw in a field at its outskirts, a
+squad of recruits doing military evolutions and physical drill.  As
+he drew near he was arrested by the short, snappy tones of the
+N. C. O. in charge.
+
+"That chap knows his job," he said to himself, "and looks like his
+job, too," he added, as his eyes rested upon the neat, upright,
+soldier-like figure.
+
+Captain Neil he found observing the drill from a distance.
+
+"What do you think of that?" he called out to Barry, as the latter
+came within hailing distance.  "What do you think of my sergeant?"
+
+"Fine," replied Barry.  "Where did you get him?"
+
+"What?  Look at him!"
+
+"I am.  Pretty natty sergeant he makes, too."
+
+"Let's go out there, and I'll introduce him."
+
+As they crossed the parade ground, the sergeant dropped his
+military tone and proceeded to explain in his ordinary voice some
+details in connection with the drill.  Barry, catching the sound of
+his voice, stopped short.
+
+"You don't mean it, Captain Neil!  Not dad, is it?"
+
+"Nobody else," said Captain Neil.  "Wait a minute.  Wait and let's
+watch him at his work."
+
+For some time they stood observing the work of the new sergeant.
+Barry was filled with amazement and delight.
+
+"What do you think of him?" inquired Captain Neil.
+
+But Barry made no reply.
+
+"My company sergeant major got drunk," continued Captain Neil.  "I
+had no one to take the drill.  I asked your father to take it.  He
+nearly swept us off our feet.  In consequence, there he stands, my
+company sergeant major, and let me tell you, he will be the
+regimental sergeant major before many weeks have passed, or I'm a
+German."
+
+"But his age," inquired Barry, still in a maze of astonishment.
+
+"Oh, that's all right.  You don't want them too young.  I assured
+the authorities that he was of proper military age, telling them,
+at the same time, that I must have him.  He's a wonder, and the men
+just adore him."
+
+"I don't wonder at that," said Barry.
+
+Together they moved over to the squad.  The sergeant, observing his
+officer, called his men smartly to attention, and greeted the
+captain with a very snappy salute.
+
+"Sergeant major, let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Barry
+Dunbar," said Captain Neil with a grin.
+
+"I say, dad," said Barry, still unable to associate his father with
+this N. C. O. in uniform who stood before him.  "I say, dad, where
+did you get all that military stuff?"
+
+"I'm very rusty, my boy, very rusty!  I hope to brush up, though.
+The men are improving, I think, sir."
+
+"I'm sure of it," said Captain Neil.  "How is that wild man from
+Athabasca doing?"
+
+"He is finding it hard work, sir, I'm afraid.  He finds it
+difficult to connect up this drill business with the business of
+war.  He wants to go right off and kill Germans.  But he is making
+an effort to put up with me."
+
+"And you, with him, eh, sergeant major?  But turn them loose.  They
+have done enough for to-day, and I know your son wants to take you
+off with him, and get you to explain how you go into the army."
+
+The explanation came as they were walking home together.
+
+"You see, boy, I felt keenly your disappointment in being rejected
+from the fighting forces of the country.  I felt too that our
+family ought to be represented in the fighting line, so when
+Captain Fraser found himself in need of a drill sergeant, I could
+hardly refuse.  I would have liked to have consulted you, my boy,
+but--"
+
+"Not at all, dad; you did perfectly right.  It was just fine of
+you.  I'm as proud as Punch.  I only wish I could go with you.  I'd
+like to be in your squad.  But never mind, I've two jobs open to me
+now, and I sorely need your advice."
+
+Together they talked over the superintendent's offer of the
+position of chaplain.
+
+"I can't see myself a chaplain, dad.  The position calls for an
+older man, a man of wider experience.  Many of these men would be
+almost twice my age.  Now the superintendent himself would be the
+man for the job.  You ought to see him at his work with the
+soldiers.  I really can't think I'm fit."
+
+In this opinion his father rather concurred.
+
+"An older man would be better, Barry--a man of more experience
+would be of more service, and, yet I don't know.  One thing I am
+sure of, if you accept the position, I believe you will fill it
+worthily.  After all, in every department, this war is a young
+man's job."
+
+"Of course," said Barry.  "If I went as chaplain, it would be in
+your unit, dad, and that would be altogether glorious."
+
+"I do hope so.  But we must not allow that, however, to influence
+our decision," replied his father.
+
+"I know, I know!" hurriedly agreed Barry.  "I trust I would not be
+unduly influenced by personal considerations."
+
+This hope, however, was rudely dashed by an unexpected call for a
+draft of recruits from Captain Neil's company that came through
+from Colonel Kavanagh to replace a draft suddenly dispatched to
+make up to strength another western regiment.  Attached to the call
+there was a specific request, which amounted to a demand for the
+sergeant major, for whose special qualifications as physical and
+military instructor there was apparently serious need in Colonel
+Kavanagh's regiment.
+
+With great reluctance, and with the expenditure of considerable
+profanity, Captain Neil Fraser dispatched his draft and agreed to
+the surrender of his sergeant major.
+
+The change came as a shock to both Barry and his father.  For some
+days they had indulged the hope that they would both be attached to
+the same military unit, and unconsciously this had been weighing
+with Barry in his consideration of his probable appointment as
+chaplain.
+
+The disappointment of their hope was the more bitter when it was
+announced that Colonel Kavanagh's battalion was warned for
+immediate service overseas, and the further announcement that in
+all probability the new battalion, to which the Wapiti company
+would be attached, might not be dispatched until some time in the
+spring.
+
+"But you may catch us up in England, Barry," said his father, when
+Barry was deploring their ill luck.  "No one knows what our
+movements will be.  I do wish, however, that your position were
+definitely settled."
+
+The decision in this matter came quickly, and was, without his will
+or desire, materially hastened by Barry himself.
+
+Colonel Kavanagh's battalion being under orders to depart within
+ten days, a final Church Parade was ordered, at which only soldiers
+and their kin were permitted to be present.  The preacher for the
+day falling ill from an overweight of war work, and Barry being in
+the city with nothing to do, the duty of preaching at this Parade
+Service was suddenly thrust upon him.
+
+To his own amazement and to that of his father, Barry accepted
+without any fear or hesitation this duty which in other circumstances
+would have overwhelmed him with dismay.  But to Barry the occasion
+was of such surpassing magnitude and importance that all personal
+considerations were obliterated.
+
+The war, with its horrors, its losses, its overwhelming sacrifice,
+its vast and eternal issues, was the single fact that filled his
+mind.  It was this that delivered him from that nervous self-
+consciousness, the preacher's curse, that paralyses the mental
+activities, chills the passions, and cloggs the imagination, so
+that his sermon becomes a lifeless repetition of words, previously
+prepared, correct, even beautiful, it may be in form, logical in
+argument, sound in philosophy, but dead, dull and impotent, bereft
+of the fire that kindles the powers of the soul, the emotion that
+urges to action, the imagination that lures to high endeavour.
+
+"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye
+present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God,
+which is your reasonable service."
+
+The voice, clear, vibrant, melodious, arrested with its first word
+the eyes and hearts of his hearers, and so held them to the end.
+With the earnest voice there was the fascination of a face alight
+with a noble beauty, eyes glowing as with lambent flame.
+
+A second time he read the appealing words, then paused and allowed
+his eyes to wander quietly over the congregation.  They represented
+to him in that hour the manhood and womanhood of his country.
+Sincerely, with no attempt at rhetoric and with no employment of
+any of its tricks, he began his sermon.
+
+"This war," he said, "is a conflict of ideals eternally opposed.
+Our ambitious and ruthless enemy has made the issue and has
+determined the method of settlement.  It is a war of souls, but the
+method of settlement is not that of reason but that of force--a
+force that finds expression through your bodies.  Therefore the
+appeal of the Apostle Paul, this old-world hero, to the men of his
+time reaches down to us in this day, and at this crisis of the
+world's history.  Offer your bodies--these living bodies--these
+sacred bodies--offer them in sacrifice to God."
+
+There was little discussion of the causes of the war.  What need?
+They knew that this war was neither of their desiring nor of their
+making.  There was no attempt to incite hatred or revenge.  There
+was little reference to the horrors of war, to its griefs, its
+dreadful agonies, its irreparable losses.
+
+From the first word he lifted his audience to the high plane of
+sacrament and sacrifice.  They were called upon to offer upon the
+altar of the world's freedom all that they held dear in life--yea,
+life itself!  It was the ancient sacrifice that the noblest of the
+race had always been called upon to make.  In giving themselves to
+this cause they were giving themselves to their country.  They were
+offering themselves to God.  In simple diction, and in clear
+flowing speech, the sermon proceeded without pause or stumbling
+to the end.  The preacher closed with an appeal to the soldiers
+present to make this sacrifice of theirs at once worthy and
+complete.  These bodies of theirs were sacred and were devoted
+to this cause.  It was their duty to keep them clean and fit.
+
+For a few brief moments, he turned to the others present at the
+service--the fathers, mothers, wives and sweethearts of the
+soldiers, and reminded them in tones thrilling with tenderness and
+sympathy that though not privileged to share in the soldiers'
+service in the front lines, none the less might they share in this
+sacrifice, by patient endurance of the separation and loss, by a
+cheerful submission to trial, and by continual remembrance in
+prayer to Almighty God of the sacred cause and its defenders they
+might help to bring this cause to victory.
+
+In the brief prayer that followed the sermon, in words tender,
+simple, heart-moving, he led the people in solemn dedication of
+themselves, soul and body, to their country, to their cause, to
+their God.
+
+The effect of the sermon and prayer was overpowering.  There were
+no tears, but men walked out with heads more erect, because of the
+exaltation of spirit which was theirs.  And women, fearful of the
+coming hour of parting, felt their hearts grow strong within them
+with the thought that they were voluntarily sending their men away.
+Upon the whole congregation lay a new and solemn sense of duty, a
+new and uplifting sense of privilege in making the sacrifice of all
+that they counted precious for this holy cause.
+
+It was the sermon that brought the decision in the matter of
+Barry's appointment.
+
+"What do you think of that, Colonel Kavanagh?" asked Captain Neil
+Fraser, who came in for the service.
+
+"A very fine sermon!  A very notable sermon!" said the colonel.
+"Who is he?"
+
+"He is my own minister," said Captain Neil, "and he gave me, to-
+day, the surprise of my life.  I didn't know it was in him.  I
+understand there is a chance of his being our chaplain.  He is
+Sergeant Dunbar's son."
+
+"I wish to Heaven we could take him with us!  What about it,
+Fraser?  We've got the father, why not the son, too?  They'd both
+like it."
+
+"I say, Colonel, for Heaven's sake, have a heart.  I hated to
+surrender my company sergeant major.  I don't think I ought to be
+asked to surrender our chaplain."
+
+"All right, Fraser, so be it.  But you have got a wonderful
+chaplain in that boy.  What a face!  What a voice!  And that's the
+kind of a spirit we want in our men."
+
+That very afternoon, Captain Neil went straight away to Colonel
+Leighton, the officer commanding the new regiment to which Captain
+Neil's company belonged.  To the colonel he gave an enthusiastic
+report of the sermon, with Colonel Kavanagh's judgment thereon.
+
+"I would suggest, sir, that you wire Ottawa on the matter," he
+urged.  "If Colonel Kavanagh thought he had a chance, he would not
+hesitate.  We really ought to get this fixed.  I assure you he's a
+find."
+
+"Go to it, then, Fraser.  I'm rather interested to see your earnest
+desire for a chaplain.  The Lord knows you need one!  Go up to
+Headquarters and use my name.  Say what you like."
+
+Thus it came that the following day Barry was informed by wire of
+his appointment as chaplain of the new regiment of Alberta rangers.
+
+"It's at least a relief to have the matter settled," said his
+father, to whom Barry brought his wire.  "Barry, I'm glad of the
+opportunity to tell you that since yesterday, my mind has undergone
+considerable change.  I am not sure but that you have found your
+place and your work in the war."
+
+"No, dad," answered Barry, "I wasn't responsible for that sermon
+yesterday.  The war was very near and very real to me.  Those boys
+were looking up at me, and you were there, dad.  You drew that
+sermon stuff out of me."
+
+"If once, why not again?  At any rate, it greatly rejoiced me to
+know that it was there in you.  I don't say I was proud of you, my
+boy.  I was proud of you, but that is not the word that I should
+like to use.  I was profoundly grateful that I was privileged to
+hear a sermon like that from a son of mine.  Now, Barry," continued
+his father, "this is our last day together for some months, perhaps
+forever," he added in a low tone.
+
+"Don't, daddy, don't," cried Barry, "I can't bear to think of that
+to-day."
+
+"All right, Barry, but why not?  It is really far better that we
+should face all the possibilities.  But now that we have this day--
+and what a perfect day it is--for our last day together, what shall
+we do with it?"
+
+"I know, dad--I think you would wish that we take our ride into the
+foothills to-day."
+
+"It was in my mind, my boy.  I hesitated to suggest it.  So let us
+go."
+
+It was one of those rare November days that only Alberta knows,
+mellow with the warm sun, and yet with a nip in it that suggested
+the coming frost, without a ripple of the wind that almost
+constantly sweeps the Alberta ranges.  In the blue sky hung
+motionless, like white ships at sea, bits of cloud.  The long
+grass, brown, yellow and green in a hundred shades, lay like a
+carpet over the rolling hills and wide spreading valleys, reaching
+up on every side to the horizon, except toward the west, where it
+faded into the blue of the foothills at the bases of the mighty
+Rockies.
+
+Up the long trail, resilient to their horses' feet, they cantered
+where the going was good, or picked their way with slow and careful
+tread where the rocky ridges jutted through the black soil.
+
+They made no effort to repulse the thought that this was their last
+day together, nor did they seek to banish the fact of the war.
+With calm courage and hope they faced the facts of their environment,
+seeking to aid each other in readjusting their lives to those facts.
+They were resolutely cheerful.  The day was not to be spoiled with
+tears and lamentations.  Already each in his own place and time had
+made his sacrifice of a comradeship that was far dearer than life.
+The agony of that hour, each had borne in silence and alone.  No
+shadow should fall across this sunny day.
+
+By the side of the grave, in its little palisaded enclosure, they
+lingered, the father recalling the days of his earlier manhood,
+which had been brightened by a love whose fragrance he had
+cherished and shared with his son through their years together,
+Barry listening with reverent attention and tender sympathy.
+
+"I had always planned that I too should be laid here, Barry," said
+his father, as they prepared to take their departure, "but do you
+know, boy, this war has made many changes in me and this is one.
+It seems to me a very little thing where my body lies, if it be
+offered, as you were saying so beautifully yesterday, in sacrifice
+to our cause."
+
+Barry could only nod his head in reply.  He was deeply moved.
+
+"You are young, Barry," said his father, noting his emotion, "and
+life is very dear to you, my boy."
+
+"No, dad, no!  Not life," said Barry brokenly.  "Not life, only
+you, dad.  I just want you, and, oh dad!" continued the boy, losing
+hold of himself and making no effort to check or hide the tears
+that ran down his face, "if one of us is to go in this war,--as is
+likely enough,--I only want that the other should be there at the
+time.  It would be--terribly--lonely--dad--to go out myself--
+without you.  Or to have you go out--alone.--We have always been
+together--and you have been--so very good to me, dad.  I can't help
+this, dad,--I try--but I am not strong enough--I'm not holding back
+from the sacrifice, dad," hurrying his words,--"No, no, not that,
+but perhaps you understand."
+
+For answer, his father put both his arms around his son, drew his
+head down to his breast, as if he had been a child.
+
+"There, there, laddie," he said, patting him on the shoulder, "I
+know, I know!  Oh God, how I know.  We have lived together very
+closely, without a shadow ever between us, and my prayer, since
+this war began, has been that in death, if it had to be, we might
+be together, and, Barry, somehow I believe God will give us that."
+
+"Good old dad, good old boy!  What a brick you are!  I couldn't
+help that, dad.  Forgive me for being a baby, and spoiling the day--"
+
+"Forgive you, boy," still with his arms around his son, "Barry, I
+love you for it.  You've never brought me one sorrow nor will you.
+To-day and every day I thank God for you, my son."
+
+They rode back through the evening toward the camp.  By the time
+they arrived there, the sun had sunk behind the mountains, and the
+quiet stars were riding serenely above the broken, floating clouds,
+and in their hearts was peace.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A QUESTION OF NERVE
+
+
+"Gentlemen, may I introduce Captain Dunbar, your sky-pilot, padre,
+chaplain, anything you like?  They say he's a devil of a good
+preacher.  The Lord knows you need one."
+
+So Barry's commanding officer introduced him to the mess.
+
+He bowed in different directions to the group of officers who, in
+the ante-room of the mess, were having a pre-prandial cocktail.
+Barry found a place near the foot of the table and for a few
+minutes sat silent, getting his bearings.
+
+Some of the officers were known to him.  He had met the commanding
+officer, Colonel Leighton, a typical, burly Englishman, the owner
+of an Alberta horse ranch, who, well to do to begin with, had made
+money during his five years in the country.  He had the reputation
+of being a sporting man, of easy morality, fond of his glass and of
+good living.  He owed his present position, partly to political
+influence, and partly to his previous military experience in the
+South African war.  His popularity with his officers was due
+largely to his easy discipline, and to the absence of that rigidity
+of manner which is supposed to go with high military command, and
+which civilians are wont to find so irksome.
+
+Barry had also met Major Bustead, the Senior Major of the Battalion,
+and President of the mess, an eastern Canadian, with no military
+experience whatever, but with abounding energy and ambition; the
+close friend and boon companion of Colonel Leighton, he naturally
+had become his second in command.  Barry was especially delighted to
+observe Major Bayne, whom he had not seen since his first meeting
+with him some months ago on the Red Pine Trail.  Captain Neil Fraser
+and Lieutenant Stewart Duff were the only officers about the table
+whom he recognised, except that, among the junior lieutenants, he
+caught the face of young Duncan Cameron, the oldest son of his
+superintendent, and a fine, clean-looking young fellow he appeared.
+
+Altogether Barry was strongly attracted by the clean, strong faces
+about him.  He would surely soon find good friends among them, and
+he only hoped he might be able to be of some service to them.
+
+The young fellow on his right introduced himself as Captain
+Hopeton.  He was a young English public school boy, who, though a
+failure as a rancher, had proved an immense success in the social
+circles of the city.  Because of this, and also of his family
+connections "at home," he had been appointed to a Civil Service
+position.  A rather bored manner and a supercilious air spoiled
+what would otherwise have been a handsome and attractive face.
+
+After a single remark about the "beastly bore" of military duty,
+Hopeton ignored Barry, giving such attention as he had to spare
+from his dinner to a man across the table, with whom, apparently,
+he had shared some rather exciting social experiences in the city.
+
+For the first half hour of the meal, the conversation was of the
+most trivial nature, and was to Barry supremely uninteresting.
+"Shop talk" was strictly taboo, and also all reference to the war.
+The thin stream of conversation that trickled from lip to lip ran
+the gamut of sport, spiced somewhat highly with society scandal
+which, even in that little city, appeared to flourish.
+
+To Barry it was as if he were in a strange land and among people of
+a strange tongue.  Of sport, as understood by these young chaps, he
+knew little, and of scandal he was entirely innocent; so much so
+that many of the references that excited the most merriment were to
+him utterly obscure.  After some attempts to introduce topics of
+conversation which he thought might be of mutual interest, but
+which had fallen quite flat, Barry gave up, and sat silent with a
+desolating sense of loneliness growing upon his spirit.
+
+"After the port," when smoking was permitted, he was offered a
+cigarette by Hopeton, and surprised that young man mightily by
+saying that he never smoked.  This surprise, it is to be feared,
+deepened into disgust when, a few moments later, he declined a
+drink from Hopeton's whisky bottle, which a servant brought him.
+
+Liquors were not provided at the mess, but officers were permitted
+to order what they desired.
+
+As the bottles circulated, tongues were loosened.  There was nothing
+foul in the talk, but more and more profanity, with frequent apology
+to the chaplain, began to decorate the conversation.  Conscious of a
+deepening disgust with his environment, and of an overwhelming sense
+of isolation, Barry cast vainly about for a means of escape.  Of
+military etiquette he was ignorant; hence he could only wait in
+deepening disgust for the O. C. to give the signal to rise.  How
+long he could have endured is doubtful, but release came in a
+startling, and, to most of the members of the mess, a truly
+horrifying manner.
+
+In one of those strange silences that fall upon even the noisiest
+of companies, Colonel Leighton, under the influence of a somewhat
+liberal indulgence in his whisky bottle, began the relation of a
+tale of very doubtful flavour.  In the midst of the laughter that
+followed the tale, Barry rose to his feet, his face white and his
+eyes aflame, and in a voice vibrating with passion, said:
+
+"May I be excused, sir?"
+
+"Why, certainly," said the colonel pleasantly, adding after a
+moment's hesitation, "is there anything wrong, Dunbar?  Are you
+ill?"
+
+"No, sir."  Barry's voice had the resonant quality of a cello
+string.  "I mean, yes, sir," he corrected.  "I am ill.  The
+atmosphere surrounding such a tale is nauseating to me."
+
+In the horrified silence that followed his remark, he walked out
+from the room.  Upon his ears, as he stood in the ante-room,
+trembling with the violence of his passion, a burst of laughter
+fell.  A sudden wrath like a hot flame swept his body.  He wheeled
+in his tracks, tore open the door, and with head high and face set,
+strode to his place at the table and sat down.
+
+Astonishment beyond all words held the company in tense stillness.
+From Barry's face they looked toward the colonel, who, too
+dumfounded for speech or action, sat gazing at his chaplain.  Then
+from the end of the table a few places down from Barry, a voice was
+heard.
+
+"Feel better, Dunbar?"  The cool, clear voice cut through the tense
+silence like the zip of a sword.
+
+"I do, thank you, sir," looking him straight in the eye.
+
+"The fresh air, doubtless," continued the cool voice.  "I always
+find myself that even a whiff of fresh air is a very effective
+antidote for threatening vertigo.  I remember once--" continued the
+speaker, dropping into a conversational tone, and leaning across
+the table slightly toward Barry, "I was in the room with a company
+of men--"  And the speaker entered upon a long and none too
+interesting relation of an experience of his, the point of which no
+one grasped, but the effect of which every one welcomed with the
+profoundest relief.  He was the regimental medical officer, a tall,
+slight man, with a keen eye, a pleasant face crowned by a topknot
+of flaming hair, and with a little dab of hair of like colour upon
+his upper lip, which he fondly cherished, as an important item in
+his military equipment.
+
+"Say, the old doc is a lifesaver, sure enough," said a young
+subaltern, answering to the name of "Sally," colloquial for
+Salford, as he stood amid a circle of officers gathered in the
+smoking room a few minutes later.  "A lifesaver," repeated Sally,
+with emphasis.  "He can have me for his laboratory collection after
+I'm through."
+
+"He is one sure singing bird," said another sub, a stout, overgrown
+boy by the name of Booth.  "The nerve of him," added Booth in
+admiration.
+
+"Nerve!" echoed a young captain, "but what about the pilot's nerve?"
+
+"Sui generis, Train, I should say," drawled Hopeton.
+
+"Suey, who did you say?" inquired Sally.  "What's her second name?
+But let me tell you I could have fallen on his neck and burst into
+tears of gratitude.  For me," continued Sally, glancing about the
+room, "I don't hold with that dirt stuff at mess.  It isn't
+necessary."
+
+"Beastly bad form," said Hopeton, "but, good Lord!  Your Commanding
+Officer, Sally!  There's such a thing as discipline, you know."
+
+"What extraordinary thing is it that Sally knows?" inquired Major
+Bustead, who lounged up to the group.
+
+"We were discussing the padre's break, Major, which for my part,"
+drawled Hopeton, "I consider rotten discipline."
+
+"Discipline!" snorted the major.  "By Gad, it was a piece of the
+most damnable cheek I have ever heard at a mess table.  He ought to
+be sent to Coventry.  I only hope the O. C. will get him exchanged."
+
+The major made no effort to subdue his voice, which was plainly
+audible throughout the room.
+
+"Hush, for God's sake," warned Captain Train, as Barry entered the
+door.  "Here he is."
+
+But Barry had caught the major's words.  For a moment he stood
+irresolute; then walked quietly toward the group.
+
+"I couldn't help hearing you, Major Bustead," he said, in a voice
+pleasant and under perfect control.  "I gather you were referring
+to me."
+
+"I was, sir," said the major defiantly.
+
+"And why should I be sent to Coventry, or exchanged, may I ask?"
+Barry's voice was that of an interested outsider.
+
+"Because," stuttered the Major, "I consider, sir, that--that--you
+have been guilty of a piece of damnable impertinence toward your
+Commanding Officer.  I never heard anything like it in my life.
+Infernal cheek, I call it, sir."
+
+While the major was speaking, Barry stood listening with an air of
+respectful attention.
+
+"I wonder!" he said, after a moment's thought.  "If I thought I had
+been impertinent, I should at once apologise.  But, sir, do you
+think it is part of my duty to allow any man, even my Commanding
+Officer, to--pardon the disgusting metaphor, it is not so
+disgusting as the action complained of--to spit in my soup, and
+take it without protest?  Do you, sir?"
+
+"I--you--"  The major grew very red in the face.  "You need to
+learn your place in this battalion, sir."
+
+"I do," said Barry, still preserving his quiet voice and manner.
+"I want to learn--I am really anxious to learn it.  Do you mind
+answering my question?"  His tone was that of a man who is
+earnestly but quite respectfully seeking information from a
+superior officer.
+
+"Your question, sir?" stuttered the major, "your--your--question.
+Damn your question, and yourself too."
+
+The major turned abruptly away.  Barry heard him quite unmoved,
+stood looking after him in silence a moment or two, then, shaking
+his head, with a puzzled expression on his face, moved slowly away
+from the group.
+
+"Oh, my aunt Caroline," breathed Sally into his friend Hopeton's
+ear, resting heavily meanwhile against his shoulder.  "What a
+score!  What a score!"
+
+"A bull, begad! a clean bull!" murmured Hopeton, supporting his
+friend out of the room as he added, "A little fresh air, as a
+preventative of vertigo, as the old doc says, eh, Sally."
+
+"Good Lord, is he just a plain ass, or what?" inquired young Booth,
+his eye following Barry down the room.
+
+"Ass!  A mule, I should say.  And one with a good lot of kick in
+him," replied Captain Train.  "I don't know that I care for that
+kind of an animal, though."
+
+Before many hours had passed, the whole battalion had received with
+undiluted joy an account of the incident, for though the Commanding
+Officer was popular with his men, to have him called down at his
+own mess by one of his own officers was an event too thrilling to
+give anything but unalloyed delight to those who had to suffer in
+silence similar indignities at the hands of their officers.
+
+A notable exception in the battalion, however, was Sergeant Major
+McFetteridge, who, because of his military experience, and of his
+reputation as a disciplinarian, had been recently transferred to
+the battalion.  To the sergeant major this act of Barry's was but
+another and more flagrant example of his fondness for "buttin' in,"
+and the sergeant major let it be known that he strongly condemned
+the chaplain for what he declared was an unheard of breach of
+military discipline.
+
+Of course there were others who openly approved, and who admired
+the chaplain's "nerve in standing up to the old man."  In their
+opinion he was entirely justified in what he had said.  The O. C.
+had insulted him, and every officer at the mess, by his off-colour
+story, but on the whole the general result of the incident was that
+Barry's life became more and more one of isolation from both
+officers and men.  For this reason and because of a haunting sense
+of failure the months of training preceding the battalion's departure
+for England were for Barry one long and almost uninterrupted misery.
+It seemed impossible to establish any point of contact with either
+the officers or the men.  In their athletics, in their social
+gatherings, in their reading, he was quietly ignored and made to
+feel that he was in no way necessary.  An impalpable but very real
+barrier prevented his near approach to those whom he was so eager
+to serve.
+
+This unexpressed opposition was quickened into active hostility by
+the chaplain's uncompromising attitude on the liquor question.  By
+the army regulations, the battalion canteen was dry, but in spite
+of this many, both of the officers and the men, freely indulged in
+the use of intoxicating drink.  The effect upon discipline was, of
+course, deplorable, and in his public addresses as well as private
+conversation, Barry constantly denounced these demoralising habits,
+winning thereby the violent dislike of those especially affected,
+and the latent hostility of the majority of the men who agreed with
+the sergeant major in resenting the chaplain's "buttin' in."
+
+It was, therefore, with unspeakable joy that Barry learned that the
+battalion was warned for overseas service.  Any change in his lot
+would be an improvement, for he was convinced that he had reached
+the limit of wretchedness in the exercise of his duty as chaplain
+of the battalion.
+
+In this conviction, however, he was mistaken.  On shipboard, he
+discovered that there were still depths of misery which he was
+called upon to plumb.  Assigned to a miserable stateroom in an
+uncomfortable part of the ship, he suffered horribly from
+seasickness, and for the first half of the voyage lay foodless and
+spiritless in his bunk, indifferent to his environment or to his
+fate.  His sole friend was his batman, Harry Hobbs, but, of course,
+he could not confide to Harry the misery of his body, or the deeper
+misery of his soul.
+
+It was Harry, however, that brought relief, for it was he that
+called the M. O. to his officer's bedside.  The M. O. was shocked
+to find the chaplain in a state of extreme physical weakness, and
+mental depression.  At once, he gave orders that Barry should be
+removed to his own stateroom, which was large and airy and open to
+the sea breezes.  The effect was immediately apparent, for the
+change of room, and more especially the touch of human sympathy,
+did much to restore Barry to his normal health and spirits.  A
+friendship sprang up between the M. O. and the chaplain.  With
+this friendship a new interest came into Barry's life, and with
+surprising rapidity he regained both his physical and mental tone.
+
+The doctor took him resolutely in hand, pressed him to take his
+part in the daily physical drill, induced him to share the daily
+programme of sports, and, best of all, discovering a violin on
+board, insisted on his taking a place on the musical programme
+rendered nightly in the salon.  As might be expected, his violin
+won him friends among all of the music lovers on board ship, and
+life for Barry began once more to be bearable.
+
+Returning strength, however, recalled him to the performance of his
+duties as chaplain, and straightway in the exercise of what he
+considered his duty, he came into conflict with no less a personage
+than the sergeant major himself.  The trouble arose over his
+batman, Harry Hobbs.
+
+Harry was a man who, in his youthful days, had been a diligent
+patron of the London music halls, and in consequence had become
+himself an amateur entertainer of very considerable ability.  His
+sailor's hornpipes, Irish jigs, his old English North-country
+ballads and his coster songs were an unending joy to his comrades.
+Their gratitude and admiration took forms that proved poor Harry's
+undoing, and besides some of them took an unholy joy in sending the
+chaplain's batman to his officer incapable of service.
+
+Barry's indignation and grief were beyond words.  He dealt
+faithfully with the erring Hobbs, as his minister, as his officer,
+as chaplain, but the downward drag of his environment proved too
+great for his batman's powers of resistance.  Once and again Barry
+sought the aid of the sergeant major to rescue Harry from his
+downward course, but the old sergeant major was unimpressed with
+the account of Harry's lapses.
+
+"Is your batman unfit for duty, sir?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, he is, often," said Barry indignantly.
+
+"Did you report him, sir?" inquired the sergeant major.
+
+"No, I did not."
+
+"Then, sir, I am afraid that until you do your duty I can do
+nothing," answered the sergeant major, with suave respect.
+
+"If you did your duty," Barry was moved to say, "then Hobbs would
+not need to be reported.  The regulations governing that canteen
+should prevent these frequent examples of drunkenness, which are a
+disgrace to the battalion."
+
+"Do I understand, sir," inquired the sergeant major, with quiet
+respect, "that you are accusing me of a failure in duty?"
+
+"I am saying that if the regulations were observed my batman and
+others would not be so frequently drunk, and the enforcing of these
+regulations, I understand, is a part of your duty."
+
+"Then, sir," replied the sergeant major, "perhaps I had better
+report myself to the Commanding Officer."
+
+"You can please yourself," said Barry, shortly, as he turned away.
+
+"Very good, sir," replied the sergeant major.  "I shall report
+myself at once."
+
+The day following, the chaplain received an order to appear before
+the O. C. in the orderly room.
+
+"Captain Dunbar, I understand that you are making a charge against
+Sergeant Major McFetteridge," was Colonel Leighton's greeting.
+
+"I am making no charge against any one, sir," replied Barry
+quietly.
+
+"What do you say to that, Sergeant Major McFetteridge?"
+
+In reply, the sergeant major gave a full and fair statement of the
+passage between the chaplain and himself the day before.
+
+"Is this correct, Captain Dunbar?" asked the O. C.
+
+"Substantially correct, sir, except that the sergeant major is here
+on his own suggestion, and on no order of mine."
+
+"Then I understand that you withdraw your charge against the
+sergeant major."
+
+"I withdraw nothing, sir.  I had no intention of laying a charge,
+and I have laid no charge against the sergeant major; but at the
+same time I have no hesitation in saying that the regulations
+governing the canteen are not observed, and, as I understand that
+the responsibility for enforcing these regulations is in the
+sergeant major's hands, in that sense I consider that he has failed
+in his duty."
+
+But the sergeant major was too old a soldier to be caught napping.
+He had his witnesses ready at hand to testify that the canteen was
+conducted according to regulations, and that if the chaplain's
+batman or any others took more liquor than they should, neither the
+corporal in charge of the canteen nor the sergeant major was to be
+blamed.
+
+"All I can say, sir," replied Barry, "is that soldiers are
+frequently drunk on this ship, and I myself have seen them when the
+worse for liquor going into the canteen."
+
+"And did you report these men to their officers or to me, Captain
+Dunbar, or did you report the corporal in charge of the canteen?"
+
+"No, sir, I did not."
+
+"Then sir, do you know that you have been guilty of serious neglect
+of duty?" said the colonel sternly.
+
+"Do I understand, sir, that it is my duty to report to you every
+man I see the worse for liquor on this ship?"
+
+"Most certainly," replied the colonel, emphatically.  "Every breach
+of discipline must be reported."
+
+"I understood, sir, that an officer had a certain amount of
+discretion in a matter of this kind."
+
+"Where did you get that notion?" inquired the colonel.  "Let me
+tell you that you are wrong.  Discretionary powers lie solely with
+me."
+
+"Then, sir, I am to understand that I must report every man whom I
+see the worse for liquor?"
+
+"Certainly, sir,"
+
+"And every officer, as well, sir?"
+
+The colonel hesitated a moment, fumbled with his papers, and then
+blurted out:
+
+"Certainly, sir.  And let me say, Captain Dunbar, that an officer,
+especially an officer in your position, ought to be very careful in
+making a charge against a N. C. O., more particularly the sergeant
+major of his battalion.  Nothing is more calculated to drag down
+discipline.  The case is dismissed."
+
+"Sir," said Barry, maintaining his place before the table.  "May I
+ask one question?"
+
+"The case is dismissed, Captain Dunbar.  What do you want?" asked
+the colonel brusquely.
+
+"I want to be quite clear as to my duty, in the future, sir.  Do I
+understand that if any man or officer is found under the influence
+of liquor, anywhere in this ship, and at any hour of the day or
+night, he is to be reported at once to the orderly room, even
+though that officer should be, say, even the adjutant or yourself?"
+Barry said, gazing up at the colonel with a face in which
+earnestness and candour were equally blended.
+
+The colonel gazed back at him with a face in which rage and
+perplexity were equally apparent.  For some moments, he was
+speechless, while the whole orderly room held its breath.
+
+"I mean--that you--you understand--of course," stuttered the
+colonel, "that an officer must use common sense.  He must be damned
+sure of what he says, in other words," said the colonel, rushing
+his speech.
+
+"But, sir," continued Barry.
+
+"Oh, go to the devil, sir," roared the colonel.  "The case is
+dismissed."
+
+Barry saluted and left the room.
+
+"Is the man an infernal and condemned fool, or what is the matter
+with him?" exclaimed the colonel, turning to his adjutant in a
+helpless appeal, while the orderly room struggled with its grins.
+
+"The devil only knows," said Major Bustead.  "He beats me.  He is
+an interfering and impertinent ass, in my opinion, but what else he
+is, I don't know."
+
+It is fair to say that the sergeant major bore the chaplain no
+grudge for his part in the affair.  The whole battalion, however,
+soon became possessed of the tale, adorned and expanded to an
+unrecognisable extent, and revelled in ecstasy over the discomfort
+of the C. O.  The consensus of opinion was that on the whole the
+sergeant major had come off with premier honours, and as between
+the "old man" and the "Sky Pilot," as Barry was coming to be
+called, it was about an even break.  As for the Pilot, he remained
+more than ever a mystery, and on the whole, the battalion was
+inclined to leave him alone.
+
+The chaplain, however, had partially, at least, achieved his aim,
+in that the regulations governing the canteen were more strictly
+enforced, to the vast improvement of discipline generally, and to
+the immense advantage of Harry Hobbs in particular.
+
+Soon after this, another event occurred which aided materially in
+bringing about this same result, and which also led to a modification
+of opinion in the battalion in regard to their chaplain.
+
+To the civilian soldier the punctilio of military etiquette is
+frequently not only a bore, but at times takes on the appearance of
+wilful insult which no grown man should be expected to tolerate.
+To the civilian soldier born and brought up in wide spaces of the
+far Northwest this is especially the case.
+
+It is not surprising, therefore, that McCuaig, fresh from his
+thirty-five years of life in the Athabasca wilds, should find the
+routine of military discipline extremely irksome and the niceties
+of military etiquette as from a private to an officer not only
+foolish but degrading both to officer and man.  Under the patient
+shepherding of Barry's father, he had endured much without protest
+or complaint, but, with the advent of Sergeant Major McFetteridge,
+with his rigid military discipline and his strict insistence upon
+etiquette, McCuaig passed into a new atmosphere.  To the freeborn
+and freebred recruit from the Athabasca plains, the stiff and
+somewhat exaggerated military bearing of the sergeant major was at
+first a source of quiet amusement, later of perplexity, and finally
+of annoyance.  For McFetteridge and his minutiae of military
+discipline McCuaig held only contempt.  To him, the whole business
+was a piece of silly nonsense unworthy of serious men.
+
+It was inevitable that the sergeant major should sooner or later
+discover this opinion in Private McCuaig, and that he should
+consider the holding of this opinion as a tendency toward
+insubordination.  It was also inevitable that the sergeant major
+should order a course of special fatigues calculated to subdue the
+spirit of the insubordinate private.
+
+It took McCuaig some days to discover that in these frequent
+fatigues and special duties, he was undergoing punishment, but once
+made, the discovery wrought in him a cold and silent rage, which
+drove him to an undue and quite unwonted devotion to the canteen,
+which in turn transformed the reserved, self-controlled man of the
+wilds into a demonstrative, disorderly and quarrelsome "rookie"
+aching for trouble.
+
+Under these circumstances, an outburst was inevitable.  Corporal
+Ferry, in charge of the canteen, furnished the occasion.
+
+"No more for you, McCuaig.  You've got more aboard now than you can
+carry."
+
+To the injury of being denied another beer was added the insult of
+suggesting his inability to carry what he had.  This to a man of
+McCuaig's experience in every bar and camp and roadhouse from
+Edmonton to the Arctic circle, was not to be endured.
+
+He leaned over the improvised bar, until his face almost touched
+the corporal's.
+
+"What?" he ejaculated, but in the single expletive there darted out
+such concentrated fury, that the little corporal sprang back as
+from a striking snake.
+
+"You can't have any more beer, McCuaig," said the corporal, from a
+safe distance.
+
+"Watch me, sonny!" replied McCuaig.
+
+With a single sweep of his hand, he snatched two bottles from the
+ledge behind the corporal's head.  Holding one aloft, he knocked
+the top off the other, drank its contents slowly and smashed the
+empty bottle at the spot where the corporal's head had been;
+knocked the top off the second bottle and was proceeding to drink
+it, in a more or less leisurely fashion.
+
+"Private Timms!  Private Mulligan!" shouted Corporal Ferry,
+reappearing from beneath the counter.  "Arrest that man!"
+
+"Wait, sonny; give me a chance," cried McCuaig, in a wild, high,
+singsong voice.  Lifting his bottle to his lips, he continued to
+drink slowly, keeping his eye upon the two privates, who were
+considering the best method of carrying out their orders.
+
+"There, sonny, fill that up again," cried McCuaig, good-naturedly,
+when he had finished his drink, tossing the second bottle at the
+head of the corporal, who, being on the alert, again made a
+successful disappearance.
+
+"Now, then, boys, come on," said McCuaig, backing toward the wall,
+and dropping his hands to his hips.  With a curse of disappointment
+that he found himself without his usual weapons of defence, McCuaig
+raised a shout, sprang into the air, cracked his heels together in
+a double rap, and swinging his arms around his head, yelled:
+
+"Come on, my boys!  I'm hungry, I am!  Meat!  Meat!  Meat!"
+
+With each "meat," his white teeth came together with a snap like
+that of a hungry wolf.  Such was the beastly ferocity in his face
+and posture that both Private Timms and Private Mulligan,
+themselves men of more than average strength, paused and looked at
+the corporal for further orders.
+
+"Arrest that man," said the corporal again, preserving at the same
+time an attitude that revealed a complete readiness for swift
+disappearance.  "Private McTavish," he added, calling upon a tall
+Highlander who was gazing with admiring eyes upon the raging
+McCuaig, "assist Private Timms and Private Mulligan in arresting
+that man."
+
+"Why don't you come yourself, sonny?" inquired McCuaig.  With a
+swift sidestep and a swifter swoop of his long arm, he reached for
+the corporal, who once more found safety in swift disappearance.
+
+At that instant, the Highlander, seeing his opportunity, flung
+himself upon McCuaig, and winding his arms around him, hung to him
+grimly, crying out:
+
+"Get hold of his legs!  Queeck!  Will you?"
+
+When the sergeant major, attracted by the unwonted uproar, appeared
+upon the scene, there was a man on every one of McQuaig's limbs,
+and another one astride his stomach.  "Heavin' like sawlogs
+shootin' a rapid," as Private Corbin, a lumberjack from the Eau
+Claire, was later heard to remark.
+
+"What is he like now?" inquired the colonel, after listening to the
+sergeant major's report of the Homeric combat.
+
+"He is in a compartment in the hold, sir, and raging like one
+demented.  He very nearly did for Major Bustead, smashing at him
+with a scantling that he ripped from the ship's timbers, sir.  He
+still has the scantling, sir."
+
+"Let him cool off all night," said the Commanding Officer, after
+consultation with the adjutant.
+
+Barry, who with difficulty had restrained himself during the
+sergeant major's report, slipped from the room, found the M. O., to
+whom he detailed the story and dragged him off to visit the raging
+McCuaig.
+
+They found a corporal on guard outside.
+
+"I would not open the door, sir.  He is really dangerous."
+
+"Oh, rot!" replied the M. O.  "Open up the door!"
+
+"Excuse me, sir," said the corporal, "it is not safe.  At present,
+he is clean crazy.  He is off his nut entirely."
+
+The M. O. stood listening at the door.  From within came moaning
+sounds as from a suffering beast.
+
+"That man is suffering.  Open the door!" ordered the M. O.
+peremptorily.
+
+The corporal, with great reluctance, unlocked the padlock, shot
+back the bolt, and then stood away from the door.
+
+"It is the medical officer, McCuaig," said the doctor, opening the
+door slightly.
+
+Bang!  Crash! came the scantling upon the door jamb, shattering it
+to pieces.  The whole guard flung themselves against the door,
+shoved it shut, and shot the bolt.
+
+"I warned you, sir," said the panting corporal.  "Better leave him
+until morning.  He's a regular devil!"
+
+"He is no more a devil than you are, corporal," said Barry, in a
+loud, clear voice.  "He is one of the best men in the battalion.
+More than that, he is my friend, and if he spends the night there,
+I spend it with him."
+
+So saying, and before any one could stop him, Barry shot back the
+bolt, opened the door, and with his torchlight flashing before him,
+stepped inside.
+
+"Hello, McCuaig," he called, in a quiet, clear voice, "where are
+you?  It's Dunbar, you know."
+
+He drew the door shut after him.  The corporal was for following
+him, but the M. O. interposed.
+
+"Stop out!" he ordered.  "Stay where you are!  You have done enough
+mischief already."
+
+"But, sir, he'll kill him!"
+
+"This is my case," said the M. O. sharply.  "Fall back all of you,
+out of sight!"
+
+Together they stood listening in awestruck silence, expecting every
+moment to hear sounds of conflict, and cries for help, but all they
+heard was the cool, even flow of a quiet voice, and after some
+minutes had passed, the sound of moans, mingled with a terrible
+sobbing.
+
+The M. O., moving toward the corporal and his guard, said in a low
+tone:
+
+"Take your men down the passage and keep them there until I call
+for you."
+
+"Sir," began the corporal.
+
+"Will you obey my orders?" said the M. O.  "I'm in command here!
+Go!"
+
+Without further words, the corporal moved his men away.
+
+Half an hour later, the sergeant major, going his rounds, received
+a rude shock.  In the passage leading to McCuaig's compartment, he
+met four men, bearing on a stretcher toward the sick bay a long
+silent form.
+
+"Who have you got there, corporal?" he inquired in a tone of kindly
+interest.
+
+"McCuaig, sir."
+
+"McCuaig?" roared the sergeant major.  "And who--"
+
+"Medical officer's orders."
+
+"Silence there," said a sharp voice in the rear.  "Carry on, men."
+
+And past the astonished sergeant major, the procession filed with
+the medical officer and the chaplain at its tail end.
+
+After the sergeant major had made his report to the O. C., as was
+his duty, the M. O. was sent for.  What took place at that
+interview was never divulged to the mess, but it was known that
+whereas the conversation began in very loud tones by the Officer
+Commanding, it ended half an hour later with the M. O. being shown
+out of the room by the colonel himself, who was heard to remark:
+
+"A very fine bit of work.  Tell him I want to see him when he has a
+few minutes, and thank you, doctor, thank you!"
+
+"Who does the old man want to see?" inquired Sally, who, with
+Hopeton and Booth, happened to be passing.
+
+"The chaplain," snapped the M. O., going on his way.
+
+"The chaplain?  By Jove, he's a queer one, eh?"
+
+The M. O. turned sharply back, and coming very close to Sally, said
+in a wrathful voice:
+
+"A queer one?  Yes, a queer one!  But if some of you damned young
+idiots that sniff at him had just half his guts, you'd be twice the
+men you are.--Shut up, Hopeton!  Listen to me--" and in words of
+fiery rage that ran close to tears, he recounted his experience of
+the last hour.
+
+"By Jove! Doc, some guts, eh?" said Sally in a low tone, as he
+moved away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SUBMARINES, BULLPUPS, AND OTHER THINGS
+
+
+A long, weird blast from the fog horn, followed by two short, sharp
+toots, recalled Barry from his morning dream.
+
+"Fog," he grumbled, and turned over to re-capture the enchantment
+of the Athabasca rapids, and his dancing canoe.
+
+Overhead there sounded the trampling of feet.
+
+"Submarines, doc," he shouted and leaped to the floor broad awake.
+
+"What's the row?" murmured the M. O., who was a heavy sleeper.
+
+For answer, Barry ripped the clothes from the doctor's bed.
+
+"Submarines, doc," he shouted again, and buckling on his Sam Brown,
+and seizing his lifebelt, he stood ready to go.
+
+"What! your boots off, doc?"
+
+In the orders of the day before had been an announcement that
+officers and men were to sleep fully dressed.
+
+"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed the doctor, hunting through his
+bedclothes in desperation.  "I can't sleep in my boots.  Where's my
+tunic?  Go on, old fellow, I'll follow you."
+
+Barry held his tunic for him.
+
+"Here you are!  Wake up, doc!  And here's your Sam Brown."
+
+Barry dropped to lace the doctor's boots, while the latter was
+buckling on the rest of his equipment.
+
+"All right," cried the doctor, rushing from the room and leaving
+his lifebelt behind him.
+
+Barry caught up the lifebelt and followed.
+
+"Your lifebelt, doc," he said, as they passed up the companion way.
+
+"Oh, I'm a peach of a soldier," said the doctor, struggling into
+his lifebelt, and swearing deeply the while.
+
+"Stop swearing, doc!  It's a waste of energy."
+
+"Oh, go to hell!"
+
+"No, I prefer Heaven, if I must leave this ship, but for the
+present, I believe I'm needed here, and so are you, doc.  Look
+there!"
+
+The doctor glanced out upon the deck.
+
+"By Jove!  You're right, old man, we are needed and badly.  I say,
+old chap," he said, pausing for a moment to turn to Barry, "you are
+a dear old thing, aren't you?"
+
+The deck was a mass of soldiers struggling, swearing, fighting
+their way to their various stations.  Officers, half dressed and
+half awake, were rushing hither and thither, seeking their units,
+swearing at the men and shouting meaningless orders.  Over all the
+stentorian voice of the sergeant major was vainly trying to make
+itself understood.
+
+In the confusion the cry was raised:  "We're torpedoed!  We're
+going down!"
+
+There was a great rush for the nearest boats.  Men flung discipline
+to the winds and began fighting for a chance of their lives.  It
+was a terrific and humiliating scene.
+
+Suddenly, over the tumult, was heard a loud, ringing laugh.
+
+"Oh, I say, Duff!  Not that way!  Not that way!"
+
+Again came the ringing laugh.
+
+Immediately a silence fell upon the struggling crowd, and for a
+moment they stood looking inquiringly at each other.  That moment
+of silence was seized by the sergeant major.  Like a trumpet his
+sonorous voice rang out steady and clear.
+
+"Fall in, men!  Boat quarters!  Silence there!"
+
+He followed this with sharp, intelligible commands to his N. C. O.'s.
+Like magic, order fell upon the turbulent, struggling crowd.
+
+"Stand steady, you there!" roared the sergeant major, who having
+got control of his men, began to indulge himself in a few telling
+and descriptive adjectives.
+
+In less than two minutes, the men were standing steady as a rock
+and the panic was passed.
+
+"Who was it that laughed up there in that stampede?" inquired the
+O. C., when the officers were gathered about him in the orderly
+room.
+
+"I think it was the Sky Pilot, sir--the chaplain, sir," said
+Lieutenant Stewart Duff.
+
+"Was it you that laughed, Captain Dunbar?" asked the colonel,
+turning upon Barry.
+
+"Perhaps I did, sir.  I'm sorry if--"
+
+"Sorry!" exclaimed the colonel.  "Dammit, sir, you saved the
+situation for us all.  Who told you it was a false alarm?"
+
+"No one, sir.  I didn't know it was a false alarm.  I was looking
+at Lieutenant Duff--"  He checked himself promptly.  "I mean, sir--
+well, it seemed a good place to laugh, so I just let it come."
+
+The colonel's eyes rested with curious inquiry upon the serene face
+of the chaplain, with its glowing eyes and candid expression.  "A
+good place for a laugh?  It was a damned good place for a laugh,
+and gentlemen, I thank God I have one officer who finds in the face
+of sudden danger a good place for a laugh.  And now I have something
+to say to you."
+
+The O. C.'s remarks did not improve the officers' opinion of
+themselves, and they slunk out of the room--no other word properly
+describes the cowed and shamed appearance of that company of men--
+they slunk out of the room.  They had failed to play the part of
+British officers in the face of sudden peril.
+
+In his speech to the men, the C. O. made only a single reference to
+the incident, but that reference bit deep.
+
+"Men, I am thoroughly ashamed and disappointed.  You acted, not
+like soldiers, but like a herd of steers.  The difference between a
+herd of steers and a battalion of soldiers, in the face of sudden
+danger, is only this:--the steers break blindly for God knows
+where, and end piled up over a cut bank; soldiers stand steady
+listening for the word of command."
+
+If the O. C. handled the men with a light hand, the sergeant major
+did not.  His tongue rasped them to the raw.  No one knows a
+soldier as does his N. C. O., and no N. C. O. is qualified to set
+forth the soldier's characteristics with the intimate knowledge and
+adequate fluency of the sergeant major.  One by one he peeled from
+their shivering souls the various layers of their moral cuticle,
+until they stood, in their own and in each other's eyes, objects of
+commiseration.
+
+"There's just one thing more I wad like ta say to ye."  The sergeant
+major's tendency to Doric was more noticeable in his moments of
+deeper feeling, "but it's something for you lads to give heed ta.
+When ye were scrammlin' up yonder, like a lot o' mavericks at a
+brandin', and yowlin' like a bunch o' coyotes, there was one man in
+the regiment who could laugh.  There's lots o' animals that the
+Almighty made can yowl, but there's only one can laugh, and that's
+a mon.  For God's sake, men, when ye're in a tight place, try a
+laugh."
+
+For some weeks after this event the chaplain was known throughout
+the battalion as "the man that can laugh," and certain it is that
+from that day there existed between the M. O. and the chaplain a
+new bond of friendship.
+
+As the ship advanced deeper into the submarine zone, the sole topic
+of thought and of conversation came to be the convoy.  Where was
+that convoy anyway?  While the daylight lasted, a thousand pairs of
+eyes swept the horizon, and the intervening spaces of tossing,
+blue-grey water, for the sight of a sinister periscope, or for the
+smudge of a friendly cruiser, and when night fell, a thousand pairs
+of ears listened with strained intentness for the impact of the
+deadly torpedo or for the signal of the protecting convoy.
+
+While still a day and a night out from land, Barry awoke in the
+dim light of a misty morning, and proceeded to the deck for his
+constitutional.  There he fell in with Captain Neil Fraser and
+Captain Hopeton pacing up and down.
+
+"Come along, Pilot!" said Captain Neil, heartily, between whom and
+the chaplain during the last few days a cordial friendship had
+sprung up.  "We're looking for submarines.  This is the place and
+the time for Fritz, if he is going to get us at all."
+
+Arm in arm they made the circle of the deck.  The mist, lying like
+a bank upon the sea, shifted the horizon to within a thousand yards
+of the ship.
+
+"I wish I knew just what lies behind that bank there," said Captain
+Hopeton, pointing over the bow.
+
+For some moments they stood, peering idly into the mist.
+
+"By Jove, there IS something there," said Barry, who had a hawk's
+eye.
+
+"You've got 'em too, eh," laughed Hopeton.  "I've had 'em for the
+last forty-eight hours.  I've been 'seein' things' all night."
+
+"But there is," insisted Barry, pointing over the port bow.
+
+"What is it like?" asked Captain Neil, while Hopeton ran for his
+glass.
+
+"I'll tell you what it's like--exactly like the eye of an oyster in
+its pulp.  And, by Jove, there's another!" added Barry excitedly.
+
+"I can't see anything," said Captain Neil.
+
+"But I can," insisted Barry.  "Look there, Hopeton!"
+
+Hopeton fixed his glass upon the mist, where Barry pointed.
+
+"You're right!  There is something, and there are two of them."
+
+"Give the Pilot the glass, Hopeton," said Neil.  "He's got a good
+eye."
+
+"There are two ships, boys, as I'm a sinner, but what they are, I
+don't know," cried Barry in a voice tense with excitement.  "Here,
+Neil, take the glass.  You know about ships."
+
+Long and earnestly, Captain Neil held the glass in the direction
+indicated.
+
+"Boys, by all that's holy, they're destroyers," he said at length
+in a low voice.
+
+Even as they gazed, the two black dots rapidly took shape, growing
+out of the mist into two sea monsters, all head and shoulders,
+boring through the seas, each flinging high a huge comb of white
+spray, and with an indescribable suggestion of arrogant, resistless
+power, bearing down upon the ship at furious speed.
+
+"Destroyers!" shouted Captain Neil, in a voice that rang through
+the ship.  "By gad, destroyers!"
+
+There was no question of friend or foe; only Great Britain's navy
+rode over those seas immune.
+
+Upon every hand the word was caught up and passed along.  In a
+marvellously short space of time, the rails, the boats, the
+rigging, all the points of vantage were thronged with men, roaring,
+waving, cheering, like mad.
+
+With undiminished speed, each enveloped in its cloud of spray, the
+destroyers came, one on each side, rushed foaming past, swept in a
+circle around the ship and took their stations alongside, riding
+quietly at half speed like bulldogs tugging at a leash.
+
+"Great heavens, what a sight!"  At the croak in Hopeton's voice,
+the others turned and looked at him.
+
+"You've got it too, eh!" said Captain Neil, clearing his own
+throat.
+
+"I've got something, God knows!" answered Hopeton, wiping his eyes.
+
+"I, too," said Barry, swallowing the proverbial lump.  "Those
+little--little--"
+
+"Bulldogs," suggested Hopeton.
+
+"Bulldog pups," said Captain Neil.
+
+"That's it," said Barry.  "That's what they are, little bulldog
+pups, got me by the throat all right."
+
+"Me, too, by gad!" said Captain Neil.  "I should have howled out
+loud in another minute."
+
+"Listen to the boys!" cried Barry.
+
+From end to end of the ship rose one continuous roar, "Good old
+Navy!  Good old John Bull!" while Hopeton, openly abandoning the
+traditional reserve and self-control supposed to be a characteristic
+of the English public school boy, climbed upon the rail and, hanging
+by a stanchion with one hand, and with the other frantically waving
+his cap over his head, continued to shout:
+
+"England!  England!  England forever!"
+
+Then above the cheering cries was heard the battalion band, and
+from a thousand throats in solemn chant there rose the Empire's
+national anthem, "God Save the King."
+
+That night they steamed into old Plymouth town, and the following
+morning were anchored safe at Devonport dock.  Strict orders held
+the officers and men on board ship until arrangements for debarkation
+should be completed, but to Barry and the doctor, the Commanding
+Officer gave shore leave for an hour.
+
+"And I would suggest," he said, "that you go and have a talk with
+that old boy walking up and down the dock there.  Yarn to him about
+Canada, he's wild to know about it."
+
+The old naval officer was indeed "wild to know about Canada," so
+that the greater part of their shore leave was spent in answering
+his questions, and eager though he was to explore the old historic
+town, before Barry knew it, he was in the full tide of a glowing
+description of his own Province of Alberta, extolling its great
+ranches, its sweeping valleys, its immense resources.
+
+"And to think you are all British out there," exclaimed the old
+salt.
+
+"We're all British, of course," replied Barry, "but not all from
+Britain."
+
+"I know, I know," said the officer, "but that only makes it more
+wonderful."
+
+"Wonderful!  Why, why should it be wonderful?"
+
+"Yes, wonderful.  Oh, you Canadians," cried the old salt, impulsively
+stretching out his hand to Barry.  "You Canadians!"
+
+Surprised, Barry glanced at his face.  Those hard blue eyes were
+brimming with tears; the leatherlike skin was working curiously
+about the mouth.
+
+"Why, sir, I don't quite understand what you mean," said Barry.
+
+"No, and you never will.  Think of it, rushing three thousand
+miles--"
+
+"Five thousand for some of us," interrupted Barry.
+
+"Fancy that!  Rushing five thousand miles in this way, to help old
+mother England, and all of your own free will.  We didn't ask it
+of you.  Though, by heaven, we're grateful for it.  I find it
+difficult, sir, to speak quietly of this."
+
+Not until that moment had Barry caught the British point of view.
+To him, as to all Canadians, it had only been a perfectly
+reasonable and natural thing that when the Empire was threatened,
+they should spring into the fight.  They saw nothing heroic in
+that.  They were doing their simple duty.
+
+"But think of the wonder of it," said the naval officer again,
+"that Canada should feel in that way its response to the call of
+the blood."
+
+The old man's lips were still quivering.
+
+"That is true, sir," said the M. O., joining in the talk, "but
+there is something more.  Frankly, my opinion is that the biggest
+thing, sir, with some of us in Canada, is not that the motherland
+was in need of help, though, of course, we all feel that, but that
+the freedom of the world is threatened, and that Canada, as one of
+the free nations of the world, must do her part in its defence."
+
+"A fine spirit," said the old gentleman.
+
+"This fight," continued the M. O., "is ours, you see, as well as
+yours, and we hate a bully."
+
+The old salt swore a great oath, and said:
+
+"You are pups of the old breed, and you run true to type.  I'm glad
+to know you, gentlemen," he continued, shaking them warmly by the
+hand.
+
+After they had gone a few steps he called Barry back to him.
+
+"That's my card, sir.  I should like you to come to see me in
+London sometime when you are on leave."
+
+Barry glanced at the card and read, "Commander Howard Vincent,
+R. N. R."
+
+"It was very decent of the old boy," he said to the Commanding
+Officer afterwards, when recounting the interview.  "I don't
+suppose I'll ever use the card, but I do think he really meant it."
+
+"Meant it," exclaimed the Commanding Officer.  "Why, Dunbar, I'm an
+old country man, and I know.  Make no mistake.  These people, and
+especially these naval people, do not throw their cards loosely
+about.  You will undoubtedly hear from him."
+
+"It's not likely," replied Barry, "but the old gentleman is great
+stuff, all right."
+
+During the long, sunny spring day, their dinky little train whisked
+them briskly through the sweet and restful beauty of the English
+southern counties.  To these men, however, from the wide sunbaked,
+windswept plains of western Canada, the English landscape suggested
+a dainty picture, done in soft greys and greens, with here and
+there a vivid splash of colour, where the rich red soil broke
+through the green.  But its tiny fields set off with hedges, and
+lines of trees, its little, clean-swept villages, with their
+picturesque church spires, its parks with deer that actually stood
+still to look at you, its splendid manor houses, and, at rare
+intervals, its turreted castles, gave these men, fresh from the
+raw, unmeasured and unmade west, a sense of unreality.  To them it
+seemed a toy landscape for children to play with, but, as they
+passed through the big towns and cities with their tall, clustering
+chimneys, their crowding populations, with unmistakable evidences
+of great wealth, their shipping, where the harbours bit into the
+red coast line, there began to waken in them the thought that this
+tiny England, so beautifully finished, and so neatly adorned, was
+something mightier than they had ever known.
+
+In these tiny fields, in these clean swept villages, in these manor
+houses, in these castles, in factory and in shipyard, were struck
+deep the roots of an England whose greatness they had never yet
+guessed.
+
+The next afternoon brought them to the great military camp at
+Shorncliffe, in a misty rain, hungry, for their rations had been
+exhausted early in the day, weary from ship and train travel, and
+eager to get their feet once again on mother earth.
+
+At the little station they were kept waiting in a pouring rain for
+something to happen, they knew not what.  The R. T. O., a young
+Imperial officer, blase with his ten months of war in England, had
+some occult reason for delaying their departure.  So, while the
+night grew every moment wetter and darker, the men sat on their
+kit-bags or found such shelter as they could in the tiny station,
+or in the lee of the "goods trains" blocking the railroad tracks,
+growing more indignant and more disgusted with the British high
+command, the war in general, and registering with increasing
+intensity vows of vengeance against the Kaiser, who, in the last
+analysis, they considered responsible for their misery.
+
+At length the "brass hat" for whom they had been waiting appeared
+upon the scene, not in the slightest degree apologetic, but very
+businesslike, and with a highly emphasised military manner.  After
+a little conversation between the brass hat and their Commanding
+Officer, the latter gave the command and off they set in the
+darkness for their first route march on English soil.
+
+Through muddy roads and lanes, over fields, slushy and sodden, up
+hill and down dale, they plodded steadily along.  At the rear of
+the colunm marched Barry with the M. O.
+
+Long before they reached their destination, their conversation had
+given out, the M. O. sucking sullenly at his pipe, the bowl upside
+down.  The rear end of the column was very frayed and straggling.
+Why it is that a perfectly fit company will invariably fray out if
+placed at the rear of a marching column, no military expert has
+quite succeeded in satisfactorily explaining.
+
+As he tramped along in the dark by the side of the road, the M. O.
+stumbled over a soldier sitting upon the soggy bank.
+
+"Who are you?" he inquired shortly.
+
+"Corporal Thom, sir."
+
+"What's the matter with you?"
+
+"I'm all in, sir.  I've been sick all day, sir."
+
+"Why didn't you report sick, then?  Can't you get on?"
+
+"I don't think so, sir.  Not for a while, at least."
+
+"Have you any pain, any nausea?"
+
+"No, sir, I'm just all in."
+
+"Do you know our route?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I've got the turns down."
+
+"Well, come along then when you can.  I'll send back a waggon
+later, but don't wait for that."
+
+"Yes, sir," said Corporal Thom.
+
+"Come on, Dunbar!  We'll send a waggon back for these stragglers.
+There will be a good many of them before long."
+
+"You go on, doc.  I'll come later," said Barry.  "I'll catch up to
+you."
+
+But the M. O., at the various halts, waited in vain for the
+chaplain to appear.
+
+On arriving at the camp, after a long struggle, he succeeded in
+sending back an Army Service waggon to bring in the stragglers, but
+just as the waggon was about to leave, he heard coming up the road,
+a party stepping out briskly to the music of their own whistling.
+In the rear of the party marched the chaplain, laden down with one
+man's rifle and another man's kit-bag.
+
+"They're all here, sir," said Corporal Thom to the M. O., with a
+distinct note of triumph in his voice.  "All here, sir," he
+repeated, as he observed the sergeant major standing at the
+doctor's side.
+
+"Well done, corporal," said the sergeant major.  "You brought 'em
+all in?  That means that no man has fallen out on our first march
+in this country."
+
+The corporal made no reply, but later on, he explained the matter
+to the sergeant major.
+
+"It's that Sky Pilot of ours, sir," he said.  "Blowed if he'd let
+us fall out."
+
+"Kept you marching, eh?"
+
+"No, it's his chocolate and his jaw, but more his jaw than his
+chocolate.  He's got lots of both.  I was all in.  I'd been sick
+all day in the train.  Couldn't eat a bite.  Well, the first thing,
+he gives me a cake of his chocolate.  Then he sets himself down in
+the mud beside me, and me wishin' all the time he'd go on and leave
+me for the waggon to pick up.  Then he gives me a cigarette, and
+then he begins to talk."
+
+"Talk, what about?"
+
+"Damned if I know, but the first thing I knew I was tellin' him
+about the broncho bustin',--that's my job, you know--and how I won
+out from Nigger Jake in the Calgary Stampede, until I was that
+stuck on myself that I said:  'Well, sir, we'd better get a move
+on,' and up he gets with my kit-bag on his back.  By and by, we
+picks up another lame duck and then another, feedin' 'em with
+chocolate and slingin' his jaw, and when we was at the limit, he
+halts us outside one of them stone shacks and knocks at the door.
+'No soldiers here,' snaps the red-headed angel, shuttin' the door
+right in his face.  Then he opens the door and steps right in where
+she could see him, and starts to talk to her, and us listening out
+in the rain.  Say!  In fifteen minutes we was all standin' up to a
+feed of coffee and buns, and then he gets Harry Hobbs whistlin' and
+singin', and derned if we couldn't have marched to Berlin.  Say!
+He's a good one, ain't no quitter, and he won't let nobody else be
+a quitter."
+
+And thus it came that with Corporal Thom and his derelicts the
+chaplain marched into a new place in the esteem of the men of his
+battalion, and of its sergeant major.
+
+But of this, of course, Barry had no knowledge.  He knew that he
+had made some little progress into the confidence of both officers
+and men in his battalion.  He had made, too, some firm friendships
+which had relieved, to a certain extent, the sense of isolation and
+loneliness that had made his first months with the battalion so
+appalling.  But there still remained the sense of failure inasfar
+as his specific duty as chaplain was concerned.
+
+The experiences of the first weeks in England only served to deepen
+in him the conviction that his influence on the men against the
+evils which were their especial snare was as the wind against the
+incoming tide, beating in from the North Sea.  He could make a
+ripple, a certain amount of fussy noise, but the tide of temptation
+rolled steadily onward, unchecked in its flow.
+
+The old temptations to profanity, drink and lust, that had haunted
+the soldiers' steps at home, were found to be lying in wait for
+them here and in aggravated form.  True, in the mess and in his
+presence among the men there was less profanity than there had been
+at the first, but it filled him with a kind of rage to feel that
+this change was due to no sense of the evil of the habit, but
+solely to an unwillingness to give offence to one whom many of them
+were coming to regard with respect and some even with affection.
+
+"I hate that," he said to the M. O., to whom he would occasionally
+unburden his soul.  "You'd think I was a kind of policeman over
+their morals."
+
+"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," said the M. O., to whom the
+habit of profanity was a very venial sin.  "You ought to be mighty
+glad that your presence does act as a kind of moral prophylactic.
+And it does, I assure you.  I confess that since I have come to be
+associated with you, I am conscious of a very real, and at times,
+distressing limitation of my vocabulary.  I may not be more
+virtuous, but certainly I am more respectable."
+
+This sentiment, however, brought little comfort to the chaplain.
+
+"I am not a policeman," he protested, "and I am not going to play
+policeman to these men.  I notice them shut up when I come around,
+but I know quite well that they turn themselves loose when I pass
+on, and that they feel much more comfortable.  I am not and will
+not be their policeman."
+
+"What then would you be?" inquired the M. O.
+
+Barry pondered this question for some time.
+
+"To tell the truth," he said, at length, "I confess, I don't quite
+know.  I wish I did, doc, on my soul.  One thing I do know, the men
+are no better here in their morals than they were at home."
+
+"Better?  They are worse, by Jove!" exclaimed the M. O.  "Look at
+the daily crime-sheet!  Look at that daily orderly room parade.
+It's something fierce, and it's getting worse."
+
+"The wet canteen?" inquired Barry, who had lost prestige with some
+in the battalion by reason of the strenuous fight he had made
+against its introduction since coming to England.  Not that the men
+cared so much for their liquor, but they resented the idea that
+they were denied privileges enjoyed by other battalions.
+
+"The wet canteen?" echoed the doctor.  "No, you know I opposed, as
+you did, the introduction of the wet canteen, although not upon the
+same grounds.  I regard it as a perfect nuisance in camp.  It is
+the centre of every disorder, it is subversive of discipline; it
+materially increases my sick parade.  But it is not the wet canteen
+that is chiefly responsible for the growing crime-sheet and orderly
+room parade.  It is those damned--I don't apologise--"
+
+"Please don't.  Say it again!" exclaimed Barry fervently.
+
+"Those damned pubs," continued the M. O., "stuck at every crossroads
+in this country.  They're the cause of ninety per cent. of the
+drunkenness in our army, and more than that, I want to give you
+another bit of information that came out at our M. O. conference
+this week, namely that these pubs account for ninety per cent. of
+our tent hospital cases."
+
+"Ninety per cent., doctor?  That's surely high."
+
+"I would have said so, but I am giving you the unanimous verdict of
+the twenty-six medical officers at the conference.  Cut out the
+damned beer--and you know I take my share of it--cut out the beer
+and ninety per cent. of the venereal disease goes.  With me it is
+not a question of morality but of efficiency."  Here the M. O.
+sprang from his chair and began to pace the hut.  "This is the one
+thing in this army business that makes me wild.  We come over here
+to fight--these boys are willing to fight--and by gad they will
+fight!  They go out for a walk, they have a few beers together,
+their inhibitory powers are paralysed, opportunity comes their way,
+and they wake up a little later diseased.  God in heaven!  I love
+this dear old England, and I would die for her if need be, but may
+God Almighty damn her public houses, and all the infernal and
+vicious customs which they nourish."
+
+"Thank you, doctor, go right on," said Barry.  "I was at the tent
+hospital this week for the first time.  Ever since, I have been
+wanting to say what you have said just now.  But what did your M. O.
+conference do about it?"
+
+"What could we do?  The Home Office blocks the way.  Well, I've got
+that off my stomach, and I feel better," added the M. O., with a
+slight laugh.
+
+"But, doc, I want to say this," said Barry.  "I don't believe that
+the percentage of men who go in for this sort of thing is large.
+I've been making inquiries from our chaplains and they all agree
+that we have a mighty fine and clean body of men in our Canadian
+army."
+
+"Right you are!  Of course, it is only a small percentage, a very
+small percentage--a much smaller percentage than in our civilian
+population at home.  But small as it is, it is just that much too
+many.  Hell and blazes!  These men are soldiers.  They have left
+their homes, and their folks, to fight.  Their people--their people
+are the best in our land.  There's that young Pentland.  A finer
+young chap never threw a leg over a broncho.  He's in that tent
+hospital to-night.  I know his mother.  Three sons she has given.
+Oh, damn it all," the doctor's voice broke at this point.  "I can't
+speak quietly.  Their mothers have given them up, to death, if need
+be, but not to this rotten, damnable disease.  Look here, Pilot!"
+The doctor pointed a shaking and accusing finger at Barry.  "You
+have often spoken against this thing, but next time you break
+loose, give them merry hell over it.  You can't make it too hot."
+
+Long Barry sat silent overborne by the fury of the doctor's
+passionate indictment.
+
+"Cheer up, old chap!" said the doctor, when his wrath had somewhat
+subsided.  "We'll lick the Kaiser and beat the devil yet."
+
+"But, doctor, what can I do?" implored Barry.  "That's part of my
+job, surely.  Part of the job of the chaplain service, I mean.  Oh,
+that is the ghastly tragedy of this work of mine.  Somehow I can't
+get at it.  These evils exist.  I can speak against them and make
+enemies, but the things go on just as before."
+
+"Don't you believe it, Pilot, not quite as before.  Behold how you
+have already checked my profanity.  Even the old man has pretty
+much cut it out at mess.  You don't know where they would have been
+but for you.  Cheer up!  Our wings may not be visible but, on the
+other hand, there are no signs of horns and hoofs."
+
+"Doctor, one thing I'll do," cried Barry, with a sudden inspiration
+"We've a meeting of the chaplains' corps to-morrow.  I'll give them
+your speech."
+
+"Expurgated edition, I hope," said the M. O.
+
+"No, I'll put in every damn I can remember, and, if need be, a few
+more."
+
+"Lord, I'd like to be there, old boy!" said the doctor, fervently.
+
+Barry was as good as his word.  At the meeting of the chaplains'
+corps, the time was mainly taken up in routine business, dealing
+with arrangements for religious services at the various camps
+within the area.
+
+At the close of the meeting, however, one of the chaplains rose and
+announced that he had a matter to bring to the attention of the
+corps--a matter of the highest importance, which demanded their
+immediate and serious attention, and which they dared not any
+longer ignore.  It was the matter of venereal disease in our
+Canadian army.
+
+His statistics and illustrative incidents gripped hard the hearts
+of the men present.  He closed with a demand that steps be taken
+that day to deal with the situation.  The Canadian people had
+entrusted them with the care of their boys' souls.  "Their souls,"
+he cried.  "I say our first duty is to their bodies.  I am not
+saying the percentage is large.  It is not as large as in the
+civilian population at home.  But why any?  We must care for these
+men's bodies.  They fight with their bodies."
+
+His last sentence struck Barry to the heart.  It recalled his own
+sermon, spoken in Edmonton to his father's battalion.  Immediately
+he was on his feet, and without preface or apology, reproduced as
+far as he was able the M. O.'s speech of the previous night, and
+that without expurgation.
+
+There was but little discussion.  There was but one opinion.  It
+was resolved to call a joint meeting of the chaplains and medical
+officers to decide upon a course of action.
+
+As Barry was leaving the meeting, the senior chaplain, an old
+Anglican clergyman, with a saintly face and a smile that set one's
+tenderest emotions astir, came to him, and putting his hand
+affectionately upon his shoulder, said:
+
+"And how is your work going, my dear fellow?"
+
+It was to Barry as if his father's hand were upon his shoulder, and
+before he was aware he was pouring out the miserable story of his
+own sad failure as a chaplain.
+
+"Poor boy!  Poor boy!" the old gentleman kept saying.  "I know how
+you feel.  Just so, just so!"
+
+When Barry had finished relieving his heart of the burden that had
+so long lain upon it, the old gentleman took him by the hand and
+said:
+
+"My dear fellow, remember they are far from home.  These boys need
+their mothers.  They sorely need their mothers!  And, my boy, they
+need God.  And they need you.  Good-bye!"
+
+Barry came away with a warm feeling in his heart, and in it a new
+purpose and resolve.  No longer would he be a policeman to his men.
+He would try to forget their faults, and to remember only how
+sorely they needed their mothers and their God, and that they
+needed him, too.
+
+He found the camp thrilling with great news, glorious news.  The
+day so long awaited had come.  The battalion was under orders for
+France.  At that very moment there was an officers' meeting in the
+orderly room.
+
+As Barry entered the room, the O. C. was closing his speech.
+
+Barry was immediately conscious of a new tone, a new spirit, in the
+colonel's words.  He spoke with a new sense of responsibility, and
+what more than anything else arrested Barry's attention, with a new
+sense of brotherhood toward his officers.
+
+"In closing what I have to say, gentlemen, let me make a confession.
+I am not satisfied with the battalion, nor with my officers.  I am
+not satisfied with myself.  I remember being indignant at the report
+sent in by the inspecting officer concerning this battalion.  I
+thought he was unfair and unduly severe.  I believe I said so.
+Gentlemen, I was wrong.  Since that time I have seen work in some
+regiments of the Imperial Service, and especially, I have seen the
+work on the front line.  I think I know now what discipline means.
+Discipline, gentlemen, is the thing that saves an army from disaster.
+Some things we must cut out absolutely.  Whatever unfits for service
+must go.  I saw a soldier, a Canadian soldier, shot at the front for
+being intoxicated.  I pray God, I may never see the like again.  At
+this point, I wish to express my appreciation of the work of our
+chaplain, who I am glad to see has just come in.  He has stood for
+the right thing among us, and has materially helped in the
+discipline and efficiency of this battalion.  Gentlemen, you have
+your orders.  Let there be no failure.  Obedience is demanded, not
+excuses.  Gentlemen, carry on!"
+
+Barry hurried away to his hut.  The words of his colonel had lifted
+him out of his despair.  He had not then so desperately failed.
+His colonel had found something in him to approve.  And France was
+before him!  There was still a chance for service.  The boys would
+need him there.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+FRANCE
+
+
+"France, sunny France!"  The tone carried concentrated bitterness
+and disgust.  "One cursed fraud after another in this war."
+
+"Cheer up!" said Barry.  "There's worse to come--perhaps better.
+This rain is beastly, but the clouds will pass, and the sun will
+shine again, for in spite of the rain this IS 'sunny France.'
+There's a little homily for you," said Barry, "and for myself as
+well, for I assure you this combination of mal de mer and sleet
+makes one feel rotten."
+
+"Everything is rotten," grumbled Duff, gazing gloomily through the
+drizzling rain at the rugged outline of wharves that marked the
+Boulogne docks.
+
+"Look at this," cried Duff, sweeping his hand toward the deck.
+"You would think this stuff was shot out of the blower of a
+threshing machine--soldier's baggage, kits, quartermaster's
+stores--and this is a military organisation.  Good Lord!"
+
+"Lieutenant Duff!  Is Lieutenant Duff here?"  It was the O. C.'s
+voice.
+
+"Yes, sir," said Duff, going forward and saluting.
+
+"Mr. Duff, I wish you to take charge of the Transport for the
+present.  Lieutenant Bonner is quite useless--helpless, I mean.
+You will find Sergeant Mackay a reliable man.  Sorry I couldn't
+give you longer notice.  I think, however, you are the man for the
+job."
+
+"I'll do my best, sir," said Duff, saluting, as the O. C. turned
+away.
+
+"What did I tell you, Duff?" said Barry.  "You certainly are in for
+it, and you have my sympathy."
+
+"Sympathy!  Don't you worry about me," said Duff.  "This is just
+the kind of thing I like.  I haven't run a gang of navvies in the
+Crow's Nest Pass for nothing.  You watch my smoke.  But, one word,
+Pilot!  When you see me bearing down, full steam ahead, give me
+room!  I'll make this go or bust something."  Then in a burst of
+confidence, he took Barry by the arm, and added in a low voice:
+"And if I live, Pilot, I'll be running something in this war bigger
+than the Transport of a battalion before I'm done."
+
+Barry let his eyes run over the powerful figure, the rugged,
+passionate face, lit up now with gleaming eyes, and said:
+
+"I believe you, Duff.  Meantime, I'll watch your smoke."
+
+"Do!" replied Duff with superb self-confidence.  And it was worth
+while during the next hour to watch Duff evolve order out of chaos.
+First of all he put into his men and into his sergeant the fear of
+death.  But he did more than that.  He breathed into them something
+of his own spirit of invincible determination.  He had them
+springing at his snappy orders with an eagerness that was in itself
+the larger half of obedience, and as they obeyed they became
+conscious that they were working under the direction of a brain
+that had a perfected plan of action, and that held its details
+firmly in its grasp.
+
+Not only did Duff show himself a master of organisation and
+control, but in a critical moment he himself leaped into the
+breach, and did the thing that balked his men.  Did a heavy
+transport wagon jamb at the gangway, holding up the traffic, with a
+spring, Duff was at the wheel.  A heave of his mighty shoulders,
+and the wagon went roaring down the gangway.  Did a horse, stupid
+with terror, from its unusual surroundings, balk, Duff had a
+"twitch" on its upper lip, and before it knew what awful thing had
+gripped it, the horse was lifted clear out of its tracks, and was
+on its way to the dock.
+
+Before he had cleared the ship, Duff had a circle of admirers about
+him, gazing as if at a circus.
+
+"An energetic officer you have there," said the brass hat standing
+beside the colonel.
+
+"A new man.  This is his first time on the transport," replied the
+colonel.
+
+"Quite remarkable!  Quite remarkable!" exclaimed the brass hat.
+"That unloading must have been done in record time, and in spite of
+quite unusual conditions."
+
+The boat being clear and the loads made up, Duff approached the
+Commanding Officer.
+
+"All ready, sir," he announced.  "Shall we move off?  I should like
+to get a start.  The roads will be almost impassable, I'm afraid."
+
+"Do you know the route?" asked the Commanding Officer.
+
+"Yes, sir, I have it here."
+
+"All right, go ahead, Duff.  A mighty good piece of work you have
+done there."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Duff, saluting and turning away.
+
+"Move off, there," he shouted to the leading team.
+
+The driver started the team but they slipped, plunged and fell
+heavily.  Duff was at their heads before any other man could move.
+
+"Get hold here, men," he yelled.  "Take hold of that horse.  What
+are you afraid of?" he cried to a groom who was gingerly approaching
+the struggling animal.  "Now then, all together!"
+
+When he had the team on their feet again, he said to the grooms
+standing at their heads, "Jump up on the horses' backs; that will
+help the them to hold their footing."
+
+There was some slight hesitation on the part of the grooms.
+
+"Come on!" he roared, and striding to the horse nearest him, he
+flung himself upon its back.
+
+A groom mounted the other, and once more a start was made, but they
+had not gone more than a few steps, when the groom's horse fell
+heavily, and rolled over on its side, pinning the unfortunate man
+beneath him.
+
+There was a shriek of agony.  In an instant Duff was off his horse
+and at the head of the fallen animal.
+
+"Medical officer here!" he shouted.  "Now then, two of you men.
+One of you pull out that man while we lift."
+
+The horse's head and shoulders were lifted clear, and the injured
+man was pulled out of danger.
+
+"Take him out of the way, please, doctor," said Duff, to the M. O.,
+who was examining the groom.
+
+"Sergeant!"
+
+His sergeant literally sprang to his side.
+
+"Get me a dozen bags," he said.
+
+"Bags, sir?  I don't know where--"
+
+"Bags," repeated Duff savagely.  "Canvas, anything to wrap around
+these horses' feet."
+
+The sergeant without further words plunged into the darkness,
+returning almost immediately with half a dozen bags.
+
+"Thanks, sergeant; that's the way to move.  Now get some more!"
+
+Under Duff's directions the bags were tied about the feet of the
+horses, thus enabling them to hold their footing, and the transport
+moved off in the darkness.
+
+Returning from the disposing of the injured man, the M. O. found
+Barry shivering with the cold, and weak from his recent attack of
+seasickness.
+
+"There will be no end of a sick parade to-morrow morning, and
+you'll be one of them," grumbled the M. O.  "If they don't move
+them out of here soon they'll take them away in ambulances.  There
+are a hundred men at this moment fit to go to hospital, but the
+O. C. won't hear of it."
+
+"Doc, they ought to have something hot.  The kitchens are left
+behind, I understand.  Let me have a couple of your men, and let me
+see what I can do."
+
+"It's no use, I've tried all the hotels about here.  They're full
+up."
+
+"No harm trying, doc," said Barry, and off he went.
+
+But he found the hotels full up, as the doctor had said.  After
+much inquiry, he found his way to the Y. M. C. A.  A cheerful but
+sleepy secretary, half dead with the fatigue of a heavy day
+ministering to soldiers "going up the line," could offer him no
+help at all.
+
+"Do you mean to say that there is no place in this town," said
+Barry desperately, "where a sick man can get a dish of coffee?"
+
+"Sick man!" cried the secretary.  "Why, certainly!  Why not try the
+R. A. M. C.?  They've a hospital half a mile up the street.  They
+will certainly help you out.  I'll come with you."
+
+"No, you don't," said Barry.  "You go back to bed.  I'll find the
+place."
+
+Half a mile up the street, as the secretary had said, Barry came
+upon the flaring lantern of the R. A. M. C., at the entrance to a
+huge warehouse, the gate of which stood wide open.
+
+Entering the courtyard, Barry found a group of men about a blazing
+fire.
+
+"May I see the officer in charge?" he asked, approaching the group.
+
+The men glanced at his rank badges.
+
+"Yes, sir," said a sergeant, clicking his heels smartly.  "Can I do
+anything for you, sir?"
+
+"Thank you," said Barry, and told him his wants.
+
+"We have plenty of biscuits," said the sergeant, "and coffee, too.
+You are welcome to all you can carry, but I don't see how we can do
+any more for you.  But would you like to see the officer in charge,
+sir?"
+
+"Thank you," said Barry, and together they passed into another
+room.
+
+But the officer was engaged elsewhere.  While they were discussing
+the matter, a door opened, and a young girl dressed in the uniform
+of a V. A. D. (Voluntary Aid Detachment) appeared.
+
+"What is it, sergeant?" she inquired, in a soft but rather tired
+voice.
+
+The sergeant explained, while she listened with mild interest.
+Then Barry took up the tale, and proceeded to dilate upon the
+wretched condition of his comrades, out in the icy rain.  But his
+story moved the V. A. D. not at all.  She had seen too much of the
+real misery and horrors of war.  Barry began to feel discouraged,
+and indeed a little ashamed of himself.
+
+"You see, we have just come over," he said in an apologetic tone,
+"and we don't know much about war yet."
+
+"You are Canadians?" cried the girl, a new interest dawning in her
+eyes.  As she came into the light, Barry noticed that they were
+brown, and that they were very lustrous.
+
+"I love the Canadians," she exclaimed.  "My brother was a liaison
+artillery officer at Ypres; with them, at the time of the gas, you
+know.  He liked them immensely."  Her voice was soft and sad.
+
+Unconsciously Barry let his eyes fall to the black band on her arm.
+
+"He was with the Canadians, too, when he was killed at Armentieres,
+three months ago."
+
+"Killed!" exclaimed Barry.  "Oh, I am so sorry for you."
+
+"I had two brothers," she went on, in her gentle even tone.  "One
+was killed at Landrecies, on the retreat from Mons, you know."
+
+"No," said Barry, "I'm afraid I don't know about it.  Tell me!"
+
+"It was a great fight," said the girl.  "Oh, a splendid fight!"  A
+ring came into her voice and a little colour into her cheek.  "They
+tried to rush our men, but they couldn't.  My oldest brother was
+there in charge of a machine gun section.  The machine guns did
+wonderful work.  The colonel came to tell us about it.  He said it
+was very fine."  There was no sign of tears in her eyes, nor tremor
+in her voice, only tenderness and pride.
+
+"And your mother is alone now?" inquired Barry.
+
+"Oh, we gave up our house to the government for a hospital.  You
+see, father was in munitions.  He's too old for active service, and
+mother is matron in the hospital.  She was very unwilling that I
+should come over here.  She said I was far too young, but of course
+that's quite nonsense.  So you see, we are all in it."
+
+"It is perfectly amazing," said Barry.  "You British women are
+wonderful!"
+
+The brown eyes opened a little wider.
+
+"Wonderful?  Why, what else could we do?  But the Canadians!  I
+think they're wonderful, coming all this way to fight."
+
+"I can't see that," said Barry.  "That's what that old naval boy at
+Devonport said, but I can't see that it's anything wonderful that
+we should fight for our Empire."
+
+"Devonport!  A naval officer!"  The girl lost her calm.  She became
+excited.  "What was his name?"
+
+"I have his card here," said Barry, taking out his pocket book and
+handing her the card.
+
+"My uncle!" she cried.  "Why, how perfectly splendid!" offering
+Barry her hand.  "Why, we're really introduced.  Then you're the
+man that Uncle Howard--"  She stopped abruptly, a flush on her
+cheek.  Then she turned to the N. C. O.  "Yes, sergeant, that will
+do," as the man brought half a dozen large biscuit cans and as many
+large bottles of prepared coffee.
+
+As Barry's eyes fell upon the biscuit cans an idea came to him.
+
+"Will these cans hold water?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the sergeant.
+
+"Then, we're fixed," cried Barry, in high delight.  "This is
+perfectly fine."
+
+"What do you mean?" asked the girl.
+
+"We'll dump the biscuits, and boil the coffee in the cans.  I
+haven't camped on the Athabasca for nothing.  Now we're all right
+and I suppose we must go."
+
+The V. A. D. hesitated a moment, then she took the sergeant to one
+side, and entered into earnest and persuasive talk with him.
+
+"It's against regulations, miss," Barry heard him say, "and
+besides, you know, we're expecting a hospital train any minute, and
+every car will be needed."
+
+"Then I'll take my own car," she said.  "It's all ready and has the
+chains on, sergeant, I think."
+
+"Yes, it's quite ready, but you will get me into trouble, miss."
+
+"Then, I'll get you out again.  Load those things in, while I run
+and change--  I'm going to drive you out to your camp," she said to
+Barry as she hurried away.
+
+The sergeant shook his head as he looked after her.
+
+"She's a thoroughbred, sir," he said.  "We jump when she asks us
+for anything.  She's a real blooded one; not like some, sir--like
+some of them fullrigged ones.  They keep 'er 'oppin'."
+
+"Fullrigged ones?" inquired Barry.
+
+"Them nurses, I mean, sir.  They loves to 'awe them--them young
+'Vaddies,' as we call them--V. A. D., you know, sir.  They keeps
+'em a 'oppin' proper--scrubbin' floors, runnin' messages, but Miss
+Vincent, she mostly drives a car."
+
+While the sergeant was dilating upon the virtues and excellences of
+the young V. A. D., his men ran out her car, and packed into it the
+biscuit tins and coffee.  By the time the sergeant was ready she
+was back, dressed in a chauffeur's uniform.
+
+Barry had thought her charming in her V. A. D. dress, but in her
+uniform she was bewitching.  He noticed that her hair clustered in
+tiny ringlets about her natty little cap, in quite a maddening way.
+One vagrant curl over her ear had a particular fascination for his
+eyes.  He felt it ought to be tucked in just a shade.  He was
+conscious of an almost irresistible desire to do the tucking in.
+What would happen if--
+
+"Well, are you ready?" inquired the girl in a quick, businesslike
+tone.
+
+"What?  Oh, yes," said Barry, recalled to the business of the
+moment.
+
+During the drive the girl gave her whole attention to her wheel, as
+indeed was necessary, for the road was dangerously slippery, and
+she drove without lights through the black night.  Barry kept up an
+endless stream of talk, set going by her command, as she took her
+place at the wheel.  "Now tell me about Canada.  I can listen, but
+I can't talk."
+
+In the full tide of his most eloquent passages, Barry found himself
+growing incoherent at times, for his mind was in a state of
+oscillation between the wonderful and lustrous qualities of the
+brown eyes that he remembered flashing upon him in the light of the
+fire, and that maddening little curl over the girl's ear.
+
+In an unbelievably short time, so it seemed to him, they came upon
+the rear of a marching column.
+
+"These are your men, I fancy," she said, "and this will be your
+camp on the left; I know it well.  I've often been here."
+
+She swung the car off the road into an open field, set out with
+tents, and brought the car to a stop beside an old ruined factory.
+
+"This, I believe, will be the best place for your purpose," she
+said, and sprang from her seat, and ran to the ruin, flashing her
+torchlight before her.  "Here you are," she said.  "This will be
+just the thing."
+
+Barry followed her a few steps down into the long, stone-flagged
+cellar.
+
+"Splendid!  This is the very thing," he cried enthusiastically.
+"You are really the most wonderful person."
+
+"Now get your stuff in here," she ordered.  "But what will you do
+for wood?  There is always water," she added, "in some tanks
+further on.  Come, I'll show you."
+
+Barry followed her in growing amazement and admiration at her
+prompt efficiency.
+
+"Now then, there are your tanks," she said.  "As for wood, I don't
+know what you will do, but there is a garden paling a little
+further on, and, of course--"
+
+"Don't worry about that," said Barry.
+
+"I won't," with a gay laugh; "I know you Canadians, you see."
+
+Together they returned to the car.
+
+Before she mounted to her seat she turned to Barry, and offered him
+her hand and said:  "I think it is perfectly ripping that we were
+introduced in this way.  Though I don't know your name yet," she
+added shyly.
+
+"Awfully stupid of me," said Barry, and he gave her his name,
+adding that of the regiment, and his rank.
+
+"Good-bye, then," she said, climbing into her car, and starting her
+engine.
+
+"But," said Barry, "I must see you safely back."
+
+She laughed a scornful but, as Barry thought, a most delicious
+little laugh.
+
+"Nonsense!  We don't do that sort of thing here, you know.  We're
+on our own."
+
+A little silence fell between them.
+
+"When does your battalion march?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"Perhaps to-morrow.  I don't know."
+
+"If you do go then," she said, with again that little touch of
+shyness, "I suppose I won't see you again."
+
+"See you again," exclaimed Barry, his tone indicating that the
+possibility of such a calamity was unthinkable, "why, of course I
+shall see you again.  I must see you again--I--I--I just must see
+you again."
+
+"Good night, then," she said in a soft, hurried voice, throwing in
+her clutch.
+
+Barry stood listening in the dark to the hum of her engine, growing
+more faint every moment.
+
+"Some girl, eh?" said a voice.  At his side he saw Harry Hobbs.
+Barry turned sharply upon him.
+
+"Now then, Hobbs, some wood and we will get a fire going and look
+lively!  And, Hobbs, I believe there's a fence about fifty yards
+down there, which you might find useful.  Now move.  Quick!"
+Unconsciously he tried to reproduce, in uttering the last word,
+Duff's tone and manner.  The effect was evident immediately.
+
+Hobbs without further words departed in the darkness.  Again Barry
+stood listening to the hum of the engine, until he could no longer
+hear it in the noise and confusion of the camp, but in his heart
+Harry's words made music.
+
+"Some girl, eh?"
+
+As he stood there in the darkness, hearing that music in his heart,
+a voice broke in, swearing hard and deep oaths.  It was the M. O.
+
+"Hello, doc, my boy; come here," cried Barry.
+
+The M. O. approached.  He was in a state of rage that rendered
+coherent speech impossible.
+
+"Oh, quit it, doc.  Let me show you something."
+
+He led him into the ruin, where his spoils were cached.
+
+"Biscuits, my boy, and coffee.  Hold on!  Listen!  I'm going to get
+a fire going here and in twenty minutes there'll be six cans of
+fragrant delicious coffee, boiling hot."
+
+"Why, how the--"
+
+"Doc, don't talk!  Listen to me!  You round up your sick men, and
+bring them quietly over here.  I don't know how many I can supply,
+but at least, I think, a hundred."
+
+"Why, how the devil--?"
+
+"Go on; I haven't time to talk to you.  Get busy!"
+
+Working by flashlight, the men cut open the tins, dumped the
+biscuits on a blanket spread in a corner of the cellar, while Barry
+made preparations for a fire.
+
+"Here, Hobbs, you punch two holes in these cans, just an inch from
+the top."
+
+Soon the fire was blazing cheerily.  In its light Barry was
+searching through the ruin.
+
+"By Jove," he shouted, "the very thing.  Just made for us."
+
+He pulled out a long steel rod from a heap of rubbish and ran with
+it to the fire.
+
+"Here, boys, punch a hole in this wall.  Now then, for the cans.
+String them on this rod."
+
+In twenty minutes the coffee was ready.
+
+"How is it?" he inquired anxiously, handing a mess tin full to one
+of his men.
+
+The boy tasted it.
+
+"Like mother made," he said, with a grin.  "Gee, but it's good."
+
+At that moment the doctor appeared at the cellar door.
+
+"I say, old chap," he said, "there will be a riot here in fifteen
+minutes.  That coffee smells the whole camp."
+
+"Bring 'em along, doc.  The sick chaps first.  By Jove, here's the
+sergeant major himself."
+
+"What's all this?" inquired the sergeant major in his gruffest
+voice.  "Who's responsible for this fire?"
+
+"Coffee, sergeant major?" answered Barry, handing him a tin full.
+
+"But what--?"
+
+"Drink it first, sergeant major."
+
+The sergeant major took the mess tin and tasted the coffee.
+
+"Well, this IS fine," he declared, "and it's what the boys want.
+But this fire is against orders, sir.  I ought to have it put out."
+
+"You will have it put out over my dead body, sergeant major," cried
+the M. O.
+
+"And mine," added Barry.
+
+"By gad, we'll chance the zeps, sir," said the sergeant major.
+"This freezin' rain will kill more men than a bomb.  Bring in your
+men, sir," he added to the M. O.  "But I must see the O. C."
+
+The sergeant major's devotion to military discipline was struggling
+hard with his humanity, which, under his rugged exterior, beat warm
+in his heart.
+
+"Why bother with the O. C.?" said the M. D.
+
+"But I must see him," insisted the sergeant major.
+
+He had not far to go to attain his purpose.
+
+"Hello!  What the devil is this?" exclaimed a loud voice at the
+door.
+
+"By gad, it's the old man himself," muttered the M. O. to Barry.
+"Now look out for ructions."
+
+In came the O. C., followed by a brass hat.  Barry went forward
+with a steaming tin of coffee.
+
+"Sorry our china hasn't arrived yet, sir," he said cheerfully, "but
+the coffee isn't bad, the boys say."
+
+"Why, it's you, Dunbar," said the colonel, peering into his face,
+and shaking the rain drops from his coat.  "I might have guessed
+that you'd be in it.  Where there's any trouble," he continued,
+turning to the brass hat at his side, "you may be quite sure that
+the Pilot or the M. O. here will be in it.  By Jove, this coffee
+goes to the right spot.  Have a cup, major?" he said as Barry
+brought a second tin.
+
+"It's against regulations, you know," said the major, taking the
+mess tin gingerly.  "Fires are quite forbidden.  Air raids, and
+that sort of thing, don't you know."
+
+"Oh, hang it all, major," cried the O. C.  "The coffee is fine, and
+my men will be a lot better for it.  This camp of yours, anyway, is
+no place for human beings, and especially for men straight off the
+boat.  As for me, I'm devilish glad to get this coffee.  Give me
+another tin, Pilot."
+
+"It's quite irregular," murmured the major, still drinking his
+coffee.  "It's quite irregular!  But I see the door is fairly well
+guarded against light, and perhaps--"
+
+"I think we'll just carry on," said the colonel.  "If there is any
+trouble, I'll assume the responsibility for it.  Thank you, Pilot.
+Just keep guard on the light here, sergeant major."
+
+"All right, sir.  Very good, sir, we will hang up a blanket."
+
+Meanwhile the news had spread throughout the camp, and before many
+minutes had passed the cellar was jammed with a crowd of men that
+reached through the door and out into the night.  The crowd was
+becoming noisy and there was danger of confusion.  Then the pilot
+climbed up on a heap of rubbish and made a little speech.
+
+"Men," he called out, "this coffee is intended first of all for the
+sick men in this battalion.  Those sick men must first be cared
+for.  After that we shall distribute the coffee as far as it will
+go.  There is plenty of water outside, and I think I have plenty of
+coffee.  Sergeant major, I suggest that you round up these men in
+some sort of order."
+
+A few sharp words of command from the sergeant major brought order
+out of confusion, and for two hours there filed through the cellar
+a continuous stream of men, each bringing an empty mess tin, and
+carrying it away full of hot and fragrant coffee.
+
+By the time the men had been supplied the officers were finished
+with their duties, and having got word of the Pilot's coffee stall,
+came crowding in.  One and all they were vociferous in their praise
+of the chaplain, voting him a "good fellow" and a "life-saver" of
+the highest order.  But it was felt by all that Corporal Thom
+expressed the general consensus of opinion to his friend Timms.
+"That Pilot of ours," he declared, "runs a little to the narrow
+gauge, but in that last round up he was telling us about last
+Sunday there won't be the goat run for him.  It's him for the baa
+baas, sure enough."
+
+And though in the vernacular the corporal's words did not sound
+quite reverent, it was agreed that they expressed in an entirely
+satisfactory manner the general opinion of the battalion.
+
+An hour later, wearied as he was, Barry crawled into his icy
+blankets, but with a warmer feeling in his heart than he had known
+since he joined the battalion.  But before he had gone to sleep,
+there came into his mind a thought that brought him up wide awake.
+He had quite forgotten all about his duty as chaplain.  "What a
+chance you had there," insisted his chaplain's conscience, "for a
+word that would really hearten your men.  This is their first night
+in France.  To-morrow they march up to danger and death.  What a
+chance!  And you missed it."
+
+Barry was too weary to discuss the matter further, but as he fell
+asleep he said to himself, "At any rate, the boys are feeling a lot
+better," and in spite of his sense of failure, that thought brought
+him no small comfort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE NEW MESSAGE
+
+
+"I think," said Barry, to the M. O., "I really ought to ride down
+to the R. A. M. C. hospital, and tell them how the boys enjoyed the
+coffee last night."  His face was slightly flushed, but the flush
+might have been due to the fact that he had been busily engaged in
+tying up the thongs of his bed-roll, an awkward job at times.
+
+"Sure thing," agreed the M. O. heartily.  "Indeed it's absolutely
+essential, and say, old chap, you might tell her how I enjoyed my
+coffee.  She will be glad to hear about me."
+
+Barry heaved his bed-roll at the doctor and departed.
+
+At the R. A. M. C. Hospital the Officer Commanding, to whom he had
+sent in his card, gave him a cordial greeting.
+
+"I am glad to know you, sir.  We have quite a lot of your chaps
+here now and then, and fine fellows they seem to be.  We expect a
+hospital train this morning, and I understand there are some
+Canadians among them.  Rather a bad go a few days ago at St. Eloi.
+Heavy casualty list.  Clearing stations all crowded, and so they
+are sending a lot down the line."
+
+"Canadians?" asked Barry, thinking of his father.  "You have not
+heard what unit, sir?"
+
+"No, we only get the numbers and the character of the casualties
+and that sort of thing.  Well, I must be off.  Would you care to
+look around?"
+
+"Thank you, no.  We are also on the march.  I simply came to tell
+you how very greatly our men appreciated your help last night."
+
+"Oh, that's perfectly all right.  Glad the sergeant had sense
+enough to do the right thing."
+
+Barry hesitated.
+
+"May I see--ah--the sergeant?"
+
+"The sergeant?  Why, certainly, but it's not necessary at all."
+
+The sergeant was called and duly thanked.  The R. A. M. C. officer
+was obviously anxious to be rid of his visitor and to get off to
+his duty.
+
+Still Barry lingered.
+
+"There was also a young lady, sir, last night," he said at length.
+
+"A young lady?"
+
+"Sister Vincent, sir," interjected the sergeant.  "She ran them up
+to the camp in her car, sir.  The ambulances and cars were all
+under orders."
+
+"Ah!  Ran you up to the camp, eh?"
+
+"Yes, she ran us up with the biscuits and coffee.  It was awfully
+kind of her."
+
+"Ah!--Um!--Very good!  Very good!  Sergeant, call her," said the
+O. C. abruptly.
+
+"I'm afraid she'd be asleep now, sir.  She was on night duty, sir."
+
+"Oh, then," said Barry, "please don't disturb her.  I wouldn't
+think of it.  If you will be kind enough, sir, to convey the thanks
+of the men and of myself to her."
+
+"Surely, surely!  Well, I really must be going.  Goodbye!  Good
+luck!"
+
+He turned to his motor car.  "I won't forget, sir," he said to
+Barry.  "Oh, I'll be sure to tell her," he added with a significant
+smile.
+
+As Barry was mounting his horse, the strains of the battalion band
+were heard floating down the street.  He drew up his horse beside
+the entrance and waited.  Down the winding hill they came, tall,
+lean, hard-looking men, striding with the free, easy swing of the
+men of the foothills.  Barry felt his heart fill with pride in his
+comrades.
+
+"By Jove," he said to himself, "the boys are all right."
+
+"Fine body of men, sir," said the sergeant, who with his comrades
+had gathered about the gateway.
+
+"Not too bad, eh, sergeant?" said Barry, with modest pride.
+
+"Sir," said the sergeant in a low voice, "the young lady is up at
+the window to your left."
+
+"Sergeant, you're a brick!  Thank you," said Barry.  He turned in
+his saddle, and saw above him a window filled with smiling nurses
+looking down at the marching column, and among them his friend of
+the night before.  Her face was turned away from him, and her eyes
+were upon the column, eagerly searching the ranks of the marching
+men.
+
+"Sergeant," said Barry, "your Commanding Officer is a very busy
+man, and has a great many things to occupy his attention.  Don't
+you think it is quite possible that that message of mine might
+escape his memory, and don't you think it would be really more
+satisfactory if I could deliver that message in person?"
+
+The sergeant tilted his hat over one eye, and scratched his head.
+
+"Well, sir, the Commanding Officer does 'ave a lot of things to
+think about, and though he doesn't often forget, he might.
+Besides, I really think the young lady would like to know just how
+the coffee went."
+
+"Sergeant, you are a man of discernment.  I'll just wait here until
+the battalion passes."
+
+He moved his horse a few steps out from the gateway, and swung him
+around so that he stood facing the window.  The movement caught the
+attention of the V. A. D. in the window.  She glanced down, saw
+him, and, leaning far out, waved her hand in eager greeting and
+with a smile of warm friendliness.
+
+He had only time to wave his hand in reply, when the head of the
+column drew opposite the gateway, forcing him to turn his back to
+the window and stand at salute.
+
+The Commanding Officer acknowledged the salute, glanced up at the
+window, waved his hand to the group of nurses there gathered, then
+glanced back at Barry, with a smile full of meaning, and rode on.
+
+After the band had passed the entrance, it ceased playing, and the
+men, catching sight of Barry and the smiling group at the window
+above him, broke softly into a rather suggestive music hall ditty,
+at that time popular with the soldiers:
+
+
+     "Hello!  Hello!  Who's your lady friend;
+      Who's the little blossom by your side;
+      I saw you, with a girl or two,
+      Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm surprised at you."
+
+
+Down the length of the column the refrain passed, gradually gaining
+in strength and volume, until by the time the rear came opposite
+the entrance, the men were shouting with wide open throats:
+
+
+     "Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! I'm surprised at you,"
+
+
+with a growing emphasis and meaning upon every successive "Oh!"
+
+Barry's face was aflame and his heart hot with furious indignation.
+She was not that kind of a girl.  She would be humiliated before
+her associates.  He glanced up at the window but she was gone.  The
+battalion marched on but Barry still remained, his eyes following
+the swinging column, his face still flaming, and his heart hot with
+indignation.
+
+"Good morning, Captain Dunbar!"
+
+He swung off his horse, and there smiling at him with warm
+friendliness was the little V. A. D.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," began Barry, thinking of the impudent song of
+his comrades.  "I mean I'm very glad to see you.  I just ran in to
+tell you how splendidly the coffee went last night.  There are a
+hundred fellows marching along there that are fine and fit just
+because of your kindness, and I'm here to give you their thanks."
+
+Barry felt that he was cutting a rather poor figure.  His words
+came haltingly and stumblingly.  The suggestive music hall ditty
+was still in his mind.
+
+"What a splendid band you have," she said, "and how splendidly the
+men sing."
+
+"Sing!" cried Barry indignantly.  "Oh, yes, they do sing rather
+well, don't they?" he added, greatly relieved.  "I have only a
+minute," he added hurriedly, "but I wanted to see you again, and I
+wonder if I may drop you a little note now and then, just to--well,
+hang it all--just to keep in touch with you.  I don't want you to
+quite forget me."
+
+"Oh, I won't forget you," she said.  The brown eyes looked straight
+at him.  "You see, after all, my uncle knows you so well.  Indeed,
+he told me about you.  You see, we really are friends, in a way,
+aren't we?"
+
+"We are indeed, and you are awfully good.  Goodbye!"
+
+"Goodbye," she said, "and if I leave here soon, I promise to let
+you know."
+
+And Barry rode away, his heart in such a turmoil as he had never
+known.  In his ears lingered the music of that soft voice, and his
+eyes saw a bewildering complexity of dancing ringlets and lustrous
+glances, until he drew up at the rear of the column and found
+himself riding once more beside his friend, the M. O.
+
+"Congratulations, old man," said the doctor.  "She's a blossom, all
+right.  Cheer up; you may find her bending over your white face
+some day, holding your hand, or smoothing your brow, in the
+approved V. A. D. manner."
+
+"Oh, shut up, doc," said Barry with quite unusual curtness.  "She's
+not that kind of a girl."
+
+"Ah, who knows!" said the doctor.  "Who knows!"
+
+At the railway station, the battalion was halted, awaiting the
+making up of their train, the departure of which was delayed by the
+incoming hospital train from up the line.  They had not long to
+wait.
+
+"Here she is, boys!" called out a soldier.  And into the station
+slowly rolled that hospital train, with its freight of wounded men,
+mutilated, maimed, broken.  Its windows were crowded with faces,
+white as their swathings, worn, spent, deep-lined, from which
+looked forth eyes, indifferent, staring, but undaunted and
+indomitable.
+
+Gradually, with stately movement, as befitted its noble burden, the
+train came to rest immediately opposite the battalion.  With grave,
+fascinated, horror-stricken faces the men of the battalion stood
+rigid and voiceless gazing at that deeply moving spectacle.  Before
+their eyes were being paraded the tragic, pathetic remnants of a
+gallant regiment, which but a few weeks before had stood where they
+now stood, vital with life, tingling with courage.  At their
+country's bidding they had ascended that Holy Mount of Sacrifice,
+to offer upon the altar of the world's freedom their bodies as a
+living sacrifice unto God, holy and acceptable.  Now, their
+offering being made, they were being borne back helpless, bruised,
+shattered but unconquered and eternally glorious.
+
+Silently the two companies gazed at each other across the
+intervening space.  Then from the window of the train a soldier
+thrust a bandaged head and bandaged arm.
+
+"Hello there, Canada!" he cried, waving the arm.  Instantly, as if
+he had touched a hidden spring, from the battalion's thousand
+throats there broke a roar of cheers that seemed to rock the
+rafters of the station building.
+
+Again, again, and yet again!  As if they could never exhaust the
+burden of their swelling emotions, they roared forth their cheers,
+waving caps and rifles high in the air, while down their cheeks
+poured, unheeded and unhindered, a rain of tears.
+
+"Canada!  Canada!  Canada!" they cried.  "Oh, you Canadians!
+Alberta!  Alberta!"
+
+Feebly came the answering cheers, awkwardly waved the bandaged
+hands and arms.
+
+Then the battalion broke ranks and flinging rifles and kitbags to
+the ground, they rushed across the tracks, eager to bring their
+tribute of pride and love to their brothers from their own country,
+far across the sea.
+
+"Malcolm!  Hello, Malcolm!" cried a voice from a window of the
+train, as the noise had somewhat subsided.  "Hey, Malcolm, here you
+are!" cried a wounded man, raising himself from his cot to the
+window.
+
+Malcolm Innes turned, scanned the train, then rushed across the
+tracks to the window and clung fast to it.
+
+It was his brother, Ewen.
+
+"Is it yourself, Ewen, and are you hurted bad?" cried the boy, all
+unconscious of his breaking voice and falling tears.  They clung
+together for some little time in silence.
+
+"Are you much hurted, Ewen?  Tell me the God's truth," again said
+Malcolm.
+
+"Not much," said Ewen.  "True as death, I'm tellin' you.  My arm is
+broke, that's all.  We had a bad time of it, but, man, we gave them
+hell, you bet.  Oh, it was great!"
+
+Then again the silence fell between them.  There seemed to be
+nothing to say.
+
+"Here, stand back there!  You must get back, you know, men!"
+
+An N. C. O. of the R. A. M. C. tried to push Malcolm back from the
+window.
+
+"Here, you go to hell," cried Malcolm fiercely.  "It's my brother
+I've got."
+
+The N. C. O., widely experienced in these tragic scenes, hesitated
+a moment.  An officer, coming up behind him, with a single glance
+took in the situation.
+
+"My boy," he said kindly, placing his hand on Malcolm's arm, "we
+want to get these poor chaps as soon as possible where they will be
+comfortable."
+
+Malcolm sprang back at once, saluting.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said.  "Certainly, sir."  And backing across the
+tracks, stood looking across at the window from which his brother,
+wearied with his effort, had disappeared.
+
+Meantime the R. A. M. C. were busy with their work.  With marvellous
+rapidity and speed the train was unloaded of its pathetic freight,
+the carrying cases into ambulances and the walking cases into cars
+and wagons.
+
+"Good-bye, Mac," called a voice as a car was driving off.  It was
+Ewen again.  The wounded man spoke to the driver, who immediately
+pulled up and swung over to the platform where Malcolm was
+standing.
+
+"Oh, are you sure, Ewen, you are goin' to be all right?  Man, you
+look awful white."
+
+"All right, Mac.  You bet I will.  It's only my arm," said Ewen,
+his brave, bright words in pathetic contrast to his white face.
+
+At this point Barry came rushing along.
+
+"Why, Ewen!  My poor fellow!" he cried, throwing his arm about the
+wounded man's shoulder.  "What is it?"
+
+"My arm, sir," said the boy, adding some words in a low tone.  "But
+I'm all right," he said brightly.  "You'll write my mother, sir,
+and tell her?  You'll know what to say."
+
+"Surely I will.  You'll be all right, old boy, God bless you!  Good
+luck, Ewen!"
+
+Then leaning over the boy, he added in a low voice, "Remember you
+are not all alone.  God is with you.  You won't forget that!"
+
+"I won't, sir.  I know it well," said Ewen earnestly.
+
+Most of the stretcher cases had been hurried away.  Only a few of
+the more seriously wounded remained.  As Barry turned away from the
+car, he saw the medical officer and sergeant major approaching him.
+
+"A terrible business," said Barry, in a horror-stricken voice.
+"Splendid chaps.  How plucky they are!"
+
+The M. O. made no reply, but coming close to Barry, he put his arm
+through his, the sergeant major taking him by the other arm.
+
+"I say, Barry, old chap," said the M. O. in a grave voice, calling
+him for the first time by his first name.  "There is some one here
+that you know well."
+
+"Some one I know," said Barry, standing still and looking from one
+to the other.
+
+"Ay, sir.  Some one we all know and greatly respect," replied the
+sergeant major.
+
+"Not--not--oh, not my father!"
+
+The M. O. nodded.
+
+"Bad, doctor?  Not dying, doctor?"  His face was white even in
+spite of his tan.  His hands closed about the doctor's arm in a
+grip that reached to the bone.
+
+"No, not dying, Barry, but in a bad way, I fear."
+
+"Take me," muttered Barry, in a dazed way, and they moved together
+rapidly across the platform.
+
+"Wait a moment, doctor," said Barry, breathing hard.
+
+They stood still, a silent and sympathetic group of soldiers about
+them.  Barry turned from them, walked a few steps, his clasped
+hands writhing before him, then stood with his face uplifted to the
+sky for a few moments.
+
+"All right, doctor, I'll follow," he said, coming quietly back.
+"Will he know me?"
+
+"Sure thing, sir," said the sergeant major cheerily.  "He was
+asking for you."
+
+On a stretcher, waiting to be lifted into the ambulance, he found
+his father, lying white and still.
+
+"Dad!" cried Barry, dropping to his knees beside him.  He put his
+arms around him on the stretcher, and kissed him on both cheeks and
+on the lips.  They all drew back from the stretcher and turned
+their backs upon the two.
+
+"Barry, my boy.  Thank the good God!  I feared I would not see you.
+It's all right now.  Everything is all right now.  I can't put my
+arms around you, boy.  I haven't any left."
+
+Barry's shudder shook the stretcher.
+
+"Dad, dad, oh, dad!" he whispered, over and over again.
+
+"It's all right," whispered his father.  "We must not forget we're
+soldiers.  Help me to keep up, boy.  I'm not very strong."
+
+That pitiful word did for Barry what nothing else could do.  He
+lifted his head, stood up and drew a deep breath.
+
+"Sure thing, dad," he said, in a clear, steady voice.  "I mustn't
+keep you."
+
+He motioned to the bearers.  Then suddenly recollecting that his
+duty would call him away from his father, he turned to the M. O.,
+an agony of supplication in his voice.
+
+"Oh, doctor, must I leave him here?" he asked in a low tone.
+
+Just then an orderly came running up to him, and, saluting, said:
+
+"Sir, the Commanding Officer says you are to remain behind with
+your father--till--till--"
+
+"Until you are sent for," said the M. O.  "I will see to that."
+
+"Where's the Commanding Officer?" cried Barry, starting forward.
+
+"He has gone off somewheres, sir.  He was sorry he couldn't come
+himself, but he was called away.  He sent that message to you."
+
+"Doctor, will you remember to thank the Commanding Officer for
+me?" he said briefly, and turned to follow his father into the
+ambulance, which he discovered to be in charge of his friend, the
+sergeant of the R. A. M. C.
+
+At the hospital he was received with every mark of solicitous care.
+He was made to feel that he was among friends.
+
+"How long, doctor?" he asked, after the doctor had finished his
+examination.
+
+"Not long, I'm afraid.  A few hours, perhaps a day.  He will not
+suffer though," said the doctor.  "But," he added, taking Barry by
+the arm, "he is very weak, remember, and must not be excited."
+
+"I know, doctor," said Barry, quietly.  "I won't worry him."
+
+Through the morning Barry sat by his father's cot, giving him,
+under the directions of the nurse, such stimulants as he needed,
+now and then speaking a quiet, cheery word.
+
+Often his father opened his eyes and smiled at him.
+
+"Good to see you there, my boy.  That was my only grief.  I feared
+I might not see you again.  Thank the good God that he allowed me
+to see you."
+
+"He is good, dad, isn't He?  Good to me; good to us both."
+
+"Yes, He is good," said his father, and fell asleep.  For almost
+two hours he slept, a sleep of exhaustion, due to the terrific
+strain of the past forty-eight hours, and woke refreshed, calm and
+strong.
+
+"You are a lot better, dad," said Barry.  "I believe you are going
+to pull through, eh!"
+
+"A lot better, Barry," said his father, "but, my boy, we are
+soldiers, you and I.  I shall not be long, but remember, we are
+soldiers."
+
+"All right, dad.  I'll try to play the game."
+
+"That's the word, Barry.  We must play the game, and by God's grace
+we will, you and I--our last game together."
+
+Through the afternoon they talked, between intervals of sleep,
+resolved each to help the other in playing to the end, in the
+manner of British soldiers, that last, great game.
+
+They talked, of course, of home and their happy days together,
+going far back into the earlier years of struggle on the ranch.
+
+"Hard days, Barry, they were, but your mother never failed me.
+Wonderful courage she had, and if we were all right, you and I,
+Barry, she was always happy.  Do you remember her?"
+
+"Yes, dad, quite well.  I remember her smiling always."
+
+"Smiling, my God!  Smiling through those days.  Yes, that's the way
+she played the game, and that's the only way, boy."
+
+"Yes, dad," said Barry, and his smile was brighter than ever, but
+his knuckles showed white where he gripped the chair.
+
+The nurse came and went, wondering at their bright faces and their
+cheery voices.  They kept their minds upon the old happy days.
+They recalled their canoe trips, their hunting experiences,
+dwelling mostly upon the humorous incidents, playing the game.  Of
+the war they spoke little; not at all of what was to be after--the
+past, the golden, happy past, rich in love and in comradeship, that
+was their one theme.
+
+As night fell, the father grew weary, and his periods of sleep grew
+longer, but ever as he woke he found his son's face smiling down
+upon him.
+
+"Good boy, Barry," he said once, with an understanding look and an
+answering smile.  "Don't try too hard, my boy."
+
+"It's all right, dad.  I assure you it's all right.  You know it
+is."
+
+"I know, I know, my boy," he said, and fell asleep again.
+
+As the midnight hour drew on, Barry's head, from sheer weariness,
+sunk upon his breast.  In his sleep he became aware of some one
+near him.  He sat up, dazed and stupid from his exhaustion and his
+grief, and found a nurse at his side.
+
+"Take this," she said softly.  "You will need it."  She set a tray
+at his side.
+
+"Oh, thank you, no!" he said.  "I can't eat.  I can't touch
+anything."
+
+"You need it," said the nurse.  "You must take it, for his sake,
+you know.  He will need you."
+
+Her voice aroused him.  He glanced at her face.
+
+"Oh, it's you!" he cried.
+
+It was the little V. A. D.
+
+"Don't rise," she said, putting her hand on his shoulder, and
+pointing to his father.  "Drink this first."  She handed him an
+eggnog.  "Now take your tea."  There was a quiet authority about
+her that compelled obedience.  He ate in silence while she stood
+beside him.  He was too weary and too sick at heart to talk, but he
+gradually became aware that the overpowering sense of loneliness
+that had been with him all day was gone.
+
+When he had finished his slight meal, he whispered to her:
+
+"I wish I could thank you, but I can't.  I did need it.  You have
+helped me greatly."
+
+"You are better now," she said softly.  "It's very, very hard for
+you, so far from home, and from all your friends."
+
+"There is no one else," said Barry simply.  "We have no one but
+just ourselves."
+
+At this point his father opened his eyes bright and very wide-
+awake.
+
+The V. A. D. began to gather up the tea things.  Barry put out his
+hand and touched her arm.
+
+"Dad, this is your night nurse.  She was very kind to me last
+night, and again to-night.  This is Miss Vincent."
+
+The brightness of the V. A. D.'s smile outshone his own.
+
+"I'm not a real nurse," she said.  "I'm only a V. A. D., you know.
+They use me to wash the floors and dishes, and for all sorts of odd
+jobs.  To-night they are shorthanded, and have put me on this
+duty."
+
+While she was speaking, she continued to smile, a smile of radiant
+cheer and courage.
+
+The wounded man listened gravely to her, his eyes searching her
+face, her eyes, her very soul, it seemed to her.  In spite of her
+experience and her self-control, she felt her face flushing under
+his searching gaze.
+
+"My dear," he said at length, "I am glad to meet you.  You are a
+good and brave girl, I know."  His eyes fell upon the black band
+upon her arm.  "I see you are wearing the badge of heroism.  My
+dear, pardon me, you have the same look--Barry, she has your dear
+mother's look, not so beautiful--you will forgive me, my dear--but
+the same look.  She thinks of others and she has courage to suffer.
+My dear, I cannot take your hands in mine,"--he glanced with a
+pathetic smile at his bandaged arms, but with a swift movement of
+indescribable grace the girl stooped and kissed him on the
+forehead.
+
+"Barry," he said, turning to his son, "that was a fine courtesy.  I
+count it an honour to have known you, Miss Vincent."
+
+He paused a moment or two, his searching eyes still upon her face.
+
+"You will befriend my boy, after--after--"
+
+"I will try my best, sir," said the girl, the colour deepening in
+her cheeks the while.  "Good night, sir," she said.  "I shall be
+near at hand if I am wanted."
+
+"Barry," said his father, after the girl had gone, "that is a very
+charming and a very superior young lady, one you will be glad to
+know."
+
+"Yes, dad, I am sure she is," said Barry, and then he told his
+father of the events of the previous night.
+
+For some moments after he had finished his father lay with his eyes
+shut, and quite still, and Barry, thinking he slept, sat watching,
+his eyes intent upon the face he loved best in all the world.
+
+But his father was not asleep.
+
+"Yes, Barry," he said, "she is like your dear mother, and now," he
+added hurriedly, "I hope you will not think I am taking a liberty--"
+
+"Oh, dad, I implore you!" said Barry.
+
+"Barry, I would like to speak to you about your work."
+
+Barry shook his head sadly.
+
+"I'm not much good, dad," he said, "but I'm not going to quit," he
+added quickly, noting a shadow on his father's face.
+
+"Barry, I'm going to say something to you which I do hope will not
+hurt you.  I know the common soldier better than you do, boy.  Our
+Canadian soldiers do not like to be rebuked, criticised or even
+watched too closely.  Forgive me this, my boy."
+
+"Oh, dad, please tell me all that is in your heart!"
+
+"Thank you, Barry.  They don't like the chaplain to be a censor
+over their words."
+
+"I loathe it," said Barry passionately.
+
+"Believe me, they are good chaps in their hearts.  They swear and
+all that, but that is merely a habit or a mere expression of high
+emotion.  You ought to hear them as they 'go over.'  Barry, let all
+that pass and remember that these boys are giving their lives--
+their lives, Barry, for right, for conscience, and ultimately,
+though it may be unconsciously, for God.  Barry, a man that is
+giving his life for God may say what he likes.  Don't be too hard
+on them, but recall to mind, Barry, that when they go up the line
+they feel terribly lonely and terribly afraid, and that is a truly
+awful experience."
+
+He paused a moment or two, and then lowered his voice and continued:
+"Barry, you won't be ashamed of me.  I was terribly afraid, myself."
+
+Barry choked back a convulsive sob.
+
+"You, dad, you!"  He laughed scornfully.
+
+"I didn't run, Barry, thank God!  But the boys--my boys--they are
+only lads, many of them--lonely and afraid--and they must go on.
+They must go on.  Oh, Barry, in that hour they need some one to go
+with them.  They need God."
+
+His son was listening with his heart in his eyes.  He was getting a
+new view of the soldier and of the soldier's needs.
+
+"Unhappily," continued his father, "God is at best a shadowy being,
+to many of them a stranger, to some a terror.  Barry," he said,
+"they need some one to tell them the truth about God.  It's not
+fair to God, you know."  Here again his father paused and then said
+very humbly:  "I think I may say, Barry, I know God now, as I did
+not before.  And you helped me, boy, to know him."
+
+"Oh, dad," cried Barry, passionately.  "Not I!  I don't know Him at
+all!"
+
+"Let me tell you how you helped me, Barry.  Before I went up the
+last time, I wanted--"
+
+He paused abruptly, his face working and his lip quivering.
+
+"Forgive me, my boy.  I'm a little weak."
+
+A few moments of silence and then he continued quietly:
+
+"I wanted you, Barry."
+
+The boy's hands were writhing under his knees, but his face and
+eyes were quite steady.
+
+"I was terribly lonely.  I thought of that strange, dear bond that
+held us together, and then like a flash out of the sky came those
+great words:  'Like as a father pitieth his children,' and oh, boy,
+boy!  It came to me then that as I feel toward my boy God feels
+toward me.  Barry, listen--"  His voice fell to a whisper.  "I am
+God's son, as you are mine.  There was no more fear, and I was not
+nearly so lonely.  Tell the boys--tell the boys the truth about
+God."
+
+He lay a long time silent, with his eyes closed, and as Barry
+watched he saw two tears fall down the white cheeks.  It was to him
+a terrible sight.  Never, not even at his mother's grave, had he
+seen his father's tears.  It was more than he could endure.  He put
+his face down beside his father's on the pillow.
+
+"Dad, I understand," he whispered.  "I know now what God is like.
+He is like you, dad.  He gave himself for us, as you, dad, have
+given yourself all these years for me."
+
+He was sobbing, but very quietly.
+
+"Forgive me, dad; I'm not crying.  I'm just thinking about God and
+you.  Oh, dad, you are both wonderful!  Wonderful!"
+
+"Barry, my boy, tell them.  Don't worry yourself about them.  Just
+tell them about God.  He is responsible for them, not you."
+
+"Oh, I will, dad; I promise you I will.  I've been all wrong, but
+I'll tell them.  I'll tell them."
+
+"Thank God, my boy," said his father, with a deep sigh.  "Now I'm
+tired.  Say 'Our Father.'"
+
+Together they whispered those greatest of words in human speech,
+those words that have bound heaven to earth in yearning and in hope
+for these two thousand years.
+
+"Don't move, Barry," whispered his father.  "I like you there."
+
+With their faces thus together they fell asleep.
+
+Barry was awakened by his father's voice, clear and strong.
+
+"Are you there, Barry?" it said.
+
+"Here, dad, right here!"
+
+"Good boy.  Good boy.  You won't leave me, Barry.  I mean you don't
+need to go?"
+
+"No, dad, I'll never leave you."
+
+"Good boy," again murmured his father softly.  "Always a good boy,
+always, always--"
+
+He was breathing heavily, long deep breaths.
+
+"Lift me up, Barry," he said.
+
+Barry sat on the bed, put his arm around his father's shoulders,
+and lifted him up.
+
+"That's better--hold me closer, Barry--  You won't hurt me--  Oh,
+it's good--to feel--your arms--strong arms--Barry."
+
+"You made them strong, dad," said Barry, in a clear, steady voice.
+
+The father nestled his head upon his son's shoulder.
+
+"Barry," he said in the low tone of one giving a confidence, "don't
+ever forget--to thank God--for these eighteen years--together--
+You saved me--from despair--eighteen years ago--when she went away--
+you know--and you have been--all the world to me--my son--"
+
+"And you to me, dad," said his son in the same steady tone.
+
+"I've tried all my life--to make you know--how I love you--but
+somehow I couldn't--"
+
+"But I knew, dad," said Barry.  "All my life I have known."
+
+"Really?" asked his father.  "I--wonder--I don't think--you quite
+know--  Ah--my boy--my boy--  You don't--know--you--can't.  Barry,"
+he said, "I think--I'm going out--I'm going--out--no, in--your
+word--my boy--in--eh--Barry?"
+
+"Yes, dad," said his son.  "Going in.  The inner circle, you know."
+
+"The--inner--circle--" echoed his father.  "Warmth--light--love--
+Now--I think--I'll sleep--  Good night--Barry--  Oh--my boy,--you--
+don't quite--know--  Kiss me--Barry--"
+
+Barry kissed him on the lips.
+
+"So--  Good--night--"
+
+A deep breath he took; another--Barry waited for the next, but
+there was not another.
+
+He laid his father down and looked into his quiet face, touched
+even now with the noble stateliness of death.  He put his arms
+about the unresponsive form, and his face to the cheek still warm.
+
+"Dad, oh, dad," he whispered.  "Do you know--do you know--  Oh,
+God, tell him how I love him.  Tell him!  Tell him!  I never
+could."
+
+The little V. A. D. came softly and stood looking from a distance.
+Then coming to the bedside, she laid her hand upon the head and
+then the heart of the dead man.  Then she drew back, and beckoning
+to an orderly, they placed a screen about the cot.  She let her
+eyes rest for a moment or two upon the kneeling boy, then went
+softly away.
+
+Death was to her an all too familiar thing.  She had often seen it
+unmoved, but to-night, as she walked away, the brown eyes could not
+hold their tears.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A MAN OF GOD
+
+
+Barry was standing beside his father's grave, in a little plot in
+the Boulogne cemetery set apart for British officers.  They had,
+one by one, gone away and left him until, alone, he stood looking
+down on the simple wooden cross on which were recorded the name,
+age, and unit of the soldier with the date of his death, and
+underneath the simple legend, eloquent of heroic sacrifice, "Died
+of wounds received in action."
+
+Throughout the simple, beautiful burial service he had not been
+acutely conscious of grief.  Even now he wondered that he could
+shed no tears.  Rather did an exultant emotion fill his soul as
+he looked around upon the little British plot, with its rows of
+crosses, and he was chiefly conscious of a solemn, tender pride
+that he was permitted to share that glorious offering which his
+Empire was making for the saving of the world.  But, in this
+moment, as he stood there alone close to his father's grave, and
+surrounded by those examples of high courage and devotion, he
+became aware of a mighty change wrought in him during these last
+three days.  He had experienced a veritable emancipation of soul.
+He was as if he had been born anew.
+
+The old sense of failure in his work, the feeling of unfitness for
+it, and the old dread of it, had been lifted out of his soul, and
+not only was he a new man, but he felt himself to be charged with a
+new mission, because he had a new message for his men.  No longer
+did he conceive himself as a moral policeman or religious censor,
+whose main duty it was to stand in judgment over the faults and
+sins of the men of his battalion.  No more would the burden of his
+message be a stern denunciation of these faults and sins.  Standing
+there to-day, he could only wonder at his former blindness and
+stupidity and pride.
+
+"Who am I," he said in bitter self-humiliation, "that I should
+judge my comrades?  How little I knew myself."
+
+"A man of God," his superintendent had said in his last letter to
+him.  Yes, truly a man of God!  A MAN not God!  A MAN not to sit in
+God's place in judgment upon his fellow sinners, but to show them
+God, their Father.
+
+Barry thought of the frequent rebukes he had administered to the
+officers and men for what he considered to be their sins.  He
+groaned aloud.
+
+"God will forgive me, I know," he said.  "But will they?"
+
+He tried to recall what the burden of his message to his battalion
+had been during these past months, but to him there came no clear
+and distinct memory of aught but warnings and denunciations, with
+reference to what he judged to be faulty in their conduct.  To-day
+it seemed to him both sad and terrible.
+
+How had he so failed and so misconceived the Master's plain
+teaching?  He moved among sinners all His days, not with
+denunciations in His heart or voice, but only with pity and love.
+
+"Be not anxious," He had said.  "Consider the birds of the air.
+Not one of them falleth to the ground without your Father.  How
+much more precious are you than the birds."
+
+What a message for men going up to face the terrors and perils of
+the front line.  "Be not anxious!"
+
+"I was afraid," his father had said to him.  That to him was
+inconceivable.  That that gallant spirit should know terror seemed
+to him impossible.  Yet even he had said, "I was afraid."  And for
+the loneliness, what a message he now had.  In their loneliness men
+cried out for the presence of a friend, and the Master had said:
+
+"When ye pray, pray to your Father.  Your Father knoweth.  When ye
+pray, say, 'Our Father'!"  And he had missed all this.  What a mess
+he had made of his work!  How sadly misread his Master's teaching
+and misinterpreted his Master's spirit!
+
+Barry looked down upon the grave at his feet.
+
+"But you knew, dad, you knew!" he whispered.
+
+For the first time since he had become a chaplain, he thought of
+his work with gratitude and eagerness.  He longed to see his men
+again.  He had something to tell them.  It was this: that God to
+them was like their fathers, their mothers, their brothers, their
+friends; only infinitely more loving, and without their faults.
+
+With his head high and his feet light upon the earth, he returned
+to the R. A. M. C. Hospital, where he found Harry Hobbs, with his
+handbag and a letter from his O. C.
+
+"Take a few days off," said the O. C.  "We all sympathise with you.
+We miss you and shall be glad to see you, but take a few days now
+for yourself."
+
+Barry was greatly touched, but he had only one desire now, and that
+was to return to his unit.  His batman brought him also an order
+from the Assistant Director of Chaplain Service bidding him report
+at the earliest moment.
+
+At Headquarters he learned that the A. D. C. S. had been in
+Boulogne, but had gone to Etaples, some thirty or forty miles
+distant, to visit the large hospitals there.  He determined that
+to-morrow he would go to Etaples and report, after which he would
+proceed to his battalion.
+
+That evening, he visited the men in the hospital, coming upon many
+Canadians whose joy in seeing a chaplain from their own country
+touched Barry to the heart.  He took their messages which he
+promised to transmit to their folks at home, and left with them
+something of the serene and exultant peace that filled his own
+soul.
+
+From Ewen Innes and others of the Wapiti draft, he learned
+something of his father's work and place in their battalion.
+Soldiers are not eloquent in speech, but mostly in silence.  Their
+words halted when they came to speak of their sergeant major's
+soldierly qualities,--for his father had become the sergeant major
+of the battalion--his patience, his skill, his courage.
+
+"He knew his job, sir," said one of them.  "He was always onto it."
+
+"It was his care of his men that we thought most of," said Ewen,
+who continued to relate incidents that had come under his own
+observation of this characteristic, tears the while flowing down
+his cheeks.
+
+"He never thought of himself, sir.  It was our comfort first.  He
+was far more than our sergeant major.  He watched us like a father;
+that's what he did."
+
+As Barry listened to the soldiers telling of his father in broken
+words, and with flowing tears, he almost wondered at them for their
+tears and wondered at himself that he had none.  Tears seemed to be
+so much out of place in telling such a tale as that.
+
+The train for Etaples leaving at an unearthly hour in the morning,
+Barry went to take farewell of the V. A. D. the night before.
+
+"That is an awfully early hour," she said, "and, oh, such a
+wretched train."  There was in her voice an almost maternal
+solicitude for his comfort.
+
+"That's nothing," said Barry.  "When I see you here at your
+unending work, it makes me feel more and more like a slacker."
+
+"Wait for me here a moment," she said, and hurried away to return
+shortly in such a glow of excitement as even her wonted calm and
+self-restraint could not quite hide.
+
+"I'm going to drive you to Etaples to-morrow in my car.  I know the
+matron and some of the nurses in the American hospital there."
+
+"You don't mean it," said Barry, "but are you sure it's not a
+terrible bore for you?  I am much afraid that I have been a
+nuisance to you, and you have been so very, very good to me."
+
+"A bore!" she cried, and the brown eyes were wide open in surprise.
+"A bore, and you a Canadian!  Why, you are one of my brothers'
+friends, and besides you seem to me a friend of our family.  My
+uncle Howard, you know, told me all about you.  Besides," she added
+in a voice of great gentleness, "you remember, I promised."
+
+Barry caught her hand.
+
+"I wish I could tell you all I feel about it, but somehow I can't
+get the words."
+
+She allowed her hand to remain in his for a moment or two; then
+withdrawing it, said hurriedly, with a slight colour showing in her
+cheeks:
+
+"I think I understand."  Then changing her tone abruptly, and
+dropping into the business-like manner of a V. A. D., she said,
+"So, we'll go to-morrow.  It will he a splendid run, if the day is
+fine.  We had better start by nine o'clock to give us a long day."
+Then, as if forgetting she was a V. A. D., she added with a little
+catch in her voice, "Oh, I shall love it!"
+
+The day proved to be fine,--one of those golden days of spring that
+have given to the land its name of "sunny France."  It was a day
+for life and youth and hope.  A day on which war seemed more than
+ever a cruel outrage upon humanity.  But across the sunniest days,
+across the shining face of France, and across their spirits, too,
+the war cast its black shadow.  They both, however, seemed to have
+resolved that for that day at least they would turn their eyes from
+that shadow and let them rest only where the sun was shining.
+
+The V. A. D. with her mind intent upon her wheel could only
+contribute, as her share in the conversation, descriptive and
+somewhat desultory comments upon points of interest along the way.
+Barry, because it harmonised with his mood, talked about his father
+and all their years together but ever without obtrusion of his
+grief.  The experiences of the past three days, which they had
+shared, seemed to have established between them a sense of mutual
+confidence and comradeship such as in ordinary circumstances would
+have demanded years of companionship to effect.  This sense of
+sympathy and of perfect understanding on the part of the girl at
+his side, together with the fascinating charm of her beauty, and
+her sweetness, was to Barry's stricken heart like a healing balm to
+an aching wound.
+
+They were in sight of Etaples before Barry imagined they could have
+made more than half the journey.
+
+"Etaples, so soon!  It cannot be!"
+
+"But it is," said the girl, throwing a bright smile at him, "and
+that's the hospital, on the hill yonder, where the flag is flying."
+
+"Why," exclaimed Barry, "that's the American flag!  What's the
+American flag doing there?"
+
+"It's flying over an American hospital," said the V. A. D.  "I
+think it's such a beautiful flag.  In the breeze, it seems to me
+the most beautiful of all the flags.  The stripes seem to flow out
+from the stars.  Of course," she added hurriedly, "the Union Jack
+with all its historic meaning and its mingled crosses, is
+splendidly glorious and is more decorative, but I always think,
+when I see those floating stripes, that the Americans have the most
+beautiful flag."
+
+"I admit," said Barry, "it's a beautiful flag, but--well, I'm a
+Britisher, I suppose, and see it with British eyes.  But why is
+that flag flying here in France?  How do the authorities allow
+that?  It's a neutral flag--awfully neutral, too."
+
+"I understand they have permission from the French authorities to
+fly that flag over every American institution in France.  And you
+know," continued the girl with rising enthusiasm, "if they are
+neutral, they have immensely helped us, too, haven't they?--in
+munitions and that sort of thing."
+
+"That's true enough," agreed Barry, "and it's all the more
+wonderful when you think of the millions of Germans that they have
+in their country.  I heard a very fine thing, not long ago, from a
+friend of mine.  A Pittsburgh oil man about to close a deal, with a
+traveller, with millions in it, suddenly discovered that his oil
+was to go to the Germans.  At once the deal was off, and, though
+the price was considerably raised, there was, in his own words,
+'Nothing 'doing!'  'No stuff of mine,' he said, 'shall go to help
+an enemy of the Anglo-Saxon race.'  That's the way I believe the
+real Americans feel."
+
+"This is a wonderful hospital," said the V. A. D.  "Whenever I see
+it, I somehow feel my heart grow warm to the American people for
+the splendid way in which they have helped poor France, for, you
+know, in the first months of the war, the French hospitals were
+perfectly ghastly."
+
+"I know, I know!" cried Barry.  "And the Canadians, too, have
+chipped in a bit.  We have a Canadian hospital in Paris, for the
+French, and others are being organised."
+
+They turned in at the gate and found themselves in a beautiful
+quadrangle, set out with grass plots and flowers and cement walks.
+The building itself, an ancient royal palace, had been enlarged by
+means of sun-parlours and porches which gave it an air of wonderful
+cheeriness and brightness.
+
+"I will run in and see if any of my friends are about," said the
+V. A. D.  "Wait here for me.  Unless you care to come in," she added.
+
+"No, I will wait here.  I don't just feel like meeting strangers
+but, if there are Canadians in the hospital, I should like to see
+them.  And perhaps you can discover where my chief can be found, if
+you don't mind."
+
+Hardly had she passed within the door, when another car came
+swiftly to the gate and drew up a little in front of Barry's.  A
+girl leaped from the wheel and with a spring in her step, which
+spoke of a bounding vitality, ran up the steps.
+
+What thought caught her it is difficult to say, but on the topmost
+step she spun around and looked straight into Barry's eyes.
+
+"Paula!" he shouted, and was out of the car and at the foot of the
+steps, with hand outstretched, when, with a single touch of her
+foot to the steps, she was at him, with both hands reaching for
+his.
+
+"Barry, oh, Barry!  It can't be you!" she panted.  Her face went
+red, then white, then red again.  "Oh, it's better than a drink to
+see you.  Whence, how, why, whither?  Oh, never mind answering,"
+she went on.  "It's enough to see you."
+
+A step behind her diverted her attention from Barry.  Barry ran up
+the steps, and taking the V. A. D. by the hand, led her down.
+
+"I want you to meet a friend of mine," he said and introduced
+Paula.
+
+Paula's eyes, keen as a knife-point, were upon the V. A. D.'s face.
+
+"I'm glad to know you," she said frankly, offering her hand.
+"Principally," she added, with a little laugh, "because you know
+Barry."
+
+The V. A. D. bowed with the slight reserve characteristic of her,
+and took Paula's hand.
+
+"I, too, am pleased," she said, "to meet a friend of Captain
+Dunbar."  Then she added with increased cordiality, "and I'm glad
+to meet an American in France.  I know your matron, and some of the
+nurses."
+
+"Good!" cried Paula.  "Now, then, you'll both of you take lunch
+with me."
+
+The V. A. D. demurred.
+
+"Of course you will," cried Paula.  "Oh, Barry, I'm just ready to
+die from seeing you again.  Come along!" she cried, impulsively,
+catching the V. A. D. by the arm.  "Come along and park your
+buzzwagon here beside mine."
+
+She ran to her car, sprang in and whirled it into place before the
+V. A. D. had hers well started.
+
+Barry waited where they had left him.  The sudden appearing of
+Paula had stirred within him depths of feeling that almost
+overpowered him.  His mind was far away in Athabasca, once more he
+was seeing the dark pool, the swiftly flowing water, the campfire,
+and his father bending over it.  His heart was quivering as if a
+hand had been rudely thrust into a raw wound in it.
+
+The V. A. D. held Paula a few moments beside her car, speaking
+quickly and earnestly.  When they rejoined Barry, Paula's eyes were
+soft with unshed tears, and her voice was very gentle.
+
+"I know, Barry," she said.  "Miss Vincent just told me.  Oh, what
+terrible changes this war brings to us all.  We see so many sad
+things here every day.  It's terribly sad for you, Barry."
+
+"Yes, it is sad, Paula, and it is going to be lonely.  You have
+brought back to me that bright day on the Athabasca.  But," he
+added earnestly, "after all, in this war everything personal is so
+small.  Besides, he was so splendid, you know, and the boys told me
+he played the game up there right to the end.  So I'm not going to
+shame him; at least, I'm trying not to."
+
+But bright as was Barry's smile, Paula caught the quivering of his
+lips, and turned quickly away from him.
+
+After a moment or two of silence, she cried, with her old
+impulsiveness, "Now you will both lunch with me.  I'm the
+quartermaster of this outfit, and have a small parlour of my own.
+We shall have a lovely, cosy time, just Miss Vincent, you and
+myself together."
+
+"But," replied the V. A. D., "I have just arranged with the matron
+to lunch with her."
+
+"Oh, rubbish!  I'll cut that out, all right.  What's the use of
+being quartermaster if I can't arrange a lunch party to suit
+myself?"
+
+Still the V. A. D. demurred.  With her, breaking an engagement for
+lunch was a serious affair--was indeed taking a liberty which no
+English girl would think of doing.
+
+"Oh, that's nonsense!" cried Paula.  "I'll make it perfectly all
+right.  Look here," she cried, wheeling upon the V. A. D., "you
+Britishers are so terribly correct.  I'll show you a little
+shirtsleeve diplomacy.  Besides, if you don't come in on this you
+can have the matron, and I'll take Barry," she said with a
+threatening smile.  "Watch me!" she added, as she ran away.
+
+"What a splendid girl!" said the V. A. D.  "And that captivating
+American way she has.  Perfectly ripping, I call it.  I do hope we
+shall be friends."
+
+In a short time Paula came rushing back into the room, announcing
+triumphantly that arrangements had been made according to her
+programme, with the matron in hearty accord.
+
+"And she sends her love," she said to the V. A. D.  "She would not
+have you on any account miss this party.  She is desperately
+grieved that she cannot accept my invitation to join us.  Of
+course, I knew the old dear couldn't.  And we are to meet her
+afterwards."
+
+The little lunch party was, on the whole, a success.  To the
+conversation Paula contributed the larger part, Barry doing his
+best to second her.  But in spite of his heroic efforts, his mind
+would escape him, far away to the sunny Athabasca plains, and the
+gleaming river and the smooth slipping canoe, and then with swift
+transition to the little British plot in the cemetery at Boulogne.
+
+At such times, Paula, reading his face, would momentarily falter in
+her gay talk, only to begin again with renewed vivacity.  On one
+topic, however, she had no difficulty in holding Barry's attention.
+It was when she told of the organising and despatching of the
+American Red Cross units to France, and more especially of her own
+unit, organised and financed by her father.
+
+"I am awfully sorry he is not here to-day.  He would have loved to
+have seen you again, Barry."
+
+"And I to have seen him," said Barry.  "He is a big man, and it is
+fine of him to do this thing.  It's just like the big, generous-
+hearted Americans--they are so unstinted in their sympathies, and
+they back them up for all they are worth."
+
+"And how efficient they are," added the V. A. D. in warm admiration.
+"This hospital, you know," turning to Barry, "is perfectly wonderful.
+Its equipment!  Its appliances!  I have often heard our O. C. speak
+in the most rapturous envy of the Etaples American Red Cross unit."
+
+"And why should not it be?" cried Paula.  "It's a question of money
+after all.  We are not at war.  We put in a few little hospitals
+here in France.  We have more money thrown at us than we can use.
+And you talk about efficiency," she added, turning to the V. A. D.
+"Good Lord!  My pater has just come back from London, where he was
+rubbering around with lords and dukes and things in a disgustingly
+un-American way I told him, and now he raves from morning until
+night over the efficiency of the British.  He's been allowed to see
+some of their munition works, you know.  I simply had to declaim
+the American Declaration of Independence to him three times a day
+to revive his drooping Democratic sentiments, and I had to sew Old
+Glory on to his pajamas so that he might dream proper American
+dreams.  No, to tell you the truth," here Paula's voice took a
+deeper note, "every last American of us here in France is hot with
+humiliation and rage at his country's attitude,--monkeying with
+those baby-killing, woman-raping devils."
+
+As she ended, her voice shook with passion, her cheeks were pale,
+and in her eyes shone two bright tears.  Impulsively the V. A. D.
+rose from her place, ran around to Paula, and putting her arm
+around her neck, said:
+
+"Oh, I do thank you, and I love you for your words," while Barry
+stood at attention, as if in the presence of his superior officer.
+"I salute you," he said with grave earnestness.  "You worthily
+represent your brave and generous people."
+
+"Oh, darn it all!" cried Paula, brushing away her tears.  "I'm a
+fool, but you don't know how we Americans feel--real Americans, I
+mean, not the yellow hyphenated breed."
+
+After lunch, Barry went to look up his chief, the assistant
+director of chaplain service, while Paula took charge of the
+V. A. D., saying:
+
+"Run away, Barry, and see your Brass Hat.  I'll show Miss Vincent
+how a quartermaster's department of a real hospital should be run."
+
+His hour with the A. D. C. S. was a most stimulating experience for
+Barry.  He found himself at once in touch with not an official
+thinking in terms of military regulations and etiquette, but a
+soldier and a man.  For the A. D. C. S. was both.  Through all the
+terrible days at Ypres, where the Canadians, in that welter of gas
+and fire and blood, had won their imperishable fame as fighting
+men, he had been with them, sharing their dangers and ministering
+to their wants with his brother officers of the fighting line.
+Physically an unimpressive figure, small and slight, yet he seemed
+charged with concentrated energy waiting release.
+
+As Barry listened to his words coming forth in snappy, jerking
+phrases, he was fascinated by the bulldog jaw and piercing eyes of
+the little man.  In brief, comprehensive, vigorous sentences, he
+set forth his ideals for the chaplain service in the Canadian army.
+
+"Three things," he said, "I tell my men, should mark the Canadian
+chaplain service.  The first, Unity--unity among themselves, unity
+with the other departments of the army.  Two words describe our
+chaplains--Christian and Canadians.  I am an Anglican myself, but
+on this side of the channel there are no Anglican, no Presbyterian,
+no Methodist chaplains, only Christian and Canadian chaplains.  I
+have had to fight for this with high officials both in the army and
+in the church.  I have won out, and while I'm here this will be
+maintained.  The second thing is Spirituality.  The Chaplain must
+be a Christian man, living in touch with the Divine--alive toward
+God.  Third, Humanity.  He must be 'touched with the feeling of our
+infirmity,' sharing the experiences of the men, getting to know
+their feelings, their fears, their loneliness, their misery, their
+anxieties, and God knows they have their anxieties for themselves
+and for their folks at home."
+
+As Barry listened, he heard again his father's voice.  "They need
+you.  They are afraid.  They are lonely.  They need God."
+
+"And remember," said the A. D. C. S., as he rose to close the
+interview, "that I am at your back.  If you have any difficulty,
+let me know.  If you are wrong, I promise to tell you.  If you are
+right, I'll back you up.  Now, let us go and look over the
+hospital.  There are some of our fellows there.  If you feel like
+saying anything in the convalescent ward, all right, but don't let
+it worry you."
+
+As they went through the wards, Barry could not but notice how the
+faces of the patients brightened as his chief approached, and how
+their eyes followed him after he had passed.
+
+They moved slowly through those long corridors, sanctified by the
+sufferings and griefs and hidden tears of homesick and homelonging
+men, to many of whom it seemed that the best of life was past.
+
+When they had gone the length of the convalescent ward, the
+A. D. C. S. turned and, after getting permission of the medical
+superintendent, briefly introduced Barry to the wounded men, as "a
+man from the wild and woolly Canadian west, on his way up the line,
+and therefore competent to tell us about the war, and especially
+when it will end."
+
+Beside them stood a piano, and on it lay a violin in its open case.
+Barry took up the violin, fingered its strings in an absent-minded
+way, and said:
+
+"I don't know anything about the war, men, but I do know when it
+will end, and that is when we lick those Huns good and plenty, as
+our American friends would say," bowing to the doctor at his side.
+"I'm an awfully poor speaker, boys," he continued in a confidential
+tone, "but I can make this thing talk a bit."
+
+Without further preface he began to play.  He had not held a
+violin in his hands since he had played with his father at home.
+Unconsciously his fingers wandered into the familiar notes of
+Handel's Largo.  He found the violin to possess an exceptionally
+rich and pure quality of tone.
+
+As he began to play, a door opened behind them, admitting Paula,
+the V. A. D. and two or three young doctors, who took their places
+in the corner about the piano.
+
+"Do you know this?" whispered Paula to the V. A. D., as she caught
+the strains of the Largo.
+
+"Yes.  I used to play it with my brother."
+
+"Go to it, then," said Paula.
+
+But the V. A. D. hesitated.
+
+"Go on!  Look at the boys, and look at his face."
+
+The V. A. D. glanced about the room at the lines of pale and
+patient faces, which, in spite of the marks of pain, were so
+pathetically and resolutely bright.  Then she glanced at Barry's
+face.  He had forgotten all about his surroundings, and his face
+was illumined with the light from those hidden lamps that burn deep
+in the soul of genius, a light enriched and warmed by the glow of a
+heart in sympathy with its kind.
+
+In obedience to Paula's command and a little push upon her
+shoulder, the V. A. D. sat down at the piano and touched the notes
+softly, feeling for the key, then fell in with the violin.
+
+At the first note, Barry turned sharply about and as she found her
+key and began to follow, he stepped back to her side.  Immediately,
+from his instrument, there seemed to flow a richer, fuller stream
+of melody.  From the solemn and stately harmonies of the Largo, he
+passed to those old familiar airs, that never die and never lose
+their power over the human heart--"Annie Laurie" and "Ben Bolt,"
+and thence to a rollicking French chanson, which rather bowled over
+his accompanist, but only for the first time though, for she had
+the rare gift of improvisation, and sympathetic accompaniment.
+
+Then with a full arm bowing, he swept them into the fiercely
+majestic strains of the "Marseillaise," bringing the blue-coated
+orderlies about the door, and such patients as could stand, and the
+group about the piano to rigid attention.  From the "Marseillaise"
+it was easy to pass into the noble simplicity of his own national
+song, "Oh, Canada!" where again his accompanist was quite able to
+follow, and thence to the Empire's National Anthem, which had for
+a hundred years or more lifted to their feet British soldiers and
+sailors the world over.
+
+As he drew his bow over the last chord, Paula stepped to his side,
+and whispered in his ear:
+
+"Where's America in this thing?"
+
+Without an instant's break in the music, he dropped into a
+whimsical and really humorous rendering of "Yankee Doodle."
+Quickly the V. A. D. moved from the stool, caught Paula and thrust
+her into the vacant place.  Then together the violin and piano
+rattled into a fantastic and brilliant variation of that famous and
+trifling air.  Again, with a sudden change of mood, Barry swung
+into that old song of the homesick plantation negro, "The Suwanee
+River"--a simple enough air, but under the manipulations of a
+master lending itself to an interpretation of the deep and tender
+emotions which in that room and in that company of French, British,
+Canadian, American folk were throbbing in a common longing for the
+old home and the "old folks at home."  Before he had played the air
+once through, the grey-haired American doctor was openly wiping his
+eyes, and his colleagues looking away from each other, ashamed of
+the tears that did them only honour.
+
+Paula's flushed face and flashing eyes were eloquent of her deep
+emotion, while at her side the V. A. D. stood quiet, controlled,
+but with a glow of tender feeling shining in her face and in her
+soft brown eyes.
+
+Not long did Barry linger amid those deeps of emotion, but
+straightening his figure to its full height, and throwing up his
+head, he, in full octaves, played the opening bars of what has come
+to be known as America's national anthem, "The Star Spangled
+Banner."
+
+Instantly the A. D. C. S., the orderlies about the door, the
+wounded French, British and Canadian soldiers that could stand,
+sprang to attention and so remained while the violin, with its
+piano accompaniment, throbbed forth the sonorous chords.  With the
+last bar, Barry dropped his bow to his side, but held the violin
+still at his chin.  Not one of that company moved, but stood with
+their eyes fastened upon his face.  After a moment's pause, he
+quietly lifted his bow again, and on the silence, still throbbing
+to the strains of that triumphant martial air, there stole out
+pure, sweet, as from some ethereal source, the long drawn,
+trembling notes of that old sacred melody, which, sounding over men
+and women in their hours of terror and anguish and despair, has
+lifted them to peace and comfort and hope--"Nearer, My God, to
+Thee."
+
+The tension which had held the company was relaxed, the wounded
+men sank to their seats, the A. D. C. S. removed his hat, which,
+according to military regulations, he had worn to this moment.
+On all sides, heads dropped in an attitude of reverence, and so
+continued until Barry had drawn the last deep, vibrating note to
+a close.
+
+When he had laid his violin in its case, the old American doctor
+came forward, with his hand extended.
+
+"Let me, as an American and a Christian, thank you, sir," he said.
+
+One by one the group of Americans came to shake hands with him, the
+last being Paula, who held his hand a moment and said softly:
+
+"Thank you, Barry.  I believe all that stuff now.  I have learned
+it here."
+
+The last of all to come was the V. A. D.  Shyly, with a smile
+radiant through her tears, she offered her hand, saying:  "Thank
+you!  He would have liked that, I know."
+
+"Captain Dunbar, where's your own violin?"  The abrupt tone of the
+A. D. C. S. startled them all.
+
+"At home, sir.  I didn't think a chaplain would need one."
+
+"Whose violin in this?" asked the A. D. C. S. in his brusque
+manner.
+
+"I rather think this is mine," said one of the doctors.
+
+"Will you sell it?  I'll buy it from you, at any price you say.  I
+want it for him."
+
+"You can't buy it, colonel," said the doctor.  "It's his now.  I
+never knew it had all that heart stuff in it."
+
+He took up the violin, and handed it to Barry.  But Barry drew back
+in astonishment.  Then the old doctor came forward.
+
+"No, Travis," he said, "we'll do better than that.  What did your
+fiddle cost?"
+
+"A hundred and fifty dollars, I think."
+
+"Travis, this company of Americans, representing their country here
+in France, as a token of their sympathy with the allies and their
+sacred cause, and of gratitude to you, sir," bowing to Barry, "will
+buy this instrument and present it to this young man, on condition
+that he repeat in similar circumstances the service he has rendered
+this afternoon.  Am I right?" he asked, looking about him.
+
+"You bet you are!  Right you are!" said the doctors.
+
+"Oh, doctor, you are a dear old thing!" exclaimed Paula.
+
+Barry stood holding the instrument in his hand, unable to find his
+voice.  The A. D. C. S. came to his aid.
+
+"In the name of my chaplain, and in the name of thousands of
+Canadian soldiers to whom I promise you he will bring the blessing
+that he has brought us this afternoon, I thank you for this very
+beautiful and very characteristic American act."
+
+"Well," said the old doctor, "I don't know how you folks feel, but
+I feel as if I had been to church."
+
+"Now, sir," said the A. D. C. S. to Barry, in his military tone, "I
+am organising a company of musicians who will go through our camps
+and help the boys as you have helped us to-day.  I would like you
+to be one of them.  What do you say?"
+
+"Oh, sir," exclaimed Barry hastily, laying the violin upon the
+piano and standing back from it, "don't make that an order, sir.
+I want to stay with my men."
+
+His face was quivering with deep emotion.  The A. D. C. S. looked
+into the quivering face.
+
+"All right, Dunbar," he said, with a little laugh, and putting his
+hand on Barry's shoulder.  "I guess you are all right."
+
+"Some boy!  What?" said the American doctor.  "Here I think you had
+better take your fiddle along," handing Barry the violin.  "It
+doesn't belong to any one in this bunch."
+
+The burst of laughter that followed, all out of proportion to the
+humour of the remark, revealed the tensity of the strain through
+which they had passed.
+
+Through the little town of Etaples they drove together in almost
+complete silence, until they had emerged into the country, lying
+spread out about them in all the tender beauty of the soft spring
+evening.  As the car moved through the sweet silence of the open
+fields, the V. A. D. said softly:
+
+"Oh, Captain Dunbar, I--"
+
+"My name is Barry," he said gently.
+
+A quick flush came into the beautiful face and a soft light to the
+brown eyes, as she answered:
+
+"And mine is Phyllis."  Then she hurried to add, "I was going to
+say that you helped me this afternoon as nothing has since my dear
+brothers went."
+
+"Thank you, Phyllis.  What you have been to me through all these
+days, I wish I could tell, but I can't find words."
+
+Then they rode together in silence that was more eloquent than
+any words of theirs could be.  At length Barry burst forth
+enthusiastically:
+
+"Those Americans!  What a beautiful and gracious act of kindness
+that was to me."
+
+"Oh," replied Phyllis, with answering enthusiasm, "aren't they
+fine!  That was perfectly ripping of them."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+INTENSIVE TRAINING
+
+
+Barry's return to the battalion was like a coming home.  In the
+mess there was no demonstration of sympathy with him in his loss,
+but the officers took occasion to drop in casually with an
+interesting bit of news, seeking to express, more or less
+awkwardly, by their presence what they found it impossible to
+express in actual words.
+
+It was to Barry an experience as new as it was delightful.
+Hitherto, as far as any real fellowship was concerned he had lived
+a life of comparative isolation among his fellow officers, and
+while they were careful to preserve the conventions and courtesies
+imposed by their mutual relations, he had ever been made to feel
+that in that circle he was an outsider.
+
+Among the officers who came to call upon him, none surprised him
+more than did Major Bayne.  While that officer had always been
+careful to maintain an attitude toward him, at once correct and
+civil, there had never been any approach to friendliness.  As a
+matter of fact, Major Bayne was too entirely occupied with his own
+interests to have either the leisure or the inclination for
+anything but a casual concern for the chaplain and his affairs.
+That was not to be wondered at.  Life in the army, notwithstanding
+all its loyalties and its fine unselfishnesses, is, in some of its
+phases, a brutally self-centred form of existence.  Its routine
+consists in the continual performance of "duties" under an
+authority ruthless in its exactions and relentless in its
+penalties.  Only after months of experience of its iron rigidity
+does the civilian, accustomed as he is to self-determination, with
+a somewhat easygoing regard for the conventions of his community,
+arrive at the state of mind in which unconsciously and as a matter
+of second nature he estimates the quality of the most trivial act
+by its relation to the standard set by the Military High Command.
+Like a spectre does that solemn, impalpable, often perfectly
+unreasonable omniscient and omnipotent entity lurk in the shadow
+ready to reach out a clutching hand, and for some infraction of
+regulations, wilful or inadvertent, hale the luckless and shivering
+defaulter to judgment.  It therefore behooves a man to take heed to
+himself and to his ways, for, with the best intention, he may
+discover that he has been guilty of an infraction, not of a
+regulation found in K. R. & O., with which he has painfully made
+himself familiar and which he has diligently exercised himself to
+observe, but of one of those seventeen hundred and sixty-nine
+"instructions" and "informations" which from time to time have
+appeared in those sacred writings known as Army, Divisional,
+Brigade, or Battalion Orders.
+
+In consequence, an officer with a conscience toward his duty, or an
+ambition for promotion, gives himself so completely to the business
+of "watching his step" that only by a definite exercise of his
+altruistic faculties can he indulge himself in the commendable
+civilian luxury of caring for his neighbour.
+
+And so it came about that Major Bayne, possessing in a large
+measure the quality of "canniness" characteristic of his race--a
+quality which for the benefit of the uninitiated Saxon it may be
+necessary to define as being a judicious blending of shrewdness and
+caution,--and being as well, again after the manner of his race,
+ambitious for his own advancement, and, furthermore, being a man of
+conscience, had been so entirely engrossed in the absorbing
+business of "watching his step" that he had paid slight heed to the
+affairs of any other officer, and least of all to those of the
+chaplain, whose functions in the battalion he had regarded, it must
+be confessed, as more or less formal, if not merely decorative.
+
+But, in spite of all this, in the major the biggest thing was his
+heart, which, however, true to his race type again, he kept stored
+in the deepest recesses of his system.  To "touch" the major's
+"heart" was an operation of more than ordinary difficulty.  It was
+that very thing, however, which the letter to the battalion
+Commanding Officer from the A. D. C. S. had achieved.  The effect of
+this letter upon the members of the mess, and most especially upon
+the junior major in regard to their relation to their chaplain, was
+revolutionary.  Hence the major's visit to Barry upon the evening of
+his return.
+
+It was with an unusually cordial handshake that he greeted the
+chaplain.
+
+"We are glad to have you back with us, Captain Dunbar," he said.
+"We missed you, and we have discovered that we need you.  Things
+have been moving while you were away.  This battalion is undergoing
+a transformation.  The O. C. is tightening down the screws of
+discipline.  He sees, and we all are beginning to see, that we are
+up against a different proposition from what we had imagined, and
+right here, Captain Dunbar, I want to say for myself, and I believe
+for the rest of the boys, that we have not given you a square
+deal."
+
+His attitude and his words astounded Barry.
+
+"Don't say that, major," he said, in a voice husky with emotion.
+"Don't say that.  I have been all wrong.  I am not going to talk
+about it, but I am awfully glad to get a second chance."
+
+"If you need a second chance, Pilot," said the major, for the first
+time using the friendly western sobriquet, "believe me, you'll get
+it."
+
+The major sat down, pulled out his pipe, and began to impart some
+interesting bits of news.
+
+"Things are moving rather swiftly with us these days.  There are
+many changes taking place.  Duff has gone permanently to the
+transport, and is in the way for a captaincy.  Hopeton has gone for
+a machine gun course.  Sally is to be company commander in his
+place.  Booth takes charge of the bombers.  Your friend, Sergeant
+Knight, is slated for a commission.  He is doing awfully well with
+the signallers, and, by the way, there is something I want to show
+you to-morrow, something quite unique and remarkable, our new
+instructor in bayonet fighting.  Do you know we were rather stuck
+on our bayonet fighting, but he has made the boys feel that they
+didn't know anything about bayonet fighting, or, for that matter,
+about anything else.  I think you will enjoy him.  The boys are all
+up on their toes.  There is nothing like the scream of a live shell
+'coming in' to speed up the training."
+
+When the major had departed, he left Barry in a maze of wonder and
+gratitude.  That the battalion were glad to have him back, that all
+the old feeling of latent hostility of which he had been conscious
+was gone, and that they felt that they really needed him stirred in
+his heart a profound sense of humility and gratitude.
+
+Late as it was he felt he must go out for a stroll about the camp
+just to see the men and give them greeting.
+
+Wherever he went he was greeted with a new respect and a new
+cordiality.  It was as if he had passed through some mystic
+initiation ceremony and had been admitted into a magic circle of
+comradeship with the common soldier, than which no privilege is
+more dearly coveted by the officers, from the colonel himself to
+the youngest sub, and which is indeed, in the last analysis, the
+sine qua non of effective leadership.
+
+As Barry was passing the sergeants' mess-room the door opened and
+there came out Sergeant Major McFetteridge himself, with two others
+of the mess.
+
+"Good evening, sergeant major," said Barry quietly passing on his
+way.
+
+"Good evening, sir," said the sergeant major with his usual stiff
+salute.  "Oh, it's you, sir," he cried as the light fell upon
+Barry's face.  "We're glad to see you back, sir."
+
+"Thank you, sergeant major," replied Barry, offering his hand, "and
+I'm glad to be back with you all again."
+
+"Thank you, sir.  I assure you we're glad to have you.  Won't you
+come in, sir?  The boys will all want to see you," and so saying
+the sergeant major threw wide open the door.
+
+Nowhere is class privilege more appreciated and more jealously
+guarded than in the sergeants' mess.  It is the most enclusive of
+all military circles.  Realising this, Barry was glad to accept the
+invitation.  The hut was filled with sergeants in easy deshabille,
+smoking, lounging, playing various games.
+
+"The chaplain, boys," announced the sergeant major, and instantly
+every man was on his feet, and at attention.
+
+"It's all right, boys," said the sergeant major.  "The chaplain has
+just dropped in for a minute for a friendly call, and we want you
+to feel, sir," he added, for the sergeant major loved a little
+ceremonial, "that we respectfully sympathise with you in your loss,
+and that we consider ourselves honoured by your presence here
+tonight."
+
+Barry was so deeply touched by the unexpected warmth of their
+welcome, and by the reference to his recent sorrow, that he could
+not trust himself to speak.  Without a word he passed around the
+group, shaking hands with each man in turn.  By the time he had
+finished the round, he had his voice in control, and said:
+
+"Sergeant major, this is very kind of you.  I thank you for this
+welcome, and I am grateful for your sympathy."  He hesitated a
+moment or two; then, as if he heard his father's voice, "Tell them!
+Tell them!  They don't know Him," he added:  "And, sergeant major,
+if you will allow me, I have something I want to say to all the
+men when I get a chance.  I cannot say it all to-night to the
+sergeants, but this much I would like to say:  That since I saw
+you, I believe I have got a new idea of my work in the battalion.
+I got it from a sergeant major whose men told me that he was a fine
+soldier and a brave man, and more than that, that he was 'like a
+father to them.'  That, sergeant major, was my own father.  From
+him I learned that my job was not to jump on men for their faults,
+but to help men to know God, who is our Father in Heaven, and, men,
+I think if I can do this, I shall count myself happy, for He is
+worth knowing, and we all need Him."
+
+His words gripped them hard.  Then he added, "Before I say 'good
+night,' may I have the privilege of leading you to Him in words
+that you have all learned at your mother's knee?"  Then simply he
+spoke the words of that immortal prayer, the men joining in low and
+reverent voices.
+
+After the prayer, he quietly said, "Good night!" and was passing
+out of the hut.  He had not got to the door, however, when the
+sergeant major's voice arrested him.
+
+"Sir, on behalf of the sergeants, I thank you for coming in and I
+thank you for your words.  You have done us all good."
+
+The following morning, a sergeant from a neighbouring battalion,
+visiting the transport lines, and observing Barry passing along
+with Major Bayne on the battalion parade ground, took occasion to
+remark:
+
+"That is your padre, ain't it?  He checks you fellows up rather
+short, don't he?"
+
+"Yes, that is our padre, or Pilot, as we like to call him," was
+Sergeant Mackay's answer, "but I want to tell you that he can just
+check us up until our heads touch the crupper, and it's nobody's
+damned business but our own."
+
+"Well, you needn't get so blasted hot over it.  I ain't said
+nothing against your padre that I haven't heard from your own
+fellows."
+
+"That's all right, sergeant.  That was before we got to the war.
+I'm not huntin' for any trouble with anybody, but if any one wants
+to start up anything with any one, sergeant, in this battalion, he
+knows how to do it."
+
+And this came to be recognised as an article in the creed of the
+sergeant's mess.
+
+The bayonet-fighting squad were engaged in some preliminary drill
+of the more ordinary kind when Major Bayne and the chaplain arrived
+on the ground.
+
+"We'll just watch the little beggar a while from here and go up
+later," said the major.
+
+As Barry watched the drill sergeant on his job, it seemed to him
+that he had never seen a soldier work before.  In figure, in pose,
+in action there was a perfection about him that awakened at once
+admiration and envy.  Below the average height, yet not
+insignificant, erect, without exaggeration, precise in movement
+without angularity, swift in action without haste, he was indeed a
+joy to behold.
+
+"Now, did you ever see anything like that?" enquired the major,
+after their eyes had followed the evolutions of the drill sergeant
+for a time.
+
+"Never," said Barry, "nor do I hope to again.  He is a--I was going
+to say dream, but he's no dream.  He's much too wide awake for
+that.  He's a poem; that's what he is."
+
+Back and forth, about and around, stepped the little drill
+sergeant, a finished example of precise, graceful movement.  He was
+explaining in clean cut, and evidently memorised speech the details
+of the movements he wished executed, but through his more formal
+and memorised vocabulary his native cockney would occasionally
+erupt, adding vastly to the pungency and picturesqueness of his
+speech.
+
+"He knows we are here all right," said the major, "but he would not
+let on if it were King George himself.  I'll bet you a month's pay,
+though, that we can't get one foot beyond what he considers the
+saluting point before he comes to attention, and as for his salute,
+there is nothing like it in the whole Canadian army.  Talk about a
+poem, his salute has Shakespeare faded.  Now he's going to move
+them off.  Watch and listen!"
+
+"Ye-a-ou-w!" came the long-drawn cry, fiercely threatening,
+representing in English speech the word "squad."  Then followed an
+expletive, "Yun!" which for explosive quality made a rifle crack
+seem a drawl, and which appeared to release in the men a hidden
+spring drawn to its utmost tension.  The slack and sagging line
+leaped into a rigid unit, of breathless, motionless humanity.
+
+"Aw-e-ou-aw!" a prolonged vocalisation, expressive of an infinite
+and gentle pity, and interpreted to the initiated ear to mean "As
+you were!" released the rigid line to its former sagging state.
+
+"N-a-w then," said the voice in a semi-undertone, slow and tense,
+"this ain't no arter dinner bloomin' siester.  A little snap--ple--
+ease!"  The last word in a sharply rising inflection, tightening up
+the spring again for the explosive "Ye-a-ou-w--yun!"  (Squad
+attention.)  "Aw-e-ou-r--yun!!!  Aw-e-ou-r--yun!!!"
+
+Without warning came the commands, repeating "As you were!"
+"Attention!"  He walked up and down before the rigid line, looking
+them over and remarking casually,
+
+"Might be a little worse," adding as an afterthought, "per-haps!"
+After which, with a sharp right turn, and a quick march, he himself
+leading with a step of clean-cut, easy grace, he moved them to the
+bayonet-fighting ground.
+
+"By Jove!" breathed Barry.  "Did you ever imagine anything like
+that?"
+
+"The result of ten years in the regular army," said the major.
+
+"It's almost worth it," answered Barry.
+
+Arriving at the bayonet-fighting ground, the little sergeant major
+put the squad through their manual as if they had been recruits, to
+a running comment of biting pleasantries.  After bringing them to
+attention, he walked slowly down the line, then back again, and
+remarked after due deliberation:
+
+"I have seen worse--not often--"  Then, in a tone of resignation,
+he gave the order:
+
+"Stan-a-yeh!!!"
+
+The men "stood at ease," and then "stood easy."
+
+"Now, then," said the major, "we'll steal in on him, if we can."
+They moved forward toward the little sergeant major, who remained
+studying the opposite horizon in calm abstraction until their toes
+had reached a certain line, when, like the crack of a whip, there
+came once more the long-drawn cry with its explosive termination:
+
+"Ye-a-ou-w!--Yun!!!" with the result that the line was again thrown
+into instantaneous, breathless and motionless rigidity.
+
+Toward the advancing officers the sergeant major threw himself into
+a salute with one smooth, unbroken movement of indescribable grace
+and finish.
+
+"Good morning, sergeant major," said Major Bayne.  "Captain Dunbar,
+this is Sergeant Major Hackett."
+
+Again came the salute, with a barely perceptible diminution of
+snap, as befitted a less formal occasion.
+
+"Sergeant major," said Barry, "I would give a great deal to be able
+to do that."
+
+"Wot's that, sir?" enquired the sergeant major.
+
+"That salute of yours."
+
+"Quite easy wen you knaow 'ow!" permitting himself a slight smile.
+
+"You are doing some bayonet-fighting, I see, sergeant major," said
+Major Bayne.
+
+"Yes, sir, goin' to do a bit, sir," replied the sergeant major.
+
+"Very well, carry on!"
+
+And the sergeant major "carried on," putting into his work and
+into his every movement and utterance an unbelievable amount of
+concentrated and even vicious energy.
+
+On the bayonet-fighting ground, the first line of the enemy was
+represented by sacks stuffed with straw, hung upon a frame, the
+second by stuffed sacks deposited on the parapet of a trench.  In
+bayonet-fighting the three points demanding special emphasis are
+the "guarding" of the enemy's attack, a swift bayonet thrust and an
+equally swift recovery, each operation, whether in case of a living
+enemy or in the stuffed effigy, being attended with considerable
+difficulty.  Barry was much interested in the psychological element
+introduced into the exercises by the drill master.
+
+"You must halways keep in mind that the henemy is before you.  It's
+important that you should visualise your foe.  The henemy is hever
+before you.  Anything be-ind a British soldier won't trouble
+anybody, and you are to remember that hit's either you or 'im."
+
+In moments of rapid action the sergeant major evidently had
+difficulty with his aspirates.
+
+"The suspended sacks before you represent the henemy.  You are to
+treat 'em so."
+
+Having got his line within striking distance of the swinging sacks,
+the exercise was directed by two commands, "On guard!" and "Point!"
+the first of which was supposed to knock off the enemy's thrust,
+and the second to drive the bayonet home into his vitals, after
+which, without command, there must be a swift recovery.
+
+"Naw then, "Hn-gah!--Pint!!!"
+
+For some moments, in response to these orders, the squad practised
+"guarding" and "pointing," not, however, to the complete satisfaction
+of the sergeant.
+
+"Naw, then, number five, stick it hinto 'im.  Ye ain't 'andin' a
+lidy an unbreller!"
+
+Another attempt by number five being still suggestive of the
+amenities proper to a social function, the sergeant major stepped
+up to the overgentle soldier.
+
+"Naw, then," he said, "hobserve!  There's my henemy.  See 'is hugly
+mug.  Hn-gah!  Pint!!!"
+
+At the words of command, the sergeant major threw himself into his
+guard and attacked with such appalling ferocity as must have
+paralysed an ordinary foe, sending his bayonet clean through to his
+guard, and recovering it with a clean, swift movement.
+
+Having secured a fairly satisfactory thrust, the sergeant major
+devoted his attention to the recovery of the bayonet.
+
+"Fetch it hout!" he cried fiercely.  "There's another man comin'.
+Fetch it hout!  Ye may fetch 'is spinial column with it.  No
+matter, 'e won't need it."
+
+The final act in this gruesome drama was the attack upon the second
+line represented by the sacks lying upon the parapet of the trench
+beyond.  The completed action thus included the guard, thrust,
+recovery, the leap forward past the swinging line of sacks, and a
+second thrust at the figure prone upon the parapet, with a second
+recovery of the weapon, this second recovery being effected by
+stamping the foot upon the transfixed effigy, and jerking back the
+bayonet with a violent upward movement.
+
+This last recovery appeared to cause number five again some
+difficulty.
+
+"Now then, number five, put a little aight (hate) into it.  Stamp
+your bleedin' 'obnyles (hobnails) on his fice, and fetch it hout!
+This wye!"  As he took the rifle from number five, the sergeant
+major's face seemed to be transformed into a living embodiment of
+envenomed hate, his attack, thrust, recovery, gathering in
+intensity until with unimaginable fury he leaped upon the prostrate
+figure, drove his bayonet through to the hilt, stamped his hobnails
+upon the transfixed enemy, jerked his weapon out, and stood
+quivering, ready for any foe that dared to approach.  The savage
+ferocity of his face, the fierce energy in his every movement,
+culminating in that last vicious leap and stamp, altogether
+constituted such a dramatic and realistic representation of actual
+fighting that the whole line burst into a very unsoldierly but very
+hearty applause, which, however, the sergeant major immediately and
+sternly checked.
+
+"What do you think of that?" enquired the major.  "Isn't he a
+scream?"
+
+"He is perfectly magnificent," said Barry, "and, after all, he is
+right in his psychology.  There is no possibility of training men
+to fight, without putting the 'aight into it!'"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+A TOUCH OF WAR
+
+
+The period of intensive training was drawing to a close.  The
+finishing touches in the various departments that had come to be
+considered necessary in modern warfare had been given.  With the
+"putting on the lacquer" the fighting spirit of the men had been
+sharpened to its keenest edge.  They were all waiting impatiently
+for the order to "go up."  The motives underlying that ardour of
+spirit varied with the temperament, disposition and education of
+the soldier.  There were those who were eager to "go up" to prove
+themselves in that deadly struggle where their fellow Canadians had
+already won their right to stand as comrades in arms with the most
+famous fighting battalions of the British army.  Others, again,
+there were in whose heart burned a deep passion to get into grips
+with those hellish fiends whose cruelties, practised upon
+defenceless women and children in that very district where they
+were camped, and upon wounded Canadians, had stirred Canada from
+Vancouver to Halifax with a desire for revenge.
+
+But, with the great majority there was little of the desire either
+for military glory or for revenge.  Their country had laid upon
+them a duty for the discharge of which they had been preparing
+themselves for many months, and that duty they were ready to
+perform.  More than that, they were eager to get at it and get done
+with it, no matter at what cost.  With all this, too, there was an
+underlying curiosity as to what the thing would be like "up there."
+Far down below all their feelings there lay an unanswered
+interrogation which no man dared to put to his comrade, and which
+indeed few men put to themselves.  That interrogation was:  "How
+shall I stand up under the test?"
+
+The camp was overrun with rumours from returning battalions of the
+appalling horrors of the front line.  Ever since that fateful 22nd
+of April, 1915, that day of tragedy and of glory for the Canadian
+army, and for the Canadian people, the Ypres salient, the point of
+honour on the western front from Dixmude to Verdun, had been given
+into the keeping of the Canadian army.  During those long and
+terrible months, in the face of a continued bombardment and of
+successive counter-attacks, with the line growing thinner, week by
+week, hacked up by woefully inadequate artillery, the Canadian army
+had held on with the grim tenacity of death itself.  There was
+nothing that they could do but hold on.  To push the salient deeper
+into the enemy lines would only emphasise the difficulty and danger
+of their position.  The role assigned them was that of simply
+holding steady with what ultimate objective in view no one seemed
+to know.
+
+Week by week, and month after month, the Canadian battalions had
+moved up into the salient, had done their "tours," building up
+their obliterated parapets, digging out their choked-up water-
+courses, revetting their crumbling trenches, and rebuilding their
+flimsy dugouts, and then returning to their reserve lines, always
+leaving behind them in hastily dug graves over the parados of their
+trenches, or in the little improvised cemeteries by Hooge, or Maple
+Copse or Hill 60, a few more of their comrades, and ever sending
+down the line their maimed and broken to be refitted for war or
+discharged again to civilian life.  It was altogether a ghastly
+business, a kind of warfare calling for an endurance of the finest
+temper and a courage of the highest quality.
+
+From this grim and endless test of endurance, the Canadians had
+discovered a form of relief known as a "trench raid," a special
+development of trench warfare which later came to be adopted by
+their comrades of the French and British armies.  It was a form of
+sport, grim enough, deadly enough, greatly enjoyed by the Canadian
+soldiers; and the battalion which had successfully pulled off a
+trench raid always returned to its lines in a state of high
+exaltation.  They had been able to give Fritz a little of what
+they had been receiving during these weary months.
+
+While the battalion waited with ever-growing impatience for the
+order that would send them "up the line," a group of officers was
+gathered in the senior major's hut for the purpose of studying in
+detail some photographs, secured by our aircraft, of the enemy
+trenches immediately opposite their own sector of the front line.
+They had finished their study, and were engaged in the diverting
+and pleasant exercise of ragging each other.  The particular
+subject of that discussion was their various sprinting abilities,
+and the comparative usefulness of various kinds of funk-holes as a
+protection against "J.J.s" (Jack Johnsons), "whizzbangs," or the
+uncertain and wobbling "minniewafers."
+
+Seldom had Barry found occasion to call upon Major Bustead, with
+whom he had been unable to establish anything more than purely
+formal relations.  A message, however, from the orderly room to
+Lieutenant Cameron, which he undertook to deliver, brought him to
+the senior major's hut.
+
+"Come in, padre," said the major, who of late had become more
+genial, "and tell us the best kind of a funk-hole for a
+'minniewafer.'"
+
+"The deepest and the closest for me, major, I should say," said
+Barry, "from what I have heard of those uncertain and wobbling
+beasts."
+
+"I understand that chaplains do not accompany their battalions to
+the front line, but stay back at the casualty clearing stations,"
+suggested the major.  "Wise old birds, they are, too."  The major
+had an unpleasant laugh.
+
+"I suppose they go where they are ordered, sir," replied Barry,
+"but if you will excuse me, I have here a chit for Lieutenant
+Cameron, sir, which has just come in," and Barry handed Cameron his
+message.
+
+"Will you allow me, sir?" said Cameron.
+
+"Certainly, go on, read it," said the major.
+
+Cameron read the message, and on his face there appeared a grave
+and anxious look.
+
+"It's from the casualty clearing station, sir.  One of our chaps
+from Edmonton is there dangerously wounded, and wants to see me.
+I'd like to go, sir, if I might."
+
+"Oh, certainly.  I'll make it all right with the O. C.  Get a horse
+from the transport.  Which casualty clearing station is it?"
+
+Cameron looked at his message.
+
+"Menin Mill, sir."
+
+"Menin Mill!  By gad, I thought it was Brandthoek, but Menin Mill,
+good Lord, that's a different proposition.  That's way beyond
+Ypres, you know.  Right up on the line.  You can't take a horse
+there.  Do you think you ought to go up at all?"
+
+"I think I should like to go, sir," replied Cameron.  "I know the
+chap well.  Went to school and college with him."
+
+"Then," said the major, "you had better hurry up and attach
+yourself to one of the transports going in.  You will barely be in
+time."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Cameron, and left the room.
+
+Barry went out with him.  "Who is it, Cameron?" he said.  "Do I
+know him?"
+
+"I don't know, sir, whether you do or not.  It's young McPherson of
+Edmonton, an awfully decent chap, and my very best friend."
+
+"May I go up with you, Duncan?  I know Colonel Tait and Captain
+Gregg, who are at the Mill, I understand."
+
+"I would be awfully glad if you would, but I hardly liked to ask
+you.  It hasn't the reputation of being a very healthy place, I
+hear."
+
+"All right, Cameron.  I'm going up," said Barry.
+
+Upon enquiry they found that they were too late for the transports,
+and again the question arose as to whether, in view of the major's
+order, they should make the attempt by themselves.
+
+"It was not really an order, I think, sir," said Cameron.  "It was
+more in the way of a suggestion.  I think I'll go.  The note said,
+'dangerously wounded,' and he sent for me."
+
+"All right," said Barry, "we'll go on, and we'll almost certainly
+pick up some one who will be able to direct us to the Mill."
+
+Their road, which took them to Vlammertinghe, led through level
+fields, lying waste and desolate with rank, overgrowing weeds.  As
+they approached that historic village, they saw on every hand the
+cruel marks of war.  On either side of the road were roofless and
+shattered cottages, grown around with nettles and briars.  Among
+these ruins, as they found on a later day, were the old garden
+flowers, pansies and daisies, bravely trying to hold their own.
+Among the rank weeds was to be seen the half-hidden debris of
+broken farm gear.  Here and there stood the ruins of what had been
+a thrifty homestead, with its stone-flagged courtyard, around which
+clustered its stables.  Now nettles and briars grew around the
+broken walls and shattered, staring windows.  At rare intervals, a
+great house appeared, with pretentious gateway, and grass-grown
+drive winding up between stately and mutilated trees.  Over the
+whole countryside hung a melancholy and weird desolation, cottages,
+homesteads, fields, the very trees crying aloud to high heaven for
+pity and vengeance.
+
+At Vlammertinghe, itself, the church tower still stood whole, but
+the church itself was wrecked, as were most of the village shops
+and dwellings.  In the village was to be seen no living thing
+except some soldiers, who in the broken cellars were making their
+bivouacs.  The village stood deserted of its inhabitants, ever
+since the terrific onslaught of the Huns, on the 22nd of April,
+1915, which had driven them forth from their homes, a panic-
+stricken, terror-hunted crowd of old men, women and little babes,
+while over them broke, with a continuous and appalling roar, a
+pitiless rain of shells.
+
+At the cross-roads stood a mounted officer, directing the traffic,
+which here tended to congestion.  As they entered the village, the
+sentry halted them to enquire as to their bona fides.  Having
+satisfied him, they enquired their way to the Menin Mill.
+
+"Menin!"  The rising inflection of the sentry's voice expressed a
+mild surprise.  "The old Mill!  Are you going there?"
+
+"Yes," said Barry, answering his inflection.  "Why not?"
+
+"Well, sir, you know, it's rather a bad road.  Warm bit of country
+up there, but--"  He shrugged his shoulders in quite a French
+manner as if to say it was no business of his.  "If you are going
+to Menin, you keep this road straight through past Wipers past the
+Cloth Hall, out by the Menin Gate.  A hot place, that, sir.  Then
+straight on, taking the right incline for about a mile and a half.
+You will see a big cemetery on your left.  The Mill stands near a
+big school on your right.  But why not drop into the dressing
+station, here, sir, right here in this old mill, which stands at
+the cross-roads?  You may catch an ambulance going straight up to
+the Mill."
+
+"Thank you very much," said Barry.  "We'll do that very thing."
+
+"Good luck, sir," said the sentry, saluting.
+
+They found an ambulance about to start, and asked for a lift.
+
+"All right, sir," said the driver, "but you'd better step in and
+ask the officer."
+
+They passed into a large and high-vaulted stone building, which in
+peace days had been a mill.  The old-fashioned, massive machinery
+was still standing intact.  Obtaining permission from the officer,
+they took their places beside the driver of the ambulance, and were
+soon on their way.
+
+It was already growing dark, but, although the surface of the stone
+pave was frequently broken with shell-holes, the ambulance, dodging
+round the holes, rushed without pause along at a high rate of
+speed.
+
+"You don't use your lights?" asked Barry.
+
+"No, not lately, sir," said the driver.  "That's the newest order,"
+he added in a tone of disgust.
+
+The road lay between double rows of once noble trees, centuries
+old, with the first delicate green of spring softening their bare
+outlines.  Now, splintered, twisted, broken, their wounds showing
+white in the darkening light through the delicate green, they stood
+silently eloquent of the terrific force of the H. E. shell.
+
+As they went speeding along the shell-marked road they came upon a
+huge trunk of a mighty elm, broken clear from its stump, lying
+partially cross their track, which soldiers were already busy
+clearing away.  Without an instant's pause, the driver wheeled his
+car off the 'pave', crashed through the broken treetops, and
+continued on his way.
+
+Barry looked upon the huge trunk with amazement.
+
+"Did a single shell break that tree off like that?" he asked.
+
+"You bet," was the reply, "and all these you see along here.  It's
+the great transport road for our front line, and the boches shell
+it regularly.  Here comes one now," he added, casually.
+
+There was a soft woolly "whoof" far away, a high, thin whine, as
+from a vicious insect overhead, with every fractional second coming
+nearer and yet nearer, ever deepening in tone, ever increasing in
+volume, until, like an express train, with an overwhelming sense of
+speed and power, and with an appalling roar, it crashed upon them.
+In the field on their left, there leaped fifty yards into the air a
+huge mass of earth and smoke.  Then a stunning detonation.
+
+Insensibly Barry and Cameron both crouched down in the car, but the
+driver held his wheel, without the apparent quiver of a muscle.
+
+"There'll be three more, presently, I guess," he said, putting on
+full speed.
+
+His guess proved right.  Again that distant woolly "whoof," the
+long-drawn whine, deepening to a scream, the appalling roar and
+crash, and a second shell fell in the road behind them.
+
+"Two," said the driver coolly.  "There will be a couple more."
+
+Again and yet again, each time the terror growing deeper in their
+souls, came the two other shells, but they fell far behind.
+
+"Oh, Fritzie," remonstrated the driver, "that's rotten bad work.
+You'll have to do better than that."
+
+Again and again, in groups of four, the shells came roaring in, but
+the car had passed out of that particular zone of danger, and sped
+safely on its way.
+
+"Do you have this sort of thing every night?" enquired Barry.
+
+"Oh, no," cheerfully replied the driver.  "Fritzie makes a lot
+better practice than that, at times.  Do you see this?"  He put his
+finger upon a triangular hole a few inches above his head.  "I got
+that last week.  We don't mind so much going up, but it's rather
+annoying when you're bringing down your load of wounded."
+
+As they approached Ypres, the road became more and more congested,
+until at length they had to thread their way between two continuous
+streams of traffic up and down, consisting of marching battalions,
+transports, artillery wagons, ambulances, with now and then a motor
+or a big gun.
+
+About a mile from the city, they came to a large red brick
+building, with pretentious towers and surrounded by a high brick
+wall.
+
+"An asylum," explained the driver.  "Now used as a dressing station.
+We'll just run in for orders."
+
+At what seemed to Barry reckless speed, he whirled in between the
+brick posts, and turned into a courtyard, on one side of which he
+parked his ambulance.
+
+"Better come inside, sir," said the driver.  "They sometimes throw
+a few in here, seeing it's a hospital."
+
+They passed down the wide stairs, the centre of which had been
+converted into a gangway for the passage of wheeled stretchers,
+into a large basement, with concrete floors and massive pillars,
+lit by flaring gasjets.  Along the sides of the outer room were
+rows of wounded soldiers, their bandaged heads and arms no whiter
+than their faces, a patient and pathetic group, waiting without
+complaint for an ambulance to carry them down the line.
+
+In an inner and operating room, Barry found two or three medical
+officers, with assistants and orderlies, intent upon their work.
+While waiting there for their driver, they heard overhead again
+that ominous and terrifying whine, this time, however, not long
+drawn, but coming in with terrific speed, and ending with a sharp
+and shattering crash.  Again and again and again, with hardly a
+second between, there came the shells.  It seemed to Barry as if
+every crash was fair upon the roof of the building, but no man
+either of the medical attendants or of the waiting wounded paid the
+slightest heed.
+
+At length there came a crash that seemed to break within the very
+room in which they were gathered.  The lights flickered, some of
+them went out, there was a sound as if a tower had crashed down
+upon the roof.  Dust and smoke filled the room.
+
+"Light up that gas," said the Officer Commanding.  An orderly
+sprang to obey.  The gasjets were once more lighted and the work
+went on.
+
+"Rather near, wasn't that one?" asked Barry of a wounded man at his
+side.
+
+"Yes," he replied casually, "they got a piece that time," and again
+he sunk into apathetic silence.
+
+In a few moments the driver had obtained his orders and was ready
+to set forth.
+
+"Better wait a bit," said the sergeant at the door, "until their
+Evening Hate is over."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said the driver.  "I guess Fritz is pretty
+well through.  They are rather crowded there at the mill, and I
+guess we'll go on."
+
+In his heart, Barry earnestly hoped that the sergeant would
+interpose with a more definite command, but, inasmuch as the
+bombardment had apparently ceased, and as if it were all in a day's
+work, the driver, buttoning up his coat, said:
+
+"We'll go, sir, if you are ready."
+
+A few minutes' run brought them to the gate of the ruined city.
+As the car felt its way through the ghostly town, Barry was only
+vaguely conscious in the darkness of its ghostly skeletonlike
+ruins.  Fifteen minutes brought them to the Menin gate.
+
+"Sounds rather hot out there," remarked the driver.  "Well,
+Fritzie, I guess we won't join your party this time.  We prefer to
+wait, if you don't mind, really."
+
+He ran the car into the lee of the ramparts, by the side of the
+gateway, waited there half an hour or so, until the "Evening Hate"
+was past; then onward again to the Menin Mill.
+
+They lifted the blanket covering the sandbagged entrance, passed
+through a dark corridor and came into a cellar, lit by lanterns,
+swinging from the roof, and by candles everywhere upon ledges or
+upon improvised candlesticks.
+
+No sooner had they come into the light, than Barry saw across the
+room his friend, Dr. Gregg, his coat off, and his shirtsleeves
+rolled to his elbows.
+
+"Hello, Dunbar," said the doctor, coming forward.  "I guess I won't
+shake hands just now.  Sit down.  Won't you have a cup of coffee?
+Jim," turning to an orderly, "give Captain Dunbar a cup of coffee."
+
+Barry presented Cameron to his friend, and together they sat down
+and waited.  When the doctor was through with his patient, he came
+and sat down with them.
+
+"We came up to see a young chap named McPherson.  I think you sent
+a note down about him to-day."
+
+"McPherson," said the doctor.  "I don't remember, but I will see."
+
+He turned to a desk and turning over the pages of a record,
+apparently found the name, and returned to Barry.
+
+"I am sorry to say that McPherson died this afternoon," he said.
+
+"Dead," said Barry.  He turned to Cameron.  "I'm awfully sorry,
+Duncan."
+
+"Was there anybody with him?" he enquired of the doctor.  "He was
+Lieutenant Cameron's very close friend, and college companion."
+
+"Oh, awfully sorry," replied the doctor.  "Yes, I think Captain
+Winter, the chaplain of the --th, was with him at the last.  He's
+not here just now.  I can tell you where to get him.  To-morrow is
+his day here."
+
+"Is--is--is his body still here?" enquired Cameron, after a few
+moments' silence.
+
+"Yes, it's in the next room.  Do you want to see it?  He was pretty
+badly smashed up, I'm afraid."
+
+"I think I should like to see him," said Cameron.  "I know his
+people, you see, and I would like to tell them that I saw him."
+
+"Oh, all right," said the doctor.  He called an orderly.
+
+"Come this way, sir," said the orderly.
+
+Together they followed the orderly into the next room, apparently a
+storehouse for grain.  There lying upon the floor they saw three
+silent shapes, wrapped in grey blankets.
+
+"This is Mcpherson, sir," said the orderly, looking at the card
+attached to the blanket.
+
+He stooped, drew down the blanket from the face and stepped back.
+In civil life, both Barry and Cameron had seen the faces of the
+dead, but only in the coffin, after having been prepared for burial
+by those whose office it is to soften by their art death's grim
+austerities.
+
+Cameron gave one swift glance at the shapeless, bloody mass, out of
+which stared up at him wide-open glassy eyes.
+
+"Oh, my God, my God!" he gasped, gripping Barry by the arm, and
+staggering back as if he had received a blow.  He turned to the
+door as if to make his escape, but Barry, himself white and shaken,
+held him firmly.
+
+"Steady, old boy," he said.  "Steady, Duncan!"
+
+"Oh, let me go!  Let me get out of here!"
+
+"Duncan, there are a lot of wounded chaps out there."
+
+The boy--he was only nineteen--was halted at the word, stood
+motionless and then muttered:
+
+"You are right, sir.  I was forgetting."
+
+"And, Duncan, remember," said Barry, in a quiet and solemn voice,
+"there's more than that to McPherson.  That fine young chap whom
+you knew and loved is not that poor and battered piece of clay.
+Your friend has escaped from death and all its horrors."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know," whispered Cameron, still shaking.  "We'll go
+out now, sir.  I'll be all right.  I assure you I'm all right."
+
+They passed out into the dressing-room again, where the wounded
+were continuing to arrive.  Cameron was for departing at once, but
+Barry held him back, unwilling that the lad should be driven away
+beaten and unnerved by what he had seen.
+
+"I say, Duncan, let's see some of these boys.  We can perhaps cheer
+them up a bit.  They need it badly enough, God knows."
+
+"All right," muttered Cameron, sitting down upon a bench in the
+shadow.  They waited there till Dr. Gregg came along.
+
+"Hello, Dunbar, you are looking seedy.  Feeling rotten, eh?" said
+the doctor, eying him critically for a few moments.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," said Barry.  "The truth is, I've just been in
+there with young Cameron.  Rather a ghastly sight.  Cameron's badly
+knocked up.  Can you do anything for him?"
+
+"Sure thing," said the doctor cheerfully.  "Stay right there where
+you are.  I'll bring you something in a moment or two.  Now sit
+right there, do you hear?  Don't move."
+
+In a few moments he returned, bringing hot coffee for them both.
+
+"There," he said in a cheerful matter-of-fact voice, "drink that."
+
+Barry gulped it down, Cameron taking his more slowly, and with
+evident distaste.  The doctor continued to converse with them in
+tones of cheerful and, as Barry thought, of almost careless
+indifference.
+
+"Now, I must leave you," said the doctor.  "I see there's a case of
+shell shock.  We didn't know how to handle that for a while.  The
+British R. A. M. C. for some months declined to recognise it as
+requiring treatment at all.  You might care to look at this chap.
+Poor devil!"
+
+Barry had been looking at the man ever since he had come into the
+room, supported by two of his comrades.  He was indeed an object of
+pity.  Of splendid physique, six feet and powerfully built, with
+the fine intelligent face of an educated man, he stood there white,
+twitching in every muscle, in a state of complete nerve-collapse.
+
+Colonel Tait, who had been observing him keenly ever since his
+entering the room, now approached him, greeted him with a cheerful
+"Hello!" took him by the hand and felt his pulse.
+
+"How are you, old chap?  Feeling a little better than you were,
+aren't you?"
+
+"Yes--doc--tor.  Rather--rotten--though--  Be all right--to-morrow--"
+
+"Sure you will!  Still a little rest won't do you any harm.  We'll
+send you down for a couple of weeks, and then you will be fit
+enough to have another go at the boche."
+
+So saying he turned him over to an assistant, and went on with his
+work.  At this point Cameron, from whose eyes the look of horror
+had not yet faded, leaned over to Barry and whispered:
+
+"Let's get out of this.  For Heaven's sake, this thing is getting
+me."  He glanced at Barry.  "What, are you ill, too?"
+
+"Ill," answered Barry between his clenched teeth.  "Ill?  No, why
+should I be ill?  Look at these boys.  I see myself ill.  By Jove!"
+he added under his breath, "here's another shell shock.  Sit down,
+Cameron!"  His voice took on a sterner tone.  "Sit down.  Don't be
+an ass!"
+
+Once more Colonel Tait took in hand the shell-shock man.  This
+second was a stretcher case.  The man was very violent, requiring
+two men to hold him on his stretcher.
+
+"Oh, let him go!  Let him go!" said Colonel Tait.  "What's wrong
+with you?" he said to the man.  "Have you any wounds?"
+
+"No, sir," chattered the man miserably.  "Shell--shock,--sir.
+Buried--twice--by a shell.  Oh!  Ah!"
+
+The colonel had a few moments' conversation with Gregg, who came
+over to where Barry was sitting and said:
+
+"I say, Dunbar, watch this case.  You will see some fun."
+
+"Fun," echoed Barry, shaken and indignant.  "Not much fun for that
+poor chap."
+
+"Stand up," said the colonel sharply.
+
+The man stood up without much apparent difficulty.
+
+"Ah!" said the colonel.  "Shell shock.  Bad case, too."  His voice
+was kind and sympathetic.  He gripped the man by the arm and ran
+his hand down his spine until he came to the small of his back.
+
+"Pain there, eh?" he said, giving the man a poke.
+
+"Yes, yes!  Ouw!  Doctor.  Awful."
+
+"Thought so," said the doctor.  "Bad case!  Poor chap!  A curious
+feeling in the legs, eh?"
+
+The man nodded vigorously, still twitching violently and making
+animal moanings.
+
+Still pursuing his investigations and continuing to sympathise with
+his patient, the doctor enquired as to other symptoms, to all of
+which the patient promptly confessed.  When the examination was
+completed, the doctor gave his man a hearty slap on the back and
+said:
+
+"You're all right, my boy.  Go treat yourself to a cup of cocoa,
+and a good, thick slice of bread and raspberry jam--raspberry,
+remember--and to-morrow you can report to your battalion medical
+officer."
+
+"What!" exclaimed the man.  "Doctor, I can't go up again.  I'm not
+fit to go up."
+
+"Oh, yes, you can, my boy.  You'll be in good fighting trim to-
+morrow.  You'll see!  You'll see!  Come back here some day,
+perhaps, with a V. C."
+
+Thereupon the man began to swear violently.
+
+"Here, none of that," said the doctor sharply, "or up you go to-
+night."
+
+A grin ran around the dressing station, in which none joined more
+heartily than the first shell-shock man, waiting to be conveyed
+down the line.
+
+"They don't get by the old man often, nowadays," was Dr. Gregg's
+comment.
+
+"You don't often get cases like this, though, do you?" enquired
+Barry.
+
+"Not often.  We have passed through this dressing station some
+thousands of cases, and we may have had eight or ten malingerers.
+But this is not all sham.  There is a strong mixture of hysteria
+and suggestion with the sham.  A chap with a highly organised
+temperament gets buried by a shell.  That is a terrific nerve
+shock.  He sees two or three chaps blown to bits.  Another nerve
+shock.  Now he has heard about shell shock as a result of a similar
+experience.  Immediately the suggestion begins to work and the man
+discovers in himself the well known symptoms of genuine shell
+shock, and, begad! I don't wonder.  What we have just given him is
+part of the treatment for hysteria--a little nerve tonic.  A good
+sleep may put him all right by to-morrow morning.  The chances are,
+however, that the O. C. will send him down for a few days' rest and
+change.  If so, the chap will be as happy as a clam.  The boys will
+rag him half to death down there, so that he will be keen to get
+back again, and the chances are may get his V. C.  Oh, we all get
+scared stiff," laughed Gregg.  "We are none of us proud about here.
+That hero stuff that you read about in the home papers, we don't
+know much about.  We just 'carry on'."
+
+"By Jove, Gregg!  That's all right, but to just 'carry on' in this
+business, it seems to me, calls for some pretty fine hero stuff."
+
+"Well, we don't call it so," said Gregg.  "Now I'll see about your
+ambulance.  I believe there's one about ready to go.  I think I can
+find a place for you and your friend, and it will save you a long
+walk."
+
+They came away from the old mill with mingled feelings.  Barry had
+to a certain extent recovered from his shock, and had himself
+somewhat firmly in hand.  Cameron was still silent and obviously
+shaken.
+
+It was grey dawn when they arrived at the camp, physically weary,
+nervously exhausted, and sick at heart.  Barry wakened Hobbs, who
+greeted them with the news that the battalion was under orders to
+go up that night.  By his own state Barry was able to gauge that of
+his friend Cameron.  The experiences of the last ten hours had been
+like nothing in his previous life.  The desolation wrought by war
+upon the face of the country, upon the bodies of men, upon their
+souls, had sickened and unnerved him; and this he remembered was
+an experience of only a brief ten hours.  He was conscious of a
+profound self-distrust and humiliation, as he thought of those
+other men, those medical officers, with their orderlies, the
+ambulance drivers, those wounded soldiers.  How could they endure
+this horror, day in and day out, for weeks and for months?  In a
+few hours he would have to meet his fellow officers and the men.
+They could not fail to read in his face all this that he carried in
+his heart.
+
+By his grey, haggard face he knew that the same horror and fear had
+gone deep into his friend's soul.  There came to him the sudden
+thought that Cameron, too, must meet his fellow officers, and must
+endure their searching chaff, and that he would reveal himself to
+his undoing; for no man can ever live down in his battalion the
+whisper that he is a "quitter."  That very night Cameron would be
+forced to lead up his platoon into the front line, and must lead
+them step by step over that same Vlammertinghe road, where the
+transports were nightly shelled.  In the presence of any danger
+soever, he must not falter.  When the shells would begin to fall,
+he knew well how the eyes of his men would turn to their leader and
+search his very soul to see of what quality he was.  Far better a
+man should die than falter.  He had not failed to notice the
+startled look in Cameron's eyes when Hobbs blurted out his news.
+Some way must be found for the bracing up of the nerve, the
+steadying of the courage of his friend.
+
+"Come in with me, Cameron," he said, standing at the door of his
+hut.  "I'm dead beat and so are you.  We'll have coffee and some
+grub, and then sleep for a couple of hours until reveille."
+
+Cameron hesitated.  The thing he most longed for at that moment was
+to be alone.
+
+"Come on!" insisted Barry.  "Hobbs will have a fire going, and hot
+coffee in ten minutes.  Come on, old chap.  I want you to."
+
+He threw his arm around Cameron's shoulder and dragged him in.  The
+boy dropped onto Barry's cot, and, as he was, boots and coat on,
+was asleep before the coffee was ready.  His boyish face, with its
+haggard look, struck pity to Barry's heart, and recalled his
+father's words, "These boys need their mothers."  If ever a lad
+needed his mother, it was young Cameron, and just in that hour.
+
+He woke the boy up, gave him his coffee, had Hobbs remove his
+boots, made him undress and covered him up in his blankets.  Then,
+taking his own coffee, he lay down on Hobbs' bed.
+
+"Harry," he said, "give us every minute of sleep you can.  Wake us
+just one-half hour before reveille with coffee and everything else
+good you can rustle, and, Harry, waken me before Mr. Cameron."
+
+When he lay down to sleep he made an amazing discovery--that his
+own horror and fear and self-distrust had entirely passed away.  He
+felt himself quite prepared to "carry on."  How had this thing come
+to pass?  His physical recuperation by means of coffee and food?
+This doubtless in part, but only in part.  In his concern for his
+friend he had forgotten himself, and in forgetting himself he had
+forgotten his fear.  It was an amazing discovery.
+
+"Thank the good God," he said.  "He never forgets a fellow, and I
+won't forget that."
+
+He woke to find Hobbs at his side, with coffee, toast and bacon,
+and on the floor beside his cot his tub awaiting him--the tub being
+a rubber receptacle exactly eighteen inches in diameter.
+
+He hurried through his dressing, and his breakfast, all the while
+Cameron lying like a dead man, and with almost a dead man's face.
+
+Barry hated to waken him, but reveille was but a bare thirty
+minutes off, and he had an experiment to work upon his friend.
+
+"Bring the coffee, Harry.  Not the bacon, yet," he ordered.
+
+"Hello, Cameron, old boy!  Wake up."
+
+Cameron rolled over with a groan and opened his eyes, still dull
+and heavy with sleep.
+
+"Here you are.  Pipe this down your tunnel and look lively, too.
+You have got thirty minutes--twenty-five, really--to reveille, and
+you have your toilet to perform--shave, massage, manicure and all
+the rest--so go to it.  Here's your tub.  You can't get into it,
+but soap yourself over, and Hobbs will sluice you with a pail or
+two outside."
+
+"Why all this Spartan stuff?  It's awfully cold.  I think I'll
+content myself with a nose rub this morning."
+
+"Get out of bed, and be quick about it," commanded Barry, "unless
+you'd rather take your tub where you are."
+
+So saying he jerked the clothes clear off the cot, threatening
+Cameron with the tub.  Cameron sprang up, stripped, soaped himself
+over, groaning and shivering the while; then stood outside in the
+open, while Hobbs administered the order of the bath, and after a
+vigorous rub, came in glowing.
+
+"By jingo!  That's bully!  It's a pity a fellow can't always feel
+just how bully it is before he takes it."
+
+"Na-a-w then! a little snap!" ordered Barry, in attempted imitation
+of the inimitable Sergeant Major Hackett.  "A little speed,
+ple-ease!  That's better.  I've seen worse--not often!"
+
+And so he rattled on through Cameron's dressing and shaving
+operations.
+
+"Now then, 'Obbs, a little Delmonico 'ere.  Shove this bacon
+against your fice, Cameron."
+
+"What about yours, sir?" said Cameron, as he sat down to the
+luxuries which somehow Hobbs had "rustled."
+
+"Had it, you slacker."  Then with a swift change of voice and
+manner he added:  "Listen to me, Cameron.  I'm going to have my
+prayers.  You won't bother me any, and if you don't mind I'll do
+them out loud.  Don't you stop eating, though.  Hobbs, stop your
+wandering around there and sit down and listen."  Barry took his
+Bible.
+
+"Cameron," he said, "one comfort in reading the Bible to a chap
+with a father like yours is that you know all about the thing
+already--context, historical references and theological teaching--
+therefore, no need of comment.  Also you have a good imagination to
+see things.  Turn on the juice while I read.  Hobbs, you waken up,
+too."
+
+Then he began to read the vivid words which picture as in miniature
+etchings the life stories of the heroes of Faith who in their day
+held their generation steady and pointed the way to duty and
+victory.  As he read his face became alight, his dark eyes glowed,
+his voice thrilled under the noble passion of the words he read.
+Then he came to this stately peroration:
+
+"And what shall I more say?  For the time would fail me to tell of
+Gideon," and so on through the list of heroes, "Who through faith
+subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped
+the mouths of lions, (of whom the world was not worthy).  Wherefore
+seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of
+witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so
+easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set
+before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our
+faith, who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross,
+despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the
+throne of God."
+
+Both reader and hearers were swept along upon the tide of dramatic
+passion.  They were themselves a part of the great and eternal
+conflict there pictured; they, too, were called upon to endure the
+cross.
+
+Cameron had forgotten his breakfast, and with his kindling eyes
+fastened upon the reader's face, was listening to the noble music
+of the thrilling words.
+
+Barry closed his book and laid it down.
+
+"Great, eh!  Wonderful company!  All the finest and the best of the
+war's heroes are in it.  Now, then, prayer--"  He dropped on his
+knees, Cameron and Hobbs following his example.
+
+It was a prayer chiefly of thanksgiving for those who in their day
+and in the face of anguish and terror and death had kept the faith;
+of thanksgiving, too, for all who in this present day of sacrifice
+in the home land and of sacrifice upon the field of battle were
+keeping that same faith for the Empire and for this same sacred
+cause of humanity.  The prayer closed with a simple petition that
+they in the battalion might be found worthy of a humble place in
+that great company.
+
+As they were repeating together the prayer "Our Father," the notes
+of the reveille sounded shrilly over the camp.
+
+"Go out, Hobbs, for a minute," said Barry after they had risen from
+their prayer.  He knew well that Cameron would want a few minutes
+with him alone.
+
+"Sir," said the boy, and his voice was quiet and steady, "I'm not
+going to try to thank you, but I believe I can 'carry on' now."
+
+"You bet you can," said Barry, gripping his hand.  "You bet you
+can!  It's the point of view after all, old man, isn't it?  For
+ourselves it doesn't matter, but we have got to think of the boys,
+and we have got to stay with the game."
+
+Eighteen hours later the relief was completed, and the battalion
+was in its place in the line, all but the sentries asleep in their
+flimsy dugouts and behind their rotten parapets.
+
+An hour later, Barry, who was sleeping with the M. O. in the
+regimental aid post, was wakened from a dead sleep by the M. O.
+
+"There's something doing out there," he said.  "Listen!"
+
+There was a quick succession of sharp explosions.
+
+"Bombs!" said the M. O.
+
+The explosions were followed by the rat-tat-tat--tat-tat--tat-tat-
+tat of the machine guns.  Instantly they were both on their feet
+and out in the trench.
+
+"I guess Fritzie is trying to put something over on us, being our
+first night," said the M. O.  "I'll get my boys out."
+
+He ran to the adjoining dugout, where his corporal and stretcher
+bearers were sleeping, roused them and sent them up the trench.
+There was the sound of subdued voices and of quick marching feet
+along the communication trench a few yards away.  They stood
+together listening for a few minutes.
+
+"I'm going," said Barry, hurrying off in the direction of the
+sound.  "Come on."
+
+"Captain Dunbar," called the M. O. sharply, "my place is here, and
+I think this is where you will be most useful as well.  They will
+bring the wounded to us right here."
+
+In a few minutes all was still again, except for the machine guns,
+which still kept up their incessant tattoo.
+
+The M. O. was correct in his forecast.  In a few minutes down the
+communication trench came a wounded man walking, jubilant in spite
+of his wounds.
+
+"Fritzie tried to put one over on us," he exclaimed, while the
+doctor was dabbing with iodine and tying up his wounded arm, "but I
+think he's got another guess coming.  You ought to have seen our
+officer," he added.  "The first one in the bunch to be 'at 'em.'
+With a bayonet, too, mind you.  Grabbed one from a private as he
+ran past, and bombs bursting like hell all around.  Beg pardon,
+sir," he added, turning to Barry.  "He's some kid, poor chap.  He's
+got his, I guess."
+
+"Who is he?" asked the M. O.
+
+"Lieutenant Cameron, sir."
+
+"Cameron!" cried Barry.  "Where is he?"
+
+"They are carrying the stretcher cases right down to the dressing
+station, I hear," said the man.
+
+"I'm going, doc," said Barry, and was off at a run.
+
+At the casualty clearing station there was no excitement, the
+doctors and orderlies "carrying on" as usual, receiving the
+wounded, dressing their wounds, sending them down with the
+smoothness and despatch characteristic of their department.
+
+"Cameron?" said the doctor in answer to Barry's question.  "Why
+certainly, I'll show you."  And he led him to Cameron's cot.
+
+"Well, old chap," said the doctor cheerily, "we're going to send
+you down in a minute or two.  Now don't talk."
+
+Cameron's eyes welcomed Barry.
+
+"Dear old boy," said Barry, dropping on his knees beside him.  "I'm
+awfully sorry."
+
+"It's all right," whispered Cameron.  "They--never--knew.--You'll
+write dad--and tell him--I kept--"  The voice trailed off into
+silence.  The morphia was doing its merciful work.
+
+"Kept the faith," said Barry.
+
+"Yes," whispered Cameron with a smile, faint but exultant.
+
+"Good old boy," whispered Barry.
+
+"Yes, I--kept--I kept--"
+
+The bearers came to carry out the stretcher.
+
+"Will he recover?" whispered Barry to the doctor.
+
+"Recover?  Surest thing you know," said the doctor in a loud cheery
+voice.  "We can't spare this kind of stuff, you know."
+
+And again Barry leaned over the stretcher and said, patting Cameron
+on the shoulder:
+
+"Good old boy.  You make us proud of you.  You kept the faith."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THINNING RANKS
+
+
+"Three months in that hell-hole of the salient have made their mark
+on this battalion," said Transport Sergeant Mackay.
+
+"Yes, there's quite a lot of these round the first line and back
+about here," replied the pioneer sergeant, who was putting the
+finishing touches upon some crosses, that were to be sent up the
+line that night.
+
+"That's so, Fatty.  Whose is that cross you are finishing?"
+
+"That's Lieutenant Salford's, a fine young officer he was, too.
+Always had a smile.  The deeper the mud the more Sally smiled.  And
+this here is Lieutenant Booth's.  There's a chap now that picked up
+wonderful.  Two months ago everybody thought he was a big soft
+slob, and those bombers say that he was all, right.  And here's the
+M. O.'s.  Poor old doc!  There was a man, now, if there ever was
+one.  He wasn't afraid of nothing.  He would go walking about with
+a smile when a bombardment was on, and in that last big show the
+other day, they say him and the chaplain--there's another peach--
+they 'carried on' wonderful.  I wasn't around there at the time,
+but the boys at the dressing station told me that them two worked
+back and forward getting out the wounded, I think they had about
+thirty injured up at that time, as if it was a kind of er summer
+shower that was falling, let alone H. E.'s and whizzbangs, and then
+after they got the last man out, the M. O. went in with some
+stretcher bearers, just lookin' around before he left, and a shell
+came and got 'em all, and they say it was about the last shell that
+was throwed.  And that's where poor Harry Hobbs got his, too.  The
+Pilot went out just a minute before, and when he came back that's
+what he saw.  They say he was terrible cut up over the M. O.  Funny
+thing, the M. O.'s face was just as quiet as if he had gone to
+sleep, but the rest of the boys, well you could hardly get 'em
+together, and the Pilot walkin' up and down there lookin' like a
+lost man.  We buried 'em right there by Maple Copse.  I want to
+tell you, sergeant, that that's the hardest job I ever done in this
+war.  The Pilot, he broke right down in the middle of the service.
+It must have been hard for him.  I've been with him now at every
+funeral and he stands up to his work like a man.  He takes it kind
+of cheery almost, but when we was puttin' down the M. O. and poor
+Harry, the Pilot just couldn't appear to stand it.  I cried like a
+baby, and you ought to have seen the crowd, the O. C. and the
+adjutant and the pioneers, and they are all pretty hardened up by
+this time.  They have done enough plantin' anyhow.  They just all
+went to pieces.  The shells was goin' overhead among the trees,
+something awful, but nobody minded more than if they had been pea-
+shooters.  First time I ever seen the Pilot break, and I have been
+with him ever since the first one we buried, and that was big Jim
+Berry.  A sniper got him.  You don't remember?  I guess you don't
+see much or get much of the news back here."
+
+"Back here!" exclaimed Sergeant Mackay.  "What do you mean, 'back
+here'?  Don't I have to go up every night with the transport, and
+through that barridge, too.  This aint no 'safety first' job."
+
+"I know, sergeant.  I'm not sayin' you ain't at war.  Believe me,
+I'd rather be up front than to go up round Hell Fire Corner and
+come back by the Menin Gate every night like you fellows.  I ain't
+sayin' nothing about that, but you don't see things that I see, and
+you don't get the news same as I do.  Now, about Jim Berry, you
+know, he was goin' to do some snipin' in place of McCuaig, who went
+to the machine gun company."
+
+"McCuaig, in the machine gun company!  I never heard that."
+
+"Well, that's what I'm sayin'," said Sergeant Matthews, "you don't
+get some of the chances to get news down here, same as me.  You
+see, when we're sewin' up the boys and fixin' 'em up like, and when
+we're fixin' up the graves and puttin' on the crosses, you get kind
+of thinkin' about things, and kind of lonesome, and so the boys
+keep telling the news to cheer themselves up, and that's how I
+heard about McCuaig.  You see, McCuaig was snipin' the first tour,
+and he's a killer, you bet, and he had only cut three natches in
+his rifle.  The boys say he had got four of the Huns, but he had
+only put down three natches on his rifle to be sure, and after he
+seen the machine gun work, stoppin' a raid, he comes to the
+officer, and says he, givin' him his rifle:  'Say, this is all
+right for sport, but it ain't good enough for killin' these devils.
+I'd like to get on to your gang, if I can,' and they put him right
+onto the machine gun.  Say, he's sleepin' with that Lewis gun ever
+since.  Just pets it like a baby.  What was I tellin' you?  Oh,
+yes, about McCuaig and Jim Berry.  Well, he took McCuaig's place
+snipin' and a good sniper he was too.  He used to hunt, you know,
+up in the mountains with Jim Knight every fall.  Well, he started
+out snipin' the day after McCuaig quit, and McCuaig gave him his
+rifle too, and took him up to the 'hide.'  Well, big Jim was always
+a careless cuss, you know.  He gets his eye on the hole, sightin'
+his rifle, and McCuaig was watchin' through one of them new things--"
+
+"Perry's scope."
+
+"Yes, that's it, Paris cope.  Them French is mighty smart fellows,
+you bet.  When along walks a Hun.  'There he comes!' sings out
+McCuaig.  'Didn't see him until he got past,' says Jim, pretty mad,
+because Jim hated to show that he'd got 'buck fever,' or something,
+and waited for the next.  'Here he comes!' says McCuaig, again.
+'Bang!' goes Jim.  'I've got him,' he shouts, hoppin' up to get a
+good look, when McCuaig grabs him and jerks him down, swearin'
+somethin' awful, and tellin' him he wasn't shootin' no mountain
+goats.  'Oh shaw!' says Jim.  'They can't get me.'  'You keep your
+head down, Jim,' said McCuaig.  That's the very last words he said
+to him, just as he was leavin' him.  He wasn't down the next day
+when bang! goes Jim's rifle, and again up he jumps to see what he'd
+got, when ping! goes a Boche bullet right through his head.  You
+know McCuaig was real mad, and he stood quiet at that hole for
+three hours.  Then he got Corporal Thom to shove up a hat on a
+rifle, when ping! comes the bullet and bang! goes Jim's rifle.
+'Guess he won't shoot no more, unless there's shootin' in hell,'
+says he, and makes another natch.  Say, the boys all felt bad about
+Jim and so did the Pilot.  Well, we had to plant him that night, as
+we was goin' out next day.  It was out beyond the Loop.  You don't
+know where that is, I guess."
+
+"Of course, I do," asserted Mackay indignantly.  "I've been all
+around that front line.  What are you givin' us!"
+
+"Oh, you have, eh!  Well, I wouldn't unless I had to, you bet.
+It's no place for a man with a waist line like mine.  Well, as I
+was sayin', that cemetery was right out in the open, right under
+observation, and exposed to machine guns, snipers, whizbangs, all
+the hull bloody lot of 'em.  Wasn't no place for a cemetery anyway,
+I say.  I'm not after any bomb proof job but a cemetery should be--"
+
+"Should be a quiet and retired spot," suggested one of the
+transport boys.
+
+"Yes.  What's the use of getting livin' men shot up when they're
+buryin' dead men, I want to know.  Not saying anything about the
+officers that's always round, and the chaplain.  I say a cemetery
+should be somewhere out of sight, like Maple Copse; now, there's a
+good place, except that the roots make it hard diggin'.  Up against
+a railway bank like that down at Zillebeck, by the Railway Dugouts,
+there's a lovely place."
+
+"How would the Ramparts do, sergeant?" enquired another transport
+lad.
+
+"Ramparts?  You mean at Ypres?  Yes," said the sergeant, with a
+grin, "but I'd hate to turn out the Brigade Headquarters Staff."
+
+"Go on, sergeant."
+
+"Well, as I was sayin', that's no place for a cemetery up there
+beyond the Loop, but I didn't know so much about it then, you bet.
+That's where we had to bury Jim.  It was a awful black night, and
+of course, just as we got out to the trench to go 'overland' to the
+cemetery, them flares started up something awful.  I don't know
+what they was lookin' for, but when they went up, I want to tell
+you, I felt about the size of a tree, and I wisht I was one.  Well,
+Jim, you know, was pretty heavy, an awful heavy carry he was for
+the boys.  I was tryin' to hurry 'em along, but that Pilot, he
+heads the procession, and on he goes at a funeral march pace.  Now
+I believe in doin' things right.  I've heard of some pioneers that
+hurries their job.  I don't believe in that, but when you are going
+across the open on a dark night, with them flares going up, I say
+between flares is a good time to get a move on, but, no, that there
+Pilot, he just goes that pace and no more.  I want to tell you the
+boys was nervous and the officers too.  The O. C. and Major Bustead
+was there.  I could see the major fussin' to get on.  Well, we got
+Jim down all right, and just as the Pilot got started, darned if
+they didn't open up the biggest kind of a machine gun chorus you
+ever heard."
+
+"What did you do, sergeant?"
+
+"Me?  Well, I started huggin' mud and saying all the good words I
+could think of.  Even the O. C. got down on his knees, and the
+major, he near got into the grave, but that darned Pilot stood up
+there getting taller every minute, and goin' on with his prayer,
+and the boys sayin' 'Amen!' that loud and emphatic that I thought
+he'd take the hint and cut out somethin', but cut out nothin'!
+Seemed as if his memory was workin' over time, the way he kept a
+fetchin' up things that he could a easily forgot, and when he comes
+to the benediction, the whizbangs begin to come.  Up goes his hand,
+the way they do.  I thought to myself that that was a kind of
+unnecessary display.  I looks up and there he was, more like a tree
+than ever.  In fact, I says to myself--it's queer how you think
+things at times like that--darned if they won't think the darned
+fool is a tree, for nothin' but a darned tree would stand up in the
+flare light and look so much like a tree anyhow.  I guess that's
+what saved him.  He never moved until he was done, and then didn't
+he stay with us pioneers after the rest had gone until we filled
+up.  Say, he's all right."
+
+"You bet he's all right," said Sergeant Mackay, "and he's gettin'
+in his work with the boys."
+
+"What do you mean, 'gettin' in his work'?" enquired the pioneer
+sergeant.
+
+"Oh, well, you know," said Sergeant Mackay awkwardly, "he's makin'
+'em think a lot different about things.  I know he has 'em tied up
+all right in their language."  And this was as near to a confession
+of faith as the sergeant cared to go.
+
+"Oh, I can see a difference myself up the line," said the pioneer
+sergeant.  "The boys used to get out of his way.  He used to jump
+on 'em something fierce.  You remember?"
+
+"Huh-uh!"
+
+"Well, they just love to have him drop in now and they tell him
+things.  I saw Corporal Thom the other night showin' him his girl's
+picture, and the Pilot thought she was a fine girl too, and got her
+address down, and said he was going to write her and tell her what
+a fine chap the corporal was, and you ought to see Corporal Thom
+swell up until he 'most bust his tunic."
+
+"Oh, I know the corporal's dippy about the Pilot," said Sergeant
+Mackay.
+
+"Yes, and the officers, too," said the pioneer sergeant.  "There's
+Captain Duff.  Well, you know what a holy terror he is."
+
+"He's all right," said Sergeant Mackay stoutly.  "He was my chief
+for about a month here, and he was the first one to get this
+transport licked into shape, you bet."
+
+"I'm not saying anything against Captain Duff, but he was a
+roughneck, you know well enough, and I guess he hadn't much use for
+the Pilot."
+
+"Oh, I know all about that," said Sergeant Mackay.  "The Pilot used
+to go up with us on the transport.  It was awful hard on Captain
+Duff, handlin' the column and the mules and all the rest, to hold
+in when the Pilot was along.  The captain, he had to come round now
+and then to the rear.  There he would have a lovely time for a few
+minutes, with the Pilot safe up in front.  But the Pilot calmed him
+down all right."
+
+"Yes, and there's that young Captain Fraser," said the pioneer
+sergeant, with a note of enthusiasm in his monotonous voice.
+"There a soldier.  He just loved fightin'.  I remember the night he
+got his wound.  It was on a raid of course.  If there was a raid
+on, Captain Neil was sure to be there.  He just about got his arm
+blown off, but they say he's goin' to be all right.  I was at the
+regimental aid post when they fetched him in.  Oh, he was a dirty
+mess, face all cut up, and his arm hangin', and not a word out of
+him until the Pilot comes along.  Then he begins to chirp up and
+the Pilot starts jollyin' him along one minute and sayin' Psalms
+to him the next minute, and little prayers, and the boys around
+listenin', sometimes grinnin' and sometimes all choked up, but I'm
+awful glad Captain Neil is comin' round all right."
+
+By this time the pioneer sergeant had his crosses finished.
+
+"Well," he said, as he set the crosses against the wall, "there's
+three of the finest officers we ever had in this battalion.  You
+take 'em up to-night when you go, sergeant."
+
+"We're not going up to-night.  The boys are coming out this
+evening," replied Sergeant Mackay.
+
+"No?  Is that so?  I never heard that.  Guess I'll have to go up
+with some other outfit.  Comin' out this evening?  Well, it's time
+they were.  They've had one hell all the time, I hear, this tour."
+
+"Yes," continued Sergeant Mackay, "and the highlanders are sending
+up their band to meet them and play them out.  I call that a mighty
+fine thing to do.  You know our own band had to go up with water
+and rations last night, and they can't get out until to-night.  So
+the Highlanders' band--"
+
+"Pretty good band, too, isn't it?"
+
+"Best pipe band in the army," said Sergeant Mackay with enthusiasm.
+
+"Oh, a pipe band!" exclaimed the pioneer sergeant in a disappointed
+tone.
+
+"Yes, a pipe band, what else?" enquired Sergeant Mackay truculently.
+
+"Why don't they send up their real band, when they're doin' it,
+anyway?"
+
+"What!" shouted Sergeant Mackay.  "I'll tell you.  For the same
+reason that they don't make you O. C. in this battalion, you damned
+fat lobster!  There now, you've started me swearin' again, and I
+was quittin' it."
+
+Sergeant Mackay's wrath at the slur cast upon the pipe band, the
+only band, in his opinion, worthy of any real man's attention, was
+intensified by his lapse into his habit of profanity, which, out of
+deference to the Pilot, he for some weeks had been earnestly
+striving to hold in check.
+
+"Oh well, Scotty, don't spoil your record for me.  I guess a pipe
+band is all right for them that likes that kind of music.  For me,
+I can't ever tell when they quit tunin' up and begin to play."
+
+Sergeant Mackay looked at him with darkening face, evidently
+uncertain as to what course he should adopt--whether to "turn
+himself loose" upon this benighted Englishman or to abandon him to
+his deserved condition of fatuous ignorance.  He decided upon the
+latter course.  In portentous silence he turned his back upon Fatty
+Matthews and walked the whole length of the line to get a mule back
+over the rope.  It took him some little time for the mule had his
+own mind about the manoeuvre and the sergeant was unwontedly
+deliberate and gentle with him.  Then, the manoeuver executed, he
+walked slowly back to the pioneer sergeant and in restrained and
+carefully chosen speech addressed him.
+
+"Look here, Fatty, I'm askin' you, don't you ever say things like
+that outside of these lines, for the sake of the regiment, you
+know.  I'd really hate the other battalions to know we had got
+such--"  He halted himself abruptly and then proceeded more
+quietly, "A man as you in this battalion.  My God, Fatty, they'd
+think your brains had run down into your pants.  I know they
+haven't, because I know you haven't any."  He took a fresh breath,
+and continued his address in a tone of patient remonstrance.  "Why,
+man, don't you know that wherever the British Army has gone, its
+Highland regiments have cleared the way; and that when the pipes
+get playin' the devil himself couldn't hold them back?"
+
+"I don't wonder," said Fatty innocently.  "They make a man feel
+like fightin' all right."
+
+Sergeant Mackay scanned his face narrowly, uncertain as to whether
+he should credit the pioneer sergeant with intelligence sufficient
+to produce a sarcasm.
+
+"What I mean is," exclaimed Fatty, seeking to appease the wrathful
+transport sergeant, "when you hear them pipes, you get so stirred
+up, you know, that you just feel like kullin' somebody."
+
+This apparently did not improve matters with Sergeant Mackay.
+
+"Oh, darn it, you know what I mean!"
+
+"No, Fatty," said the sergeant solemnly.  "I don't know what you
+mean, but I'll suggest this to you, Fatty.  You go down to that
+Pete mule, down there at the end of the line and talk to him.  I
+guess he'll understand you.  I'm busy just now."
+
+"I don't see what you're so hot about," said the pioneer sergeant
+in an aggravated voice, "but I'm going to see the boys come in
+anyway."
+
+When the distant sound of the pipes coming from the direction of
+the front line was heard in camp, men of the various transport
+lines and base units lined up to watch the battalion come in.  For
+the rumour had run that they had had a bad go, that they had beaten
+back no less than three rather formidable raids of the enemy and
+had been badly cut up.  More than that, by reason of the lack of
+reinforcements, they had had to do a double tour, so that they were
+returning from an experience of thirteen days, in what was indeed
+the veritable mouth of hell.
+
+"I guess they are all pretty well all in," said Sergeant Matthews,
+who, standing with his pioneers, had been carefully avoided by his
+friend Sergeant Mackay.  That enthusiastic Scot had for the time
+being abandoned his transport, and was fraternising with the
+transport men of the Highlanders, with whom he was sure he would
+feel himself in more complete accord.
+
+"Here they come, boys," said a Scot, as the sound of the pipes grew
+louder.  "There's a drummer for ye.  Listen 'til that double roll,
+wull ye?"
+
+"Ay, Danny, the boys will be shovin' out their chests and hitchin'
+their hips about something awful."
+
+"Ye may say that, Hec.  Will ye look at young Angus on the big
+drum, man, but he has got the gr-rand style on him."
+
+"Ay, boys, they are the la-ads," said Sergeant Mackay, yielding to
+the influence of his environment and casually dropping into the
+cadence of the Highlanders about him, which, during his ten years
+in the west, his tongue had well-nigh lost.  "It's a very fine
+thing, your pipers are doing, playing our boys out in this way, and
+we won't be forgetting that in a hurry."
+
+"Why for no?" enquired Hec, in surprise.  "It's the Highlanders
+themselves that love a bonny fighter."
+
+Down the road, between lines of silent men, came the pipers with
+waving kilts and flying tartans, swinging along in their long
+swaying stride, young Angus doing wonders on the big drum, with his
+whirling sticks, and every piper blowing his loudest, and marching
+his proudest.  Behind them came the men of the battalion marching
+at attention, their colonel at their head, grave of face and
+steady.  Behind the colonel marched Major Bayne, in place of the
+senior major, whom illness had prevented from accompanying the
+battalion on this last tour, no longer rotund and cheery as was his
+wont, but with face grey, serious and deep lined.  After him at the
+head of A Company marched Captain Duff, his rugged, heavy face
+looking thinner and longer than its wont but even fiercer than
+ever.  With eyes that looked straight before then, heedless of the
+line of silent onlookers, the men marched on, something in their
+set, haggard faces forbidding applause.  At the rear of the column
+marched the chaplain alone, and every one knew that he had left up
+in the Salient behind him his friend and comrade, the M. O., whose
+place in all other marching had been at his right hand.  All knew
+too how during this last go, in the face of death in its most
+terrifying form, they had carried out their wounded comrades one by
+one until all were brought to safety.  And all knew too, how the
+chaplain carried with him that day a sore and lonely heart for the
+loss of one who was more to him than batman, and who had become his
+loyal and devoted friend.  The chaplain's face was gaunt and thin,
+with hollow cheeks, but for all that, it wore a look of serene
+detachment.
+
+"Say, he looks awful tough," said a voice in Sergeant Mackay's ear.
+
+Sergeant Mackay turned sharply around upon Fatty Matthews.
+
+"Tough!  Tough!" he exclaimed, with a choke in his voice.  "You're
+a damned liar, that's what you are.  He looks fine.  He looks
+fine," he added again furiously.  "He looks as if hell itself
+couldn't scare him."
+
+In the sergeant's eyes strange lights were glistening.
+
+"Yes, you're right, sergeant," said Fatty Matthews humbly.  "You're
+right, and that's where he's been, too, I guess."
+
+Bravely and gallantly, with the historic and immortal "Cock o' the
+North" shrilling out on the evening air, the pipers played them on
+to the battalion parade ground, where they halted, silent still and
+with that strange air of detached indifference still upon them.
+They had been through hell.  Nothing else could surprise them.
+All else, indeed, seemed paltry.
+
+Briefly, but with heart-reaching words, the colonel thanked the
+pipers for what he called "an act of fine and brotherly courtesy."
+Then turning to his men, he spoke a few words before dismissal.
+
+"Men, you have passed through a long and hard time of testing.  You
+have not failed.  I am not going to praise you, but I want you to
+know that I am proud of you.  Proud to be your commanding officer.
+I know that whatever is before us, you will show the same spirit of
+endurance and courage.
+
+"We have lost this time twenty-nine men, eleven of them killed, and
+with these three very brave and very gallant officers, among them
+our medical officer, a very great loss to this battalion.  These
+men did their duty to the last.  We loved them.  We shall miss
+them, but to-day we are proud of them.  Let us give three cheers
+for our gallant dead."
+
+With no joyous outburst, but with a note of fierce, strained
+determination, came the cheers.  In spite of all he could do, Barry
+could not prevent a shudder as he heard the men about him cheering
+for those whom he had so recently seen lying, some of them sorely
+mutilated, in their grey blankets.
+
+"Now, men," concluded the O. C., "we must 'carry on.'  You will
+have a couple of hours in which to clean up and have supper, and
+then we shall have to-night a cinema show, to which I hope you will
+all come, and which I hope you will all greatly enjoy."
+
+The colonel's little speeches, as a rule, elicited appreciative
+cheers, but this afternoon there was only a grave silence.  After
+dismissal, the men went to their huts and were soon busy giving
+themselves a "high mark scrub" preliminary to the hot bath and
+"jungle hunt" in which they would indulge themselves to-morrow.
+
+As Barry was moving off the parade ground, the junior major caught
+up to him, and took him by the arm and said:
+
+"I have sent around my batman to your hut.  He will look after you
+until I can pick out a man from the new draft.  We all know how you
+feel about Hobbs, old man."
+
+"Thank you, major," said Barry quietly.  "I appreciate that."
+
+"You will be around to-night," continued the major.
+
+"No, I think not.  I have a lot of things to do.  All those letters
+to write."  Barry shuddered as he spoke.  For nothing in all his
+ministerial experience was to him a more exhausting and heartbreaking
+task than the writing of these letters to the relatives and friends
+of his dead comrades.
+
+"I think you had better come," said the major earnestly.  "I know
+the O. C. would like it, and the boys would like it too."
+
+"Do you think so?" said Barry.  "Then I'll be there."
+
+"Good man," said Major Bayne, patting him on the shoulder.  "That's
+the stuff we like in this battalion."
+
+Barry found his hut in order, his things out for airing, his tub
+ready, and supper in preparation.
+
+"Thanks, Monroe," he said to Major Bayne's batman, as he passed
+into his hut.
+
+As he entered his hut and closed the door, for the first time there
+swept over his soul an appalling and desolating sense of loneliness.
+It was his first moment of quiet, his first leisure to think of
+himself for almost two weeks.  With the loss of his batman there had
+been snapped the last link with that old home life of his, now so
+remote but all the dearer for that.  It came to him that while he
+remained a soldier, this was to be his continual experience.  Upon
+his return from every tour new gaps would stare at him.  Up in the
+lines they did not so terribly obtrude themselves, but back here in
+rest billets they thrust themselves upon him like hideous mutilations
+upon a well loved face.  He could hardly force himself to remove his
+muddy, filthy clothes.  He would gladly have laid himself down upon
+his cot just as he was, and given himself up to the luxury of his
+grief and loneliness, until sleep should come, but his life as a
+soldier had taught him something.  These months of discipline, and
+especially these last months of companionship with his battalion
+through the terrible experiences of war, had wrought into the very
+fibre of his life a sense of unity with and responsibility for his
+comrades.  His every emotion of loss, of grief, of heart-sickness
+carried with it the immediate suggestion and remembrance that his
+comrades too were passing through a like experience, and this was
+his salvation. Weary, sick, desolate as he felt himself in this
+hour, he remembered that many of his comrades were as he, weary,
+and sick and desolate.  He wondered how the major's batman felt.
+
+"Well, Monroe," he said with an attempt at a voice of cheer,
+"pretty tough go this time."
+
+"Yes, sir, very tough," said Monroe.  "I lost my chum this time,"
+he added after a few moments' silence.
+
+"Poor chap," said Barry.  "I'm awfully sorry for you.  It's hard to
+leave a friend up there."
+
+"It is that, sir," replied Monroe, and then he added hurriedly but
+with hesitation, "and if you will pardon me, sir, we all know it's
+awful tough for you.  The boys all feel for you, sir, believe me."
+
+The unexpected touch of sympathy was too much for Barry's self-
+control.  A rush of warm tears came to his eyes and choked his
+voice.  For some minutes he busied himself with his undressing, but
+Monroe continued speaking.
+
+"Yes, sir, the Wapiti bunch is getting pretty small.  Corporal Thom
+was with me--"
+
+"Corporal Thom!" cried Barry.  "Was Corporal Thom your chum?"
+
+"Yes, sir, for six years we was on the Bar U. M. together.  We was
+awful close friends.  He was a good chum."
+
+"Corporal Thom!" exclaimed Barry again; "he was your chum!  He was
+a great friend of mine too.  You have indeed suffered a great
+loss."
+
+"He thought a lot of you, sir," said Monroe.  "He has often talked
+to me about you."
+
+"But what a splendid death!" cried Barry.  "Perfectly glorious!"
+
+"I didn't hear, sir," said Monroe; "I came down three days ago, and
+only heard that a bomb got him."
+
+"Oh, splendid," said Barry.  "Nothing finer in the war.  Let me tell
+you about it.  There was an enemy raid coming up.  The corporal had
+got wind of it and called his men out.  They rushed into the front
+line bay.  Just as they got there, eight or ten of them, a live bomb
+fell hissing among them.  They all rushed to one end of the bay, but
+the corporal kicked the bomb to the other end, and then threw
+himself on top of it.  He was blown to pieces, but no one else was
+hurt."
+
+During the recital of this tale, Monroe stood looking at Barry and
+when he had finished his eyes were shining with tears.
+
+"Ay, sir, he was a man, sir," he said at length.
+
+"Yes, you have said it, Monroe.  He was a man, just a common man,
+but uncommonly like God, for He did the same thing.  He gave
+Himself for us."
+
+Monroe turned away to his work in silence.
+
+"Monroe," said Barry, calling him back, "look here, lad, it would
+not be right for us to grieve too much for Corporal Thom.  We ought
+to be thankful for him and proud of him, should we not?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I know, sir, but," he added while his lip trembled, "you
+hate to lose your chum."
+
+Only under compulsion of his conscience did Barry go to the cinema
+show that night, which in this camp was run under the chaplain
+service and by a chaplain.  He knew what the thing would be like.
+His whole soul shrunk from the silly, melodramatic films which he
+knew would constitute the programme as from a nauseating dose of
+medicine.  The billboard announced a double header, a trite and,
+especially to Canadians, a ridiculous representation of the
+experiences of John Bull and his wife and pretty daughter as
+immigrants to the Canadian Northwest, which was to be followed by
+the immortal Charlie Chaplin.
+
+The cinema hut was jammed--the whole battalion, now much reduced in
+numbers, officers and men being present, and with them the men of
+the base units and transports of other battalions.  It was in some
+senses an unusual gathering.  There was an entire absence of the
+wonted chaff and uproarious horseplay; instead a grave and almost
+bored air rested upon the men's faces.  The appalling experiences
+of the past thirteen days seemed to dwarf all other things in
+comparison.  They had been in the presence of the Big Thing; all
+else seemed petty; they had been looking into death's cold eyes;
+after that other sights seemed trivial.  Many of them carried sore
+hearts for their comrades with whom they had at other times
+foregathered in just such circumstances as these, but nevermore
+again.
+
+It was the custom in the battalion, as the officers came into such
+gatherings as this, to receive them with a ripple of applause, but
+to-night there was silence.  Barry arrived late.  When he appeared
+there fell upon the men a hush, and then as he moved toward the
+front seats reserved for the officers, the men began to rise until
+the whole battalion was standing silent and motionless, and so
+remained until he had found a seat.  It was Major Bayne who called
+his attention to this unusual demonstration, which was reserved
+only for great occasions and for nothing less than a battalion
+commander.
+
+"They are saluting you, Pilot," said Major Bayne in a whisper,
+himself standing with the other officers.
+
+Barry quickly lifted his eyes, saw the men standing, with all eyes
+directed toward him, slowly looked over the rows of faces, smiled a
+bright but slightly wavering smile, turned and saluted the
+Commanding Officer, and sat down all trembling and shaken by this
+most touching tribute of sympathy and affection.
+
+The show began with some pictures of great allied leaders which
+excited a mild interest and drew some perfunctory applause.  Then
+came the tragic comedy of John Bull's experiences as an immigrant,
+when just as the interest began to deepen, the machine blew up, and
+the pictures were off for the night.
+
+Ordinarily such a contretemps would have been by no means fatal to
+the evening's enjoyment, for in the battalion there was no lack of
+musical and other talent, and an impromptu entertainment was easily
+possible.  Ordinarily, too, in such an emergency there would at
+once have arisen a demand for the chaplain, who had come to be
+recognised as a great standby in times of need such as this.  To-
+night, however, everything seemed changed.  The mild suggestion of
+one of the men that the chaplain should take the piano was promptly
+discouraged by the dissenting growls of the others present.  They
+knew well how their chaplain was feeling.
+
+"What shall we do?" asked Major Bayne of Barry.
+
+"Get Coleman to the piano.  He is a perfect wizard," suggested
+Barry, indicating a young lieutenant who had come to the battalion
+with the recent draft, and who had done some accompaniments for
+Barry's violin playing.
+
+Lieutenant Coleman, on being called for, went to the piano, and
+began to play.  He was indeed a wizard as Barry had said, with a
+genius for ragtime and popular music hall ditties, and possessed
+also of the further gift of improvisation that made his services
+invaluable on just such an occasion as this.
+
+From one popular air to another he wandered, each executed with
+greater brilliance than the last, but he failed to excite anything
+more than a mild interest and approval.  The old songs which on
+other occasions had been wont to let loose the song birds of the
+battalion seemed to have lost their power.  It was not gloom, but a
+settled and immovable apathy which apparently nothing could break.
+
+"This is going awfully slow," said Major Bayne to Barry.  "I wish
+something could be done."
+
+"The boys are tired out," answered Barry, himself weary and sick of
+the performance and longing more than anything else for solitude
+and his cot.
+
+The Commanding Officer came over and sat beside them.  He was
+obviously worried and uneasy.
+
+"I don't like this," he said to the major.  "Coleman is doing his
+best, and is doing mighty well, but there is no heart in the boys,
+and it isn't entirely due to physical weakness.  I wish we could
+start something that would wake them up before they leave.  They
+would sleep much better."
+
+"The Pilot here can do it," said Major Bayne in an undertone, "but
+I rather hate to ask him for he is pretty much all in."
+
+They sat a little while longer listening to the men's half hearted
+drawling of "The Tulip and the Rose."
+
+"This won't do," said the O. C. abruptly.  "Get Dunbar over here."
+
+"Dunbar," said the O. C. when Barry had come to him.  "This thing
+is as dull as ditchwater.  I want to get the boys started up a bit.
+They are hopelessly dull.  Look at their eyes.  Do you know what
+they are seeing?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said Barry, "they are seeing what they have been
+looking at for the last thirteen days."
+
+"You are right, Dunbar, and that's what I want them to forget.  Now
+I know you don't feel very fit, and I hate to ask you, but I
+believe you can do something for the men with that violin of yours.
+What do you say?"
+
+"I have already sent a man for it," said Major Bayne.  "I knew he'd
+do it, and his violin lies there under the piano."
+
+Without announcement or preface Barry walked straight to the stage
+where Coleman, having miserably failed to strike fire with "The
+Tulip and the Rose," was grinding out, with great diligence and
+conscientious energy, "Irish Eyes."  Barry picked up his violin
+from the floor, mounted the stage, laid his violin on the piano,
+then he took his place behind the pianist and, bending over him,
+reached down, caught him under the legs and while still in full
+tide of his performance, lifted him squarely off the stool and
+deposited him upon a chair at one side of the stage.  Then,
+ignoring the amazed look upon Coleman's face, he proceeded gravely
+to tune his violin to the piano.  The act itself, the cool neatness
+with which it was performed, the astonished face of the outraged
+pianist, all together created a situation excessively funny.  The
+effect upon the audience was first one of surprise, then of
+unalloyed delight.  Immediately every man in the hall was wide
+awake, and as the humour of the situation grew upon them, they
+began to cheer in quite a lively manner.
+
+When Barry put his violin to his chin they cheered again, for often
+had he bewitched them with the magic of his instrument.
+
+Before he began to play, he glanced over his shoulder at the
+discomfited Coleman and remarked in an undertone, perfectly audible
+throughout the hall, "Now we'll have some music."
+
+Again the audience went off in a perfect storm of delighted cheers,
+which were renewed from time to time as Barry would turn looking
+with a grave face upon the still amazed Coleman, not yet quite
+recovered from his first astonishment.
+
+When quiet was finally restored, Barry began to play.  For his
+opening number he made a daring choice.  It was the intricate but
+altogether tuneful Ballade and Polonaise by Vieuxtemps.  Throughout
+the somewhat lengthy number he held his audience fixed under the
+mastery of his art.  It was a triumph immediate and complete.  When
+he had finished the last brilliant movement of the Polonaise, the
+men burst again into enthusiastic cheering, moved not only by the
+music but more by the spirit of their chaplain, which they could
+not fail to understand and appreciate.
+
+He had already achieved what the O. C. had desired, but he was not
+yet done with them.  Having finished his classical selection, which
+he was quite well aware Coleman could not touch, he turned to the
+latter and gravely motioned him to the piano stool.  Coleman
+hesitated, not knowing quite what would be demanded of him.
+
+"Come on, Coleman, be a sport," shouted a young officer, the
+audience joining once more in encouraging cheers.
+
+Still Coleman hesitated.  One never knew just what vagary the
+chaplain might put on.  Failing to move him by imploring gesture,
+Barry finally approached him, and with elaborate, courteous
+formality, offered him his hand, and finally conducted him to the
+piano stool.  Again the delighted audience went into a roar of
+cheers.
+
+From that moment, and for a full hour, Barry had them at his will,
+now listening spellbound to some simple old heart song, now beating
+hand and foot to a reel, now roaring to the limit of their lung
+power some old and well-loved popular air.
+
+"Ain't he a bird?" said the major to the Commanding Officer.
+
+"He's fine," assented the Commanding Officer with a great sigh.  "I
+can't tell you what a burden he has lifted from me.  It's worth a
+week's rest to the men, and, poor chaps, they need it."  Lowering
+his voice, he leaned over to the major and said, "We may be going
+up again to-morrow night."
+
+"To-morrow night, colonel!" exclaimed the major, aghast.
+
+"Not a word, but I have exceedingly grave news.  The front line is
+driven in.  One of the battalions holding is completely wiped out."
+
+"Wiped out?  Good God, and where are the enemy?"
+
+"As far as I can hear, although I haven't the particulars, they
+have broken through from Hooge to Hill 60, are through Sanctuary
+Wood, and down to Maple Copse.  Two relief battalions have gone up
+and are holding.  The chances are we shall have to go to back them
+up to-morrow evening.  It's hard on the boys, for they have come
+through a long and bitter experience, but not a word of this,
+major, to any one.  We shall let them have their rest to-night.
+That's why I was so anxious about this entertainment.  That's why I
+am particularly grateful to that Pilot of ours.  He is a wonder,
+and by the look of him he is about all in.  He is staying
+magnificently with the game.  And now, major, I am going to do
+something that will please him immensely.  At least I think it
+will."
+
+At a pause in the music, the O. C. arose and moved toward the
+stage.  Barry at once stepped back to the rear.  Standing before
+the men, the O. C. spoke briefly:
+
+"I wish to thank in your name, men, our chaplain, and his assistant,
+Mr. Coleman, for the very delightful evening they have given us.  I
+know how you feel by the way I feel myself.  I need say no more, and
+now, seeing that we have missed our parade service for the last two
+Sundays, and as I should not like the chaplain to become rusty in
+his duty, I'm going to ask him to bring our very pleasant evening to
+a close with a little service such as he himself would suggest."
+
+Hardly were the words out of his mouth, when Barry took up his
+violin and said:
+
+"Boys, did you have a good time to-night?"
+
+"Yes, sir; you bet we had, sir."
+
+"Well, then, if you had, sing this," and recited for them the first
+verses of the old hymn,
+
+
+"Abide with me, fast falls the even tide."
+
+
+When they had sung the first verse, he said again:
+
+"Now sing these words," and once more he recited the stirring
+verse:
+
+
+"I fear no foe, with Thee at hand to bless."
+
+
+When they had finished the verse, he said to them
+
+"Shall we have another?"
+
+"Go on, sir!" they said.  "Sure thing!"  "Finish it up!"
+
+"Then," said Barry, "sing these words":
+
+
+     "I need Thy presence every passing hour,
+      What but Thy grace can foil the tempter's power."
+
+
+Then when he had finished the verse, he dropped the violin and,
+moving to the edge of the platform, said, in a voice vibrant with
+emotion:
+
+"Don't sing these words, but say them as I play them for you."
+
+He then recited the moving words with which the old hymn closes:
+
+
+     "Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;
+      Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies;
+      Heaven's morning breaks, and earth's vain shadows flee,
+      In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me."
+
+
+"I want every one of you to say the words to himself as I play
+them."
+
+In long-drawn, tremulous notes he voiced the beautiful plea for aid
+in the hour of man's supreme need, which finds expression in the
+first two lines.  Then, with his bow gripping the strings in a
+great sweeping crescendo, he poured forth in full strong chords the
+triumphant faith with which the hymn closes.
+
+He laid his violin on the piano, stood quite a few moments looking
+upon them, then said:
+
+"Men, listen to these great words.  They might have been written
+for us, and for these days;" and he recited to them the words of
+the Hebrew psalm, eloquent of courage in the face of a crumbling
+world:
+
+
+"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.
+
+Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though
+the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.
+
+Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the
+mountains shake with the swelling thereof.  Selah.
+
+There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of
+God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High.
+
+God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved.  God shall help
+her and that right early.
+
+The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved; he uttered his voice,
+the earth melted.
+
+The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge.
+Selah.
+
+Come, behold the words of the Lord, what desolations he hath made
+in the earth.
+
+He maketh wars to cease unto the end of the earth; he breaketh the
+bow, and cutteth the spear in sunder: he burneth the chariot in the
+fire.
+
+Be still and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the
+heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.
+
+The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge."
+
+
+Then they followed him in the General Confession, and the Lord's
+prayer.
+
+"Captain Dunbar," said the O. C., offering him his hand, "you have
+done for us to-night a greater thing than you know just now.  You
+will understand better tomorrow.  With all my heart I thank you on
+the men's behalf and on my own behalf, for I assure you I needed it
+as much as they did.  I want to assure you, too, sir, that I
+received to-night the thing I needed."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Barry simply, too weary to utter another
+word, and staggered out, half dead with exhaustion.
+
+Half an hour later, as he was leisurely undressing, and drinking
+the cup of cocoa which Monroe had prepared for him, a message
+summoned him to the orderly room.  There he found Colonel Leighton
+with Major Bayne and the company commanders.
+
+"I have a communication here for you, Captain Dunbar," said the
+O. C., "from your D. A. C. S.," and he passed him a little slip.
+
+It was the announcement of his "leave."
+
+"Well, what do you think of that?" said the O. C.  "How does that
+suit you?"
+
+"Well, sir," said Barry, uncertainty and hesitation in his voice,
+"I'd like the leave, all right, but can I conveniently be spared
+just now?"
+
+"Most certainly," said the O. C., "and, what's more, I want you to
+go to-night.  Can you get ready?"
+
+"I suppose so, sir," said Barry, wearily.
+
+"By Jove! listen to him," said the O. C.  "He hates to leave us,
+doesn't he?"  And they all laughed.  "Now, Dunbar," he said, "no
+more posing.  You catch the leave train to-night at Poperinghe.  As
+a matter of fact, I think it starts somewhere about twelve."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Barry.  "I think I can catch it."
+
+"Then good luck!" said the O. C., rising from his chair.  "Every
+one of us here would like to be in your place, but since it isn't
+himself, every man is glad that it should be you."
+
+Still Barry hesitated.
+
+"I really hate to leave you, sir, just now," he said.  "I mean
+that," he added with a little nervous laugh.
+
+"Oh, come on, Dunbar," said the O. C. in a voice whose gruffness
+might signify almost any emotion, but with a touch upon his
+shoulder that Barry knew meant comradeship.  "Say good-bye to the
+boys here, and get out."
+
+They had just finished the plan for the campaign of the next night,
+and every man in that little company knew that for him this might
+be his last "Good-bye" to the chaplain.  It only added to the depth
+of their feeling that they knew that of all this Barry was
+unconscious.  But, whether it was that unconsciously he had
+gathered something of the real significance of the situation, or
+whether it was that he himself had reached the limit of emotional
+control, as he passed from man to man, shaking hands in farewell,
+his lips refused to utter a single word, but in his eyes were
+unshed tears that spoke for him.
+
+Major Bayne followed him to the door, and outside:
+
+"Take my horse and Monroe with you, and good-bye, old man.  All
+sorts of good luck.  Remember that we all feel to-night that you
+are really one of us, and that we are better men because we have
+known you.  Goodbye."
+
+Again Barry was conscious of that strange suggestion, almost of
+impending calamity.
+
+"I hate to go, major," he said.  "I believe I'll wait."
+
+"Nonsense," said the major impatiently.  "Take your leave when you
+get your chance, and have a good time.  You have earned it."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE PASSING OF McCUAIG
+
+
+At Poperinghe the leave train was waiting in the station, and a
+little company of officers and men were having their papers
+examined preparatory to their securing transportation.  Some of
+the officers were from his own brigade and were known to Barry.
+
+"A big push on at the front, I hear," said one of them to a friend.
+
+"Yes, major," said his friend.  "They have been having a perfect
+hell of a time."
+
+"By the way, your men are going in to-morrow, I understand," said
+the major, turning to Barry.
+
+"I don't think so, major," replied Barry.  "We have just come out."
+
+"Oh, well, I had it from fairly good authority that they were going
+in to-morrow night."
+
+Barry hunted up Monroe, whom he found talking to a signaller of the
+battalion.
+
+"Did you boys hear anything about the battalion going up to-morrow?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the signaller promptly.  "We had it over the
+wires.  They are going in, all right, to-morrow night."
+
+Monroe kicked the signaller on the ankle.
+
+"Did you hear anything about it, Monroe?" enquired Barry.
+
+"No, sir.  I don't believe these rumours at all.  They are always
+flying about."
+
+"But you say you got it over the wires?" said Barry to the signaller.
+
+"Yes, sir.  That is, sir, of course, we get a lot of messages.
+Perhaps I'm mixed up," said the signaller in very evident confusion.
+
+"And you haven't heard anything, Monroe?" said Barry.
+
+"No, sir, not a thing, and I think I would have heard if there had
+been any truth in it."
+
+Something in the childlike expression of innocence upon Monroe's
+face wakened Barry's suspicion.
+
+"Look here, Monroe," he said, "don't lie to me.  Now, I'm talking
+to you as your chaplain.  Tell me the truth.  Have you heard of the
+battalion going in to-morrow?"
+
+Under Barry's eye Monroe began to squirm.
+
+"Well, sir, to tell you the truth, I did hear a rumour of that
+kind."
+
+"And you?" said Barry, turning upon the signaller, "tell me the
+truth."
+
+"Well, sir, it's just as I said.  We had it over the wires.  The
+battalion is going in."
+
+"Very well, get my stuff, Monroe," said Barry, quietly.  "I'm going
+back."
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir."
+
+"Do you hear me?  Get my stuff; I'm not going out to-night."
+Barry's tone admitted no further talk, and Monroe, swearing deeply
+at his friend the signaller and at his own stupidity, and
+especially at his own "lack of nerve to see his lie through,"
+hunted out Barry's baggage and stood ready for his officer to
+return.
+
+"Hello, Dunbar," said the major, as he saw Barry about to mount his
+horse.  "What's up?  Forgotten something?  You'll surely miss your
+train."
+
+"I'm not going," said Barry briefly, getting himself settled in his
+saddle.
+
+"Not going!" exclaimed the major.  "What do you mean?  I thought
+you were on leave."
+
+"Changed my mind," said Barry cheerfully.
+
+"I say, old man," said the major, "there may be nothing in what I
+told you about the push.  Anyway, you know we cannot postpone our
+leave until all the fighting is over."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," replied Barry.  "There are lots of you
+combatant chaps in a battalion, but there is only one chaplain."
+
+"Oh, hang it all," cried the major, "take your leave.  Well,"
+seeing that Barry paid no heed to his advice, "the best of luck,
+old man," he said, offering his hand.  "I guess you're all right
+after all."
+
+The exhilaration that had sustained Barry during the evening
+suddenly fled, leaving him flat in spirit and limp in body.  What
+he wanted most of all was sleep, and morning was not so far away.
+He rode back to his hut, and, bidding Monroe let him sleep all day,
+he tumbled into bed and knew nothing until late in the afternoon.
+Monroe, too, had slept in, and, after rising, had been busy about
+the hut, so that he had no further information as to the battalion's
+movements.  The chaplain's hut was some distance from Headquarters
+and from the battalion camp.  Hence it came that while Barry was
+writing hard at his letters throughout the remainder of the
+afternoon, he was quite unaware of what was taking place. Monroe,
+however, returned about six o'clock to say that the battalion had
+been "standing to" all afternoon, but that the general feeling was
+that there would be no advance until late at night.
+
+Glad of the opportunity to catch up with his correspondence, Barry
+paid little heed to the passing of time.  His last letter was to
+the V. A. D., in which he poured out the bitterness of his
+disappointment that he was not even now on his way to Boulogne and
+to her, and expressing the hope that after this "show" was over, he
+would be granted leave, upon which happy event he would with all
+speed proceed to her.  She had been speaking of a trip to England.
+Would it not be a very wise and proper proceeding that she should
+make her leave to synchronise with his?  Now he must be off, and so
+with love to her, and with the hope that they might see London
+together--
+
+Just then Monroe came with the startling news that the battalion
+had "moved up" hours ago.
+
+"Which road?" enquired Barry, springing to his feet.
+
+"Don't know, sir," replied Monroe, who had evidently his own
+opinion about matters.  "But I met a padre," he continued, "who
+told me that there was a stream of wounded passing through the
+Brandhoek Clearing Station.  He said they were very short-handed
+there, sir," and Monroe regarded his officer with anxious eyes.
+
+"I hate to take you up there, Monroe," said Barry with a smile.
+
+"Oh, that's all right, sir," said Monroe, hastily, "but I guess
+we'll have to hurry."
+
+"I remember, Monroe, that your major and you would have sent me out
+of this, but you know well enough that there's only one place for
+me to-night, and the question is, where is the battalion--Ypres
+Barracks, Chateau Beige, Zillebeck, or where?"
+
+"I enquired at the transports, sir," said Monroe, "and no one
+appeared to know.  They moved out quietly and left no word behind."
+
+"All right, we'll go up to Chateau Belge, and if they are not
+there, we'll make a shot at Zillebeck," said Barry.  "We'll go
+right away.  We don't need a lot of truck this trip."
+
+It was a long and tiresome march, but Barry found himself
+remarkably fit, and already under the exhilaration of what was
+before him.  At the Chateau Belge they found no word of their
+battalion, but they were informed that the shelling on the
+Kruisstraat road had been bad all afternoon, and was still going
+on.  The Boches were paying particular attention indeed to the
+crossroads.
+
+"All right," said Barry.  "We'll go up and have a look at it,
+anyway."
+
+A hundred yards further up the road they were held up by a sudden
+burst of H. E. shells, which fell in near proximity to the
+crossroads before them.
+
+"Well, we'll just wait here a few minutes until we can time these
+things," said Barry, sitting down by the roadside.
+
+As they were waiting there, three soldiers passed them at quick
+march.
+
+"Better wait, boys," called Barry; "they are dropping quite a few
+shells at the crossroads."
+
+"We are runners, sir," said one of them.  "I guess we'll just take
+a chance, thank you, sir."
+
+"All right, boys, if you think best," replied Barry.  "Good luck!"
+
+"Thank you, sir," they said, and set off at a smart pace.
+
+While Barry sat listening to the sound of their footsteps upon the
+pavement, there came that terrific whine, followed by an appalling
+crash, as a H. E. shell landed full upon the road.  Barry sprang to
+his feet.  Three other shells followed in quick succession, then
+there came the sound of hurrying feet and a man appeared, bleeding
+horribly and gasping.
+
+"Oh, my God!  My God!  They are gone!  They are gone!"
+
+"Sit down," said Barry.  "Now, where's your wound?"
+
+"My arm, sir," said the man.
+
+Barry cut off the blood-soaked sleeve, ripped open his first aid
+dressing, and bound the wound up tightly.  Then he put a tourniquet
+upon the arm above the wound.
+
+"The other boys killed, you say?" he inquired.
+
+"Yes, sir, blown to pieces.  Oh, my God!" he groaned, shuddering.
+"My chum's whole head was blown off, and the other has his belly
+all torn up."
+
+"Now look here, old man," said Barry, "you lie down here where you
+are, and keep perfectly still," for the man was throwing himself
+about, more from shock than from pain.  "We'll get you to the
+dressing station in a few minutes.  Monroe, run and get the
+stretcher bearers, and I'll go and see how things are up yonder."
+
+He threw his coat over the wounded man, and set off at a run toward
+the crossroads.  He found matters as the man had said, the two
+bodies lying in a dark patch of bloodsoaked dust, one with head
+quite blown off, and the other with abdomen horribly torn.
+
+He hurried back to the wounded man, who had recovered somewhat from
+his shock and was now lying on his side quietly moaning.  Barry got
+from him the names and units of the men who had been killed.
+
+"I will drop a note to your mother, too, my boy," he said, "and
+tell her about your wound."
+
+"Oh, sir," said the boy quickly--he was only a boy after all--
+"don't tell her--at least, tell her I'm all right.  I'll be all
+right, won't I?"
+
+"Sure thing," said Barry, "don't you fear.  I won't alarm her, and
+I'll tell her what good stuff you are, boy."
+
+"All right, sir.  Thank you, sir," said the boy quietly.
+
+"And I'll tell her, too, that you are not worrying a bit, and that
+you know that you are in the keeping of your Heavenly Father.  How
+is that?"
+
+"Yes, sir," said the boy in a low voice.  "I will be glad to have
+you tell her that.  She taught me all that, sir.  Poor mother,
+she'll worry though, I know," he added with a little catch in his
+throat.
+
+"Now you brace up," said Barry firmly.  "You have got off mighty
+well.  You have got a nice little blighty there, and you are going
+to be all right.  I'll give your mother the best report about you,
+so that she won't worry."
+
+"Oh, thank you," said the boy, with fervent gratitude, "that will
+be fine.  And you are right," he added, a note of resolution coming
+into his voice.  "I got off mighty well, and it's only my left arm,
+thank goodness.  I'll brace up, sir, never fear," he added between
+his teeth, choking back a groan.
+
+Barry accompanied the stretcher-bearer back to the chateau and gave
+the man over into the care of the C. A. M. C.
+
+"Can you put a squad on to digging a grave?" he inquired of the
+officer in charge.  "If so, though I'm in an awful hurry, I'll stay
+to bury those poor chaps."
+
+"Sure thing, we can," said the officer.  "We'll do the very best we
+can to hurry it."
+
+In about an hour and a half Barry was on his way again.  He dodged
+the shelling at the crossroads, and following a track across the
+open fields, arrived at the Zillebeck Bund without adventure.
+
+Here to his relief he found the battalion.  He made his way at once
+to Headquarters, and walked in upon a meeting of officers.
+
+"Well, I'm--" exclaimed Colonel Leighton, checking himself hard,
+"who have we here!  What in hell are you doing here, Pilot?  I
+thought you would be safely in old Blighty by this time," he added,
+shaking him warmly by the hand.
+
+"Oh, you couldn't work that game on me, colonel," said Barry
+cheerily, going round the group of men, who gave him an eager
+welcome.  "You thought you had shipped me off, just as the fun was
+starting, but I got on to you."
+
+"Well, I'll be darned," said Major Bayne.  "How did you find out?"
+
+Barry told him, adding, "You will have to train your man to lie
+more cheerfully."
+
+"That's what comes of a man's environment," said the major,
+disgustedly.  "I was always too truthful, anyway."
+
+"Well, sir," said Barry, turning to the colonel.  "I'm awfully glad
+to find you here.  I was afraid I'd lost you."
+
+"Well, gentlemen," said the colonel, "you have all got your orders.
+Does any one want to ask a question?  Well, then, it's pretty
+simple after all.  Two companies advance as far as Maple Copse, and
+gradually work up until they feel the enemy, then put in a block
+and hold against attack, at all costs.  The other two companies are
+to follow up in support at Zillebeck Village.  Later on, when our
+reserves come up, and when our guns return--I hear they are pushing
+them up rapidly--we are promised a go at those devils.  Meantime we
+have got to hold on, but I expect the battalion will be pulled out
+very shortly."
+
+The flickering candles lit up the faces of the men crowding the
+dugout.  They were elaborately careless and jolly, but their eyes
+belied their faces.  Under the careless air there was a tense and
+stern look of expectation.  They were all sportsmen, and had all
+experienced the anxious nervous thrill of the moments preceding a
+big contest.  Once the ball was off, their nervousness would go,
+and they would be cool and wary, playing the game for all they had
+in them.
+
+"Now, gentlemen," said the colonel, as they prepared to leave the
+dugout, "before I let you go, there is one thing I want to say.
+It's a tradition of the British army that any soldier or officer
+who has lost his unit marches toward the sound of the guns.  I am
+proud to-night that we have an example of that old tradition here.
+We left our chaplain behind, and he didn't know where his battalion
+had gone, but he moved toward the sound of the guns.  That is what
+I would expect from any of you, gentlemen, but it's none the less
+gratifying to find one's expectations realised."
+
+Only his flaming face revealed Barry's emotion as the colonel was
+speaking.
+
+"Now then, gentlemen, carry on, and the best of luck."
+
+"Sir," said Barry, "what about a little prayer?"
+
+"Fine," said the colonel heartily, while round the room there ran a
+murmur of approval.
+
+Barry pulled out his little Bible and read, not one of the
+"fighting psalms" but the tenderly exquisite words of the
+Shepherd's song.  His voice was clear, steady and ringing with
+cheery confidence.  His prayer was in the spirit of the psalm,
+breathing high courage and calm trust, even in the presence of the
+ultimate issue.
+
+In a single sentence he commended his comrades to the keeping of
+the Eternal God of Truth and Justice and Mercy, asking that they
+might be found steadfast in their hour of testing and worthy of
+their country and their cause.
+
+Together they joined in the Lord's prayer; then lifting over them
+his hands, he closed the little service with that ancient and
+beautiful formula of blessing, which for two thousand years has
+sent men out from the Holy Place of Meeting to face with hearts
+resolved whatever life might hold for them.
+
+One by one, as they passed out the officers shook hands with Barry,
+thanking him for the service, and expressing their delight that he
+was with them again.
+
+"What are we going to do with you, Pilot?" inquired the colonel.
+
+"I thought I'd stick around with the boys," said Barry.
+
+"Well," said the colonel, gravely, "of course, there's no use of
+your going up to the attack.  You would only be in the way.  You
+would be an embarrassment to the officers.  That reminds me, there
+was a call from Menin Mill for you this afternoon.  They are having
+an awful rush there.  Our own R. A. P. will be in Zillebeck
+Village, and our Headquarters will be there."
+
+"I'll go there, sir, if you agree," said Barry, and after some
+discussion the matter was so arranged.
+
+In a ruined cellar in the village of Zillebeck, a mile and a half
+further in, the R. A. P. was established and there carried on
+during the desperate fighting of the next three days.  Through this
+post a continuous stream of wounded passed, the stretcher cases all
+night, the walking cases all day and all night.  In spite of its
+scenes of horror and suffering the R. A. P. was a cheery spot.  The
+new M. O. was strange to his front line business, but he was of the
+right stuff, cool, quick with his fingers, and undisturbed by the
+crashing of bursting shells.  The stretcher bearers and even the
+wounded maintained an air of resolute cheeriness, that helped to
+make bearable what otherwise would have been a nightmare of
+unspeakable horror.  Attached to the R. A. P. was an outer building
+wherein the wounded men were laid after treatment.  Thither in a
+pause of his work, Barry would run to administer drinks, ease the
+strain of an awkward position, speak a word of cheer, say a prayer,
+or sing snatches of a hymn or psalm.  There was little leisure for
+reflection, nor if there had been would he have indulged in
+reflection, knowing well that only thus could he maintain his self-
+control and "carry on."
+
+With each wounded man there came news of the progress of the
+fighting.  The boys were holding splendidly, indeed were gradually
+eating into the enemy front.  They brought weird stories of his
+comrades, incidents pathetic, humorous, heroic, according to the
+temperament of the narrator.  But from more than one source came
+tales of Knight's machine gun section to which McCuaig was
+attached.  Knight himself had been killed soon after entering the
+line, and about his men conflicting tales were told: they were
+holding a strong point, they were blown up, they had shifted their
+position, they were wiped out, they were still "carrying on."
+McCuaig was the hero of every tale.  He was having the time of his
+life.  He had gone quite mad.  He was for going "out and over"
+alone.
+
+The first authentic account came with young Pickles, now a runner,
+who made his way hobbling to Headquarters with a message from A
+Company, and who reported that he had fallen in with McCuaig by the
+way, and by him had been commandeered to carry ammunition, under
+threat of instant death.
+
+"Where did you see McCuaig first, Pickles?" Barry inquired, anxious
+to learn the truth about his friend.
+
+"Way up Lover's Walk," said young Pickles, who was in high spirits,
+"under a pile of brush and trees.  I though it was a wildcat, or
+something moving and snarling--the light was kind of dim--and when
+I went up there was McCuaig.  He was alone.  Two or three men were
+lying near him, dead, I guess, and he was swearing, and talking to
+himself something fierce.  I was scart stiff when he called me to
+him.  I went over, and he says to me, 'Say, youngster,' just like
+that, 'you know where this walk used to drop down into the trench?
+Well, there's a lot of machine gun ammunition over there, all fixed
+up and ready.  You go and bring it up here.'  I tried to get out of
+it, sayin' I was bringing a 'hurry up' message down, but he turns
+his machine gun on me, and says, 'Young man, it's only a couple of
+hundred yards down there, and fairly good cover.  They can't see
+you.  Go and bring that stuff here.  If you don't I'll blow you to
+hell just where you stand.'  You bet I promised.  I got that
+ammunition so quick.  Oh, of course, he's crazy, all right," said
+young Pickles, "but he is fighting like hell.  I beg pardon, sir."
+
+"Doctor, I'm going after him," said Barry.  "He will stay there
+until he bleeds to death.  He is my oldest friend."
+
+"All right, padre, if you say so," said the M. O., "but it's a
+nasty job.  I should not care for it."
+
+Barry knew the area thoroughly.  He got from young Pickles an exact
+description of the location of the spot where McCuaig had last been
+seen, and with the returning stretcher bearers set off for the
+wood, which was about a thousand yards further on.
+
+The communication trench leading up to the wood, which had been
+constructed with such care and of which the Canadians were so
+proud, had been blown up from end to end by the systematic and
+thorough bombardment of the three days before.  The little party,
+therefore, were forced to make their way overland by the light of
+the star shells.
+
+They reached the wood in safety.  Barry looked about him in utter
+bewilderment.  Every familiar feature of the landscape was utterly
+blotted out.  The beautiful ambrosial wood itself, of heavy trees
+and thick tinder-brush, was a mat of tangled trunks, above which
+stood splintered stubs.  Not a tree, not a branch, hardly a green
+leaf was left.  Under that mat of fallen trunks were A and C
+Companies, somewhere, holding, blocking, feeling up toward the Hun.
+
+The shells were whining overhead, going out and coming in, but
+mostly coming in.  None, however, were falling on the wood because
+here friend and foe were lying almost within bayonet length of each
+other.  Only an occasional burst from a machine gun broke the
+silence that hung over this place of desolation and death.
+
+"That's the company Headquarters," said the stretcher bearer,
+pointing to what looked like a bear den, under some fallen trees.
+Barry pushed aside the blanket and poking his head in, found Duff
+and a young lieutenant working at a table by the light of a
+guttering candle.
+
+"For the love of God, Pilot," exclaimed Duff, springing up and
+gripping Barry's hand, "it's good to see you, but what are you
+doing here?"
+
+"I came up for McCuaig," said Barry, after a warm greeting to both.
+
+"Oh, say, that's good.  We have got him as far as the next dugout
+here, the old bear.  I've been trying to get him out for half a
+day.  There's a soldier for you!  He's been potting Boches with his
+blessed machine gun, scouting from one hole to another for the last
+two days, and he's got a nasty wound.  I'm awfully glad you have
+come."
+
+"How are things going, Duff?"
+
+"We have got the ----s so that they can't move a foot, and we'll
+hold them, unless they bring up a lot of reserves."
+
+"By Jove!  Duff, you boys are wonderful."
+
+"I say," said Duff, brushing aside the compliment, "did young
+Pickles get through?  That young devil is the limit.  You'd have
+thought he was hunting coyotes."
+
+"Yes, he got through.  Got a blighty though, I guess.  It was he
+that told me about McCuaig."
+
+"Well, Pilot, old man," said Duff, taking him by the arm, "get out!
+Get out!  Don't waste time.  There may be a break any minute.  Get
+out of here."
+
+Duff was evidently in a fever of anxiety.  "You had no right to
+come up here anyway; though, by Jove, I'm glad to see you."
+
+"What's the fuss, Duff?" said Barry.  "Am I in any more danger than
+you?  I say," he continued, with tense enthusiasm, "do you realise,
+Duff, that as long as Canada lasts they will talk of what you are
+doing up here these days?"
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Pilot, get out," said Duff crossly.  "You make
+me nervous.  Besides, you have got to get that wounded man out, you
+know.  Come along."
+
+He hustled Barry out and over to the neighbouring dugout, where
+they found McCuaig with his beloved machine gun still at his side.
+The wounded man was very pale, but extremely cheerful, smoking a
+cigarette.
+
+"I'm glad to see you, sir," he said quietly, reaching out his hand.
+
+"Good old man," said Barry, gripping his hand hard, "but you are a
+blamed old fool, you know."
+
+McCuaig made no reply, but there was a happy light on his face.
+Under Duff's compelling urging they got the wounded man on a
+stretcher and started on their long and painful carry.
+
+"Now, boys," warned Duff, "you are all right up here, except for
+machine guns, but don't take any chances further out.  That's where
+the danger is.  When the shells come, don't rush things.  Take your
+time.  Now, good-bye, Pilot, it's worth a lot to have seen you
+anyway."
+
+"Good-bye, old man," said Barry, smiling at him.  "You're the
+stuff.  Good luck, old man.  God keep you."
+
+Duff nodded, and waved him away.  The return trip was made in
+comparative quiet.
+
+"What do you think, doctor?" said Barry, after the M. O. had
+completed his examination.
+
+"Oh, we'll pull him through all right," said the M. O.  "When did
+you get this, McCuaig?" he continued, touching a small wound over
+the kidney.
+
+"Dunno, rightly.  Guess I got it when we was blown up, yesterday."
+
+"Then why didn't you come in at once?" inquired the M. O.
+indignantly.
+
+McCuaig looked at him in mild surprise.
+
+"Why, they was all blown up, and there wasn't anybody to run the
+gun."
+
+The M. O. examined the wound more closely and shook his head at
+Barry.
+
+"We won't touch that now.  We'll just bandage it up.  Are you
+feeling pretty comfortable?"
+
+"Fine," said McCuaig with cheerful satisfaction.  "We held them up,
+I guess.  They thought they was going to walk right over us.  They
+was comin' with their packs on their backs.  But the boys changed
+their minds for them, I guess."
+
+A reminiscent smile lingered upon the long, eaglelike face.
+
+Half an hour later Barry found a minute to run into the adjoining
+room where the wounded lay.
+
+"Anything you want, McCuaig?" he asked.
+
+"A drink, if you ain't too busy, but I hate to take your time."
+
+"Oh, you go to thunder," said Barry.  "Take my time!  What am I
+for?  Any pain, Mac?"
+
+"No, not much.  I'm a little sleepy."
+
+Barry turned the flash-light on his face.  He was startled to find
+it grey and drawn.  He brought the M. O., who examined the wounded
+man's condition.
+
+"No pain, eh, Mac?"
+
+"No, sir," said McCuaig cheerfully.
+
+"All right, boy, just lie still," said the M. O., beckoning Barry
+after him.
+
+"He is going out," he said when they reached the dressing room,
+"and he's going fast.  That wound in the back has been bleeding a
+long time."
+
+"Oh, doctor, can't anything be done?  You know he's got a
+remarkable constitution.  Can't something be done?"
+
+"There are times when a doctor wishes he had some other job," said
+the M. O., "and this is one of them."
+
+"I say, doctor, will you get along without me for a while?" said
+Barry.
+
+"Go on," said the M. O., nodding to him.
+
+Barry took a candle and went in beside his friend.  As he sat there
+gazing upon the greying face, the wounded man opened his eyes.
+
+"That you, Barry?" he asked with a quiet smile.
+
+Barry started.  Only in the very first weeks of their acquaintance
+had McCuaig called him by his first name, and never during the past
+months had be used anything but his rank title.  Now all rank
+distinctions were obliterated.  They were as man to man.
+
+"Yes, Mac, it's me.  Do you know what I was thinking about?  I was
+thinking of the first time I saw you coming down that rapid in your
+canoe."
+
+"I remember well, Barry.  I often think of it.  It's a long time
+ago," said McCuaig in his soft, slow voice.  "I've never been sorry
+but once that I come, and that time it was my own fault, but I
+didn't understand the game."
+
+"You've made a great soldier, Mac.  We are all proud of you," said
+Barry, putting his hand upon McCuaig's.  McCuaig's long thin
+fingers tightened upon Barry's hand.
+
+"I think I'm going out," he said, with his eyes on Barry's face.
+"What do you think?"
+
+It was the time for truth telling.
+
+"Oh, Mac, old man," said Barry, putting his head down close to him
+to hide from him the rush of tears that came to his eyes, "I'm
+afraid you are, and I hate to have you go."
+
+"Why, Barry, you crying for me?" asked McCuaig in a kind of wonder.
+"Say, boy, I'm awful glad you feel that way.  Somehow I don't feel
+quite so lonely now."
+
+"Oh, Mac, you are my oldest, my best friend in the battalion, in
+all the world," said Barry.
+
+"Oh, I just love to hear you say that, boy.  Do you know I wanted
+to tell you how I felt about that time on the boat, you remember?"
+Barry nodded.  "Barry, tell me, honest Injun, did I make good as a
+soldier?"
+
+"The best ever," said Barry.  "They all say so, officers and men.
+I heard the colonel say so the other day."
+
+Again the smile came.
+
+"Barry, it was you that done that for me.  You showed me, and you
+done it so nice.  I never forgot that, and I always wanted to tell
+you how I felt about it.  Barry, you done a lot for me."
+
+"Oh, Mac, don't talk like that," said Barry, trying to keep his
+voice steady.  "I did so little and I wanted to do so much."
+
+"Say, I like to hear you.  I'd like to stay a little longer just to
+be with you, Barry.  I've watched you just like you was my own boy,
+and I've been awful proud of you, but I didn't like to say so."
+
+The uncovering of the great love of this simple, humble hearted man
+broke down Barry's self-control.  He made no effort to check his
+falling tears.
+
+"I'm getting--kind of weak, Barry," whispered McCuaig.  "I guess I
+won't be long, mebbe."
+
+His words recalled Barry's nerve.
+
+"Mac, would you like me to say a prayer?" he asked.  "Just as you
+feel about it, you know."
+
+"Yes--I would--but I ain't--your religion--you know--though--I
+like--awful well--the way--you talk about--Him."
+
+"I know you are R. C., Mac, but after all you know we have just the
+one Father in Heaven and the one Saviour."
+
+"Yes,--I know, Barry.  It's all the same."
+
+Barry had a sudden inspiration.
+
+"Wait, Mac, a minute," he said.
+
+He hurried out to the dressing room, seeking a crucifix, but could
+find none there.
+
+"I'll run across to Headquarters," he said.
+
+"Say, there's a machine gun playing that street awful," said the
+M. O.'s sergeant, "to say nothing of whizzbangs."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," said Barry.  "I'll make a dash for it."
+
+But at Headquarters he was no more successful.  He went out into
+the garden in the rear of the R. A. P., and returned with two small
+twigs.  The M. O. bound them together in the form of a cross.
+Barry took it and hastened to McCuaig's side.
+
+The hurried breathing and sunken cheeks of the wounded man showed
+that the end was not far.  As Barry knelt beside him, he opened his
+eyes.  There was a look of distress upon his face, which Barry
+understood.  God was near.  And God was terrible.  He wanted his
+priest.
+
+"Barry," he whispered, "I've not--been a good man.  I haven't been--
+mean to anybody,--but I used--to swear--and fight, and--"
+
+"Mac, listen to me.  We're all the same," said Barry, in a quiet,
+clear voice.  "Suppose I'd injured you."
+
+"You wouldn't--Barry."
+
+"But suppose I did some real mean thing to you, and then came and
+said I was sorry, would you forgive me?"
+
+"Would I--I'd never think--of anything--you did--to me, Barry."
+
+"Mac, that's the way your Father in Heaven feels to you.  We have
+all done wrong, but He says, 'I will blot out all your sins.'  You
+needn't fear to trust Him, Mac."
+
+"I guess--that's so, Barry--I guess that's--all right."
+
+"Yes, it's all right.  Now I'll say a prayer.  Look, Mac!"
+
+He held up the little wooden cross before his eyes.  A smile of joy
+and surprise transfigured the dying face.
+
+"I see it!--I see--it!" he whispered, and made a movement with his
+lips.  Barry laid the cross upon them, and with that symbol of the
+Divine love and of the Divine sacrifice pressed to the dying lips,
+he prayed in words such as a child might use.
+
+For some time after the prayer McCuaig lay with his eyes shut, then
+with a sudden accession of strength, he opened them and looking up
+into Barry's eyes, said:
+
+"Barry, I'm all right now. . . .  You helped me again."
+
+The long thin hands, once of such iron strength, began to wander
+weakly over the blanket, until touching Barry's they closed upon
+it, and held it fast.
+
+"I--won't--forget--you--ever--" he whispered.  The nerveless
+fingers with difficulty lifted Barry's hand to the cold lips.
+"Good--bye--Bar--ry--" he said.
+
+"Good-bye, dear old comrade.  Good-bye, dear old friend," said
+Barry in a clear quiet voice, gazing through his falling tears
+straight into the dying eyes.
+
+"Good--night--"  The whisper faded into silence.  A quiet smile lay
+on the white face.  The eyes closed, there was a little tired sigh,
+and the brave tender spirit passed on to join that noble company of
+immortals who abide in the Presence of the Eternal God of Truth and
+Love, and "go no more out forever," because they are akin to Him.
+
+In the sorely tortured graveyard, beside the little shell-wrecked
+Zillebeck church, in a hole made by an enemy shell, they laid
+McCuaig--a fitting resting place for one who had lived his days in
+the free wild spaces of the Canadian west, a fitting tomb for as
+gallant a soldier as Canada ever sent forth to war to make the
+world free.
+
+That night the battalion was relieved.  Worn, spent, but with
+spirit unbroken, they crawled out from under that matted mass of
+tangled trunks, sending out their wounded before them, and leaving
+their buried dead behind them, to hold with other Canadian dead the
+line which from St. Julien, by Hooge, Sanctuary Wood, and Maple
+Copse, and Mount Sorel, and Hill 60, and on to St. Eloi, guards the
+way to Ypres and to the sea.  To Canada every foot of her great
+domain, from sea to sea, is dear, but while time shall last Canada
+will hold dear as her own that bloodsoaked sacred soil which her
+dead battalions hold for Honour, Faith and Freedom.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+LONDON LEAVE AND PHYLLIS
+
+
+The leave train pulled into the Boulogne station exactly twenty-six
+hours late.  As Barry stepped off the train he was met by the
+R. T. O., an old Imperial officer with a brisk and important
+military manner.
+
+"You are the O. C. train, sir?" he inquired.
+
+"I am, sir," replied Barry, saluting.
+
+"You have had a hard time, I understand," said the R. T. O., drawing
+him off to one side and speaking in a low tone.
+
+"Yes sir, we HAVE had a hard time," replied Barry, "at least the
+men have.  This is my report, sir."
+
+The R. T. O. took the document, opened it, glanced hurriedly
+through it.
+
+"Ah," he said, "ninety-seven casualties, thirteen fatal.  Very bad.
+Six burned.  This is truly terrible."
+
+"There were only two soldiers burned, sir," replied Barry, "but it
+IS terrible, especially when you think that the men were going on
+leave and were supposed to have got quit of the danger zone."
+
+"Very, very terrible," said the officer.  "You ran off the track, I
+understand."
+
+"No, sir, it was a collision.  There must have been gross
+carelessness, sir," said Barry.  "I trust there will be an
+investigation.  I have taken the liberty to suggest that, sir, in
+my report."
+
+Barry's voice was stern.
+
+"You need have no apprehension on that score, sir," said the
+R. T. O., with his eyes still upon the report.  "This is very clear
+and concise.  I see you make no mention of your own services in
+connection with the affair, but others have.  I have had a most
+flattering telegram from the officer commanding the R. A. M. C., as
+also from the Divisional Commander, mentioning your initiative and
+resourcefulness.  I assure you this will not be forgotten.  I
+understand you are a padre?"
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Barry, who was getting rather weary of the
+conversation.
+
+"All I have to say, then, sir, is that the Canadian army must be
+rich in combatant officers for, if you will pardon me, it strikes
+me that there is a damned good combatant officer lost in you."
+
+"If I were a better padre," replied Barry, "I would be content."
+
+"I fancy you have little ground for complaint on that score," said
+the R. T. O., for the first time smiling at him.
+
+"May I ask, sir," replied Barry, "if my responsibility ends here?"
+
+"Yes, unless you want to take charge of the boat."
+
+"I'd rather not, sir, if you please.  How long before she sails?"
+
+"About three hours.  Have you anything to do?"
+
+"I should like to visit the R. A. M. C. hospital.  I should also
+like to phone the American hospital at Etaples."
+
+"Very well, you can easily do both.  I will run you up in my car,
+if you care to wait a few moments until I put through some little
+matters here.  Then if you will be good enough to join me at
+breakfast, I can drive you up afterwards to the hospital.  This is
+my car.  I think you had better step in and sit down; you look
+rather used up."
+
+"Will you allow me to speak to some of the men first, sir?"
+
+"Oh, certainly.  Do anything you like.  There are your men."
+
+As Barry moved along the line of men drawn up on the platform, he
+was followed by a rising murmur of admiration, until, as he reached
+a group of officers at the end, a little Tommy, an English cockney,
+lifting high his rifle, sang out:
+
+"Naow then, lads, 'ere's to our O. D," adding after the cheers,
+"'e's a bit ov ol raa-ght, 'e is!"
+
+"Men," said Barry, "I thank you for your cheers, but I thank you
+more for your splendid behaviour night before last.  It was beyond
+praise.  You couldn't save all your comrades, but you would
+willingly have given your lives to save them.  That's the true
+spirit of the Empire.  It's the spirit of Humanity.  It's the
+spirit of God.  If I were a combatant officer--"
+
+"You'd be a good 'un, sir," cried a voice.
+
+"If I were a combatant officer, I should like to lead men like you
+into action."
+
+"We'd follow you to 'ell, sir," shouted the little cockney.
+
+"Oh, I hope not," replied Barry.  "I'm not going that way.  May I
+say, in wishing you every good luck, that you are a credit to your
+country, and I can say nothing higher.  I wish to thank the
+officers who so splendidly did their duty and gave such valuable
+service.  Good luck to you, boys, and give my love to all at home."
+
+Again the men broke into cheers, and Barry, shaking hands with the
+officers, turned away toward the car.  As he was entering the car,
+Sergeant Matthews came over to him.
+
+"I want to thank you, sir, for getting me free of the R. A. M. C.
+up there.  I feel rather bad, but since my wife is waiting to meet
+me in London, I was anxious to get through."
+
+"All right, sergeant," replied Barry.  "I'll get you to a hospital
+in London, when we arrive.  You are not feeling too badly, I hope."
+
+"A little shook up, sir," said the sergeant.
+
+At the R. A. M. C. hospital a bitter disappointment awaited him.
+He found that the V. A. D. had departed for England, but just where
+no one seemed to know.  In her last letter to him, received before
+the last tour in the trenches, she had mentioned the possibility of
+a visit to London, and had promised him further information before
+her departure, but no further word had he received.
+
+His inquiry at Etaples was equally unproductive of result.  Paula
+and her father had also gone to England.  They had taken the
+V. A. D. with them, and their address was unknown.  The matron of
+the hospital believed that they had planned a motor trip to
+Scotland, for they had carried Captain Neil Fraser off with them,
+and were planning a visit to his home.  They expected to return in
+about three weeks.
+
+By the bitterness of his disappointment, Barry realised how greatly
+he had counted on this meeting with his friends.  Were it not for
+the hope of being able to discover them in England, he would have
+turned back up the line, there and then, and found among the only
+friends he had on this side of the ocean relief from the
+intolerable weight of loneliness that was bearing him down.
+
+He walked out to the cemetery, and stood beside his father's grave.
+There for the first time it came over him that henceforth he must
+go all the way of his life without the sight of that face, without
+the touch of that hand on his shoulder, without the cheer of that
+voice.  In floods his sense of loss swept his soul.  It took all
+his manhood to refrain from throwing himself prone upon the little
+mound and yielding to the agony that flooded his soul, and that
+wrought in his heart physical pain.  By a resolute act of will, he
+held himself erect.  While he blamed and despised himself for his
+weakness, he was unable to shake it off.  He did not know that his
+mental and emotional state was in large measure a physical reaction
+from the prolonged period of exhausting strain, his treble tour in
+the trenches, with its unrelieved sense of impending destruction,
+that its endless procession of broken, torn bodies, with its nights
+of sleepless activity, with its eternal struggle against depression,
+consequent upon the loss of his comrades, its eternal striving after
+cheeriness and more than all the shock of the train wreck, with its
+scenes of horror; all this had combined to reduce his physical
+powers of resistance to the point of utter exhaustion.
+
+As he stood there in that cemetery with its rows of crosses,
+silently eloquent of heroism and of sacrifice, the spirit of the
+place seemed to breathe into him new life.  As his eyes fell upon
+the cross bearing his father's name, he seemed to see again that
+erect and gallant figure, instinct with life and courage.  There
+came to him the memory of a scene he had never forgotten.  Again he
+was with his father in the little home cottage.  How dear it had
+been to him then!  How dear to him, today!  Once more he felt the
+strong grip of his father's hand and heard his father's voice:
+
+"Good night, boy.  We don't know what is before us, defeat, loss,
+suffering, that part is not in our hands altogether, but the shame
+of the quitter never need and never shall be ours."
+
+Unconsciously as if he were in the presence of a superior officer,
+he lifted his hand in salute, and with a sense of renewal of his
+vital energies he returned to the boat.
+
+During the crossing his mind was chiefly occupied with the problem
+of discovering the whereabouts of the V. A. D. or his American
+friends.  He had never learned her London address, if indeed she
+had one.  He remembered that she had told him that her home had
+been turned into a hospital.  He had some slight hope that he might
+be able to trace her by the aid of her uncle.
+
+Arrived in London, his first duty was to see Sergeant Matthews,
+whose injuries in the wreck were apparently more serious than at
+first supposed, safely disposed in a hospital ambulance.  Thereupon
+he proceeded to the Hotel Cecil, and set himself seriously to the
+solution of his problem.  He was too weary for clear thinking and
+as the result of long, confused and very vexing cogitation, he
+resolved upon a letter to Commander Howard Vincent, R. N. R.  This,
+after much labour, he succeeded in accomplishing.  Thereafter, much
+too weary for food, he proceeded to his room, where he gave himself
+up to the unimaginable luxury of a bath in a clean tub, and with an
+unstinted supply of clean towels, after which riotous indulgence,
+he betook himself to bed.  As he lay stretched between the smooth
+clean sheets, he found it impossible to recall a state of existence
+when clean sheets had been a nightly experience.  The chief regret
+of these semi-unconscious moments preceding slumber was that sleep
+would rob him of this delicious sense of physical cleanness and
+well-being.
+
+He was wakened by a knock at his door, followed by a hesitating
+apology for intrusion.  Rejoicing in the luxury of his surroundings,
+and in the altogether satisfying discovery that he might sleep
+again, he turned over and once more was lost in profound slumber.
+A second time he was aroused by a mild but somewhat anxious inquiry
+as to his welfare.
+
+"I want nothing, only a little more sleep," and again luxuriating
+for a few moments in his clean sheets and his peaceful environment,
+he resigned himself to sleep, to waken with a comfortable sense of
+pleasant weariness, which gradually passed into a somewhat acute
+sense of hunger.
+
+He decided, after due consideration, that he would plumb the depths
+of bliss, unmeasured and unknown, and have breakfast in bed.  He
+went to the window and looked out upon the murky light of a London
+day.  He decided that it was still early morning, and rang for the
+waiter.  He was informed by that functionary that breakfast was
+impossible, but that if he desired he could be supplied with an
+early dinner.
+
+"Dinner!" exclaimed Barry.
+
+He looked at his watch, but found that he had neglected to wind it,
+and that consequently it had stopped.
+
+"What time do you make it, waiter?"
+
+"Half after six, sir."
+
+He decided that he would rise for dinner, 'phoned for a paper and
+his mail, and lay back between the sheets once more, striving to
+recapture that rapturous sense of welfare that had enwrapped him
+the night before.  Luxuriating in this delightsome exercise, he
+glanced lazily at the heading of his paper, and then cried, as the
+paper boy was leaving the room,
+
+"Hello! here, boy! what day is this?"
+
+"Friday, sir," said the boy, gazing at him in astonishment.
+
+"Friday?  Are you sure?"
+
+"Yes, sir, Friday, sir.  What does the paper say, sir?"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course.  All right."
+
+He had gone to bed on Wednesday night.  He knew that because he
+remembered the date of his letter to Commander Howard Vincent,
+R. N. R.  He made the astounding discovery that he had slept just
+forty-four hours.  Then he made a second discovery and that was
+that of his precious eight days' leave, three were already gone.
+
+After he had dined he inquired at the desk for his mail, and
+searched through the telegrams, but there was nothing for him.
+
+Then he betook himself to the streets, aware that the spectre of
+loneliness was hard on his trail, and swiftly catching up with him.
+London was roaring around him in the dark, like a jungle full of
+wild beasts, of whose shapes he could catch now and then horrid
+glimpses.  Among all the millions in the city, he knew of no living
+soul to whom he could go for companionship, nor was there anything
+in form of amusement that specially invited him.
+
+There was Grand Opera, of course, but from its associations with
+his father he knew that that would bring him only acute misery.
+Gladly would he have gone to the hospitals, but they would be shut
+against him at this hour.  He bought an evening paper, and under a
+shaded lamp studied the amusement columns.  Some of the Revues he
+knew to be simply tiresome, others disgusting.  None of them
+appealed to him.  Aimlessly he wandered along the streets, heedless
+of his direction, conscious now and then of an additional pang of
+wretchedness as he caught a glimpse now and then at a theatre door
+of young officers passing in with sweet faced girls on their arms,
+
+At length in desperation he followed one such pair, and found
+himself listening to Cinderella.  Its light and delicate fancy, its
+sweet pathos, its gentle humour lured him temporarily from his
+misery, but often there came back upon him the bitter memory of
+his comrades in their horrid environment of filth, danger and
+wretchedness.
+
+He found some compensation in the thought that these officers
+beside him were like himself on leave, and while he envied them, he
+did not grudge them their delight in the play, and their obviously
+greater delight in their lovely companions beside them, but this
+again was neutralised by the bitter recollection of his own hard
+fate which denied him a like joy.
+
+After the play he stood in the entrance hall, observing the crowd,
+indulging his sense of ill-usage at the hands of fate as he saw the
+officers lingering with many unnecessary touches over the cloaking
+of their fair partners, and as he caught the answering glances and
+smiles that rewarded their attentions.
+
+His eyes followed the manoeuvrings of the painted ladies as they
+hovered about the doors, boldly busy with their profession.  He
+understood as never before the nature of their lure and the
+overpowering subtlety of the temptation cast by them over the
+lonely soldier in London.
+
+Close at his side he heard a voice:
+
+"How do you like it, boy?  Not bad, eh?"
+
+"Awfully jolly, dad.  It's perfectly fine of you."
+
+He turned and saw a grey-haired gentleman, with upright soldierly
+figure, and walking with him, arm in arm, a young officer,
+evidently his son.  He followed them slowly to the door, and eager
+to share if he might the joy of their comradeship, he listened to
+their talk.  Then as they disappeared into the darkness, sick at
+heart, he passed out of the door, stood a moment to get his
+bearings, and sauntered beyond the radius of the subdued light
+about the entrance, into the darkness further on.
+
+He had gone but a few paces, and was standing beneath a shaded
+corner light, meditating the crossing of the roaring street, when
+he heard behind him an eager voice crying,
+
+"Captain Dunbar!  Captain Dunbar!"
+
+Swiftly he turned, and saw in the dim light a dainty figure, opera
+coat flowing away from gleaming arms and shoulders, a face with its
+halo of gold brown hair, with soft brown eyes ashine and eager
+parted lips, a vision of fluttering, bewildering loveliness bearing
+down upon him with outstretched hands.
+
+"What," he gasped, "you!  Oh, you darling!"
+
+He reached for her, gathered her in his arms, drew her toward him,
+and before either he or she was aware of what he intended to do,
+kissed her parting lips.
+
+"Oh, how dare you!" she cried, aghast, pushing him back from her,
+her face in a red flame.  "Oh, I'm so glad.  I was afraid I should
+lose you."
+
+Barry, appalled at his own temerity, his eyes taking in the sweet
+beauty of her lovely face, stood silent, trembling.
+
+"Well, aren't you going to tell me you are glad to see me?" she
+cried, smiling up at him saucily.
+
+"Phyllis," he murmured, moving toward her.
+
+"Stop," she said, putting her hands out before her, as if to hold
+him off.  "Remember where you are.  I ought to be very angry,
+indeed."
+
+She drew him toward a dark wall.
+
+"But you aren't angry, Phyllis.  If you only knew how I have wanted
+you in this awful place.  Oh, I have wanted you."
+
+She saw that he was white and still trembling.
+
+"Have you, Barry?" she asked, gently.  "Oh, you poor boy.  I know
+you have been through horrible things.  No, Barry, don't.  You
+awful man," for his hands were moving toward her again.  "You must
+remember where you are.  Look at all these people staring at us."
+
+"People," he said, as if in a daze.  "What difference do they make?
+Oh, Phyllis, you are so wonderfully lovely.  I can't believe it's
+you, but it is, it is!  I know your eyes.  Are you glad to see me?"
+he asked shyly, his hungry eyes upon her face.
+
+"Oh, Barry," she whispered, the warm flush rising again in her
+cheeks, "can't you see?  Can't you see?  But what am I thinking
+about?  Come and see mamma, and there's another dear friend and
+admirer of yours with her."
+
+"Who?  Not Paula?"
+
+"No, not Paula," she said, with a subtle change in her voice.
+"Come and see!"
+
+She took his arm and brought him back to a motor standing at the
+theatre entrance.
+
+"Oh, mamma, I have had such a race," she cried excitedly, "and I
+have captured him.  Barry, my mother."
+
+Barry took the offered hand, and gazed earnestly into the sad brown
+eyes that searched his in return.
+
+"And here's your friend," said Phyllis.
+
+"Hello, Pilot," said a voice from a dark corner of the car.
+
+"What, Neil!  Oh, you boy," he cried in an ecstasy, pushing both
+hands at him.  "You dear old boy.  How is the arm, eh? all right?"
+
+"Oh! doing awfully well," said Captain Neil.  "And you?"
+
+"Oh, never so well in all my life," cried Barry.  "Yet, to think of
+it, ten minutes ago, or when was it, I was in there a miserably
+homesick creature, envious of all the happy people about me, and
+now--"
+
+While he was speaking, his eyes were on Mrs. Vincent's face, but
+his hand was holding fast to her daughter's arm.  "Now it's a
+lovely old town, and full of dear people."
+
+"Where are you putting up?" asked Mrs. Vincent.
+
+"The Cecil."
+
+"Let us drive you there then," she said.
+
+During the drive Barry sat silent for the most part, listening to
+Phyllis talking excitedly and eagerly beside him, answering at
+random the questions which came like rapid fire from them all, but
+planning meanwhile how he should prolong these moments of bliss.
+
+"How about supper?" he cried, as they arrived in the courtyard of
+the hotel.  "Come in.  I want you to; you see I have so much to ask
+and so much to tell Captain Fraser here, and three of my days are
+gone already.  Besides, I want you to awfully."
+
+Mrs. Vincent looked at his face, which for all its brightness was
+worn and deep-lined, and her compassionate motherly heart was
+stirred.
+
+"Of course we'll come.  We want to see you and to hear about your
+experiences."
+
+"Oh, bully!" cried Barry.  "I shall always remember how good you
+are to me to-night."
+
+He was overflowing with excitement.
+
+"Oh, this is great, Neil.  It's like having a bit of the old
+battalion here to see you again."
+
+While waiting for their orders to be filled at the supper table,
+Captain Neil turned suddenly to Barry and said, "What's all this
+about a train wreck and the gallant O. C. train?"
+
+"Yes, and this rescuing of men from burning cars," exclaimed
+Phyllis.
+
+"And knocking out insubordinates."
+
+"And being mentioned in despatches."
+
+"And receiving cheers at the station."
+
+"Now where did you get all that stuff?" inquired Barry.
+
+"Why, all London is ringing with it," said Captain Neil.
+
+"Nonsense," said Barry; "who's been stuffing you?"
+
+"Well," said Phyllis, "we came across your sergeant to-day in the
+hospital.  Such a funny man."
+
+"Who?  Fatty Matthews?" asked Barry, turning to Captain Neil.
+
+"Yes, it was Fatty," said Captain Neil, "and if you had your rights
+by his account, you ought to be in command at this moment of an
+army corps at the very least.  But you were O. C. leave train, were
+you not?"
+
+"Yes, to my dismay I was made O. C., but I met a chap, Captain
+Courtney, a very decent fellow, my adjutant, and made him carry
+on."
+
+"My word, that was a stroke!"
+
+"We had a wreck, a ghastly affair it was, though it might have been
+a lot worse.  The R. A. M. C. people did magnificently, and the men
+behaved awfully well, so that we managed to get through."
+
+"And what about the O. C.?" inquired Captain Neil.
+
+"Oh, nothing special.  He just saw that the others carried on.  Now
+tell me about you people.  What have you been doing and what are
+you going to do?"
+
+"Well, 'we're here, because we're here,'" chanted Captain Neil.
+
+"And why didn't you send me word as to your movements?" said Barry.
+"What hours of agony you would have spared me!"
+
+"But I did," replied Phyllis.  "I sent you our town address and
+told you everything."
+
+"Now isn't that rotten!" exclaimed Barry.  "Never mind, I've found
+you, and now what's the programme?"
+
+"Well," cried Captain Neil with great enthusiasm, "we are all off
+to Edinburgh to-morrow, where we meet the Howlands, and then for a
+motor trip through the Highlands and to my ancestral home."
+
+Barry's face fell.  "To-morrow?" he said blankly, with a quick look
+at Phyllis.  "And you are all going?"
+
+"Not I," said Mrs. Vincent, "but why should you not join the party?
+You need just such a change.  It would do you good."
+
+"Sure thing he will," cried Captain Neil.
+
+During the supper they had firmly resolved to taboo the war.  They
+talked on all manner of subjects, chiefly of the proposed motor
+trip, but in spite of the ban their talk would hark back to the
+trenches.  For Captain Neil must know how his comrades were faring,
+and how his company was carrying on, and Barry must tell him of
+their losses, and all of the great achievements wrought by the men
+of their battalion.  And Barry because his own heart was full of
+all their splendid deeds let himself go.  He told how Sally and
+Booth had met their last call, of the M. O. and his splendid work
+in rescuing the wounded.
+
+"No word in all of this of the Pilot, I observe," interjected
+Captain Neil.
+
+"Oh, he just carried on!"
+
+Then he told how at last the M. O. went out, and how on his face
+there was only peace.  He had to tell of Corporal Thom, and how he
+gave himself for his comrades and how Cameron kept the faith, a
+long list of heroes he had to enumerate, of whom the world was not
+worthy, whose deeds are unknown to fame, but whose names are
+recorded in the books of God.  And then reverently he told of
+McCuaig.
+
+As Barry talked, his heart was far away from London.  He was seeing
+again that line of mud bespattered men, patiently plodding up the
+communication trench.  He was looking upon them sleeping with worn
+and weary faces, in rain and mudsoaked boots and puttees, down in
+their flimsy, dark dugouts.  He was hearing again the heavy "crash"
+of the trench mortar, the earth shaking "crumph" of the high
+explosive, the swift rush of the whizbang.  Before his eyes he saw
+a steady line of bayonets behind a crumbling wall, then a quick
+rush to meet the attack, bomb and rifle in hand.  He saw the
+illumined face of his dying friend.
+
+As he told his tale, his face was glowing, his eyes gleaming as
+with an inner fire.
+
+"Oh, God's Mercy!" he cried, "they are men!  They are men!  Only
+God could make such men."
+
+"Yes, only God," echoed Mrs. Vincent after a long pause.  "They are
+God's men, and to God they go at last.  Truly they are God's own
+men."
+
+While Barry was speaking, Phyllis, her hands tightly clasped, was
+leaning forward listening with glistening eyes and parted lips.
+Suddenly she rose, and went hurriedly to the door.
+
+"Forgive me," said Barry, turning to Mrs. Vincent.  "I should not
+have talked about these things.  It's Neil here that drew me out.
+It's his fault."
+
+In a few minutes Captain Neil arose and saying, "I'll see where
+Phyllis has gone," went out at the same door.
+
+"They are very great friends," said Mrs. Vincent.  "We are very
+fond of Captain Fraser.  Indeed, he is like one of our family."
+
+"A fine, brave chap he is," said Barry warmly, but with a queer
+chill at his heart.
+
+"Phyllis has made some very delightful friends in France.  Those
+Americans at Etaples were very good to her," and she continued to
+chat in her soft, gentle voice, to which Barry gave a courteous
+hearing but very casual replies.  His heart and his ears were
+attentive for the returning footsteps of those who had so abruptly
+deserted them.  While Mrs. Vincent was talking, an ugly question
+was thrusting itself upon his attention, demanding an answer.  He
+could see--any one with eyes could see--that there was between
+Phyllis and his friend Captain Neil some understanding.  Just what
+was between them Barry longed to know.  It flashed upon him that
+upon the answer to that question his whole future hung, for if this
+girl was more than friend to Captain Neil, then the joy of life had
+for him been quenched.  No motor trip for him to-morrow.  He had
+had enough heart-wrenching to bear as it was without that.  No!  If
+between these two a closer relation than that of mere friendship
+existed, his way was clear.  He would return to the trenches to-
+morrow.
+
+"Oh, here you are, dear," said Mrs. Vincent, as Phyllis and Captain
+Neil returned to the room.  "You found the air too close, I fear."
+
+"No," said Phyllis with simple sincerity, "it was Barry.  I saw
+those men, and I could not bear it.  I can't bear it now."  Her
+lips were still trembling, and her eyes were filled with tears.
+
+"And yet," said Barry, "when you were over there in the midst of it
+all, you never once weakened.  That's the wonder of it.  You just
+go on, doing what you must do.  You haven't time to reflect, and
+it's God's mercy that it is so.  Thank God we have our duty to do
+no matter what comes.  Without that life would be unbearable."
+
+"Now, what about to-morrow?" said Captain Neil briskly, as Mrs.
+Vincent rose from the table.  "We must settle that.  What about it,
+Barry?"
+
+"I don't know.  Do you think I should go?  It's your party and it's
+already made up."
+
+"Not quite," said Phyllis, looking shyly at him.  "You belong to
+the party more than any of us, you know."
+
+"Then what about Paula?" said Barry.  "This is her party, is it
+not?"
+
+Phyllis was silent.
+
+"I think, Captain Dunbar," said Mrs. Vincent, "if you would like
+it, you ought to go.  You need something of the kind, and you will
+fit in admirably with the party, I am quite sure.  To-day," she
+added with a little laugh, "I was doubtful as to the propriety of
+these young people going off all the way to Edinburgh by
+themselves, but you know in these war times we do extraordinary
+things, but now if you join them, my scruples will be removed."
+
+"Some chaperon," whispered Captain Neil audibly to Phyllis.  Then
+he added briskly, "Well, then, that's settled.  To-morrow at 8:37
+we meet at King's Cross, 8:37, remember."
+
+But for Barry the matter was far from settled.
+
+"I can't quite make up my mind to-night," he said.  "I shall be at
+King's Cross, however, in the morning at any rate."
+
+"But, Barry," began Phyllis, protesting, "you must--I want--"
+
+She ceased speaking abruptly, her face flushing and then going
+suddenly white.
+
+"Oh, rot, old man," said Captain Neil, impatiently, "you will come.
+Of course he'll come," he added to Phyllis.
+
+They moved together out of the room, Mrs. Vincent and Captain Neil
+leading the way.
+
+"Oh, Barry, aren't you going?" said Phyllis in a low voice.
+
+"How can I answer that?" he replied, almost in anger.  "Do YOU ask
+me to go?  Do YOU want me to go?"
+
+"Of course, we all want you to go," said the girl.
+
+"Is that your answer?"  His voice was tense; his face strained.
+"If that is all, Phyllis, I must say 'Good-bye' to-night.  Why
+should I go with you?  Why should I stay here in London?  There's
+nothing for me here.  The war is the only place--"
+
+"Oh, Barry," she said, her eyes bright with tears, "how unkindly,
+how terribly you talk."  Then with a swift change of mood she
+turned upon him.  "What right have you to talk like that?" she
+cried in sudden wrath.  "What have I done--what have we done to
+you?"
+
+"Wait, Phyllis," he cried desperately.  "Oh, let them go on," he
+added impatiently.  "For Heaven's sake, is there no place about
+here where I can talk to you?"  They were both pale and trembling.
+"I must talk to you to-night--now--at once."  He stood between her
+and the door.  "Can't you see I love you?  I love you, do you hear?
+If you don't love me, why should I live?"
+
+"Oh, Barry," said the girl, in a hurried voice.  "You must not talk
+like this.  Come this way.  I know this place."  She hurried out by
+a side door, down a corridor, and into a small parlour, with cosy
+corners, where they were alone.
+
+"Now, Phyllis," said Barry, facing her, with a settled fierceness
+in his voice and manner.  "I am quite mad, I know, to love you, but
+I do.  I can't help it any more than breathing.  I have no right to
+tell you this, perhaps.  I am nobody, and I have nothing to offer
+any girl.  I see that now.  Oh, I see that clearly now, but I never
+thought of that part of it before.  I only loved you.  How could I
+help it?  I hardly knew myself until tonight.  But I know now," he
+added in a voice of triumph, the gloom lifting from his face, and
+the fierce light fading from his eyes.  "Yes, I know now, Phyllis.
+I love you.  I shall always love you.  I love you and I am glad to
+love you.  Nothing can take that from me."
+
+All this time she was standing before him, her face white, her lips
+parted, a look of wonder, almost of fear, in the brown eyes, so
+bravely holding his, her hands pressed hard upon her bosom, as if
+to stay its tumult.
+
+"I have no right to say this to you," said Barry again.  "You
+belong to a great family.  Perhaps you are rich.  Great Heavens!"
+he groaned.  "I never thought of that.  You are beautiful.  Many
+men will love you, great men and rich men will love you.  You are
+so wonderful.  Why, there's Captain Neil, he--"
+
+"Captain Neil," echoed Phyllis, with infinite scorn in her voice.
+
+"Well, many men."
+
+"Many men," she repeated, her lips beginning to tremble.  "Oh,
+Barry, can't you see?  You blind boy.  There's only one man for me,
+Barry, and that's you, just you."  She came near to him, laid her
+hands upon his breast, her eyes looking into his.
+
+"Phyllis," he said, putting his arms round her, a great wonder in
+his voice.  "It can't be true!  Oh, it can't be true!  Yet your
+eyes, your dear eyes say so.  Phyllis, I do believe you love me."
+
+The little hands slid up around his neck; he drew her close.
+
+"Phyllis, my dear, dear, love," he whispered.
+
+He felt her body suddenly relax, and as she leaned backwards in his
+arms, still clinging to him, he bent over her and his lips met hers
+in a long kiss.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A WEDDING JOURNEY
+
+
+"Just a moment, if you please, Paula.  I should like to get down a
+few notes of this bit.  Oh, what a view!  Lake, moor, hills,
+mountains, village!"
+
+Mr. Howland sprang from the car, sketchbook in hand, and ran
+forward to a jutting rock that commanded the wide valley, flanked
+by hills, in whose bosom lay a loch, shimmering in the morning
+light.  The car drew up on the brow of a long and gently sloping
+incline, which the road followed until it disappeared in a turn at
+the village at the loch's end.
+
+"Get the little church tower in, father, and a bit of the castle.
+I can see it from here," said Paula, standing upon the motor seat.
+
+"I shall try this further rock," said her father.  "Ah, here it is.
+Do come, all of you, and get this.  Oh, what a perfectly glorious
+view!"
+
+The little group gathered about him in silence, upon a little
+headland that overlooked the valley, and feasted upon the beauty
+that spread itself out before them, the undulating slope and
+shimmering loch, the wide moors and softly rounded hills, the dark
+green masses of ragged firs, and the great white Bens in the far
+distance, and below them, in the midst the human touch, in a
+nestling village with its Heaven-pointing spire.
+
+"Hark!" said Paula.
+
+From across the loch there floated up to them, soft and mellow as
+an angel's song, the sound of a bell.
+
+Mr. Rowland dropped his sketchbook, took off his hat, and stood as
+if in worship.  The other men followed his example.
+
+"Father," said Paula, "let's go to church."
+
+"Hush," said her father, putting up his hand, and so stood for some
+moments.
+
+"Oh, Scotland, Scotland!" he cried, lifting his arms high above his
+head, "no wonder your children in exile weep for their native
+land."
+
+"And your men fight and die for you," added Paula, glancing at
+Captain Neil.
+
+"Thank you," said Captain Neil, turning quickly away.
+
+"Yes," said Paula, "we shall go to church here, father."
+
+The church stood against a cluster of ancient firs, in the midst of
+its quiet graves, yew shaded here and there.  Beside it stood the
+manse, within its sweet old garden, protected by a moss covered
+stone wall.
+
+At its gate the minister stood, a dark man with silvering hair, of
+some sixty years, but still erect and with a noble, intellectual
+face.
+
+"Let us speak to him," said Paula, as they left their car.
+
+With characteristic reserve, Barry and Neil shrank from greeting a
+stranger, but with fine and easy courtesy Mr. Howland bared his
+head, and went up to the minister.
+
+"We heard your bell's invitation, sir," he said, "and we came to
+worship with you."
+
+A grave smile touched the dark face.
+
+"You rightly interpreted its message," he said.  "Let me repeat its
+welcome."
+
+"We are Americans, at least my daughter and I are," said Mr.
+Howland, presenting Paula, a frank smile upon her beautiful face,
+"and this is her young friend from London, Miss Vincent, and these
+young officers are of the Canadian army."
+
+"Canadians!" exclaimed the minister, meeting them with both hands.
+"Oh, you are indeed welcome."
+
+"We are all in the war, sir, I would have you know," added Mr.
+Howland.
+
+The minister looked puzzled.
+
+"Let me explain," said Barry.  "Mr. Rowland and his daughter are on
+leave from their own hospital which they have set up in France.
+Miss Vincent is from the base hospital in Boulogne."
+
+Like the sun breaking upon the loch in a dull day, a smile broke
+over the dark face.  He threw the gate wide open.
+
+"In the name of my country, in this its dark hour, let me give you
+welcome," and once more he shook them each by the hand.  "We have
+still half an hour before worship," he continued.  "Pray do me the
+honour of entering my manse."
+
+They followed him up the shrubbery-flanked gravel walk to the door.
+
+"Enter," he said, going before them into the manse.  "Jean!  Jean!"
+he called.
+
+"Yes, dear," came a voice like the sound of a silver bell, and from
+another room issued a lady with a face of rare and delicate
+loveliness.  Her soft, clinging black gown, with a touch of white
+at her throat, served to emphasise the sweet purity of her face,
+but cast over it a shade of sadness at once poignant and tender.
+
+"My dear, this is Mrs. Robertson," he said simply; "these friends,
+Americans and Canadians, are from the war."
+
+At that word she came to greet them, her face illumined by a smile
+inexpressibly sweet, but inexpressibly sad.  "You are welcome, oh,
+very welcome," she said, in a soft Scotch voice.  "Come in and rest
+for a few moments."
+
+"Our young friend here, Captain Dunbar, is chaplain of a
+distinguished Canadian regiment."
+
+"They are all distinguished," said the lady.
+
+"A chaplain?" said the minister.  "My dear sir, we should be
+grateful for a message for our people from the front--"
+
+"Oh, yes, if you would," added his wife.
+
+"But," protested.  Barry, "I want to hear some one else preach.
+One gets very tired of one's own preaching, and besides I'm a very
+poor preacher."
+
+"I'll take that risk, but I will not press you," said the minister
+courteously.
+
+"Do, Barry," said Paula in a low voice, but he shook his head.
+
+"I see you have some soldier friends at the front," said Mr.
+Rowland, pointing to a photograph on the mantel of a young officer
+in Highland dress.
+
+"Our son, sir," said the minister quietly.
+
+"Our only son," added his wife quietly.  "He was in the Black
+Watch."  Her voice, with its peculiar bell-like quality, was full
+of pride and tenderness.
+
+"Oh," said Phyllis, turning to her with quick tears in her eyes and
+holding out her hand.
+
+"Ah," said the lady, "you too?  Your brother?"
+
+"My two brothers."
+
+"My dear child!  My dear child!" said the minister's wife, kissing
+her.  "Your mother was greatly privileged," she added gently.
+
+It was a deeply moving scene.
+
+"Madam," said Mr. Howland, wiping his eyes, "forgive me, but you
+mothers are the wonder of the war."
+
+"There are many of us in this glen, sir," she replied.  "We cannot
+give our lives, sir.  We can only give what is dearer than our
+lives, our dear, dear sons, and, believe me, we don't grudge them."
+
+"Madam," said Mr. Howland, "the whole world honours you and wonders
+at you."
+
+"Sir," said Barry, obeying a quick impulse, "I cannot preach, but
+may I tell your people something about their boys and how splendid
+they are?"
+
+"Thank you," said the minister.
+
+"Oh, would you?" cried his wife.  "There are many there who feel
+only the loss and the sorrow.  You can tell them something of its
+splendour."
+
+By this time in the eyes of all the visitors there were tears, but
+on the faces of the minister and his wife there was only the serene
+peace of those who within the sacred shrine of sacrifice have got a
+vision of its eternal glory.
+
+"Barry," said Paula, drawing him aside, "I love you for this, but
+do talk about something, or I shall surely cry.  These people break
+my heart."
+
+"Oh, no," said Barry, looking at them, "there are no tears there.
+They have been all the way through."
+
+"Like people, like priest!"  The folk that gathered in the little
+church that morning were simple people of the glen, shepherds and
+cotters from the countryside, humble villagers.  They were women
+for the most part, with old men and children.  The girls were away
+at the munition plants, the young men at the war, fighting or lying
+under their little crosses or in their unknown and unmarked graves,
+on one of Britain's five battle fronts, or under the tossing waters
+of the Seven Seas where Britain's navy rides, guarding the world's
+freedom.  Simple peasant folk they were, but with that look of
+grave and thoughtful steadfastness with which Scotland knows how to
+stamp her people.
+
+The devotions were conducted by the minister with simple sincerity,
+and with a prophet's mystic touch and a prophet's vision of things
+invisible.
+
+Barry made no attempt at a sermon.  He yielded himself to the
+spirit of the place, the spirit of the manse and its people, whose
+serene fortitude under the burden of their sorrow had stirred him
+to his soul's depths.  Their spirit recalled the spirit of his own
+father and the spirit of the men he had known in the trenches.  He
+made a slight reference to the horrors of the war.  He touched
+lightly upon the soldiers' trials but he told them tales of their
+endurance, their patience, their tenderness to the wounded, their
+comradeship, their readiness to sacrifice.  Before he closed, he
+lifted them up to see the worth and splendour of it all and gave
+them a vision of the world's regeneration through the eternal
+mystery of the cross.
+
+They listened with uplifted face, on which rested a quiet wonder,
+touched with that light that only falls where sacrifice and
+sacrament are joined.  There were tears on many faces, but they
+fell quietly, without bitterness, without passion, without despair.
+
+A woman with a grief worn face waited for him at the foot of the
+pulpit stairs, the minister's wife and Phyllis beside her.
+
+"Mrs. Finlayson wishes to speak to you," she said.
+
+"Ay, ay!  I jist want to say that you had the word for me the day.
+I see it better the noo.  A'm mair content that ma mon sud be
+sleepin' oot yonder."  She held Barry's hand while she spoke, her
+tears falling on it, then kissed it and turned away.
+
+"And this," said the minister's wife, "is Mrs. Murray, who has
+given three sons, and who has just sent her last son away this
+week."
+
+"Three sons," echoed Barry, gazing at the strong face, beaten and
+brown with the winds and suns of fifty years, "and you sent away
+your last.  Oh, I wonder at you.  How could you?"
+
+"A cudna haud him back wi' his three brithers lyin' oot there,
+and," she added, with a proud lift of her head, "and wudna."
+
+It took some minutes for Barry to make his way through to the door.
+He wanted to greet them all.  He had a feeling that he was there
+not in his own person but as a representative standing between two
+noble companies of martyrs, those who had gone forth to die, and
+those who had sent them.
+
+"You have done us a great service to-day, sir," said the minister
+in bidding Barry good-bye.
+
+"It was a privilege to do it," said Barry as he shook hands with
+the minister and his wife.  "I shall tell the men about you and
+your people."
+
+"My dear, my dear, is he your man?" asked the minister's wife as
+she held Phyllis' hand.
+
+"He is," said Phyllis, glancing at Barry with shy pride.
+
+"And he leaves you soon?"
+
+"In two days," replied the girl, with a quick breath.
+
+"Don't let him away till you give yourself wholly to him.  Why not
+to-morrow?  It's a mother's word."
+
+"That's what I say," cried Paula impulsively, seeking to cover the
+girl's blushing confusion.  "Neil," she added, turning to him, "I
+should love to be married in just such a dear little church as
+this."
+
+"All right," said Neil.  "I know another just like it, and I shall
+show it to you next week."
+
+They wandered down by the loch's side.  Passing a boat-renting
+establishment, Paula suddenly exclaimed,
+
+"My Land of Liberty, look there, Barry!"
+
+"What?"
+
+"A canoe," she cried, running toward it.  "A Canadian canoe!"
+
+"A genuine Peterboro," he cried, following her.  "Where did you get
+this?" he inquired, turning to the boatman.
+
+"My boy brought it with him from Canada, sir.  He is an engineer.
+I have his whole outfit in the house--tent, camp things and all.
+He is at the war himself."
+
+"Oh, Barry, look at the dear thing.  What does it make you think
+of?"  She glanced at Barry's face and added quickly, "Oh, I know.
+Forgive me.  I'm a fool!"
+
+"Come along, Phyllis," said Barry, drawing her away with him.  "I
+want to talk to you."
+
+"We shall take lunch in half an hour, Barry," called Mr. Howland
+after him.  "We're due at Pitlochry, you know, for dinner."
+
+"All right, sir," said Barry.  "We'll be on hand."
+
+"I wonder if she's got the nerve," said Paula to Captain Neil as
+they stood looking after them.
+
+"I wonder," said Captain Neil, looking at her.  "Would you?"
+
+"Would I," said Paula, with sudden shyness.  "I--but you are not
+going away in two days."
+
+"No, thank the good Lord," said Captain Neil, fervently, "but,
+Paula, I'll not forget."
+
+At Pitlochry they found their mail awaiting them.
+
+"A telegram for you, Barry," said Paula, who had assumed the duty
+of postman.
+
+They all paused in examining their mail to watch Barry open his
+wire.
+
+"Guess," he shouted, holding his telegram high.
+
+"Oh, glory, I know!" exclaimed Paula.  "Extended leave.  How much?"
+
+"'Oh, excellent young maid, how much elder art thou than thy looks!'"
+
+"Oh, Barry!" exclaimed Phyllis.  "How much?"
+
+"Five days, five whole days."
+
+"Humph!  It's the least they could do.  They might have made it
+ten," grumbled Paula.
+
+"Mr. Howland, may I speak to you a moment?"  Barry's look and voice
+were eloquent of resolve.
+
+"Certainly, Barry.  Immediately?"
+
+"If you please, sir."
+
+They retired to a corner, where Barry could be seen with ardent
+look and vehement gesture putting his proposition to Mr. Howland,
+whose face showed mingled pleasure and perplexity.  The others
+waited patiently for the conference to end.
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said Paula, "Barry ought to know by this time that the
+pater simply can't make up his mind without me.  I know what they
+are at."
+
+She moved over to them.
+
+"Now, father, of course you will do as Barry wishes," she declared.
+"Oh, I know what he wants.  Now listen to me.  Just wire Mrs.
+Vincent that everything is perfectly all right, that you can
+guarantee Barry, and that it's the sensible thing, the only thing
+to do under the circumstances.  Oh, we'll have it in that dear
+little church.  Splendid.  Perfectly ripping!  Eh, Phyllis?  Come
+over here at once.  Now, father, get busy on the wire.  Why waste a
+perfectly good hour in just talking about it?  What do you say,
+folks?  How many say 'Ay'?"
+
+Up went Barry's two hands, and with them Neil's and Paula's.
+
+"What about you, miss?" asked Paula, turning wrathfully toward
+Phyllis.
+
+Phyllis walked quietly to Barry's side.
+
+"Barry," she said, giving him her hand, "I have decided to be
+married to-morrow.  I shall wire mamma."
+
+Barry answered her only with his eyes.
+
+"By Jove!" said Paula, "you Britishers are the limit, for stolid,
+unemotional people.  Here am I shouting my head off like a baseball
+fan, to get this thing put through, and you quietly walk up and
+announce that everything's fixed but the band."
+
+The wires to London that afternoon were kept busy, a message going
+to Mrs. Vincent from each member of the party, but it was felt that
+that from Phyllis to her mother was really all that was necessary.
+
+
+"Dearest Mamma--Barry and I are to be married tomorrow.  English
+law makes London impossible, as Barry has only five days.  I am
+very happy, feeling sure you approve.  Our dearest, dearest love.
+
+"Phyllis."
+
+
+A long wire also went from Barry to Mr. Robertson, the minister of
+the little church, where they had spent such a delightful hour that
+morning, but this wire Barry showed to no one.
+
+The bride's bouquet was from the manse garden, a shower of white
+roses, no purer and no sweeter than the bride herself.  At the
+church door, the party stood shrinking from the moment of parting.
+At length Paula took matters in hand.
+
+"As usual," she said, "the heavy work falls to me.  Dear Mrs.
+Robertson"--to the minister's wife--"goodbye.  I shall always love
+you and your dear little church."
+
+She put her arms around the minister's wife and kissed her.
+
+"Oh, we're going to see them off," said that lady.  "Lead the way,
+Captain Dunbar, please," she added, with a bright smile, giving him
+a little push.
+
+"Come, Phyllis," said Barry offering his wife his arm, and they
+started off down the street toward the lake.
+
+"Will you permit me?" said the minister, offering his arm to Paula,
+who in mystified silence took it without a word.
+
+"May I have the pleasure?" said Mr. Howland, offering his arm to
+Mrs. Robertson.
+
+"Come, Captain Fraser," she said gaily, offering him the other arm.
+
+"Just what is happening to me, I don't pretend to know," said
+Paula, "but whatever it is, America is in this thing to the
+finish."
+
+Barry stopped at the boathouse landing.  There, tied to the dock,
+floated the Canadian canoe, laden with tent and camp outfit, and
+with extra baskets provided from the manse.
+
+"Oh, Barry, how wonderful!  How perfectly wonderful!" cried Paula
+in an ecstasy of delight.
+
+In that farewell there were tears and smiles, but more smiles than
+tears.  The last to touch their hands was Paula.  She managed to
+draw them apart from the others, with her eyes glistening with
+unaccustomed tears.  "You deserve each other.  Phyllis," she
+whispered, alternately shaking and kissing her, "there was a day
+when I would have fought you for him, until Neil came.  Barry, you
+dear boy, you may kiss me goodbye, and oh, may you both live
+forever."
+
+"Goodbye, dear Paula," cried Phyllis.  "You have been so lovely to
+me from the very first.  I shall never, never forget you."
+
+"Goodbye, Paula," said Barry, "dearest of all dear friends."
+
+She stooped to steady the canoe, while Phyllis stepped to her place
+in the bow.
+
+"Goodbye to all of you.  God love you and keep you all," said
+Barry.
+
+He took his paddle and stepped into the canoe, Paula still stooping
+over it to keep it steady.
+
+"Dear, dear Barry," she whispered, and for the first time her tears
+fell.  "Goodbye!  Goodbye!"
+
+Together the little company stood watching them away, Phyllis in
+the bow, not paddling, sat with her face toward them, Barry
+swinging his paddle with graceful, powerful strokes, until just at
+a curve of the shore, where some birches overhung the water, he
+swung the canoe half round, and with paddle held Voyageur fashion
+in salute, they passed out of sight.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE PILOT'S LAST PORT
+
+
+The little Canadian army was done with The Salient.  The British
+tradition established in the third month of the war, in that first
+terrific twenty-two days' fight by Ypres, that that deadly convex
+should be no thoroughfare to Calais for the Hun, was passed on with
+The Salient into Canadian hands in the early months of 1915.  How
+the little Canadian army preserved the tradition and barred "the
+road-hog of Europe" from the channel coast for seventeen months,
+let history tell, and at what cost let the dead declare who lie in
+unmarked graves which, following the curving line of trenches from
+Langemarck through Hooge and Sanctuary Wood over Observation Ridge
+to St. Eloi, and the dead under those little crosses that crowd the
+cemeteries of The Salient and of the clearing stations in the rear,
+and the living as well, who through life will carry the burden of
+enfeebled and mutilated bodies.
+
+For seventeen months the Canadians in shallow dugouts and behind
+flimsy trenches endured the maddening pounding of the Huns' guns,
+big and little, without the satisfaction of reprisal, except in
+raid or counter-attack, suffering the loss of two-thirds of their
+entire force, but still holding.  Now at length came the welcome
+release.  They were ordered to the Somme.  Welcome not simply
+because of escape from an experience the most trying to which an
+army could be subjected, but welcome chiefly because there was a
+chance of fighting back.
+
+They had no illusions about that great battle area of the south,
+echoes of whose titanic struggle had reached them, but they longed
+for a chance to get back at their foe.  Besides, the Somme
+challenged their fighting spirit.  That glorious assault of the
+first of July of the allied armies which flung them upon the
+scientifically prepared, embattled and entrenched "German
+Frontier," with its fortified villages, its gun stuffed woods, its
+massed parks of artillery, and defended by highly disciplined and
+superbly organised soldiery, stirred them like a bugle call.  For
+two years the master war-makers of the world had employed
+scientific knowledge, ingenuity and unlimited resources upon the
+construction of a system of defence by means of which they hoped to
+defy the world, and upon which when completed they displayed the
+vaunting challenge, "We are ready for you; come on!"
+
+In that great conflict there was no element of surprise.  It was a
+deliberate testing out of strength, physical and moral.  For the
+first time in the war the British army stood upon something like
+even terms in manpower and in weight of metal, with, however, the
+immense handicap still resting upon it that it was the attacking
+force.  The result settled forever the question of the fighting
+quality of the races.  When the first day's fight was done, on a
+battle front of twenty miles the British armies had smashed a hole
+seven miles wide, while their gallant allies, fighting on an eight-
+mile front, had captured the whole line.  In two weeks' time, the
+seven-mile hole was widened to ten.  Fortified villages, entrenched
+redoubts, woods stuffed with guns, great and small, had gone down
+before that steady, relentless, crushing advance.  The full
+significance of the Somme had not dawned as yet upon the world.
+The magnitude of the achievement was not yet estimated, but already
+names hitherto unknown were flung up flaming into the world's sky
+in letters of eternal fire, Ovillers, Mametz Wood, Trones Wood,
+Langueval, Mouquet Farm, Deville Wood for the British, with twenty-
+one thousand prisoners, and Hardecourt, Dompierre, Becquin-Court,
+Bussu and Fay for the French allies, with thirty-one thousand
+prisoners.
+
+On that line of carefully chosen and elaborately fortified
+defences, the proudest of Germany's supermen of war had been beaten
+at their own game by the civilian soldiers of "effete and luxury
+loving Britain," and the republican armies of "decadent France,"
+and still the Homeric fight was raging.  Foot by foot, yard by
+yard, the Hun was fighting to hold the line which should make good
+his insolent claim to the hegemony of the world.  Step by step,
+yard by yard, that line was being torn from his bloody fingers.
+Into that sea of fire and blood, the Canadians were to plunge.
+They remembered Langemarck and Sanctuary Wood and St. Eloi, and
+were not unwilling to make the plunge.  They thought of those long
+months in The Salient, when the ruthless Hun from his vantage
+ground of overwhelming superiority had poured his deadly hail from
+right flank, left flank, front and rear, upon them, holding,
+suffering, dying, day by day, month by month, and they were grimly
+jubilant over the chance which the Somme offered them of evening
+somewhat the score.
+
+"We have something to hand Fritzie," young Pickles was heard to
+remark when he had learned of the quality of the Somme fighting,
+"and I hope he'll like it, for he's got to take it."
+
+The battalion ranks, both officers and men, had once more been
+filled up.  They had a brief fortnight's training in the new open
+fighting under barrage and then set off cheerfully for the "Big
+Game."  Ten days they marched and countermarched in the back
+country, keeping clear of those two mighty streams "up" and "down,"
+that flowed between ditches and hedges along the road that led to
+the great arena, and catching glimpses and echoes as they marched
+until, hard, fit, keen, they joined the "upstream" flowing toward
+Albert.  That stream was made up of those various and multifarious
+elements that go to constitute, equip and maintain a modern army.
+
+There were marching battalions, with their mounted officers,
+bearing names and insignia famous in the world's wars for two
+hundred years, and with them battalions who a few brief months ago
+were peaceful citizens, knowing nothing of war.  There were
+transport columns, ammunition columns, artillery columns, with
+mounted escorts.  There were big guns, on huge caterpillar trucks,
+shouldering the lighter traffic to the ditches, and little guns
+slipping meekly in their rear.  There were motor lorries, honking
+and thundering their insistent way through dodging, escaping,
+cursing infantry, forty-six miles of them to a single army corps.
+There were strings of mules and horses with weirdly shaped burdens
+on their pack saddles.  There were motor cars bearing "Brass Hats,"
+gentle looking individuals, excessively polite, yet somehow getting
+men to jump when they spoke, and everywhere ambulances, silent and
+swift moving, before whose approach the stream parted in recognition
+of the right of way of these messengers of mercy over all the
+enginery of war.
+
+The "down stream" was much the same, with here and there differences.
+That stream flowed more swiftly.  The battalions marched with more
+buoyant tread.  They had done their part and without shame.  They
+had met their foes and seen their backs.  The trucks, transport and
+ammunition wagons were empty and coming with a rush.  Only the
+ambulances moved more slowly.  Carefully, with watchful avoidance of
+ruts and holes, which, in spite of the army of road-mending Huns,
+broke up the surface of the pavements these ambulances made their
+way.  They must get through no matter what was held up.
+
+And as they flowed these streams ever and anon broke their banks
+and flooded over in little eddies into villages and fields, there
+to tarry for a day and a night, only to be caught up again in
+either one of those resistless inevitable currents of war.
+
+"Look before you, major," said Barry, who was riding with the
+Headquarters Company at the head of the column, as often now at the
+invitation of the O. C.
+
+The column was slowly climbing a long gentle sloping hill that
+reached its apex some two or three miles away.  On either side,
+spread out over the fields, as far as the eye could reach, were
+military encampments, in tents, in huts and in the open.  Infantry
+units, horse lines, motor truck parks, repair camps for motors and
+for guns, ammunition dumps with shells piled high, supply sheds
+bulging with their canvas-covered contents, Red Cross huts and
+marquees, and Y. M. C. A. tents with their cues of waiting
+soldiers, getting "eats" and drinks, and comforts of various kinds.
+The whole countryside was one mighty encampment packed with
+munitions and supplies and thronging with horses, mules and men.
+
+"This is war on the 'grand scale,'" said the O. C. dropping back
+beside them.  "From the top of this hill we can see Albert and a
+part of the most famous battle-field of all time.  We camp just
+outside of Albert on what is known as the 'brick field,' and in a
+couple of days more we shall be in it.  Well," he continued, with a
+glance over the column following, "the boys never were more fit."
+
+"And never more keen," said the major.  "They are right on their
+toes."
+
+"Major, I expect to meet the divisional commander down here, and I
+want you to be there.  Captain Dunbar, you know him, I believe.  He
+has asked especially that you should be there as well."
+
+"Yes, sir, I have met the General.  To my mind he is an ideal
+soldier."
+
+"Yes, and an ideal officer," said the O. C.  "He knows his job and
+he is always fit and keen."
+
+At the top of the hill, a traffic officer, a young lieutenant from
+the Imperial forces, diverted the column from the road into a
+field.
+
+"Why is this?" inquired the O. C.
+
+"There's the answer, sir," said the officer coolly.
+
+There was a long drawn whine which rapidly grew into a shriek and
+an H. E. shell dropped fair in the road, a short distance in front.
+
+"Oh, I see, you have some of these birds down in this country,
+too."
+
+"Yes, sir, this is their breeding ground," said the young lieutenant.
+
+Once more came the long whining shriek and the terrific blast of
+the H. E., this time closer.
+
+"I would not delay, sir, if I were you," said the young chap
+coolly, pulling out his cigarette case.  "They get rather ugly at
+times."
+
+"What about you?" inquired the O. C. moving off.
+
+"Part of my job, sir," replied the youth, saluting.
+
+"Well, good luck, boy," said the O. C., trotting to the head of the
+column.
+
+"Thank you, sir," said the youth, turning to his job again.
+
+They rode a hundred yards, when another shell came, there was a
+terrific explosion, apparently just at the spot where the young
+officer had been standing.
+
+"By Jove!  I'm afraid that's got him," said the O. C.
+
+"I'll go and see, sir," said Barry, spurring his horse back to the
+spot.
+
+"Come back here, Barry," called the major.  "Darn him for a fool!
+What's the use of that?  That isn't his job," he added angrily.
+
+"He thinks it is, probably," said the O. C.
+
+Barry found a great hole in the road with the officer's horse lying
+disembowelled beside it, kicking in his death agony.  There was no
+sign of his rider anywhere.  Fortunately there was a gap in the
+column, so that no one else was near enough to be injured.
+
+As Barry stood gazing about, a voice hailed him from the ditch,
+which was several feet deep.
+
+"I say, sir," said the voice, "I wouldn't just stay there.  They
+generally send over four of 'em.  That's only the third.  I find
+this ditch very convenient, though somewhat mucky."
+
+Barry looked at him in astonishment.  He was white and shaken,
+covered with mud, but trying to get his cigarette case open.
+
+"I'd get off, sir, if I were you," he said, "until the next one
+comes.  Quick, sir, I hear it now."
+
+Barry needed no second invitation.  He flung himself headlong into
+the ditch beside the young fellow, but the shell dropped into the
+field beyond.
+
+"That's as near as I like 'em," said the young officer, scraping
+the mud off his clothes.  "My poor, old gee-gee got it though."  He
+drew his revolver and shot the wounded animal.  "It's hard on the
+horses.  You see, they can't dodge," he added.
+
+"I say, my boy," said Barry, for the lieutenant was only a boy,
+"that was a near thing for you.  What are you going to do now?"
+
+"Oh, just carry on," said the boy.  "The relief will be along in
+a few hours.  Beastly mess, eh?" he continued, but whether he
+referred to the disembowelled horse or the state of his own
+uniform, Barry could not say.
+
+"You are sure you are all right?" said Barry, as he shook hands
+with him.  "I'm awfully glad you weren't hurt."
+
+"So am I," said the boy heartily.  "Awfully rotten to be potted out
+here playing a bally policeman, eh?  What?  Well, good luck, sir,"
+and Barry rode off to join his column with a deep admiration in his
+heart for the English school boy who, when war began, was probably
+a fifth form lad, in whose life the most dangerous episode would be
+a ball taken full off bat at point, or a low tackle on the Rugby
+field.
+
+At Divisional Headquarters, they met the general, who after a
+conversation with the O. C. greeted Barry warmly.
+
+"So you have gone and done it, young man.  Well, I admire your
+nerve, and I congratulate you.  I happen to know the family very
+well.  As a matter of fact there is some remote connection, I
+believe.  By the way, I have a communication from London for you,"
+he added, drawing Barry to one side, and giving him a little slip.
+"I happen to know about it," he continued, while Barry was reading
+his telegram, "and say, if I can be of any assistance, I shall be
+very glad.  It's a step up, you see.  I have no doubt it can be put
+through quite easily and quickly, and I believe the step is coming
+to you."
+
+Barry stood with his eyes upon the dispatch.  It was an offer of a
+hospital appointment at the base, and carried with it his majority.
+
+"I have no doubt the missus will be pleased, eh?" said the general
+with a grin.
+
+Barry pulled out a letter from his pocket, opened it and handed it
+to the general, pointing to a paragraph.  The general took it and
+read,
+
+"And Barry, dear, remember that though you have a wife now, your
+duty to your country is still your first duty.  I would hate that
+any thought of me should make it harder for you to carry on."
+
+The general folded up the letter, put it slowly into its envelope,
+and handed it back to Barry.
+
+"I know her," he said simply.  "I should expect nothing else from
+her.  You are a lucky dog, but, of course," he added, with a swift
+glance at Barry's face, "some one must take that job."
+
+"I fancy, sir, there are many for it, who are hardly fit for this
+work up here," replied Barry quietly.  "I think, sir, I'll just
+carry on where I am."
+
+"You are quite sure?" inquired the general.  "Don't you want a day
+or two to think it over?"
+
+"I am quite sure, sir," said Barry, "I am quite sure that my wife
+would approve."
+
+"Very well, then," said the general, "let me handle this for you,
+and let me say, sir, that I am proud to have you in my division."
+
+So saying, he gripped Barry's hand hard, and turned abruptly away
+to the others.
+
+They rode to their camp in almost complete silence, except for a
+grunt or two from the O. C. who seemed in a grumpy mood.
+
+When they arrived at Headquarters, the O. C. drew up his horse and
+turning to the major, said,
+
+"I don't know just what to do with this Pilot of ours.  He is a
+fool in some ways."
+
+"A darned fool, sir," said the major emphatically.
+
+"And," continued the major, "I am selfish enough to say that I am
+damned glad--I won't apologise, Pilot--that he decided to stay with
+us.  It would have been just a little harder to carry on if he had
+left us."
+
+"Yes," growled the major, "but, oh, well, we have got to stick it I
+guess.  The Pilot is a soldier all right."
+
+There was nothing further said about the matter, but next day as
+Barry walked about the camp, among the men, their eyes followed him
+as he passed, and every officer in the mess seemed to discover an
+errand that took him to Barry's tent.
+
+Two days later the Canadians moved up into the line and took over
+from the Australians.  They followed the Bapaume Road toward
+Pozieres, passing through a country which had seen the heaviest
+fighting in the war.
+
+"This," said the O. C., drawing aside from the road, and riding to
+a slightly rising ground, "is La Boiselle, or at least where it
+was, and that I fancy is the famous mine crater.  Sixty thousand
+pounds of gun cotton blew up that hole."
+
+There was absolutely no sign of the village, the very foundations
+of the houses, and the cellars having the appearance of a ploughed
+field.
+
+"That was a desperate fight," continued the O. C.  "It was here
+that the Middlesex men made their great charge.  Fifty men reported
+from the battalion when it was over.  In that village they had a
+whole division fighting before they were through, Middlesex men,
+Royal Scots and Irish, for three days and three nights."
+
+As they rode along, the guns on either side began their evening
+chorus and from the far rear came the roaring rush of the H. E.'s
+like invisible express trains hurtling through the air.  It was
+music to their ears, and they rode forward with a new feeling in
+their hearts, for there appeared to be almost no reply from the
+enemy guns.
+
+The battalion took to the trenches at the crossing of the Pozieres
+Road, and so effective was the counter-battery work that they were
+able to settle down into their battle positions without casualties.
+The R. A. P. was in a deep German dug-out thirty feet below the
+surface, with double entrances and heavily timbered.  It had been
+most elaborately prepared, planked on sides and floor, and fitted
+with electric lights.  There were two main rooms, with a connecting
+corridor, leading to each entrance.  They found an Australian
+medical officer in charge.
+
+"These chaps were regular settlers, weren't they?" said Barry,
+after they had exchanged greetings.
+
+"Yes, sir, they intended to sty, apparently," said the Australian,
+in his slow drawl.  "We found some letters on a wounded officer
+indicating their intention to remyn for the durytion, but we wanted
+the plyce--couldn't carry on without it in fact.  It's quite a good
+plyce, too," he added with a cheerful grin.
+
+"Why, it's just bully," said the M. O.  "I am only sorry that we
+can't promise you as good in The Salient."
+
+"I hear it is rather rotten, eh, sir?" said the Australian.
+
+"Not as bad as Gallipoli, though," said Barry.  "By Jove!  You
+Australian chaps did magnificently down there.  Must have been a
+perfect hell."
+
+"Oh, yes, quite hot for a while, but I fancy you Canydians didn't
+have any afternoon tea party in The Sylient, eh?  My word, there
+was some fighting there.  Oh, there it comes," he added.
+
+As he spoke a muffled explosion was heard, and the dug-out rocked,
+and the candles flickered.
+
+"Can they get you down here?" inquired the M. O.
+
+"I fancy a direct hit from a really big H. E. would disturb our
+little home, but nothing else would.  Of course, a shell in the
+door wye would be a bit awkward, you knaow," replied the
+Australian.
+
+The night, however, passed quietly, and except for a few slightly
+wounded walking cases, there was little work to do.  The Canadians
+decided that in coming to the Somme, they had made a most happy
+exchange.
+
+A quiet day followed the night, but the whole battalion was keyed
+up with intense expectation for the attack which they knew was
+fixed for the night following.  With expectation mingled curiosity.
+They knew all about raiding; that was their own specialty, but they
+were curious as to the new style of fighting which they knew to be
+awaiting them, the capturing, holding and consolidating of a line
+of enemy trenches.
+
+Nightfall brought the opportunity to gratify their curiosity.  For
+two hours before the attack, their guns put down the barrage to
+cover the front line of enemy trenches, and to dispose of his wire.
+
+The M. O. and Barry, with the Australian and their whole staff,
+made their way to a ridge a few yards distant to see the show.
+
+"Great Heaven, what is that?" inquired the M. O., pointing to what
+seemed to be a line of flickering watch fires upon the crest of a
+neighbouring rising ground.
+
+"Guns!  Ours," said the Australian, surprised at the M. O.'s
+excitement.
+
+"Guns!  My Lord, guns, Barry," shouted the M. O.
+
+"Guns?  And in the open!  And on a hill!  And wheel to wheel!"
+cried Barry.  "Thank the good Lord I have lived to see this day.
+Look at the boys," he added in a low tone, to the Australian beside
+him.
+
+They glanced over their shoulders and saw two of the orderlies
+executing a fox-trot in the heavy shell-ploughed soil.
+
+"What's the row?" inquired the Australian.
+
+"Why, my dear chap," replied the M. O., "don't you know we have
+never seen a gun in action in the open that way.  Our guns operated
+only from holes and corners, from hedges and cellars.  Otherwise
+they'd be spotted and knocked out in an hour."
+
+"Ow!" said the Australian, "our bird men attended to that the first
+dye of the fight.  They sye there was a double line of observation
+balloons along the lines, ours and theirs up to the 30th of June.
+The next morning not a Boche balloon was to be seen.  Our plynes
+put their eye out in a single afternoon.  Since that time, we hold
+over them in the air.  Ah!  There are the heavies coming up now.
+The full chorus will be on in half a minute."
+
+A few seconds later, the truth of the Australian's prophecy was
+demonstrated.  The full chorus was on.  For two hours the barrage
+raged, and the din was such that they had to shout in each other's
+ears to be heard.  The hilltops were ringed with darting tongues of
+red flame as though belched out by a thousand fabled dragons.  It
+was as if the air above was filled with millions of invisible
+demons, whining, moaning, barking, shrieking in a fury of venomous
+hate, while at regular intervals came the express train roar of the
+twelve, fifteen and sixteen inch guns.
+
+"It's almost worth while to have lived through those months in The
+Salient," said Barry, "to get the full enjoyment of this experience.
+Well do I remember the day when our O. C. asked for 'retaliation,'
+and was told he could have six rounds, I think it was, or eight.
+Meanwhile our trenches and dug-cuts were going up in bloody mud."
+
+"I think we might as well go below," said the Australian.  "They
+will be coming in presently."
+
+But Barry and the M. O. remained long after the first coming in
+shells began to drop around.  That barrage so long waited for, and
+so ardently desired, was worth some risk.
+
+Soon the wounded began to arrive, and throughout the whole night,
+the M. O. and his staff were busy at their work.  On the arrival of
+the zero hour, the barrage lifted.
+
+"Well, good luck go with the boys," said the Australian, fervently.
+"They are out and over now.  We'll get some of them presently."
+
+Throughout the night, a stream of walking wounded kept flowing in.
+Jubilant, exultant in spite of their pain, they bore with them the
+joyful report that they had shifted the Hun from his trenches and
+his deep dug-outs, and were still advancing.  Singing at the top of
+their voices, they came limping in, bloody and muddy, but wild with
+exultation and joy.  The day long looked for by the Canadians had
+arrived.  They were getting something of their own back.
+
+The next day revealed the full extent of the achievement.  The
+whole Canadian line had swept forward for over a thousand yards,
+had captured strong points, a fortified sunken road, the famous
+"sugar refinery" and, overrunning their objective, had captured the
+village of Courcelette, as well.  It was a gallant little fight,
+and quite a notable achievement.
+
+After two days the battalion was pulled out, having suffered
+comparatively slight losses, and more than ready to return when the
+opportunity should come.
+
+The next three weeks were spent in minor operations, consolidating
+positions, repelling counter-attacks, and preparing for the real
+"big go," in which the Canadians were to take their part in the
+advance of the whole allied line, after which the battalion was
+sent into reserve for a few days' respite.
+
+The Canadian line was gradually wearing thin, but the spirit of
+those who survived was the spirit of the whole allied line,--the
+spirit that claimed victory and was not to be denied.  As to the
+nature of the task awaiting them, however, they well knew that it
+was to be a fight in which the last ounce of resolution and only
+the last ounce would carry them through to their objective.
+
+The experiences of the allies during the past months had wrought in
+them a settled conviction that victory was awaiting them, and a
+settled resolution that that victory they would secure at all cost
+soever.
+
+At length the day arrived, a dull October day, overhung with rain
+clouds and thick with chill mist.  On the parade ground the
+battalion was drawn up for the service which always preceded an
+attack.
+
+The operations of the past month had reduced the battalion to about
+half its fighting strength.  Only some five hundred men, with
+officers barely sufficient to direct their movements, looked back
+at Barry through the mist as he faced them for the service.
+
+"Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation," he
+read.  The psalm might have been written for the occasion.
+
+"He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence: I shall not
+be moved.
+
+"My soul, wait thou only upon God: for my expectation is from him.
+
+"He only is my rock and my salvation: he is my defence: I shall not
+be moved.
+
+"In God is my salvation, and my glory: the rock of my strength, and
+my refuge is in God.
+
+"Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before
+him.  God is a refuge for us."
+
+Barry made only a single comment upon the psalm, "Men, nothing can
+move God, and nothing can move those whose trust is in God.
+Remember God is to be trusted."
+
+The reading was followed by the General Confession, the Absolution
+and a brief extemporary prayer, concluding with the Lord's Prayer.
+As Barry was mounting his horse a runner brought him an order from
+his divisional chief, directing him to report at the casualty
+clearing station in Albert for immediate duty.  He carried the
+order to the O. C.
+
+"Look at this!" he stormed.
+
+"Too bad!  Too bad!" said the O. C.  "Rotten luck for you."
+
+"Look here, sir," said Barry, "I have always gone up with the
+battalion, and I think--"
+
+"I fancy they are getting on to you, Dunbar.  You know you have
+rather shirked the C. C. S. duty," said the O. C. with a smile.
+
+"Isn't there some way out of this?  If I got a substitute--"
+
+"A soldier obeys orders, Captain Dunbar," said the O. C. gravely.
+
+"Yes, sir, I know, but--"
+
+"And he doesn't say 'but'," continued the O. C.  "No, Barry," he
+added in a kindly voice, "I have no responsibility or authority in
+this.  I'd be glad to have you come up with us.  We are going into
+the 'big thing' this time, I know, but perhaps it's just as well.
+You go your way and we'll go ours.  I'd like to say this to you,
+however, my boy, you have been a great help to me with the men."
+
+His tone was grave but kind, and it sent to Barry's heart a chill
+of foreboding.  "Good-bye, Barry," he added, shaking hands with
+him.
+
+"Good-bye, sir.  Good luck, sir.  May I say, sir," said Barry,
+"that you have helped me immensely with my duty."
+
+"Do you say so, Barry?" said the O. C., a note of surprise in his
+voice.  "I'm delighted to know that."
+
+"God keep you, sir," said Barry earnestly.
+
+"Thank you, sir.  We are in His keeping, aren't we?" and turning in
+his saddle, he gave the order to advance.
+
+Barry rode with the column to the very mouth of the communication
+trench running to Pozieres, dropping into step with each company
+commander for a time, and leaving each with a cheery word of
+farewell.  At the mouth of the trench, he stood watching the men as
+they stepped down and out of his sight, giving them a word of good
+cheer and good luck as they passed, and receiving in return
+answering smiles and greetings.  Then with eyes unseeing, he rode
+back to camp, heavy of heart, for he knew well that many of these
+faces he would see no more.
+
+The zero hour was fixed for five a. m. the following morning.  As
+the hour drew near, Barry at his work in the C. C. S., found in his
+heart the words of the psalm, "My soul wait thou only upon God . . .
+I shall not be moved."  That wounds and death were awaiting many
+of them he well knew, and his prayer was that they might meet the
+fate appointed them with unshaken faith and courage.
+
+By seven o'clock the wounded began to arrive and an hour later the
+C. A. M. C. marquee was filled to overflowing with a cue of wounded
+men forming outside in the falling rain.  The suffering in their
+pale and patient faces stirred in him a poignant sympathy.  There
+was the chaplain service tent adjoining.  He ran to find the
+chaplain in charge.
+
+"Tell me," he said, "may we use your marquee for wounded men?"
+
+"Sure thing.  It will never be used for a better purpose."
+
+Barry returned to the O. C. of the C. C. S.
+
+"Why not direct that a part of this stream be sent to the adjoining
+tent for registration, and for anti-tetanus hypodermics?  These
+poor chaps are standing out in the rain, chilled to the bone and
+ready to drop."
+
+"For Heaven's sake do it," said the O. C.  "We are really up
+against it here.  Can you take that off my hands?"
+
+"I'll try," said Barry.
+
+In a few minutes the congestion at the door of the marquee was
+relieved and the wounded men, to their own vast comfort, were
+bestowed upon the benches and chairs in the chaplain service tent.
+But something further was necessary to their comfort.
+
+"Draper," said Barry to the chaplain in charge of the tent, "you
+see these men?  They have had nothing to eat since last night.
+They have fought a battle, been wounded, and walked out some five
+miles or so, since then.  It's eight o'clock now.  What about it?"
+
+"What about it?" exclaimed the chaplain.  "You watch me!"
+
+He ran to the Y. M. C. A. tent, enlisted the secretary's aid and
+in twenty minutes they together had transported to the chaplain
+service tent coffee and cocoa urns, and with an organised band of
+assistants were supplying the wounded with warming and comforting
+nourishment.  Never had those splendid services more quickly and
+effectively justified their place in the army.
+
+With the wounded came rumours, more or less fantastic, of disaster.
+Something terrible had befallen the whole Canadian line.  It was
+difficult to get at the truth.  As with all rumours, they
+contradicted each other and left the mind in a chaos of perplexity.
+The battalion had run into wire, where the machine guns had found
+it, the battalion was practically wiped out, it had found cover in
+a trench and was still holding on, the O. C. was wounded, the O. C.
+was killed, and with him every company commander.
+
+Again and again, Barry sent men to the signals to learn the truth,
+but it was found impossible to get a message through.  That an
+overwhelming disaster had befallen his battalion was abundantly
+evident from the numbers of wounded.  With his heart growing numb
+with pain he struggled with his work.  Gradually, he was forced to
+accept as true that a large proportion of the battalion were
+casualties, that the O. C. was wounded, possibly dying, that many
+of the officers had fallen and that the remainder were still
+holding a precarious position, and fighting for their lives.
+
+"I shall not be moved," he had read to them last night.  The
+promise was being fulfilled in the men of his battalion.  They
+could die at the wire or in the trench, but they could not be
+moved.  While mechanically carrying on his work, his mind was with
+the fighting, dying remnant of his comrades.  The O. C. of the
+C. C. S. passing on his rounds found Barry carrying on with tears
+blinding his eyes so that he could hardly see the figures he was
+entering in his record.
+
+"Your men are having a hell of a time, I hear," said the O. C.  "I
+say, boy," he added, glancing at Barry's haggard face, "let up for
+a while."
+
+"I'm all right, sir," said Barry, through his teeth.  "Excuse me,
+really I'm all right.  It is a bit difficult to carry on when you
+know that your friends are being cut to pieces, but I'm all right,
+sir."
+
+"All right, my boy," said the O. C., "we're up against it to-day.
+I'll come for you in a few minutes, and we'll have a bit to eat."
+
+Barry shook his head.  He was too sick to eat, but the O. C. knew
+better than he just what he wanted.  In a few minutes he returned
+with an assistant who took Barry's place.
+
+"Come along, boy," said the O. C. cheerfully.  "We have got to feed
+the living that we may care for the wounded and dying."
+
+"You are quite right, sir," said Barry.  "I am ashamed of myself.
+I'll be fit in a few minutes."
+
+"Don't apologise for one moment," said the colonel, "if you felt
+any less deeply than you do, you'd be something less than a man.
+We'll get into touch with the Divisional Headquarters, and try to
+get the facts."
+
+He had no sooner reached his private room than his signaller
+informed him that Divisional Headquarters had just been trying to
+get him.  It took some time, however, to get the message through.
+Meantime, the Colonel was handling Barry with a wise and skillful
+touch.  He made him eat and eat heartily, seeking to divert his
+mind in the meantime from the disaster that had befallen the
+battalion to the big issues at stake, and pointing out with
+resolute cheerfulness that the calamity that had befallen the
+battalion was only a temporary setback.
+
+"We're winning, my boy, and we're paying the price," he said.
+
+At length signals got the D. H. Q. and called the colonel to the
+phone.  After a few minutes' conversation, the O. C. called Barry.
+
+"The general wants to speak to you, padre," and Barry with an
+apprehensive heart went to the phone.
+
+"Oh, that you, Captain Dunbar?"  It was the general's voice and
+somehow it carried with it an atmosphere of calm and cheerful
+confidence.  "How are you getting on?"
+
+"Oh, sir, very well.  We are terribly anxious, of course."
+
+"That's natural," said the general quietly.  "We have had rather a
+serious reverse.  Your whole brigade met with wire, and I fear they
+suffered heavily.  The men behaved with great steadiness and are
+still splendidly holding.  We are, of course, making every effort
+to relieve them, and with good hope of success."
+
+"Have you heard of my O. C.?" inquired Barry.
+
+"I fear rather bad news, Dunbar.  Indeed, I fear he is seriously
+wounded.  We have sent him straight on to Contay.  Your officers
+have suffered quite severely."
+
+"Have you heard what the casualties are, sir?"
+
+"Not exactly," replied the General.  "We shall not know until
+evening, but we must be prepared for a heavy loss.  By the way, can
+you be spared from the casualty clearing station?  I hear you are
+doing fine work there.  If you can run up, I can send my car for
+you."
+
+"I'm afraid not, sir, just now.  Perhaps later on in the afternoon."
+
+"Let me speak to Colonel James," said the general.
+
+The O. C. came to the phone.
+
+"Yes, sir," he said.--"Well, we are short handed just now.--He is
+really necessary at the present moment.--Yes, later on we'll send
+him up.--Very well, sir.--We are doing our best."
+
+The calm and confident bearing of his superior officer, made Barry
+ashamed of the unnerving emotion from which he had been suffering
+all morning.  He returned to his work resolved to put aside all
+personal considerations.  The thing in which they were engaged was
+vastly more important than the fate of any individual or of any
+battalion.  Victory was necessary, was guaranteed, and was
+demanding its price.  That price was being paid, and to that price
+every man must make his contribution.
+
+Toward night the stream of wounded gradually grew less, and the
+O. C. sent Barry, in a returning ambulance, up to the Divisional
+Headquarters.  The serenity with which the general received him did
+much to restore Barry's poise, which had been severely shaken by
+the strain of the night and day with the wounded in the casualty
+clearing station and by the heartracking agony he had suffered over
+the loss of his comrades.
+
+"Come in, Dunbar," said the general kindly.  "Take a seat for a few
+minutes.  Have a cigar.  These you will find are good, I think."
+
+"Thank you, sir.  I will take a cigarette, if I may," said Barry,
+helping himself from a box on the table.
+
+He had not been many minutes in the dug-out until he began to catch
+the reactions of the place.  The spirit was one of controlled but
+concentrated energy.  It was the spirit of the divisional commander,
+and it passed from him to the humblest orderly in the room.  There
+was swiftness of action, alertness of mind, and with these a
+complete absence of hurry or confusion.  Runners were continually
+arriving with urgent messages, phones insisting upon immediate
+answer, officers coming in with business of vast importance, but
+with no sign of flurry, the work of the Divisional Headquarters went
+swiftly and smoothly on.
+
+At length there was a pause in the rush of calls upon the general's
+attention.
+
+"Come in this way," he said to Barry, and led him to a smaller room
+at the back of the dug-out.
+
+"Very comfortable quarters these.  They seem to have done themselves
+quite well, haven't they?  It is most convenient, for we certainly
+should not have taken pains to construct such elaborate dug-outs as
+these we have fallen heir to.  Find a seat, Dunbar.  I have got the
+latest reports."  His voice was very gentle and very kindly.  "Yes,"
+he continued, "we have had a bad night's work.  Uncut wire and an
+enfilade from a redoubt which should have been blown up.  The
+casualties are very heavy."
+
+"What are they?" Barry asked.
+
+"Quite heavy, Dunbar, I'm afraid.  Only some fifty have reported so
+far."
+
+"Fifty!" cried Barry.  "Out of five hundred!"
+
+"There will doubtless some more drop in," added the general, "but
+we must be prepared for a heavy loss, far heavier, both in officers
+and men, than we can afford.  The Battalion Headquarters was
+terribly wrecked by a succession of direct hits.  Only a few of the
+staff escaped unhurt.  Colonel Leighton was a fine officer.  I had
+a great admiration, indeed, affection, for him.  I know how you
+felt towards him, and he to you."
+
+The steadiness in his voice brought quiet, but the kindness in it
+brought strength, and comfort.  Barry became suddenly aware of the
+crushing load of responsibility upon this gentle-voiced man.  He
+was eager to help.
+
+"I wish I could help you, sir," he said.  "I am sure we are all
+ready to do our best."
+
+"I know that, Dunbar, and all are needed.  Major Duff has gone out
+badly injured.  The only officers remaining unhurt in the front line
+are Major Bayne and Captain Fraser, both of whom are splendidly
+carrying on.  And you, too, have given great help to-day.  Colonel
+James assures me that your initiative and resourcefulness were of
+the greatest service to him.  Oh, by the way, a message came through
+in a letter the other day, that I should have sent you, but other
+things put it out of my mind, I am sorry to say."  He touched a
+bell.  "You see I had to tell your wife, Dunbar, of your
+determination to stay by us," he added with a smile.  "Get me my
+private post-bag, please," he said to the orderly.  He selected a
+letter from a packet, opened it, and pointed to a page.  Barry
+recognised the handwriting as his wife's.  He read:
+
+"I need not assure you it was none of my family's doing to get that
+appointment for Barry.  I was not surprised that he declined it,
+but then you see I know Barry.  He is at the place where I would
+want him to be."
+
+Barry kept his eyes steadily upon the words until he should be sure
+of his voice.  His heart was thrilling with pride in the girl who
+had given herself to him.  As the moments passed, he there and then
+vowed that by God's grace, he would not shame her nor belie her
+trust in him.
+
+"Thank you, sir," he said quietly, handing the letter back.
+
+"Helps a bit, eh, what?" said the general.  "We can't let our women
+down, can we?"
+
+"No, sir," said Barry.  "Is there nothing I can do?"  His voice was
+as steady and quiet as the general's.
+
+"Oh, thank you, just the C. C. S., I fancy, at present."
+
+At that point the door opened, and the corps commander came in,
+wearing a very tired and anxious face.
+
+"Bad business, general," he said, with a single word of greeting
+and ignoring Barry.
+
+"Yes, a very bad business, sir," said the divisional commander,
+and Barry fancied he caught a new note in his voice, a note of
+sternness, almost of challenge.
+
+"Seems that we missed that wire, eh, along here?" said the corps
+commander, putting his finger upon a map which lay on the table.
+
+"We must have that patrolled very carefully, you know."  There was
+a note of criticism in his voice.
+
+"Yes, sir," replied the corps commander courteously.  "I wasn't at
+all sure that the wire was cut, and so reported."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"This strong point should have been removed," continued the
+divisional commander, putting his finger upon a point of junction.
+"That I asked to be done, but McDowell seems to have missed it."
+
+"Ah!"
+
+"The enfilade got us from that point, of course."  There was no
+mistaking the implication in the general's words.
+
+"Ah!  You reported that, eh?"
+
+"You will find it in my report, sir.  My division has suffered very
+heavily from that strong point."
+
+The corps commander turned, and apparently observing Barry for the
+first time started and said,
+
+"You are--"
+
+"My friend, Captain Dunbar," said the general.
+
+"Ah, Captain Dunbar," said the corps commander, obviously annoyed
+at his presence at the interview.  "I trust Captain Dunbar is
+quite--"
+
+"Captain Dunbar's reticence," said the general with quiet courtesy,
+"can be entirely trusted.  He has just been doing some fine work at
+the C. C. S."
+
+"Ah, yes.  You are a padre, Dunbar?  Oh, I remember to have heard
+about you.  Very glad, indeed, to meet you, sir.  Well, I must be
+off.  We'll see to that strong point at once, general.  Good-night--
+good-night, Dunbar."
+
+The general returned from seeing his visitor out.  "Of course, we
+keep these things to ourselves."
+
+"Of course," answered Barry.
+
+"And now," said the general with a kindly smile, "I have kept the
+good news to the last.  Your majority is coming through, and here
+is a letter which came in my care.  Now, if you will excuse me,
+I'll leave you to take a bit of a rest.  There's a cot, if you want
+to lie down.  Then we'll have a bite to eat later."
+
+"Oh, thank you very much," said Barry eagerly, taking the letter.
+"This is good news, indeed.  My letters have been going astray
+somehow.  I have not had one for a week."
+
+"As long as that," said the general with uplifted brows.
+
+One sentence in his letter made music in Barry's heart.
+
+"And oh, my heart's beloved, God has been good to me and to you,
+for when the war is over, I hope there will be two of us to welcome
+daddy back."  To which sentence Barry in his letter, written in
+immediate reply, said,
+
+"Yes, dear, dear heart, God has been good to us, in that he has
+given us to each other, and to us both this wonderful new life to
+carry on when we are done."
+
+When the general returned, he found Barry with his face on his arms
+and dead asleep.
+
+"Poor chap," he said to his batman, "he is done up.  Let him rest a
+bit."
+
+They gave him an hour, after which they had their bite together.
+
+"Now, general," said Barry, "I should like to run up to Battalion
+Headquarters.  I might be of use there."
+
+"That's quite all right," said the general.  "You will be glad to
+know that that strong point has already been attended to.  You
+didn't hear the row, did you?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+"Well the relief is going in and your men will soon be out."
+
+When Barry entered the Battalion Headquarters, he found only Major
+Bayne and Captain Neil, with a signaller and a couple of runners,
+completing the arrangements for the relief.
+
+"You!  Pilot!" exclaimed the major, as he gripped his hand.  "Now
+what the devil brought you here?"
+
+"Couldn't help it, major.  Simply had to come.  I have been trying
+to get you all day," said Barry.
+
+"Awfully glad to see you, old chap," said Captain Neil, for the
+major was finding difficulty with his speech.
+
+"How many left, major?" said Barry.
+
+"Five officers and seventy men," said the major in a husky voice.
+"My God, how those boys stuck."
+
+"I shall not be moved," quoted Barry.
+
+"That's it!  That's it!" said the major.  "Not the devil himself,
+let alone the Huns, could move them back from that wire.  What is
+it, Sergeant Matthews?" he inquired of the sergeant who came in at
+that moment.  "Have you completed your work?"
+
+Sergeant Matthews was pale, panting and exhausted.  "Yes, sir," he
+said, "I think so.  I didn't--I didn't--go quite the full length of
+the trench.  The boys said there was no one up there."
+
+"But, Sergeant Matthews," thundered the major, "your orders were to
+go to the very end of the trench.  You know this battalion never
+goes out leaving its wounded behind."
+
+"We had a full load, sir," said the sergeant, leaning against the
+wall.
+
+"Well, you will have to go back," said the major, "and complete the
+job.  Can you carry on?"
+
+"Yes, sir, I think so, sir."
+
+As he spoke Sergeant Matthews swayed along the wall and collapsed
+onto a bench.
+
+"Give him a shot of rum," said the major curtly to a runner.
+
+"Let me go, major.  I'll take the party," said Barry eagerly.  "The
+sergeant is all in.  I've had an hour's sleep and a feed and I feel
+quite fit."
+
+"Oh, nonsense, the sergeant will be all right soon," said the major
+impatiently.
+
+"But, major, I should like to go.  The sergeant is played out and I
+am perfectly fit.  We can't take the risk of leaving wounded men up
+there in that trench.  Besides, there's little danger now.  The
+strong point is blown up, so the general told me before I left."
+
+"No, Barry, I won't allow it.  I won't take the chance," said the
+major.  "My God, man! there are only five officers left.  I have
+lost every friend I have got in the battalion, except Neil here and
+you.  I'm damned if I'm going to let you go out over No Man's
+Land."
+
+"Steady, now, major," said Barry.  "I'm going to take a walk to the
+end of that trench, just in case one of the boys should be there.
+Don't say no.  It must be done and done carefully."
+
+"All right, Barry," said the major, suddenly yielding.  "Better
+take the sergeant with you.  He knows the way, and I guess he's all
+right now."
+
+The major and Captain Neil followed the party up the stairs and out
+into the trench.  It was a beautiful starry night, and all was
+quiet now along the front.
+
+"I don't like it," said the major, as he and Captain Neil stood
+together watching the party away.  "I feel queer about it, Neil.  I
+tell you I wish I hadn't let him go, but he is so darned stubborn
+about what he thinks is his duty."
+
+"By Jove!  Major, he always bucks me up somehow," said Captain
+Neil.
+
+"Bucks us all up," said the major, and he turned to take up again
+the heavy burden of responsibility so suddenly and so terribly laid
+upon him.  The relief had been completed, and the last N. C. O. had
+just reported "all clear."  The Headquarters Company, now reduced
+to a poor half dozen, were standing ready to move, when the
+telephone rang.
+
+"Yes, doctor," said the major, answering it.  "Oh, my God!  My God!
+Not that, doctor!  Oh, God help us all!  I'll be right down.  It's
+the Pilot, Neil," he said, turning to his friend.  "Just take
+charge, will you please.  I must run."
+
+Breathless he arrived at the R. A. P.
+
+"Any chance, doctor?" he asked of the M. O. who was standing
+awaiting him at the door.
+
+"Not the very least, major, and he only has a few minutes.  He
+wants you."
+
+"Now, may God help me," said the major standing quite still a
+moment or two.  "How did he get it?" he asked of a stretcher
+bearer.  "Do you know?"
+
+"Yes, sir, we had just picked up the last man.  Sergeant Matthews
+got a wound in the leg, and we had to carry him.  Just as we
+started, they got to shelling pretty bad and we dropped into a
+hole.  I looked over my shoulder and there was the Pilot, the
+chaplain, sir, I mean, with his body spread over Sergeant Matthews,
+to keep off the shrapnel.  It was there he got it."
+
+"Damn Sergeant Matthews," exclaimed the major, and passed on.
+
+Barry was lying on a stretcher, very white and very still, but the
+smile with which he welcomed the major was very bright.
+
+"Awfully sorry--for you,--old chap," he whispered.  "Couldn't
+really--help--it--you know--we--got--them all--I'm--awfully--glad--
+to see you--just a minute--before--before--"
+
+The major, by this time, was weeping quietly.
+
+"You have--been--a good friend--to me--major--.  We--have had--a
+good--time--together--.  Say--goodbye--to--the boys--for--me--and--
+--to--to--Neil."
+
+"Oh, Barry, boy," said the major, brokenly.  "It's hard to have you
+go.  You have helped us all."
+
+Barry fumbled with weak fingers at his breast.  The major opened
+his tunic thinking that he needed air.
+
+"My--my--let-ter--" he whispered.
+
+The major took the letter from his breast pocket, and put it in his
+hand.  Barry held it a moment, then carried it to his lips.
+
+"Now--that's--all--major," he whispered.  "Tell--her--I--thank--
+God--for--her--and--for--the--other.  Major--tell--the boys--that--
+God--is good--.  Never--to be--afraid--but to--carry on--"
+
+It was his last word, and there could be no better.  "God is good.
+Never be afraid but carry on."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+"CARRY ON"
+
+
+The next day but one they carried the Pilot to his grave in the
+little plot outside the walled cemetery on the outskirts of the
+city of Albert.  It had been arranged that only a small guard
+should follow to the grave.  But this plan was changed.  Sergeant
+Mackay, who was the only sergeant left after consulting "the boys,"
+came to Major Bayne.
+
+"The boys feel bad, sir," he said, "that they can't go with the
+Pilot, excuse me, sir, the chaplain."
+
+"Do they?" said the major.  "We want to avoid congestion in the
+streets, and besides we don't want to expose the men.  They are
+still shelling the city, you know."
+
+"I know, sir," replied the sergeant.  "The boys have heard the
+shells before, sir.  And there's not so many of them that they will
+crowd the streets much."
+
+"Let them go, sergeant," said the major, and Sergeant Mackay went
+back with the word to the men.  "And I want you to look like
+soldiers," said the sergeant, "for remember we are following a
+soldier to his grave."
+
+And look like soldiers they did with every button and bayonet
+shining, as they had never shone for battalion inspection.
+
+They had passed through an experience which had left them dazed;
+they had marched deliberately into the mouth of hell and had come
+back stunned by what they had seen and heard, incapable of emotion.
+So they thought, till they learned that the Pilot had been killed.
+Then they knew that grief was still possible to them.  With their
+grief mingled a kind of inexplicable wrath at the manner of his
+death.
+
+"If it had been the O. C. now, or any one else but Fatty Matthews,"
+said Sergeant Mackay in disgust, expressing the general opinion.
+"It is an awful waste."
+
+Under the figure of the Virgin and Child, leaning out in pity and
+appeal over the shattered city, through marching battalions "going
+in" and "coming out," the little pitiful remnant made its way, the
+band leading, the Brigade and Divisional Headquarters Staffs
+bringing up in the rear.  The service was brief and simple, a
+brother chaplain reading at the major's suggestion the Psalm which
+Barry had read at his last Parade Service with the battalion.
+
+At the conclusion of the service, the divisional commander stepped
+forward and said,
+
+"May I offer the officers and men of this battalion my respectful
+sympathy with them in the loss of their chaplain?  During these
+last weeks, I had come to know him well.  Captain Dunbar was a
+chaplain in his brigade.  He was more.  He was a gallant officer,
+a brave soldier, a loyal-hearted Canadian.  The morale of this
+division is higher to-day because he has been with us.  He did his
+duty to his country, to his comrades, to his God.  What more can we
+ask than this, for ourselves and for our comrades?"
+
+Then there was a little pause and Major Bayne began to speak.  At
+first his voice was husky and tremulous, but as he went on, it
+gathered strength and clearness.  He reminded them how, when the
+chaplain came to them first, they did not understand him, nor treat
+him quite fairly, but how in these last months, he had carried the
+confidence, and the love, of every officer and man in the battalion.
+
+"Were the Commanding Officer here to-day, he would tell, as I have
+often heard him tell, how greatly the chaplain had contributed to
+the discipline and to the morale of this battalion.  He helped us
+all to be better soldiers and better men.  He never shrank from
+danger.  He never faltered in duty.  He lived to help his comrades
+and to save a comrade he gave his life at last."
+
+The major paused, looked round upon the gallant remnant of a once
+splendid battalion, his lips quivering, his eyes running over with
+tears.  But he pulled himself together, and continued with steady
+voice to the end.
+
+"But not to say these things am I speaking to you today.  I wish
+only to give you this last message from our Sky Pilot.  This is the
+Pilot's last message:  'Tell the boys that God is good, and when
+they are afraid, to trust Him, and "carry on."'  And for myself,
+men, I want to say that he was the only man that showed me what God
+is like."
+
+In that company of men who had looked steadfastly into the face of
+death, there were no eyes without tears, many of them were openly
+weeping.
+
+When the major had finished, the officers present, beginning with
+the divisional commander, came and stood at the head of the open
+grave for a single moment, then silently saluted and turned away.
+It was the duty of Bugler Pat McCann to sound "The Last Post," but
+poor Pat was too overcome with his sobbing at once to perform this
+last duty.  Whereupon the runner Pickles, standing with rigid,
+stony face beside his chum, took the bugle from his hands and there
+sounded forth that most beautiful and most poignant of all musical
+sounds known to British soldiers the world over, "The Last Post,"
+ending with that last, high, long-drawn, heart-piercing note of
+farewell.
+
+Then, because the war was yet to be won, they "carried on," the
+battalion marching away to a merry tune.
+
+Beside Barry's grave there still lingered three men, the divisional
+commander, Major Bayne, and Captain Neil.
+
+"I am thinking of that little girl in London," said the divisional
+commander, and for the first time his voice broke.  The others
+waited, looking at him.  "We will hold back this news for a couple
+of days, and I think, major, you ought to go and--"
+
+"No, general!--My God, no!  Don't ask me!"  The major was profoundly
+agitated.  "Send Neil, here.  He knows her well, and his wife is
+her great friend."
+
+"Very well, major, I think that will be better," said the general
+in his courteous, gentle voice.  "You know her, Captain Fraser, and
+you can be better spared."
+
+And so it was arranged.  Captain Neil telegraphed Paula to meet him
+at Boulogne, and together they made the journey to London, carrying
+with them sad and fearful hearts.
+
+They found Phyllis in a little flat which her mother had taken.
+When she saw them her face went white, and her hands flew to her
+bosom.  Speechless, and with a great fear in her wide-open brown
+eyes, she stood looking from one to the other, waiting for their
+message.  Paula went to her and without a word put her arms round
+her, and held her close.
+
+"I know, Paula," she said, putting her gently away from her.  "I
+know what you have to tell me.  Barry is dead.  My dear love is
+dead!"  Her voice was tender, soft and low.  "Don't fear to tell
+me, Neil," she said.  "See, I am quite steady."  She put out her
+hand that he might see that there was no tremour in it.
+
+"Sit down, darling," besought Paula, again winding her arms about
+her.
+
+"No, no, let me stand, Paula dear.  See, I am quite strong.  Now
+tell me about it, Neil--all about it.  You were his dear friend,
+you know."
+
+Her voice, so sweet, so soft, so perfectly controlled, helped
+Captain Neil with his task.  It seemed an offence that he should
+intrude any exhibition of grief or emotion upon the serene calm of
+this young girl, standing so straight, so proud, and regarding him
+with such brave eyes.
+
+Then Captain Neil told his tale.  He began with the last service
+upon the Parade Ground before the battalion moved into action.  He
+told of Barry's bitter disappointment, and of their relief that he
+was not allowed to accompany them to the front line.  He told of
+Barry's long day at the casualty clearing station, and of his
+service to the wounded, and of how good the divisional commander
+had been to him that night.
+
+"It was there he got your letter, Phyllis."
+
+"Oh, he got my letter.  I'm so glad," whispered the girl, with a
+quick breath and a sudden flushing of her pale cheeks.  "He knew!
+He knew!"
+
+"I have his letter in reply here," said Captain Neil, handing it to
+her.
+
+She took it in both her hands, kissed it tenderly, as if caressing
+a child, and put it in her bosom.
+
+"Please go on," she said, and Captain Neil took up his tale again.
+He told how the major tried to persuade him not to go out after the
+wounded that night.
+
+"But, of course, he would go," the girl said with a proud little
+smile, at which Captain Neil's self-control quite gave way, and he
+could only look at her piteously through his tears.
+
+"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said gently.  "Can't you go on?  I want to
+hear so much every bit, but if you can't--"
+
+At which, Captain Neil gripped himself hard and went on, "and so he
+went out, and they searched the trench from end to end.  They found
+one poor chap, whose leg was badly smashed--"
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad they found him," whispered Phyllis.
+
+"Then Sergeant Matthews got his wound, and the shells began to
+fall.  They took refuge in a shell hole, and there, while covering
+Fatty Matthews from the breaking shrapnel, Barry got his wound."
+
+Captain Neil was forced to pause again in the recital of his story.
+After a few minutes, he told of how they carried him to his grave,
+and laid him in the cemetery outside the city of Albert.
+
+"The boys were all there.  There were not many of them left," he
+said.
+
+"How many?" she asked.
+
+"Seventy only, out of five hundred and four who went over the
+parapet two nights before."
+
+"Ah, poor, gallant boys!  I love them, I love them all!" said the
+girl, clasping her hands together.
+
+"They were all terribly broken up as they stood about the grave,
+and no wonder!  No wonder!  Then the divisional commander made a
+little speech, and then our own major gave them Barry's last
+message."
+
+"Tell me," said the girl gently, as Captain Neil paused.
+
+"It was this," said Captain Neil.  "'Tell the boys that God is
+good, and when they are afraid, to trust Him, and "carry on."'"
+
+"That was like him," she said.  "That was like Barry!  Oh, Paula,"
+she cried, turning to her friend.  "I'm so happy!  It was a
+beautiful closing to a beautiful life.  He was a beautiful boy,
+Paula, wasn't he?  His body was beautiful, his soul was beautiful,
+his life was beautiful, and the ending, oh, was beautiful.  Oh,
+Paula, God is good.  I am so glad he gave Barry to me, and gave me
+to him.  Oh, I'm so--happy--so--happy."  Her voice sank into a
+whisper.  Then after a few moments of silence, with a little
+piteous cry, she suddenly broke forth, "But Paula! Paula! he is
+gone.  I shall never see him again."
+
+Paula held her arms tightly about her, sobbing as if her own heart
+were broken, but Phyllis recovered herself quickly.
+
+"No, no," she said softly, as if counselling her own heart.  "I
+must remember.  'God is good,' he said, and so, Paula, I must not
+be afraid.  God was good to him.  He will be good to me.  He will
+be good to his child."  Her voice sank again into a whisper.  She
+stood silent with eyes looking into the far distance.  Then, in a
+clear, firm voice, she said, "I will not be afraid!  God is good!
+I will 'carry on.'"
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land.
+
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