the heading I'm safe over here. I can't
tell you much about the trip--no use wearing out
the censor's pencils. The sea's wonderful, but I
like dry land better. I'm on dry land now, in a
quaint French village where the streets run up hill
and the people wear strange costumes. The women
wash their clothes by beating them on stones in the
brook--how would the Lancaster County women like
that?"

It was a long, chatty letter and it warmed the heart of the mother and
interested Phoebe and the others who heard it.

"He's a great David," the preacher said as he handed the letter to
Phoebe. "I suppose you'll have to read it over and over to Aunt
Barbara."

He looked at the girl as he spoke. Her high color and shining eyes spoke
eloquently of her interest in the letter. "Ah," he thought, "I believe
she still _likes Davie best_. I'm sure she does."

The preacher had been greatly changed by the events of the past year.
He would always be a bit too strict in his views of life, a bit narrow
in many things. Nevertheless, he was changed. He was less harsh in his
opinions of others since he had seen and heard how thousands who were
not of his religious faith had gone forth to lay down their lives that
the world might be made a decent place in which to live. He, Phares Eby,
preacher, had formerly denounced all that pertained to actors and the
theatre, yet tears had coursed down his cheeks as he had read the
account of a famous comedian who had given his only son for the cause of
freedom and who was going about in the camps and in the trenches
bringing cheer to the men. As the preacher read that he confessed to
himself that the comedian, familiar as he was with footlights, was doing
more good in the world than a dozen Phares Ebys. That one incident swept
away some of the prejudice of the preacher. He knew he could never
sanction the doings so many people indulge in but he felt at the same
time that those same pleasures need not have a damning influence upon
all people.

Phoebe noted the change in him. She felt like a discoverer of hidden
treasure when she heard of the influence he was exerting in behalf of
the Red Cross and Liberty Loans. But she was finding hidden treasures in
many places those days. Strenuous, busy days they were but they held
many revelations of soul beauty.

Every link with Phoebe's former life in Philadelphia was broken save the
one binding her to Virginia. That friendship was