and how interested Frank had been. He told a little, too,
about their conversation on the way to the station, and Mr Inglis could
not but smile at their making "soldiers" of all the neighbours, and at
their way of illustrating the idea to themselves. By and by David
added:

"I wish Frank had heard what you said to-day about victory. It would
have come in so well after the talk about the `soldiers' and fighting.
He would have liked to hear about the victory."

"Yes," said his father, gravely; "it is pleasanter to hear of the
victory than the conflict, but the conflict must come first, Davie, my
boy."

"Yes, papa, I know."

"And, my boy, the first step to becoming a `soldier' is the enrolling of
the name. And you know who said `He that is not for me is against me.'
Think what it would be to be found on the other side on the day when
even Death itself `shall be swallowed up in victory.'"

David made no answer. It was not Mr Inglis's way to speak often in
this manner to his children. He did not make every solemn circumstance
in life the occasion for a personal lesson or warning to them, till they
"had got used to it," as children say, and so heard it without heeding.
So David could not just listen to his father's words, and let them slip
out of his mind again as words of course. He could not put them aside,
nor could he say, as some boys might have said at such a time, that he
wished to be a soldier of Christ and that he meant to try. For in his
heart he was not sure that he wished to be a soldier of Christ in the
sense his father meant, and though he had sometimes said to himself that
he meant to be one, it was sometime in the future--a good while in the
future, and he would have been mocking himself and his father, too, if
he had told him that he longed to enrol his name. So he sat beside him
without a word.

They had come by this time to the highest point of the road leading to
Gourlay Centre, at least the highest point where the valley through
which the Gourlay river flowed could be seen; and of his own accord old
Don stood still to rest. He always did so at this point, and not
altogether for his own pleasure, for Mr Inglis and David were hardly
ever so pressed for time but that they were willing to linger a minute
or two to look down on the valley and the hills beyond. The two
villages could be seen, and the bridge, and a great many fine fields
lying round the scattered farm-houses, and, beyond these