And now he
had grown to manhood, and every year they looked more and more to him
for support. Their declining years had come and he dared not face the
possibility of leaving them. He argued the matter out with himself by
day in field and barnyard, and by night as he tossed on his sleepless
bed. Why should he yearn to go when his duty plainly declared that he
should stay? Many of the young farmers about Orchard Glen, boys he had
grown up with and who could easily be spared, never thought for a
moment of the war as their task. And why should he, who was so sadly
needed at home?

But it was inevitable that Gavin should be unhappy in the safety of
home while the world was in agony. Without realising it the Grant
Girls had raised their boy to be a soldier, they so gentle and so peace
loving. Life had not been narrow, even away back at Craig-Ellachie,
where the grass grew in the middle of the corduroy road. Gavin had
been nurtured on songs and tales of noble deeds and deathless devotion.
He had been reared in a home where each one vied with the other in
forgetting self and serving the other. The best books had been his
daily reading. And, greatest of all, he had been trained to take as
his life's pattern the One whose sole purpose had been not to be
ministered unto, but to minister.

Night after night as he was growing into manhood, Auntie Flora would
seat herself at the little old organ, and together they would all sail
happily over a sea of song, thrilling ballads of the old days when men
went gaily to death, singing

"So what care I though Death be nigh,
I live for love or die!"

Then Auntie Elspie would put aside her spinning and Auntie Janet her
knitting and they would tell him tales from the glorious history of the
clan Grant. And he was never tired of hearing that story of the Indian
Mutiny, told the Grant Girls by their grandfather; how a Highland
regiment held a shot torn position till help came, held against
overwhelming odds while men fell on every side, held, crying to each
other all up and down the sore-pressed line, "Stand fast,
Craig-Ellachie!"

And so Gavin could not but grow up filled with great aspirations. He
could no more help being chivalrous and self-forgetful than he could
help having the slow, soft accent of his Aunties.

And then into his high-purposed life came the Great Occasion! It
seemed as if he had been trained just for this. It called to him and
him alone. The gr