spondent letter from him. She could not quite agree with John that
money was not a very good thing to have. It would have opened for her
the road to the college halls, but it had been denied. And yet she was
not unhappy. Something sang in her heart these days, the memory of a
certain farewell at the back door in the wind and the rain and
darkness, a memory that was all light and glory.

But Jimmie was still unsettled and dissatisfied with school, and
Christina said that she would please him by making him a birthday cake.
She would ice it with plenty of thick almond paste, his favourite, and
put his initials on it and the date. It was a very handsome and
tempting confection indeed, when she put it on the pantry shelf in a
secluded spot where he would not see it until the right moment arrived.

The kitchen was still filled with its spicy fragrance when there came a
quick footfall in the porch and a knock at the door. Christina opened
it to meet a slim young soldier who strode into the room and saluted
smartly. She stood looking at him in stupefied silence for a moment,
and then she dropped upon a chair and put her head down on the kitchen
table.

"Oh, Jimmie! Oh, Jimmie!" she sobbed. "How could you?"

But the new recruit caught her round the waist and waltzed her across
the room, and then, snatching the butcher-knife from the table, he
presented arms and saluted and posed all in such an absurd fashion that
in spite of her grief she smiled.

"Go right back into the shed till I tell mother," she exclaimed, "she
mustn't see you till she has had warning."

Jimmie went out and hid himself, just a little subdued. Evidently his
gallant act, the thing that everybody had admired in Trooper, had taken
on a different colour when performed by him.

He had little opportunity to reflect upon his act. There was hardly
time for sorrow before Jimmie was gone; he had been put in a draft for
a Battalion already in England and to his huge delight he was sent
overseas almost immediately. It seemed as if this, her baby's going,
was almost more than Mrs. Lindsay could bear, and Christina was more
and more called upon to be a comforter and a bearer of burdens.

It was not the fear of gas nor bomb nor German bullet that kept
Jimmie's mother wakeful at night, but the pestilence that walked in
darkness, waylaying the souls of young men. Terrible tales of brave
boys falling before an enemy more to be dreaded than all the
fright