nes. Sometimes she was so occupied that she
almost forgot the terrible blow that had fallen, and then it would come
upon her with an unbelievable shock that Neil and Jimmie were
dead,--gone forever out of the world!

It was something her heart would not accept. How could it be, it
argued, that Neil, so strong and steady and full of high purpose, and
Jimmie, so radiant and full of life, could be lying dead in the mud of
a trench? It was unbelievable. And at last she came to understand,
through watching with her mother, whose faith leaped over even this
barrier of death, that the instincts of her heart were right. Jimmie
and Neil were not dead. They were gone, somewhere, beyond her sight,
but they were still living and moving and working as they had done here
on earth. Some fault of vision, some failure of the senses made it
impossible for her to communicate with them. But they were there, and
alive! Her mother was sure of that. And Grandpa was right, he had met
them the sooner for their untimely call to the Life Beyond.

Allister came home as soon as the news about Neil and Jimmie reached
him. He stayed a week with them, comforting his mother and Uncle Neil,
helping John about the barn, and trying to keep Christina from going
too often to Grandpa's empty room. He brought a long letter from
Ellen, offering to come home just as soon as the hospital authorities
would spare her. She was getting on wonderfully well, Allister
reported, and had determined, should the war continue, that she would
offer herself as a Red Cross nurse, but had decided to come home if she
were needed.

Christina was longing for her elder sister's presence and help, but the
remembrance of Neil's sacrifice for Jimmie made her ashamed of the
thought. So she wrote bravely to Ellen bidding her stay until she
finished her course.

On the evening before Allister left, he and Christina sat by the fire
talking, long after the others had gone to bed. Wallace had been there
earlier in the evening, and to Christina's amazement Allister did not
share in the universal admiration for him.

"He's got money, that young chap, Christine," he said. "But money
isn't everything, girl, remember that."

"But you like Wallace, don't you?" asked Christina in surprise.

"Oh, I guess he's all right. But he's got things too easy. And he'll
want to get them easy all his life or he'll kick over the traces."

Christina was not conscious of any feeling of