d she went over in memory every foot of the walk in the harvest
moonlight from Craig-Ellachie that night when she had been so happy
with him, but had walked beside him with blinded eyes.

The garden at Craig-Ellachie had already wakened to life, the crocuses
were out, rows and rows of them, and the garden hyacinths were holding
up their little green spears. But there was no happy gardener working
in the brown beds. Christina went slowly up the walk where the dry
leafless branches of the climbing roses hung over her head. Gavin's
dogs came tumbling down the steps to meet her in joyous welcome.

She looked up in wonder as the kitchen door was flung suddenly open.
Mrs. Johnnie Dunn flashed into the doorway and shouted something
incoherent, and as suddenly disappeared, and Hughie Reid's wife came to
the window and waved frantically. Christina ran forward, filled with
foreboding. She darted up the steps and stopped amazed in the doorway.
The kitchen was full of people, it seemed, all moving about and talking
wildly. Mr. Sinclair was there and Dr. McGarry and a half dozen women,
and the Aunties were running about laughing and crying, and it seemed
as if every one had suddenly gone quite mad.

And then it seemed to Christina that the room was going round and she
found a chair and sat down quickly, for Mrs. Johnnie Dunn's voice from
far away was calling out the most amazing and unbelievable
thing--shouting that Gavin was not dead! He had been found! He had
been buried in a shell-hole, half-dead, and when the Blue Bonnets swept
back over the enemy's trenches he had been rescued. He had been badly
wounded and had lain unconscious for a long time. But he was alive and
was in a hospital in France!

Christina flew over the brown hills on the way to her mother with the
news, saying over and over to her benumbed senses that Gavin was not
dead, that he was alive. It seemed as if her heart had been so
stupefied with grief that it could not yet accept joy. She ran in a
kind of dream saying that she would soon wake up and find that this was
not true.

But the glorious news was confirmed. There was a week of alternate
wild hope and fear, and then, as wonderful as a message from the dead,
came a cable from Gavin himself. He was in a hospital in France and
was progressing rapidly. The next news told that he was in England,
and then came a blessed letter from his nurse, saying that he was
recovering slowly but surely and w