as promising himself that it would
not be long until he would write a letter home.

Such a clamour of joy and relief as the news of Gavin brought to
Orchard Glen no one would have thought possible. Every one had
sorrowed deeply with the Grant Girls and now the whole countryside came
out to Craig-Ellachie to rejoice with them and to hear again and again
the story of Gavin's rescue. And the Grant Girls put in such a garden
as the county had never seen, and grew young and bright again with joy
and hope.

As for Christina she moved about in a golden dream. Life was not real
at all these days, but the dream of it was beautiful and the colour
came back to her cheeks and the light to her eyes, and she went about
the house with her old swift motions.

She could not believe in the reality of her joy at all until she
received her first letter from Gavin. As soon as the message came that
he was in England she wrote him. It was her answer to the letter that
he had never intended her to see during his life. It must have been a
satisfactory answer, for not all the skill of surgeon and sister
combined had produced a fraction of the healing and strengthening
quality that its closely written pages brought to the wounded soldier
in England. And his answer made Christina's eyes brighter and her step
lighter than they had been since the day Jimmy and Neil went over the
top.

It was not until Gavin was so well that he was walking about that he
wrote confessing the full extent of his injuries. He had lost an arm,
only his left arm, he wrote, which he really didn't miss much. He made
jokes about it and warned Auntie Janet that she need not be laying
plans to do as she pleased, for he could manage the whole family and
make them mind, even with one arm. And as he was still a little lame
and would be likely to carry a heavy stick for some time he would be
quite able to keep her in her place.

But he did not write so lightly on the matter to Christina. He had
only one arm, and was a poor hobbling creature, he confessed, and how
could he ask her to share life with him? He was only half a man, and a
poor weak half at that.

But Christina wrote him such a letter as forever put such notions out
of Gavin's head. It was a letter that made him feel not like half a
man but as though he had the strength of ten. For what was the loss of
an arm when one had such a warm heart beating for him, and awaiting his
coming?

Christina had no