here is no love or welcome there for him. He is a lad that any
man might well be proud of him, that gentle and kind and honest and
truthful, not like most of the young doods that come out here drinkin
and carousin and raisin the divil. mebbe you would like him better if
he was and this is just to tell you that we like your boy here and we
dont think much of the way you are using him and I hope that you will
live to see the day that you will regret with tears more bitter than
he is sheddin now the way you have treated him, and with these few
lines I will close M corbett."

How this letter was received at Mayflower Lodge, Bucks, England, is
not known, for no answer was ever sent; and although the letters to
Stanley came regularly, his wish to go home was not mentioned in any
of them. Neither did he ever refer to it again.

"Say, Stan," said young Pat one day, suddenly smitten with a bright
thought, "why don't you go home anyway? You have lots of money--why
don't you walk in on 'em and give 'em a surprise?"

"It would not be playing the game, Pat; thank you all the same, old
chap," said Stanley heartily, "but I will not go home without
permission."

After that Stanley got more and more reticent about the people at
home. He seemed to realize that they had cut him off, but the homesick
look never left his eyes. His friends now were the children of the
neighborhood and the animals. Dogs, cats, horses, and children
followed him, and gave him freely of their affection. He worked happy
hours in Mrs. Corbett's garden, and "Stanley's flowers" were the
admiration of the neighborhood.

When he was not busy in the garden, he spent long hours beside the
river in a beautifully fashioned seat which he had made for himself,
beneath a large poplar tree. "It is the wind in the tree-tops that I
like," he said. "It whispers to me. I can't tell what it says, but it
says something. I like trees--they are like people some way--only more
patient and friendly."

The big elms and spruce of the river valley rustled and whispered
together, and the poplars shook their coin-like leaves as he lay
beneath their shade. The trees were trying to be kind to him, as the
gray olive trees in Gethsemane were kind to One Other when his own had
forgotten Him!

* * * * *

When the news of the war fell upon the Pembina Valley, it did not
greatly disturb the peacefulness of that secluded spot. The well-to-do
farmers who had