e through from Colonel
Kavanagh to replace a draft suddenly dispatched to make up to strength
another western regiment. Attached to the call there was a specific
request, which amounted to a demand for the sergeant major, for whose
special qualifications as physical and military instructor there was
apparently serious need in Colonel Kavanagh's regiment.

With great reluctance, and with the expenditure of considerable
profanity, Captain Neil Fraser dispatched his draft and agreed to the
surrender of his sergeant major.

The change came as a shock to both Barry and his father. For some days
they had indulged the hope that they would both be attached to the same
military unit, and unconsciously this had been weighing with Barry in
his consideration of his probable appointment as chaplain.

The disappointment of their hope was the more bitter when it was
announced that Colonel Kavanagh's battalion was warned for immediate
service overseas, and the further announcement that in all probability
the new battalion, to which the Wapiti company would be attached, might
not be dispatched until some time in the spring.

"But you may catch us up in England, Barry," said his father, when Barry
was deploring their ill luck. "No one knows what our movements will be.
I do wish, however, that your position were definitely settled."

The decision in this matter came quickly, and was, without his will or
desire, materially hastened by Barry himself.

Colonel Kavanagh's battalion being under orders to depart within ten
days, a final Church Parade was ordered, at which only soldiers and
their kin were permitted to be present. The preacher for the day falling
ill from an overweight of war work, and Barry being in the city with
nothing to do, the duty of preaching at this Parade Service was suddenly
thrust upon him.

To his own amazement and to that of his father, Barry accepted without
any fear or hesitation this duty which in other circumstances would
have overwhelmed him with dismay. But to Barry the occasion was of such
surpassing magnitude and importance that all personal considerations
were obliterated.

The war, with its horrors, its losses, its overwhelming sacrifice, its
vast and eternal issues, was the single fact that filled his mind. It
was this that delivered him from that nervous self-consciousness, the
preacher's curse, that paralyses the mental activities, chills the
passions, and cloggs the imagination, so that his se