e winter, she had had no bed but the
flagstones of the kitchen. Not a word of complaint--and a few
shillings for both of them to live upon!

At last the father died. And the night he died Mary staggered across
to the wretched cottage of a couple of old-age pensioners opposite.
'I must rest a bit,' she said, and sitting down in a chair by the
fire she fainted. Influenza had been on her for some days, and now
pneumonia had set in. The old people would not hear of her being
taken back to her deserted cottage. They gave up their own room to
her; they did everything for her their feeble strength allowed. But
the fierce disease beat down her small remaining strength.
Elizabeth, since the story came to her knowledge, had done her best
to help. But it was too late.

She went now to kneel at the beside of the dying woman. Mary's weary
eyes lifted, and she smiled faintly at the lady who had been kind to
her. Then unconsciousness returned, and the village nurse gave it as
her opinion that the end was near.

Elizabeth looked round the room. Thank God the cottage did not
belong to the Squire! The bedroom was about ten feet by seven, with
a sloping thatched roof, supported by beams three centuries old. The
one window was about two feet square. The nurse pointed to it.

'The doctor said no pneumonia case could possibly recover in a room
like this. And there are dozens of them, Miss, in this village. Oh,
Mary is glad to go. She nursed her mother for years, and then her
father for years. She never had a day's pleasure, and she was as
good as gold.'

Elizabeth held the clammy, misshapen hand, pressing her lips to it
when she rose to go, as to the garment of a saint.

Then she walked quickly back through the fading spring day, her
heart torn with prayer and remorse--remorse that such a life as Mary
Wilson's should have been possible within reach of her own life and
she not know it; and passionate praying for a better world, through
and after the long anguish of the war.

'Else for what will these boys have given their lives!--what meaning
in the suffering and the agony!--or in the world which permits and
begets them?'

Then, at last, it was past seven o'clock. The dusk had fallen, and
the stars were coming out in a pure pale blue, over the leafless
trees. Elizabeth and Alice Gaddesden stood waiting at the open door
of the hall. A motor ambulance was meeting the train. They would
soon be here now.

Elizabeth turned to Mrs. Gad