ged, a vivid consciousness of the perils and sufferings of the
war--of the sacredness of the cause for which England was fighting,
of the glory of England, and the joy and privilege of English
citizenship. In these young creatures the elder woman had kindled a
flame of feeling which, when they parted from her and their school
life--so she told them--was to take practical effect in work for
their country, given with a proud and glad devotion.

But Pamela, leaving school at the end of July for the last time,
after a surfeit of examinations, had been pronounced 'tired out' by
an old aunt, a certain Lady Cassiobury, who came for long periodical
visits to Mannering, and made a show of looking after her
motherless niece. Accordingly she had been packed off to Scotland
for August to stay with a school friend, one of a large family in a
large country house in the Highlands. And there, roaming amid lochs
and heather, with a band of young people, the majority of the men,
of course, in the Army--young officers on short leave, or
temporarily invalided, or boys of eighteen just starting their cadet
training--she had spent a month full of emotions, not often
expressed. For generally she was shy and rather speechless, though
none the less liked by her companions for that. But many things sank
deep with her; the beauty of mountain and stream; the character
of some of the boys she walked and fished with--unnoticed
sub-lieutenants, who had come home to get cured of one wound, and
were going out again to the immediate chance of another, or worse;
the tales of heroism and death of which the Scotch countryside was
full. Her own mood was tuned thereby to an ever higher and more
tragic key. Nobody indeed of the party was the least tragic.
Everybody walked, fished, flirted, and laughed from morning till
night. Yet every newspaper, every post, brought news of some death
that affected one or other of the large group; and amid all the
sheer physical joy of the long days in the open, bathed in sun and
wind, there was a sense in all of them--or almost all of them--that
no summer now is as the summers of the past, that behind and around
the laughter and the picnicking there lay the Shadow that darkens
the world.

One gorgeous evening of gold and purple she was sitting by a
highland stream with a lad of twenty, throwing ducks and drakes into
the water. She was not at all in love with him; but, immature as she
was, she could not help seeing that he