e could fight. Every man who has fought, and every man who
wished to fight but couldn't, will want to see those lands that have
been martyred and burned, when they have risen like the Phoenix out of
their own ashes. That's why I call France and Belgium Everyman's Land.
You say your Jim spent some of his happiest days there, and now he's
given his life for the land he loved. Wouldn't you feel as if he went
with you, if you made a pilgrimage from town to town he knew in their
days of beauty--if you travelled and studied some scheme for helping to
make each one beautiful again after the war? If you did this in his name
and his honour, could he have a better memorial?"

"I guess God has let Jim speak through your lips, and tell us his wish,"
said Mr. Beckett. "What do you think, Jenny?"

"I think what you think," she echoed. "It's right the word should come
to us from the brother of Jim's love."

CHAPTER VI

That is the story, Padre, as far as it has gone. No sign from you, no
look in your eyes, could show me myself in a meaner light than shines
from the mirror of my conscience. If Jim hadn't loved me, it would be
less shameful to trade on the trust of these kind people. I see that
clearly! And I see how hateful it is to make Brian an innocent partner
in the fraud.

I'm taking advantage of one man who is dead, and another who is blind.
And it is as though I were "betting on a certainty," because there's
nobody alive who can come forward to tell the Becketts or Brian what I
am. I'm safe, _brutally_ safe!

You'll see from what I have written how Brian turned the scales. The
plan he proposed developed in the Becketts' minds with a quickness that
could happen only with Americans--and millionaires. Father Beckett sees
and does things on the grand scale. Perhaps that's the secret of his
success. He was a miner once, he has told Brian and me. Mrs. Beckett was
a district school teacher in the Far West, where his fortune began. They
married while he was still a poor man. But that's by the way! I want to
tell you now of his present, not of his past: and the working out of our
future from Brian's suggestion. Ten minutes after the planting of the
seed a tree had grown up, and was putting forth leaves and blossoms.
Soon there will be fruit. And it will come into existence _ripe_! I
suppose Americans are like that. They manage their affairs with mental
intensive culture.

The Becketts are prepared to love me for Jim's sak