much service?"

"All right, I'm coming."

When Meg got back to her room, she went and leaned over little Fay
sleeping in the cot beside her bed. Rosy and beautiful, warm and
fragrant, the healthy baby brought comfort to Meg's stricken heart.

Perhaps--who knows--the tramp of that silent army sounded in little
Fay's ears, for she stretched out her dimpled arms and caught Meg round
the neck.

"Deah Med!" she sighed, and was still.

William stood at attention.

Presently Meg knelt down by her bed, and according to the established
ritual he thrust his head into her encircling arm.

"Pray for your master, William," Meg whispered. "Oh, William, pray for
your master as you never prayed before."

* * * * * * * *

The strange tense days went on in August weather serene and lovely as
had not been seen for years. Young men vanished from the country-side
and older men wistfully wondered what they could do to help.

Peter came down from Saturday to Monday, telling them that every officer
and every civilian serving in India was recalled, but he had not yet
learned when he was to sail.

They were sitting in the wrens' garden with the children.

"Earley's going," Tony said importantly.

"Earley!" Jan exclaimed. "Going where?"

"To fight, of course," little Fay chimed in.

"Oh, poor dear Earley!" Jan sighed.

"Happy, fortunate Earley," said Peter. "I wish I stood in his shoes."

Earley joined the Gloucesters because, he said, "he couldn't abear to
think of them there Germans comin' anigh Mother and them childring and
the ladies; and he'd better go and see as they didn't."

Mr. Withells called the men on his place together and told them that
every man who joined would have his wages paid to his wife, and his wife
or his mother, as the case might be, could stop on in her cottage. And
Mr. Withells became a special constable, with a badge and a truncheon.
But he worried every soldier that he knew with inquiries as to whether
there wasn't a chance for him in _some_ battalion: "I've taken great
care of my health," he said. "I do exercises every day after my bath;
I'm young-looking for my age, don't you think? And anyway, a bullet
might find me instead of a more useful man."

No one laughed then at Mr. Withells and his exercises.

Five days after the declaration of war Jan got a letter from Hugo
Tancred. He was in London and was already a private in a rather famous
cava