could not
speak. There was something about Piers that stirred him too deeply for
speech just then. He lifted his own glass with no more than a gesture
of goodwill.

"I say, don't be so awfully jolly about it!" laughed Piers. "I tell you
it's going to end all right. Life is like that."

His voice was light, but it held an appeal to which Crowther could not
fail to respond.

"God bless you, my son!" he said. "Life is such a mighty big thing that
even what we call failure doesn't count in the long run. You'll win
through somehow."

"And perhaps a little over, what?" laughed Piers. "Who knows?"

"Who knows?" Crowther echoed, with a smile.

But he could not shake free from the chill foreboding that had descended
upon him, and when Piers had gone he stood for a long time before his
open window, wrestling with the dark phantom, trying to reason away a
dread which he knew to be beyond all reasoning.

And all through the night that followed, those words of Piers' pursued
him, marring his rest: "It's a beastly desert road I'm on, but I know
it'll lead somewhere." And the high courage of his bearing! The royal
confidence of his smile!

Ah, God! Those boys of the Empire, going forth so gallantly to the
sacrifice!

CHAPTER VI

THE ENCOUNTER

Piers was right. When Avery left Stanbury Cliffs she went back to her
old life at Rodding Vicarage.

Local gossip regarding her estrangement from her husband had practically
exhausted itself some time before, and in any case it would have been
swamped by the fevered anxiety that possessed the whole country during
those momentous days.

She slipped back into her old niche almost as if she had never left it.
Mrs. Lorimer was ill with grief and overwork. It seemed only natural that
Avery should take up the burden of her care. Even the Vicar could say
nothing against it.

Avery sometimes wondered if Jeanie's death had pierced the armour of his
self-complacence at any point. If it had, it was not perceptible; but she
did fancy now and then that she detected in him a shade more of
consideration for his wife than he had been wont to display. He
condescended to bestow upon her a little more of his kindly patronage,
and he was certainly less severe in his dealings with the children.

Of the blank in Mrs. Lorimer's life only Avery had any conception, for
she shared it with her during every hour of the day. Perhaps her own
burden weighed more heavily upon her than ever before at