ge of the entertainment department, came for Craig's opinion as to
a minstrel troupe and private theatricals, Craig was prompt with his
answer--

'Anything clean goes.'

'A nigger show?' asked Winton.

'Depends upon the niggers,' replied Craig with a gravely comic look,
shrewdly adding, 'ask Mrs. Mavor'; and so the League Minstrel and
Dramatic Company became an established fact, and proved, as Craig
afterwards told me, 'a great means of grace to the camp.'

Shaw had charge of the social department, whose special care it was to
see that the men were made welcome to the cosy, cheerful reading room,
where they might chat, smoke, read, write, or play games, according to
fancy.

But Craig felt that the success or failure of the scheme would largely
depend upon the character of the Resident Manager, who, while caring
for reading-room and hall, would control and operate the important
department represented by the coffee-room.

'At this point the whole business may come to grief,' he said to Mrs.
Mavor, without whose counsel nothing was done.

'Why come to grief?' she asked brightly.

'Because if we don't get the right man, that's what will happen,' he
replied in a tone that spoke of anxious worry.

'But we shall get the right man, never fear.' Her serene courage never
faltered. 'He will come to us.'

Craig turned and gazed at her in frank admiration and said--

'If I only had your courage!'

'Courage!' she answered quickly. 'It is not for you to say that'; and
at his answering look the red came into her cheek and the depths in her
eyes glowed, and I marvelled and wondered, looking at Craig's cool face,
whether his blood were running evenly through his veins. But his voice
was quiet, a shade too quiet I thought, as he gravely replied--

'I would often be a coward but for the shame of it.'

And so the League waited for the man to come, who was to be Resident
Manager and make the new enterprise a success. And come he did; but the
manner of his coming was so extraordinary, that I have believed in the
doctrine of a special providence ever since; for as Craig said, 'If he
had come straight from Heaven I could not have been more surprised.'

While the League was thus waiting, its interest centred upon Slavin,
chiefly because he represented more than any other the forces of the
enemy; and though Billy Breen stood between him and the vengeance of the
angry men who would have made short work of him and his saloon, noth