selves against legions. To discover their own strength
and limitations, too. The first essential in successful warfare is to
know yourself and your enemy, and you gain that knowledge in solitude.
It was so with Jesus, with Paul, with Savonarola, with scores of other
reformers. Miss Holden was driven into the wilderness--if you care to
put it so--for a similar purpose."

"But ought one to avoid opportunities of usefulness?" I urged. "I was
in the fray and I withdrew from it."

"A raw soldier, invalided home, though you did not know it," he
continued, "and sent into the country for rest and renewal, and quiet
preparation for effective service. Here you have gained your
perspective. You survey the field of battle from the heights, and yet
you have come in contact with the enemy at close quarters, too, and you
know his tactics. You will face the problems of sin and suffering and
social injustice again, but with new heart and less of despair."

"You are too generous, I fear. I should like to think that my motives
were so pure, but----"

"What is motive? Motive is what excites to action. Your motive was
not less pure because it was intuitive and unrecognised. But let me
ask you: What idea are you disposed to think you left unaccomplished?
What object ought you to have pursued?"

I thought a moment before I replied: "It seems to me that when there is
so much sin and suffering in the world we should try to alleviate it,
and to remedy the wrongs from which so much of it springs. And from
these things I fled, though I knew that the labourers were few."

"You fled from the devil, did you? And you found Windyridge a Paradise
from which he was barred!"

I remained silent.

"London has no monopoly of sin and suffering. Evil has not a merely
local habitation. If it was a wile of the devil to remove you out of
his way it has been singularly unsuccessful, I conclude, for I
understand you have found him vigorously at work here all the time.
Have you then discovered no opportunities of service and usefulness in
the wilderness?"

"If happiness is gained by administering it to others," said the squire
with some emotion; "if to break up the hard ground of the heart and sow
in it the seed of peace is to defeat the devil and his aims, then has
Miss Holden reached her ideal and earned her happiness. I told her a
year ago that the devil was a familiar presence in this village, but I
thank God, as others do and have don