names. I asked
what the "conference" was about, but gathered that Mrs. Van Homrey was
not very fully informed.

"I know they are to meet these young Canadian preachers who are so
tremendously praised by the _Standard_---- What are their names, again?
Tcha! How treacherous my memory grows! You know the men I mean. John
Crondall met them the day after their arrival last week, and is
enthusiastic about them."

I felt very much out of the movement. During the few days immediately
preceding my mother's death, and since then, I had not even seen a
newspaper, and, being unusually preoccupied, not only over the events
of my stay at Davenham Minster, but by developments in my own thoughts,
I seemed to have lost touch with current affairs.

"And what does John Crondall think of the outlook?" I asked.

"Well, I think his fear is that people in the country--outside East
Anglia, of course--may fail to realize all that the invasion has meant
and will mean; and that Londoners and townsfolk generally may slip back
into absorption in business and in pleasure as soon as they can afford
that again, and forget the fact that England is practically under
Germany's heel still."

"The taxes will hardly allow them to do that, surely," I said.

"Well, I don't know. The English are a wonderful people. The invasion
was so swift and sudden; the opposition to it was so comparatively
trifling; surrender and peace came so soon, that really I don't know but
what John is right. He generally is. You must remember that millions of
the people have not seen a German soldier. They have had no discipline
yet. Even here in London, as soon as the people spoke decidedly, peace
followed. They did not have to strike a blow. They did not feel a blow.
They were not with you and Conny, remember, at those awful trenches.
Anyhow, John thinks the danger is lest they forget again, and regard the
whole tragic business as a new proof of England's ability to 'muddle
through' anything, without any assistance from them. Of course,
England's wealth is still great, and her recuperative powers are
wonderful; but John Crondall holds that, in spite of that, submission
to nine years of German occupation and German tribute-paying will mean
the end of the British Empire."

"And he feels that the people must be stirred into seeing that and
acting on it?" I said, recalling my own thoughts during the night walk
from Barebarrow.

"Yes, I suppose that is his view. But, now I co