guard and my shield.'--A. A. PROCTER.

And meanwhile how had it been at Oakfield, little Oakfield, which had
its share in the joys and sorrows of those stirring times? Angel and
Betty could hardly remember afterwards exactly how they heard the news;
it seemed to be all over the place directly, and no one could have said
who actually told it. But it was Mr. Crayshaw who brought it--poor Mr.
Crayshaw, so aged and altered and broken-down that to care for him and
comfort him seemed the first thing his two young cousins had to do and
to think of. And indeed with Angel it was so much more natural to
think of other people first that she seemed to feel Godfrey's loss
chiefly in the way in which it would affect them all--Cousin Crayshaw,
who had had to meet the first shock of the news; poor old Penny; Nancy,
who had been his playfellow; Betty above all, who had said she could
never bear it if Godfrey died for his country. Poor Betty made such
desperate efforts to be brave and unselfish, choked back her tears so
manfully, faltered such bold words about their boy having died as he
would have wished for King and Country. And then she would run away
and sob passionately over Godfrey's toy boats, the lesson-books he had
used with her, the bed he had slept in, and then would tell herself she
was not worthy of him, and come back to be brave and self-controlled
before the others once more. While Angel, for her part, hardly
expected to be ever worthy of her boy, only went her quiet way, cried
bitterly on Martha's shoulder, sat on a stool at Cousin Crayshaw's feet
as if she were a little girl again, and did the work which Penny
forgot, and found comfort somehow from them all. Angel could not be
Betty, and Betty could not be Angel, no two people meet joy and sorrow
and do their brave, unselfish deeds in just the same way; and the
beautiful part is that there is room on the great list of honour for
the Betties who school themselves to courage, and the Angels who are
simply brave in their self-forgetfulness, and the world is the better
for them both.

It was three days after the news had come--Angel and Betty
unconsciously counted the time like that now, looking back to the days
when they didn't know that Godfrey was dead as to something beautiful
and far away.

Angel was in the garden, sitting with her work in Miss Jane's arbour.
There was so much work to be done, and poor old Penny cried so bitterly
over the black stuff that he