wail until things are changed. Ministers don't
enter the Church for the loaves and fishes, but the labourer is worthy
of his hire, and they must have enough to live on decently. Living has
doubled. I couldn't manage as things are now, and I'm a good manager,
though I says it as shouldn't.... The fight I've had all my life nobody
will ever know. Now that we have plenty, I can talk about it. I never
hinted it to anybody when we were struggling through; indeed, we washed
our faces and anointed our heads and appeared not unto men to fast! The
clothes and the boots and the butcher's bills! It's pleasant to think of
now, just as it's pleasant to look from the hilltop at the steep road
you've come. The boys sometimes tell me that they are glad we were too
poor to have a nurse, for it meant that they were brought up with their
father and me. We had our meals together, and their father helped them
with their lessons. Indeed, it's only now I realise how happy I was to
have them all under one roof."

She stopped and sighed, and went on again with a laugh. "I remember one
time a week before the Sustentation Fund was due, I was down to one
six-pence And of course a collector arrived! D'you remember that,
John?... And the boys worked so hard to educate themselves. All except
Duncan. Oh, but I am glad that my little laddie had an easy time--when
it was to be such a short one."

"He always wanted to be a soldier," Mr. Macdonald said. "You remember,
Anne, when you tried to get him to say he would be a minister? He was
about six then, I think. He said, 'No, it's not a white man's job,' and
then looked at me apologetically afraid that he had hurt my feelings.
When the War came he went 'most jocund, apt, and willingly,' but without
any ill-will in his heart to the Germans.

"'He left no will but good will
And that to all mankind....'"

Mrs. Macdonald stared into the fire with tear-blurred eyes and said: "I
sometimes wonder if they died in vain. If this is the new world it's a
far worse one than the old. Class hatred, discontent, wild extravagance
in some places, children starving in others, women mad for pleasure,
and the dead forgotten already except by the mothers--the mothers who
never to their dying day will see a fresh-faced boy without a sword
piercing their hearts and a cry rising to their lips, 'My son! My son!'"

"It's all true, Anne," said her husband, "but the sacrifice of love and
innocence can never be in vain. Not