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The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land

by Ralph Connor · English · Gutenberg #3288 · 601,487 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land

Author: Ralph Connor


        
Release date: June 3, 2006 [eBook #3288]
                Most recently updated: March 4, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3288

Credits: Donald Lainson and David Widger


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN'S LAND ***




THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN'S LAND


By Ralph Connor




Contents

CHAPTER I. ONLY A MISSIONARY
CHAPTER II. ON THE RED PINE TRAIL
CHAPTER III. A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE
CHAPTER IV. REJECTED
CHAPTER V. THE WAR DRUM CALLS
CHAPTER VI. THE MEN OF THE NORTH
CHAPTER VII. BARRICADES AND BAYONETS
CHAPTER VIII. A QUESTION OF NERVE
CHAPTER IX. SUBMARINES, BULLPUPS, AND OTHER THINGS
CHAPTER X. FRANCE
CHAPTER XI. THE NEW MESSAGE
CHAPTER XII. A MAN OF GOD
CHAPTER XIII. INTENSIVE TRAINING
CHAPTER XIV. A TOUCH OF WAR
CHAPTER XV. THINNING RANKS
CHAPTER XVI. THE PASSING OF McCUAIG
CHAPTER XVII. LONDON LEAVE AND PHYLLIS
CHAPTER XVIII. A WEDDING JOURNEY
CHAPTER XIX. THE PILOT'S LAST PORT
CHAPTER XX. “CARRY ON”




THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN'S LAND



CHAPTER I

ONLY A MISSIONARY


High upon a rock, poised like a bird for flight, stark naked, his satin
skin shining like gold and silver in the rising sun, stood a youth,
tall, slim of body, not fully developed but with muscles promising, in
their faultless, gently swelling outline, strength and suppleness to an
unusual degree. Gazing down into the pool formed by an eddy of the river
twenty feet below him, he stood as if calculating the distance, his
profile turned toward the man who had just emerged from the bushes and
was standing on the sandy strand of the river, paddle in hand, looking
up at him with an expression of wonder and delight in his eyes.

“Ye gods, what a picture!” said the man to himself.

Noiselessly, as if fearing to send the youth off in flight, he laid his
paddle on the sand, hurriedly felt in his pockets, and swore to himself
vigorously when he could find no sketch book there.

“What a pose! What an Apollo!” he muttered.

The sunlight glistening on the beautiful white skin lay like pools of
gold in the curving hollows of the perfectly modelled body, and ran like
silver over the rounded swellings of the limbs. Instinct with life he
seemed, something in his pose suggesting that he had either alighted
from the golden, ambient air, or was about to commit himself to it. The
man on the sand continued to gaze as if he were beholding a creature of
another world.

“Oh, Lord! What lines!” he breathed.

Slowly the youth began to move his arms up to the horizontal, then to
the perpendicular, reaching to the utmost of his height upon his toe
tips, breathing deep the while. Smoothly, slowly, the muscles in legs
and thighs, in back, in abdomen, in chest, responding to the exercise
moved under the lustrous skin as if themselves were living things. Over
and over again the action was repeated, the muscles and body moving in
rhythmic harmony like some perfect mechanism running in a bath of oil.

“Ye gods of Greece!” breathed the man. “What is this thing I see? Flesh
or spirit? Man or god?” Again he swore at himself for neglecting to
bring his sketch book and pencil.

“Hello, father! Where are you?” A girl's voice rang out, high, clear,
and near at hand.

“Good Lord!” said the man to himself, glancing up at the poised figure.
“I must stop her.”

One startled glance the youth flung down upon him, another in the
direction of the voice, then, like a white, gleaming arrow he shot down,
and disappeared in the dark pool below.

With his eyes upon the water the man awaited his reappearing. A half
minute, a full minute he waited, but in vain. Swiftly he ran toward the
edge of the pool. There was no sign anywhere of the youth.

Ghastly pale and panting, the man ran, as far round the base of the rock
as the water would allow him, seeking everywhere signs of the swimmer.

“Hello, father! Oh, there you are!” Breaking through the bushes, a girl
ran to him.

“What is it, pater? You are ill. What is the matter?”

“Good heavens! he was there!” gasped the man, pointing to the high rock.
“He plunged in there.” He pointed to the pool. “He hasn't come up. He is
drowned.”

“Who? What are you saying? Wake up, father. Who was there?”

“A boy! A young man! He disappeared down there.”

“A young man? Was he--was he--dressed?” inquired the girl.

“Dressed? No. No.”

“Did he--did he--hear me--calling?”

“Of course he did. That's what startled him, I imagine. Poor boy! I fear
he is gone.”

“Did he fall in, or did he dive?”

“He seemed to dive, but he has not come up. I fear he is gone.”

“Oh, nonsense, father,” said the girl. “I bet you he has swum round the
bend. Just go over the rock and see.”

“God grant it!” said her father.

He dropped his paddle, ran up over the rock and down into the little
dell on the other side that ran down to the water's edge. There he saw
a tent, with all the accompaniments of a well ordered camp, and a man
cooking breakfast on a small fire.

“Well, I'll be combusticated!” he said to himself, weakly holding to a
little poplar tree.

“I say!” he cried, “where is he? Has he come in? Is he all right?”

“Who?” said the man at the fire.

“The boy on the rock.”

The man gazed at him astonished, then as if suddenly grasping his
meaning, replied,

“Yes, he came in. He's dressing in the tent.”

“Well, I'll be condumbusticated!” said the man. “Say! what the devil
does he mean by scaring people out of their senses in that way!”

The man at the fire stood gazing at him in an utterly bewildered way.

“If you will tell me exactly what you are after, I may be able to help
you.”

The other drew slowly near the fire. He was still pale, and breathing
quickly.

“Hello, dad, is breakfast ready?” came a cheery voice from the tent.

“Thank God, he is alive apparently,” said the man, sinking down on a log
beside the fire. “You must pardon me, sir,” he said. “You see, I saw
him take a header into the pool from that high rock over yonder, and he
never came up again. I thought he was drowned.”

The man at the fire smiled.

“The young villain gave you a fright, did he? One of his usual tricks.
Well, as his father, and more or less responsible for him, I offer the
most humble apology. Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes. But why did he do such a thing?”

“Ask him. Here he comes.”

Out from the tent came the youth in shorts, the warm glow of his body
showing through the filmy material.

“Hello!” he cried, backing toward the tent door. “You are the man with
the paddle. Is there by any chance a lady with you, or did I hear a
lady's voice over there? I assure you I got a deuce of a fright.”

“You gave me the supreme fright of my life, young man, I can tell you
that.”

“But I surely heard a lady's voice,” said the youth.

“You did. It was my daughter's voice, and it was she who suggested that
you had swum around the bend. And she sent me over here to investigate.”

“Oh, your daughter. Excuse me,” said the youth. “I shall be out in a few
minutes.” He slid into the tent, and did not reappear.

The man remained chatting with the youth's father for a few minutes,
then rising said,

“Well, I feel better. I confess this thing gave me something of a shock.
But come round and see us before we go. We shall be leaving in an hour.”

The man at the fire promised to make the visit, and the other took his
departure.

A few minutes later the youth reappeared.

“Is breakfast ready?” he cried. “My, but I'm hungry! But who is he,
dad?”

“Sit down,” said his father, “and get your breakfast while it is hot.”

“But who is he, dad?” persisted the youth.

“Who is he?” said his father, dishing up the bacon. “An oil explorer,
an artist, a capitalist, an American from Pittsburgh, the father of one
child, a girl. Her mother is dead. Nineteen years old, athletic, modern
type, college bred, 'boss of the show' (quotation). These are a few of
the facts volunteered within the limited space of his visit.”

“What's he like, dad?”

“Like? Like an American.”

“Now, dad, don't allow your old British prejudices to run away with your
judgment.”

“On the contrary, I am perfectly charmed. He is one of those Americans
who capture you at once, educated, frank, open, with that peculiar charm
that Britishers will not be able to develop for many generations. An
American, but not of the unspeakable type. Not at all. You will like
him.”

“I am sure I shall,” replied the youth. “I liked his voice and his face.
I like the Americans. I met such nice chaps at college. So clever, and
with such a vocabulary.”

“Vocabulary? Well, I'm not too sure as to the vocabulary part of it.”

“Yes, such bright, pat, expressive slang, so fresh and in such variety.
So different from your heavy British slang, in which everything
approaching the superlative must be one of three things, 'ripping,' with
very distinct articulation on the double p, or 'top hole,' or 'awfully
jolly.' More recently, I believe, a fourth variation is allowed in
'priceless.'

“Ah, my boy, you have unconsciously uttered a most searching criticism
on your American friends. Don't you know that a vocabulary rich in slang
is poverty stricken in forceful and well chosen English? The wealth of
the one is the poverty of the other.”

“Where is he going?” enquired the boy.

“Out by way of Edmonton, Calgary, Moose Jaw, Minneapolis, so on to
Pittsburgh. Partner with him, young lawyer, expert in mines, unmarried.
He is coming back in a couple of months or so for a big hunt. Wants us
to join him. Really extraordinary, when you come to think of it, how
much information he was able to convey in such a short space of time.
Marvellous gift of expression!”

“What did you say, dad?”

“Say? Oh, as to his invitation! Why, I believe I accepted, my boy. It
seemed as if I could do nothing else. It's a way he has.”

“Is--is the daughter to be along?”

“Let me see. What did he say? Really, I don't know. But I should judge
that it would be entirely as she wished. She is--”

“Boss of the show, eh?”

“Exactly. Most vivid phrase, eh?”

“Very. And no doubt aptly descriptive of the fact.”

In half an hour the breakfast was finished, and the elder man got his
pipe a-going.

“Now, dad, you had better go along and make your call, while I get
things together here.”

“What! You not going! No, no, that won't do, my boy. It was about you
they were concerned. You were the occasion of the acquaintanceship.
Besides, meeting in the wilderness this way we can't do that sort of
thing, you know.”

“Well, dad, frankly, I am quite terrified of the young lady. Suppose she
should start bossing us. We should both be quite helpless.”

“Oh, nonsense, boy! Come along. Get your hat.”

“All right, I'll come. On your head be the consequences, dad. No. I
don't need a hat. Fortunately I put on a clean shirt. Will I do, dad?
You know I'm 'scairt stiff,' as Harry Hobbs would say.”

His father looked him over, but there was nothing critical in his
glance. Pride and love filled his eyes as they ran over his son's face
and figure. And small wonder! The youth was good to look upon. A shade
under six feet he stood, straight and slim, strength and supple grace
in every move of his body. His face was beautiful with the beauty of
features, clean cut and strong, but more with the beauty of a clear,
candid soul. He seemed to radiate an atmosphere of cheery good nature
and unspoiled simplicity. He was two years past his majority, yet
he carried the air of a youth of eighteen, in which shyness and
fearlessness looked out from his deep blue eyes. It was well that he
wore no hat to hide the mass of rich brown hair that waved back from his
forehead.

“You'll do, boy,” said his father, in a voice whose rigid evenness of
tone revealed the emotion it sought to conceal. “You'll take all the
shine from me, you young beggar,” he added in a tone of gruff banter,
“but there was a time--”

“WAS a time, dad? IS, and don't tell me you don't know it. I always feel
like a school kid in any company when you're about.


     'When the sun comes out
      All the little stars run in,'”


he sang from a late music hall effusion. “Why, just come here and look
at yourself,” and the boy's eyes dwelt with affectionate pride upon his
father.

It was easy to see where the boy got his perfect form. Not so tall as
his son, he was more firmly knit, and with a kind of dainty neatness in
his appearance which suggested the beau in earlier days. But there
was nothing of weakness about the erect, trim figure. A second glance
discovered a depth of chest, a thickness of shoulder and of thigh, and
a general development of muscle such as a ring champion might show; and,
indeed, it was his achievements in the ring rather than in the class
lists that won for Dick Dunbar in his college days his highest fame. And
though his fifty years had slowed somewhat the speed of foot and hand,
the eye was as sure as ever, and but little of the natural force was
abated which once had made him the glory of the Cambridge sporting
youth, and which even yet could test his son's mettle in a fast bout.

On the sandy shore of the river below the eddy, they found the American
and his party gathered, with their stuff ranged about them ready for the
canoes.

“Ah, here you are, sir,” said the American, advancing hat in hand. “And
this is your son, the young rascal who came mighty near giving me heart
failure this morning. By the way, I haven't the pleasure of knowing your
name.”

“My name is Richard Dunbar, and this is my son Barry.”

“My name is Osborne Howland, of Pittsburgh, and this is my daughter
Paula. In bloomers, as you see, but nevertheless my daughter. Meet also
my friend and partner, Mr. Cornwall Brand.”

The party exchanged greetings, and spent some moments giving utterance
to those platitudes which are so useful in such circumstances, a sort of
mental marking time preparatory to further mutual acquaintance.

The girl possessed that striking, dashing kind of brunette beauty that
goes with good health, good living, and abundance of outdoor exercise.
She carried herself with that air of assured self-confidence that comes
as the result of a somewhat wide experience of men, women and things.
She quite evidently scorned the conventions, as her garb, being quite
masculine, her speech being outspoken and decorated with the newest and
most ingenious slang, her whole manner being frankly impulsive, loudly
proclaimed.

But Barry liked her at once, and made no pretence of concealing his
liking. To her father, also, he was immediately drawn. As to Cornwall
Brand, between whom and the girl there seemed to exist a sort of
understanding, he was not so sure.

For half an hour or so they stood by the river exchanging their
experiences in these northern wilds, and their views upon life in the
wilderness and upon things in general. By a little skilful managing
the girl got the young man away from the others, and then proceeded to
dissect and classify him.

Through the open woods along the river bank they wandered, pausing here
and there to admire the view, until they came to an overhanging bank at
the entrance to a somewhat deep gorge, through which the river foamed to
the boiling rapids below. It was indeed a beautiful scene. The banks
of the river were covered with every variety of shrub and tree, except
where the black rocks broke through; between the banks the dark river
raged and fretted itself into a foam against its rocky barriers; over
them arched the sky, a perfect blue.

“What a lovely view!” exclaimed the girl, seating herself upon the edge
of the bank. “Now,” she said, “tell me about yourself. You gave my pater
a fearful fright this morning. He was quite paralysed when I came on
him.”

“I am very sorry,” said the youth, “but I had no intention--”

“I know. I told him not to worry,” replied the girl. “I knew you would
be all right.”

“And how, pray?” said the young man, blushing at the memory of his
startling appearance upon that rock.

“I knew that any fellow who could take that dive wouldn't likely let
himself drown. I guessed, too, that if you heard me hoot--”

“I did,” said the youth.

“You sure would get slippy right away.”

“I did.”

“I guess you were pretty well startled yourself, weren't you?” said the
girl, pursuing the subject with cool persistence.

“Rather,” said the young man, blushing more violently, and wishing she
would change the subject. “You are going out?” he enquired.

“Yes.”

“To-day?”

“Now--right away.”

“Too bad,” he said, his disappointment evident in his tone.

“When are you going out? But who are you, anyway?” asked the girl. “You
have to tell me that.”

“My life story, so to speak?”

She nodded.

“It's very short and simple, like the annals of the poor,” he replied.
“From England in infancy, on a ranch in northern Alberta for ten years,
a puny little wretch I was, terribly bothered with asthma, then”--the
boy hesitated a moment--“my mother died, father moved to Edmonton, lived
there for five years, thence to Wapiti, away northwest of Edmonton, our
present home, prepared for college by my father, university course in
Winnipeg, graduated in theology a year ago, now the missionary in charge
of Wapiti and the surrounding district.”

“A preacher!” said the girl, her face and her tone showing her
disappointment only too plainly.

“Not much of a preacher, I fear,” said the young man with a smile. “A
missionary, rather. That's my story.”

She noticed with some chagrin that he did not ask for hers.

“What are you doing here?” she enquired.

He hesitated a moment or two.

“Dad and I always take a trip into the wilds every summer.” Then he
added after a few moments' pause, “But of course we have other business
on hand up here.”

“Business? Up here?”

“Yes. Dad has some.” He made as if to continue, but changed his mind and
fell into silence, leaving her piqued by his reserve and by his apparent
indifference to the things concerning herself. She did not know that he
was eagerly hoping that she would supply this information.

At length he ventured, “Must you go away to-day?”

“I don't suppose there's any 'must' about it.”

“Why not stay?”

“Why should I?”

“Oh, it would be jolly,” he cried. “You see, we could--explore about
here--and,”--he ended rather lamely,--“it's a lovely country.”

“We've seen a lot of it. It IS lovely,” she said, her eyes upon his face
as if appraising him. “I should like to know you better,” she added,
with sudden and characteristic frankness, “so I think we will stay. But
you will have to be awfully good to me.”

“Why, of course,” he cried. “That's splendid! Perfectly jolly!”

“Then we had better find father and tell him. Come along,” she ordered,
and led the way back to the camp.

The young man followed her, wondering at her, and giving slight heed
to the chatter she flung over her shoulder at him as she strode along
through the bushes.

“What's the matter with you?” she cried, facing round upon him. “You
were thinking about me, I know. Confess, now.”

“I was,” he acknowledged, smiling at her.

“What were you thinking? Tell me,” she insisted.

“I was thinking--” He paused.

“Go on!” she cried.

“I was thinking of what your father said about you.”

“My father? About me? What did he say? To you?”

“No. To dad.”

“What was it? Tell me. I must know.” She was very imperious in her
manner. The youth only smiled at her.

“Go on!” she said impatiently.

“I think possibly your father was right,” he replied, “when he said you
'boss the show.'”

“Oh, that's what he said, eh? Well, I guess he's about right.”

“But you don't really?”

“Don't what? 'Boss the show'? Well, I boss my own show, at any rate.
Don't you?”

“Don't I what, exactly? Boss the show? Well, I don't think we have any
'show,' and I don't believe we have any 'boss.' Dad and I just talk
things over, you see.”

“But,” she insisted, “some one in the last analysis must decide. Your
menage, no matter how simple, must have a head. It is a law of the
universe itself, and it is the law of mankind. You see, I have done some
political economy.”

“And yet,” said the young man, “you say you run your own show?”

“Exactly. Every social organism must have a head, but every individual
in the organism must live its own free life. That is true democracy. But
of course you don't understand democracy, you Canadians.”

“Aha! There you are! You Americans are the most insular of all the great
peoples of the world. You know nothing of other people. You know only
your own history and not even that correctly, your own geography, and
your own political science. You know nothing of Canada. You don't
know, for instance, that the purest form of democracy on this American
continent lies outside the bounds of the U. S. A.”

“In Canada?” she asked scornfully. “By the way, how many Canadians are
there?”

“Yes, I know. We are a small people,” he said quietly, “but no more real
democracy exists anywhere in the world than in this country of mine. We
are a small people, but,” he said, with a sweep of his hand toward the
west and the north, “the future is with us. The day is coming when
along this waterway great cities shall be, with factories and humming
industries. These plains, these flowing hills will be the home of
millions of men, and in my lifetime, too.”

His eyes began to glow, his face to shine with a rare and fascinating
beauty.

“Do you know the statistics of your country? Do you know that during the
last twenty years the rate of Canada's growth was three times greater
than ever in the history of the United States? You are a great
commercial nation, but do you know that the per capita rate of Canada's
trade to-day is many times that of the United States? You are a great
agricultural people, but do you know that three-quarters of the wheat
land on this continent is Canadian, and that before many years you will
be coming to Canada for your wheat, yes, and for your flour? Do you see
that river? Do you know that Canada is the richest country in the world
in water power? And more than that, in the things essential to national
greatness,--not these things that you can see, these material things,”
 he said, sweeping his hand contemptuously toward the horizon, “but in
such things as educational standards, in administration of justice,
in the customs of a liberty loving people, in religious privileges, in
everything that goes to make character and morale, Canada has already
laid the foundations of a great nation.”

He stopped short, abashed, the glow fading from his face, the light from
his eyes.

“Forgive me,” he said, with a little laugh. “I am a first class ass.
I fear I was blowing like a fog horn. But when you touch Canada you
release something in me.”

While he was speaking her eyes never left his face. “Go on!” she said,
in a voice of suppressed emotion, “go on. I love to hear you.”

Her wonted poise was gone; she was obviously stirred with deep emotion.

“Go on!” she commanded, laying her hand upon his arm. “Don't stop. Tell
me more about--about Canada, about anything,” she added impatiently.

A warm, eager light filled her eyes. She was biting her lips to still
their tremor.

“There's plenty to tell about Canada,” he said, “but not now. What
started me? Oh, democracy. Yes, it was you that began it. Democracy?
After all, it is worth while that the people who are one day to fill
this wide land should be truly democratic, truly free, and truly great.”

Once more the light began to burn in his eyes and in his face.

“Ah, to have a hand in that!”

“And you,” she said in a low voice, “you with all that in you, are only
a preacher.”

“A missionary,” he corrected.

“Well, a missionary. Only a missionary.”

Disappointment and scorn were all too evident in her voice.

“ONLY a missionary. Ah, if I could only be one. A missionary! With a
mission and a message to my people! If only I had the gift of tongues,
of flaming, burning, illuminating speech, of heart-compelling speech! To
tell my people how to make this country truly great and truly free, how
to keep it free from the sordid things, the cruel things, the unjust,
the unclean, the loathsome things that have debased and degraded the
older nations, that are debasing and degrading even your young, great
nation. Ah, to be a missionary with a tongue of fire, with a message of
light! A missionary to my people to help them to high and worthy living,
to help them to God! ONLY a missionary! What would you have me? A
money-maker?”

He turned swiftly upon her, a magnetic, compelling personality. From the
furious scorn in his voice and in his flaming face she visibly shrank,
almost as if he had struck her.

“No!” she breathed. “Nothing else. Only a missionary.”

Silent she stood, as if still under the spell of his words, her eyes
devouring his face.

“How your mother would have loved you, would have been proud of you,”
 she said in a low tone. “Is--is there no one else to--to rejoice in
you?” she asked shyly, but eagerly.

He laughed aloud. “There's dad, dear old dad.”

“And no one else?” Still with shy, eager eyes she held him.

“Oh, heaps,” he cried, still laughing.

She smiled upon him, a slightly uncertain smile, and yet as if his
answer somehow satisfied her.

“Good-bye,” she said impulsively, offering her hand.

“But you are not going! You're staying a few days!” he gasped.

“No, we're going. We're going right away. Goodbye,” she said. “I don't
want those others to see. Goodbye. Oh, it's been a wonderful morning!
And,--and--a friend is a wonderful discovery.”

Her hand held his in a strong, warm grasp, but her eyes searched his
face as if seeking something she greatly desired.

“Good-bye. I am sorry you are going,” he said, simply. “I want to know
you better.”

“Do you?” she cried, with a sudden eagerness in her voice and manner.
Then, “No. You would be disappointed. I am not of your world. But you
shall see me again,” she added, as if taking a new resolve. “We are
coming back on a big hunt, and you and your father are to join us. Won't
you?”

“Dad said we should,” said the youth, smiling at the remembrance.

“And you?” she said, with a touch of impatience.

“If things can so arrange themselves--my work, I mean, and dad's.”

“But, do you want to? Do you really want to?” she asked. “I wish I knew.
I hate not to understand people. You are hard to know. I don't know you.
But you will come?”

“I think so,” said the young man. “Of course a fellow's work comes
first, you know.”

“Work?” she cried. “Your work? Oh, your missionary work. Oh, yes, yes. I
should like to see you at it. Come, let us go.”

Mr. Cornwall Brand they found in a fever of impatience. He had the
trip scheduled to a time table, and he hated to be forced to change his
plans. His impatience showed itself in snappy commands and inquiries to
his Indian guides, who, however, merely grunted replies. They knew their
job and did it without command or advice, and with complete indifference
to anything the white man might have to say. To Paula the only change in
his manner was an excess of politeness.

Her father, however, met her with remonstrances.

“Why, Paula, my dear, you have kept us waiting.”

“What's the rush, pater?” she enquired, coolly.

“Why, my dear, we are already behind our schedule, and you know Cornwall
hates that,” he said in a low voice.

“Cornwall!” said Paula, in a loud voice of unmistakable ill temper.
“Does Cornwall run this outfit?”

“My dear Paula!” again remonstrated her father.

She turned to him impatiently, with an angry word at her lips, caught
upon Barry's face a look of surprise, paused midway in her passion, then
moved slowly toward him.

“Well,” she asked, in an even, cold voice, “what do you think about it?
And anyway,” she dropped her voice so that none heard but himself, “why
should you halt me? Who are you, to give me pause this way?”

“Only a missionary,” he answered, in an equally low tone, but with a
smile gentle, almost wistful on his face.

As with a flash the wrathful cloud vanished.

“A missionary,” she replied softly. “God knows I need one.”

“You do,” he said emphatically, and still he smiled.

“Come, Paula,” called Cornwall Brand. “We are all waiting.”

Her face hardened at his words.

“Good-bye,” she said to Barry. “I am coming back again to--to your
wonderful Canada.”

“Of course you are,” said Barry, heartily. “They all do.”

He went with her to the canoe, steadied her as she took her place, and
stood watching till the bend in the river shut them from view.

“Nice people,” said his father. “Very fine, jolly girl.”

“Yes, isn't she?” replied his son.

“Handsome, too,” said his father, glancing keenly at him.

“Is she? Yes, I think so. Yes, indeed, very,” he added, as if pondering
the matter. “When do we move, dad?”

A look of relief crossed the father's face.

“This afternoon, I think. We have only a few days now. We shall run up
Buffalo Creek into the Foothills for some trout. It will be a little
stiff, but you are fit enough now, aren't you, Barry?” His voice was
tinged with anxiety.

“Fit for anything, dad, thanks to you.”

“Not to me, Barry. To yourself largely.”

“No,” said the boy, throwing his arm round his father's shoulder,
“thanks to you, dear old dad,--and to God.”



CHAPTER II

ON THE RED PINE TRAIL


On the Red Pine trail two men were driving in a buckboard drawn by a
pair of half-broken pinto bronchos. The outfit was a rather ramshackle
affair, and the driver was like his outfit. Stewart Duff was a rancher,
once a “remittance man,” but since his marriage three years ago he had
learned self-reliance and was disciplining himself in self-restraint.
A big, lean man he was, his thick shoulders and large, hairy muscular
hands suggesting great physical strength, his swarthy face, heavy
features, coarse black hair, keen dark eyes, deepset under shaggy
brows, suggesting force of character with a possibility of brutality in
passion. Yet when he smiled his heavy face was not unkindly, indeed the
smile gave it a kind of rugged attractiveness. He was past his first
youth, and on his face were the marks of the stormy way by which he had
come.

He drove his jibing bronchos with steady hands. No light touch was his
upon the reins, and the bronchos' wild plunging met with a check
from those muscular hands of such iron rigidity as to fling them back
helpless and amazed upon their hocks.

His companion was his opposite in physical appearance, and in those
features and lines that so unmistakably reveal the nature and character
within. Short and stout, inclined indeed to fat, to his great distress,
his thick-set figure indicated strength without agility, solidity
without resilience. He had a pleasant, open face, with a kindly,
twinkling blue eye that goes with a merry heart, with a genial, sunny
soul. But there was in the blue eye and in the open face, for all the
twinkles and the smiles, a certain alert shrewdness that proclaimed the
keen man of business, and in the clean cut lips lay the suggestion of
resolute strength. A likable man he was, with an infinite capacity
for humour, but with a bedrock of unyielding determination in him that
always surprised those who judged him lightly.

The men were friends, and had been comrades more or less during those
pioneer days that followed their arrival in the country from Scotland
some dozen years ago. Often they had fallen out with each other, for
Duff was stormy of temper and had a habit of letting himself swing out
upon its gusts of passion, reckless of consequences; but he was ever the
one to offer amends and to seek renewal of good relations. He had few
friends, and so he clung the more closely to those he had. At such times
the other would wait in cool, good-tempered but determined aloofness for
his friend's return.

“You can chew your cud till you're cool again,” he would say when the
outbreak would arise. But invariably their differences were composed and
their friendship remained unbroken.

The men sat in the buckboard, leaning forward with hunched shoulders,
swaying easily to the pitching of the vehicle as it rattled along the
trail which, especially where it passed over the round topped ridges,
was thickly strewn with stones. Before them, now on the trail and now
ranging wide over the prairie, ran a beautiful black and white English
setter.

“Great dog that, Sandy,” said Duff. “I could have had a dozen birds this
afternoon. A wonderful nose, and steady as a rock.”

“A good dog, Stewart,” assented Sandy, but with slight interest.

“There ain't another like him in this western country,” said the owner
of the dog with emphasis.

“Oh, I don't know about that. There are some very good dogs around here,
Stewart,” replied Sandy lightly.

“But I know. And that's why I'm saying there ain't his like in this
western country, and that's as true as your name is Sandy Bayne.”

“Well, my name is Sandy Bayne, all right, but how did he come out at the
Calgary trials?”

“Aw, those damned gawks! They don't know a good dog from a he-goat! They
don't know what a dog is for, or how to use him.”

“Oh, now, Stewart,” said Sandy, “I guess Willocks knows a dog when he
sees one.”

“Willocks!” said his friend with scorn. “There's where you're wrong. Do
you know why he cut Slipper out of the Blue Ribbon? Because he wouldn't
range a mile away. Darned old fool! What's the good of a point a mile
away! Keeps you running over the whole creation, makes you lose time,
tires yourself and tires your dog; and more than that, in nine cases out
of ten you lose your bird. Give me a close ranger. He cleans up as he
goes, keeps your game right at your hand, and gets you all the sport
there is.”

“Who beat you, Stewart, in the trials?”

“That bitch of Snider's.”

“Man! Stewart, that's a beautiful bitch! I know her well. She's a
beautiful bitch!” Sandy began to show enthusiasm.

“Oh, there you go! That's just what those fool judges said. 'Beautiful
dog! Beautiful dog!' Suppose she is! Looks ain't everything. They're
something, but the question is, does she get the birds? Now, Slipper
there got three birds to her one. Got 'em within range, too.”

“Ah, but Stewart, yon's a good bitch,” said Sandy.

“Look here!” cried his friend, “I have bred more dogs in the old country
than those men ever saw in their lives.”

“That may be, Stewart, but yon's a good bitch,” persisted Sandy.

For a mile more they discussed the merits of Slipper and of his rivals,
Sandy with his semi-humorous chaff extracting quiet amusement from his
friend's wrath, and the latter, though suspecting that he was being
drawn, unable to restrain his passionate championship of his dog.

At length Sandy, wearying of the discussion, caught sight of a figure
far before them on the trail.

“Who is that walking along there?” he enquired.

Together they ran over the names of all who in this horse country were
unfortunate enough to be doomed to a pedestrian form of locomotion.

“Guess it's the preacher,” said Duff finally, whose eyes were like a
hawk's.

“He's been out at my place Sunday afternoon,” said Sandy, “but I haven't
met him myself. What sort is he?”

“Don't ask me. I sometimes go with the madame to church, but generally I
fall asleep. He's no alarm clock.”

“Then you can't tell what sort of a preacher he is,” said Sandy with a
twinkle in his eye. “You can't hear much when you are asleep.”

“I hear enough to know that he's no good as a preacher. I hear they're
going to fire him.”

“I tell you what it is, Stewart,” said Sandy, “I don't believe you would
know a good sermon if you heard one.”

“What's that you say? I've heard the best preachers in the country that
breeds preachers, in the country where preachers grow like the berries
on the bramble bushes. I know preaching, and I like good preaching,
too.”

“Oh, come off, Stewart! You may be a good judge of dogs, but I'm blowed
if I am going to take you as a judge of preachers.”

“The same qualities in all of them, dogs, horses, preachers,” insisted
Duff.

“How do you make that out?”

“Well, take a horse. He must be a good-looker. This preacher is a
good-looker, all right, but looks ain't everything. Must be quick at the
start, must have good action, good style, staying power, and good at
the finish. Most preachers never know when to finish, and that's the way
with this man.”

“Are you going to take him up?” inquired Sandy, for they were now close
upon the man walking before them.

“Oh, I guess not,” replied Duff. “I haven't much use for him.”

“Say, what's the matter with him? He looks rather puffed out,” said
Sandy. “Better take him up.”

“All right,” replied Duff, pulling up his bronchos. “Good day. Will you
have a ride? Mr. Barry Dunbar, my friend Mr. Bayne.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Bayne,” said Barry, who was pale and panting
hard. “Thanks for the lift. The truth--is--I'm rather--done up. A touch
of asthma--the first--in five years. An old trouble of mine.”

“Get up here,” said Sandy. “There's room for three in the seat.”

“No--thank you,--I should--crowd you,--all right behind here. Beastly
business--this asthma. Worse when--the pollen--from the plants--is
floating--about--so they say. I don't know--nobody does--I fancy.” They
drove on, bumping over the stones, Barry gradually getting back his
wind. The talk of the men in the front seat had fallen again on dogs,
Stewart maintaining with ever increasing vehemence his expert knowledge
of dogs, of hunting dogs, and very especially of setter hunting dogs;
his friend, while granting his knowledge of dogs in general, questioning
the unprejudiced nature of his judgment as far as Slipper was concerned.

As Duff's declarations grew in violence they became more and more
elaborately decorated with profanity. In the full tide of their
conversation a quiet voice broke in:

“Too many 'damns.'”

“What!” exclaimed Duff.

“I beg your pardon!” said Sandy.

“Too many 'damns,'” said Barry, looking quietly at Duff.

“Dams? Where?” said Duff, looking about.

“Beaver dams, do you mean?” enquired Sandy. “I don't see any.”

“Too many 'damns,'” reiterated Barry. “You don't need them. You really
don't need them, you know, and besides, they are not right. Profanity is
quite useless, and it's wicked.”

“Well, I'll be damned!” said Stewart in a low voice to his friend. “He
means us.”

“And quite right, too,” said Sandy solemnly. “You know your English is
rotten bad. Yes, sir,” he continued, turning round to Barry, “I quite
agree with you. My friend is quite unnecessarily free in his speech.”

“Yes, but you are just the same, you know,” said Barry. “Not quite so
many, but then you are not quite so excited.”

“Got you there, old sport,” grunted Duff, highly amused at Sandy's
discomfiture. But to Barry he said, “I guess it's our own business how
we express ourselves.”

“Yes, it is, but, pardon me, not entirely so. There are others in the
world, you know, and you must consider others. The habit is a bad habit,
a rotten habit, and quite useless--silly, indeed.”

Duff turned his back upon him. Sandy, giving his friend a nudge, burst
into a loud laugh.

“You are right, sir,” he said, turning to Barry. “You are quite right.”

At this point Slipper created a diversion.

“Hello!” said Duff. “Say! Look at him!” He pointed to the dog. “Ain't he
a picture!”

A hundred yards away stood Slipper, rigid, every muscle, every hair
taut, one foot arrested in air.

“I'll just get those,” said Duff, slipping out of the buckboard and
drawing the gun from beneath the seat. “Steady, old boy, steady! Hold
the lines, Sandy.”

He moved quickly toward the dog who, quivering with that mysterious
instinct found in the hunting dog, still held the point with taut
muscles, nose and tail in line.

“Hello!” Barry called out. “It isn't the season yet for chicken. I say,
Mr. Duff,” he shouted, “it isn't the chicken season, you know.”

“Better leave him alone,” said Sandy.

“But it isn't the season yet! It is against the law!” protested Barry
indignantly.

Meantime Stewart Duff was closing up cautiously behind Slipper.

“Forward, old boy! Ste-e-e-ady! Forward!” The dog refused to move.
“Forward, Slipper!”

Still the dog remained rigid, as if nailed to the ground.

“On, Slipper!”

Slowly the dog turned his head with infinite caution half round toward
his master, as if in protest.

“Hello, there!” shouted Barry, “you know--”

Just as he called there was on all sides a great whirring of wings. A
dozen chicken flew up from under Duff's feet. Bang! Bang! went his gun.

“Missed, as I'm a sinner!” exclaimed Sandy. “I thought he was a better
shot than that.”

Back came Duff striding wide toward the buckboard. Fifty yards away he
shouted:

“Say! what the devil do you mean calling like that at a man when he's on
the point of shooting!” His face was black with anger. He looked ready
to strike. Barry looked at him steadily.

“But, I was just reminding you that it was not the season for chicken
yet,” he said in the tone of a man prepared to reason the matter.

“What's that got to do with it! And anyway, whose business is it what I
do but my own?”

“But it's against the law!”

“Oh, blank the law! Besides--”

“Besides it isn't--well, you know, it isn't quite sporting to shoot out
of season.” Barry's manner was as if dealing with a fractious child.

Duff, speechless with his passion, looked at him as if not quite sure
what form his vengeance should take.

“He's quite right, Stewart,” said his friend Sandy, who was hugely
enjoying himself. “You know well enough you are down on the farmer chaps
who go pot hunting before season. It's rotten sport, you know.”

“Oh, hell! Will you shut up! Can't I shoot over my dog when he points?
I'm not out shooting. If I want to give my dog a little experience an
odd bird or two don't matter. Besides, what the--”

“Oh, come on, Stewart! Get in, and get a move on! You know you are in
the wrong. But I thought you were a better shot than that,” added Sandy.

His remark diverted Duff's rage.

“Better shot!” he stormed. “Who could shoot with a--a--a--” he was
feeling round helplessly for a properly effective word,--“with a fellow
yelling at you?” he concluded lamely. “I'd have had a brace of them if
it hadn't been for him.”

“In that case,” said Barry coolly, “I saved you from the law.”

“Saved me from the law! What the devil do you mean, anyway?” said
Stewart. “If I want to pick up a bird who's to hinder me? And what's the
law got to do with it?”

“Well, you know, I'm not sure but it might have been my duty to report
you. I feel that all who break the game laws should be reported. It is
the only way to stop the lawless destruction of the game.”

Barry spoke in a voice of quiet deliberation, as if pondering the proper
action in the premises.

“Quite right, too,” said Sandy gravely, but with a twinkle in his blue
eye. “They ought to be reported. I have no use for those poachers.”

Duff made no reply. His rage and disgust, mingled with the sense of his
being in the wrong, held him silent. No man in the whole country was
harder upon the game poachers than he, but to be held up in his action
and to be threatened with the law by this young preacher, whom he rather
despised anyway, seemed to paralyse his mental activities. It did not
help his self-control that he was aware that his friend was having his
fun of him.

At this moment, fortunately for the harmony of the party, their
attention was arrested by the appearance of a motor car driven at a
furious rate along the trail, and which almost before they were aware
came honking upon them. With a wild lurch the bronchos hurled themselves
from the trail, upsetting the buckboard and spilling its load.

Duff, cumbered with his gun, which he had reloaded, allowed one of
the reins to drop from his hands and the team went plunging about in a
circle, but Barry, the first to get to his feet, rushed to the rescue,
snatched the reins and held on till he had dragged the plunging bronchos
to a halt.

The rage which had been boiling in Duff, and which with difficulty had
been held within bounds, suddenly burst all bonds of control. With
a fierce oath he picked up the gun which he had thrown aside in his
struggle with the horses, and levelled it at the speeding motor car.

“For God's sake, Stewart, stop!” shouted Bayne, springing toward his
friend.

Barry was nearer and quicker. The shot went off, but his hand had
knocked up the gun.

“My God, Stewart! Are you clean crazy!” said Bayne, gripping him by the
arm. “Do you know what you are doing? You are not fit to carry a gun!”

“I'd have bust his blanked tires for him, anyway!” blustered Duff,
though his face and voice showed that he had received a shock.

“Yes, and you might have been a murderer by this time, and heading for
the pen, but for Dunbar here. You owe him more than you can ever pay,
you blanked fool!”

Duff made no reply, but busied himself with his horses. Nor did he speak
again till everything was in readiness for the road.

“Get in,” he then said gruffly, and that was his last word until they
drove into the village.

At the store he drew up.

“Thank you for the lift,” said Barry. “I should have had a tough job to
get back in time.”

Duff grunted at him, and passed on into the store.

“I am very glad to have met you,” said Bayne, shaking hands warmly with
him. “You have done us both a great service. He is my friend, you know.”

“I am afraid I have offended him, all the same. But you see I couldn't
help it, could I?”

Bayne looked at his young, earnest face for a moment or two as if
studying him, then said with a curious smile, “No, I don't believe you
could have helped it.” And with that he passed into the store.

“What sort of a chap is that preacher of yours?” he asked of the
storekeeper.

“I don't know; he ain't my church. Ask Innes there. He's a pillar.”

Bayne turned to a long, lean, hard-faced man leaning against the
counter.

“My name is Bayne, from Red Pine, Mr. Innes. I am interested in knowing
what sort of a chap your preacher is. He comes out to our section, but I
never met him till to-day.”

“Oh, he's no that bad,” said Innes cautiously.

“Not worth a cent,” said a little, red headed man standing near. “He
can't preach for sour apples.”

“I wadna just say that, Mr. Hayes,” said Innes.

“How do you know, Innes?” retorted Hayes. “You know you fall asleep
before he gets rightly started.”

“I aye listen better with ma eyes shut.”

“Yes, and snore better, too, Mac,” said Hayes. “But I don't blame you.
Most of them go to sleep anyway. That's the kind of preacher he is.”

“What sort of a chap is he? I mean what sort of man?”

“Well, for one thing, he's always buttin' in,” volunteered a
square-built military looking man standing near. “If he'd stick to
his gospel it wouldn't be so bad, but he's always pokin' his nose into
everything.”

“But he's no that bad,” said Innes again, “and as for buttin' in,
McFettridge, and preachin' the gospel, I doubt the country is a good
deal the better for the buttin' in that him and his likes have done this
past year. And besides, the bairns all like him.”

“Well, that's not a bad sign, Mr. Innes,” said Sandy Bayne, “and I'm not
sure that I don't like him myself. But I guess he butts in, all right.”

“Oh, ay! he butts in,” agreed Innes, “but I'm no so sure that that's no
a part of his job, too.”



CHAPTER III

A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE


The Dunbars lived in a cottage on a back street, which had the
distinction of being the only home on the street which possessed the
adornment of a garden. A unique garden it was, too. Indeed, with the
single exception of Judge Hepburn's garden, which was quite an elaborate
affair, and which was said to have cost the Judge a “pile of money,”
 there was none to compare with it in the village of Wapiti.

Any garden on that bare, wind-swept prairie meant toil and infinite
pains, but a garden like that of the Dunbars represented in addition
something of genius. In conception, in design, and in execution the
Dunbars' garden was something apart. Visitors were taken 'round to the
back street to get a glimpse of the Dunbars' cottage and garden.

The garden was in two sections. That at the back of the cottage,
sheltered by a high, close board fence covered with Virginia creeper,
was given over to vegetables, and it was quite marvellous how, under
Richard Dunbar's care, a quarter of an acre of ground could grow such
enormous quantities of vegetables of all kinds. Next to the vegetable
garden came the plot for small fruits--strawberries, raspberries,
currants, of rare varieties.

The front garden was devoted to flowers. Here were to be found the old
fashioned flowers dear to our grandmothers, and more particularly the
old fashioned flowers native to English and Scottish soil. Between the
two gardens a thick row of tall, splendid sunflowers made a stately
hedge. Then came larkspur, peonies, stocks, and sweet-williams, verbenas
and mignonette, with borders of lobelia and heliotrope. Along the fence
were sweet peas, for which Alberta is famous.

But it was the part of the garden close about the front porch and
verandah where the particular genius of Richard Dunbar showed itself.
Here the flowers native to the prairie, the coulee, the canyon, were
gathered; the early wind flower, the crowfoot and the buffalo bean, wild
snowdrops and violets. Over trellises ran the tiny morning-glory,
with vetch and trailing arbutus. A bed of wild roses grew to wonderful
perfection. Later in the year would be seen the yellow and crimson
lilies, daisies white and golden, and when other flowers had faded,
golden rod and asters in gorgeous contrast. The approach to the door of
the house was by a gravel walk bordered by these prairie flowers.

The house inside fulfilled the promise of the garden. The living room,
simple in its plan, plain in its furnishing, revealed everywhere that
touch in decorative adornment that spoke of the cultivated mind and
refined taste. A group of rare etchings had their place over the mantel
above a large, open fireplace. On the walls were to be seen really fine
copies of the world's most famous pictures, and on the panels which ran
'round the walls were bits of pottery and china, relics of other days
and of other homes.

But what was most likely to strike the eye of a stranger on entering the
living room was the array of different kinds of musical instruments.
At one end of the room stood a small upright piano, a 'cello held one
corner, a guitar another; upon a table a cornet was deposited, and on
the piano a violin case could be seen, while a banjo hung from a nail on
the wall.

Near the fireplace a curiously carved pipe-rack hung, with some half
dozen pipes of weird design, evidently the collection of years, while
just under it a small table held the utensils sacred to the smoker.

When Barry entered he found the table set and everything in readiness
for tea.

“Awfully sorry I'm too late to help you with tea, dad. I have had a long
walk, and quite a deuce of a time getting home.”

“All right, boy. Glad you are here. The toast is ready, tea waiting to
be infused. But what happened? No, don't begin telling me till you get
yourself ready. But hurry, your meeting hour will be on in no time.”

“Right-o, dad! Shame to make a slavey of you in this way. I'll be out in
a jiffy.”

He threw off his coat and vest, shirt and collar, took a pail of water
to a big block in the little shed at the back, soused his head and
shoulders in it with loud snorting and puffing, and emerged in a few
minutes looking refreshed, clean and wholesome, his handsome face
shining with vigorous health.

Together they stood at the table while the son said a few words of
reverent grace.

“I'm ravenous, dad. What! Fried potatoes! Oh, you are a brick.”

“Tired, boy?”

“No. That reminds me of my thrilling tale, which I shall begin after
my third slice of toast, and not before. You can occupy the precious
minutes, dad, in telling me of your excitements in the office this
afternoon.”

“Don't sniff at me. I had a few, though apparently you think it
impossible in my humdrum grey life.”

“Good!” said Barry, his mouth full of toast. “Go on.”

“Young Neil Fraser is buying, or has just bought, the S.Q.R. ranch.
Filed the transfer to-day.”

“Neil Fraser? He's in my tale, too. Bought the S.Q.R.? Where did he get
the stuff?”

“Stuff?”

“Dough, the dirt, the wherewithal, in short the currency, dad.”

“Barry, you are ruining your English,” said his father.

“Yum-yum. Bully! Did you notice that, dad? I'm coming on, eh? One thing
I almost pray about, that I might become expert in slinging the modern
jaw hash. I'm appallingly correct in my forms of speech. But go on, dad.
I'm throwing too much vocalisation myself. You were telling me about
Neil Fraser. Give us the chorus now.”

“I don't like it, boy,” said his father, shaking his head, “and
especially in a clergyman.”

“But that's where you are off, dad. The trouble is, when I come within
range of any of my flock all my flip vocabulary absolutely vanishes,
and I find myself talking like a professor of English or a maiden lady
school ma'am of very certain age.”

“I don't like it, boy. Correct English is the only English for a
gentleman.”

“I wonder,” said the lad. “But I don't want to worry you, dad.”

“Oh, as for me, that matters nothing at all, but I am thinking of you
and of your profession, your standing.”

“I know that, dad. I sometimes wish you would think a little more about
yourself. But what of Neil Fraser?”

“He has come into some money. He has bought the ranch.”

Barry's tone expressed doubtful approval. “Neil is a good sort, dad,
awfully reckless, but I like him,” said Barry. “He is up and up with it
all.”

“Now, what about your afternoon?” said his father.

“Well, to begin with, I had a dose of my old friend, the enemy.”

“Barry, you don't tell me! Your asthma!” His father sat back from the
table gazing at him in dismay. “And I thought that was all done with.”

“So did I, dad. But it really didn't amount to much. Probably some
stomach derangement, more likely some of that pollen which is floating
around now. I passed through a beaver meadow where they were cutting
hay, and away I went in a gale of sneezing, forty miles an hour. But I'm
all right now, dad. I'm telling you the truth. You know I do.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said his father, concern and relief mingling in his
voice, “but you don't know how to take care of yourself, Barry. But go
on with your tale.”

“Well, as I was panting along like a 'heavey horse,' as Harry Hobbs
would say,--not really too bad, dad,--along comes that big rancher,
Stewart Duff, driving his team of pinto bronchos, and with him a chap
named Bayne, from Red Pine Creek. He turned out to be an awfully decent
sort. And Duff's dog, Slipper, ranging on ahead, a beautiful setter.”

“Yes, I have seen him.”

They discussed for a few moments the beauties and points of Duff's
Slipper, for both were keen sportsmen, and both were devoted to dogs.
Then Barry went back to his tale and gave an account of what had
happened during the ride home.

“You see Slipper ranging about got 'on point' and beautiful work it was,
too. Out jumped Duff with his gun, ready to shoot, though, of course, he
knew it was out of season and that he was breaking the law. Well, just
as Slipper flushed the birds, I shouted to Duff that he was shooting out
of season. He missed.”

“Oh, he was properly wrathful at my spoiling his shot,” cried the young
man.

“I don't know that I blame him, Barry,” said his father thoughtfully.
“It is an annoying thing to be shouted at with your gun on a bird, you
know, extremely annoying.”

“But he was breaking the law, dad!” cried Barry indignantly.

“I know, I know. But after all--”

“But, dad, you can't sit there and tell me that you don't condemn him
for shooting out of season. You know nothing makes you more furious than
hearing about chaps who pot chicken out of season.”

“I know, I know, my boy.” The father was apparently quite distressed.
“You are quite right, but--”

“Now, dad, I won't have it! You are not to tell me that I had no
business to stop him if I could. Besides, the law is the law, and sport
is sport.”

“I quite agree, Barry. Believe me, I quite agree. Yet all the same, a
chap does hate to have his shot spoiled, and to shout at a fellow with
his gun on a bird,--well, you'll excuse me, Barry, but it is hardly the
sporting thing.”

“Sporting! Sporting!” said Barry. “I know that I hated to do it, but
it was right. Besides talk about 'sporting'--what about shooting out of
season?”

“Yes, yes. Well, we won't discuss it. Go on, Barry.”

“But I don't like it, dad. I don't like to think that you don't approve
of what I do. It was a beastly hard thing to do, anyway. I had to make
myself do it. It was my duty.” The young man sat looking anxiously at
his father.

“Well, my boy,” said his father, “I may be wrong, but do you think you
are always called upon to remonstrate with every law breaker? No, listen
to me,” he continued hurriedly. “What I mean is, must you or any of us
assume responsibility for every criminal in the land?”

Barry sat silent a moment, considering this proposition.

“I wish I knew, dad. You know, I have often said that to excuse myself
after I have funked a thing, and let something go by without speaking up
against it.”

“Funked it!”

“Yes. Funked standing up for the right thing, you know.”

“Funked it!” said his father again. “You wouldn't do that, Barry?”

“Oh, wouldn't I, though? I am afraid you don't know me very well, dad.
However, I rather think I had started him up before that, you know. You
won't like this either. But I may as well go through with it. You know,
he was swearing and cursing most awfully, just in his ordinary talk you
know, and that is a thing I can't stand, so I up and told him he was
using too many 'damns.'”

“You did, eh?” In spite of himself the father could not keep the
surprise out of his voice. “Well, that took some nerve, at any rate.”

“There you are again, dad! You think I had no right to speak. But
somehow I can't help feeling I was right. For don't you see, it would
have seemed a bit like lowering the flag to have kept silent.”

“Then for God's sake speak out, lad! I do not feel quite the same way as
you, but it is what you think yourself that must guide you. But go on,
go on.”

“Well, I assure you he was in a proper rage, and if it hadn't been
for Bayne I believe he would have trimmed me to a peak, administered a
fitting castigation, I mean.”

“He would, eh?” said the father with a grim smile. “I should like to see
him try.”

“So should I, dad, if you were around. I think I see you--feint with
the right, then left, right, left! bing! bang! bung! All over but the
shiver, eh, dad? It would be sweet! But,” he added regretfully, “that's
the very thing a fellow cannot do.”

“Cannot do? And why not, pray? It is what every fellow is in duty bound
to do to a bully of that sort.”

“Yes, but to be quite fair, dad, you could hardly call Duff a bully. At
least, he wasn't bullying me. As a matter of fact, I was bullying him.
Oh, I think he had reason to be angry. When a chap undertakes to pull
another chap up for law breaking, perhaps he should be prepared to take
the consequences. But to go on. Bayne stepped in--awfully decent of
him, too,--when just at that moment, as novelists say, with startling
suddenness occurred an event that averted the impending calamity. Along
came Neil Fraser, no less, in that new car of his, in a whirlwind of
noise and dust, honking like a flock of wild geese. Well, you should
have seen those bronchos. One lurch, and we were on the ground, a
beautiful upset, and the bronchos in an incipient runaway, fortunately
checked by your humble servant. Duff, in a new and real rage this time,
up with his gun and banged off both barrels after the motor car, by this
time honking down the trail.”

“By Jove! he deserved it,” said the father. “Those motor fellows make me
long to do murder at times.”

“That's because you have no car, Dad, of course.”

“Did he hit him, do you think?”

“No. My arm happened to fly up, the gun banged toward the zenith.
Nothing doing!”

“Well, Barry, you do seem to have run foul of Mr. Duff.”

“Three times, dad. But each time prevented him from breaking the law and
doing himself and others injury. Would you have let him off this last
time, dad?”

“No, no, boy. Human life has the first claim upon our care. You did
quite right, quite right. Ungovernable fool he must be! Shouldn't be
allowed to carry a gun.”

“So Bayne declared,” said Barry.

“Well, you have had quite an exciting afternoon. But finish your tea and
get ready for the meeting. I will wash up.”

“Not if I know it, dad. You take your saw-horse and do me a little
Handel or Schubert. Do, please,” entreated his son. “I want that before
meeting more than anything else. I want a change of mood. I confess I am
slightly rattled. My address is all prepared, but I must have atmosphere
before I go into the meeting.”

His father took the 'cello, and after a few moments spent in carefully
tuning up, began with Handel's immortal Largo, then he wandered into
the Adagio Movement in Haydn's third Sonata, from thence to Schubert's
Impromptu in C Minor, after which he began the Serenade, when he was
checked by his son.

“No, not that, dad, that's sickening. I consider that the most morally
relaxing bit of music that I know. It frays the whole moral fibre. Give
us one of Chopin's Ballades, or better still a bit of that posthumous
Fantasie Impromptu, the largo movement. Ah! fine! fine!”

He flung his dish-cloth aside, ran to the piano and began an
accompaniment to his father's playing.

“Now, dad, the Largo once more before we close.” They did the Largo once
and again, then springing from the piano Barry cried: “That Largo is
a means of grace to me. There could be no better preparation for a
religious meeting than that. If you would only come in and play for
them, it would do them much more good than all my preaching.”

“If you would only take your music seriously, Barry,” replied his
father, somewhat sadly, “you would become a good player, perhaps even a
great player.”

“And then what, dad?”

His father waved him aside, putting up his 'cello.

“No use going into that again, boy.”

“Well, I couldn't have been a great player, at any rate, dad.”

“Perhaps not, boy, perhaps not,” said his father. “Great players are
very rare. But it is time for your meeting.”

“So it is, dad. Awfully sorry I didn't finish up those dishes. Let them
go till I return. I wish you would, dad, and come along with me.” His
voice had a wistful note in it.

“Not to-night, boy, I think. We will have some talk after. You will only
be an hour, you know.”

“All right, dad,” said Barry. “Some time you may come.” He could not
hide the wistful regret of his tone.

“Perhaps I shall, boy,” replied his father.

It was the one point upon which there was a lack of perfect harmony
between father and son. When the boy went to college it was with the
intention of entering the profession of law, for which his father had
been reading in his young manhood when the lure of Canada and her broad,
free acres caught him, and he had abandoned the law and with his wife
and baby boy had emigrated to become a land owner in the great Canadian
west.

Alas! death, that rude spoiler of so many plans, broke in upon the
sanctity and perfect peace of that happy ranch home and ravished it of
its treasure, leaving a broken hearted man and a little boy, orphaned
and sickly, to be cared for. The ranch was sold, the rancher moved to
the city of Edmonton, thence in a few years to a little village some
twenty-five miles nearer to the Foothills, where he became the Registrar
and Homestead Inspector for the district.

Here he had lived ever since, training the torn tendrils of his heart
about the lad, till peace came back again, though never the perfect
joy of the earlier days. Every May Day the two were wont to go upon an
expedition many miles into the Foothills, to a little, sunny spot, where
a strong, palisaded enclosure held a little grave. So little it looked,
and so lonely amid the great hills. There, not in an abandonment of
grief, but in loving and grateful remembrance of her whose dust the
little grave now held, of what she had been to them, and had done for
them, they spent the day, returning to take up again with hearts solemn,
tender and chastened, the daily routine of life.

That his son should grow to take up the profession of law had been the
father's dream, but during his university course the boy had come under
the compelling influence of a spiritual awakening that swept him into
a world filled with new impressions and other desires. Obeying what
he felt to be an imperative call, the boy chose the church as his
profession, and after completing his theological course in the city of
Winnipeg, and spending a year in study in Germany, while still a mere
youth he had been appointed as missionary to the district of which his
own village was the centre.

But though widely separate from each other in the matter of religion,
there were many points of contact between them. They were both men of
the great out-of-doors, and under his father's inspiration and direction
the boy had come to love athletic exercises of all kinds. They were
both music-mad, the father having had in early youth a thorough musical
education, the boy possessing musical talent of a high order. Such
training as was his he had received from his father, but it was confined
to one single instrument, the violin. To this instrument, upon which his
father had received the tuition of a really excellent master, the son
devoted long hours of study and practice during his boyhood years, and
his attainments were such as to give promise of something more than
an amateur's mastery of his instrument. His college work, however,
interfered with his music, and to his father's great disappointment and
regret he was forced to lay aside his study of the violin. On the piano,
however, the boy developed an extraordinary power of improvisation and
of sight reading, and while his technique was faulty his insight, his
power of interpretation were far in excess of many artists who were his
superiors in musical knowledge and power of execution. Many were the
hours the father and son spent together through the long evenings of
the western winter, and among the many bonds that held them in close
comradeship, none was stronger than their common devotion to music.

Long after his son had departed to his meeting the father sat dreaming
over his 'cello, wandering among the familiar bits from the old masters
as fancy led him, nor was he aware of the lapse of time till his son
returned.

“Hello! Nine-thirty?” he exclaimed, looking at his watch. “You have
given them an extra dose to-night.”

“Business meeting afterwards, which didn't come off after all,” said
his son. “Postponed till next Sunday.” With this curt announcement, and
without further comment he sat down at his desk.

But after a few moments he rose quickly, saying, “Let us do some real
work, dad.”

He took up his violin. His father, who was used to his moods, without
question or remark proceeded to tune up. An hour's hard practice
followed, without word from either except as regarded the work in hand.

“I feel better now, dad,” said the young man when they had finished.
“And now for a round with you.”

“But what about your wind, boy? I don't like that asthma of yours this
afternoon.”

“I am quite all right. It's quite gone. I feel sure it was the pollen
from the beaver meadow.”

They cleared back the table and chairs from the centre of the room,
stripped to their shirts, put on the gloves and went at each other with
vim. Their style was similar, for the father had taught the son all
he knew, except that the father's was the fighting and the son's the
sparring style. To-night the roles appeared to be reversed, the son
pressing hard at the in-fighting, the father trusting to his foot work
and countering with the light touch of a man making points.

“You ARE boring in, aren't you?” said the father, stopping a fierce
rally.

“You are not playing up, dad,” said his son. “I don't feel like soft
work to-night. Come to me!”

“As you say,” replied the father, and for the next five minutes Barry
had no reason to complain of soft work, for his father went after him
with all the fight that was in him, so that in spite of a vigorous
defence the son was forced to take refuge in a runaway game.

“Now you're going!” shouted the son, making a fierce counter with his
right to a hard driven left, which he side-stepped. It was a fatal
exposure. Like the dart of a snake the right hand hook got him below the
jaw, and he was hurled breathless on the couch at the side of the room.

“Got you now!” said his father.

“Not quite yet,” cried Barry. Like a cat he was on his feet, breathing
deep breaths, dodging about, fighting for time.

“Enough!” cried his father, putting down his hands.

“Play up!” shouted Barry, who was rapidly recovering his wind. “No soft
work. Watch out!”

Again the father was on guard, while Barry, who seemed to have drawn
upon some secret source of strength, came at him with a whirlwind
attack, feinting, jabbing, swinging, hooking, till finally he landed a
short half arm on the jaw, which staggered his father against the wall.

“Pax!” cried the young man. “I have all I want.”

“Great!” said his father. “I believe you could fight, boy, if you were
forced to.”

In the shed they sluiced each other with pails of water, had a rub down
and got into their dressing gowns.

“I feel fine, now, dad, and ready for anything,” said Barry, glowing
with his exercise and his tub. “I was feeling like a quitter. I guess
that asthma got at my nerve. But I believe I will see it through some
way.”

“Yes?” said his father, and waited.

“Yes. They were talking blue ruin in there to-night. Finances are
behind, congregation is running down, therefore the preacher is a
failure.”

“Well, lad, remember this,” said his father, “never let your liver
decide any course of action for you. Some good stiff work, a turn
with the gloves, for instance, is the best preparation I know for any
important decision. A man cannot decide wisely when he feels grubby.
Your asthma this afternoon is a symptom of liver.”

“It is humiliating to a creature endowed with conscience and intellect
to discover how small a part these play at times in his decisions.
The ancients were not far wrong who made the liver the seat of the
emotions.”

“Well,” said his father, “it is a good thing to remember that most of
our bad hours come from our livers. So the preacher is a failure? Who
said so?”

“Oh, a number of them, principally Hayes.”

“Thank God, and go to sleep,” said his father. “If Hayes were pleased
with my preaching I should greatly suspect my call to the ministry.”

“But seriously, I am certainly not a great preacher, and perhaps not
a preacher at all. They say I have no 'pep,' which with some of them
appears to be the distinctive and altogether necessary characteristic of
a popular preacher.”

“What said Innes?” enquired his father.

“Did you ever hear Innes say much? From his silence one would judge that
he must possess the accumulated wisdom of the ages.”

“When he does talk, however, he generally says something. What was his
contribution?”

“'Ah, weel,' said the silent one, 'Ah doot he's no a Spurgeon, not yet a
Billy Sunday, but ye'll hardly be expectin' thae fowk at Wapiti for nine
hundred dollars a year.' Then, bless his old heart, he added, 'But the
bairns tak to him like ducks to water, so you'd better bide a bit.' So
they decided to 'bide a bit' till next Sunday. Dad, at first I wanted
to throw their job in their faces, only I always know that it is the old
Adam in me that feels like that, so I decided to 'bide a bit' too.”

“It is a poor job, after all, my boy,” said his father. “It's no
gentleman's job the way it is carried on in this country. To think of
your being at the bidding of a creature like Hayes!”

He could have said no better word. The boy's face cleared like the
sudden shining of the sun after rain. He lifted his head and said,

“Thank God, not at his bidding, dad. 'One is your Master,'” he quoted.
“But after all, Hayes has something good in him. Do you know, I rather
like him. He's--”

“Oh, come now, we'll drop it right there,” said his father, in a
disgusted tone. “When you come to finding something to like in that rat,
I surrender.”

“Who knows?” said the boy, as if to himself. “Poor Hayes. He may be
quite a wonderful man, considering all things, his heredity and his
environment. What would I have been, dad, but for you?”

His father grunted, pulled hard at his pipe, coughed a bit, then looked
his son straight in the face, saying, “God knows what any of us owe to
our past.” He fell into silence. His mind was far away, following his
heart to the palisaded plot of ground among the Foothills and the little
grave there in which he had covered from his sight her that had been the
inspiration to his best and finest things, and his defence against the
things low and base that had once hounded his soul, howling hard upon
his trail.

The son, knowing his mood, sat in silence with him, then rising suddenly
he sat himself on the arm of his father's chair, threw his arm around
his shoulder and said, “Dear old dad! Good old boy you are, too. Good
stuff! What would I have been but for you? A puny, puling, wretched
little crock, afraid of anything that could spit at me. Do you remember
the old gander? I was near my eternal damnation that day.”

“But you won out, my boy,” said his father in a croaking voice, putting
his arm round his son.

“Yes, because you made me stick it, just as you have often made me stick
it since. May God forget me if I ever forget what you have done for me.
Shall we read now?”

He took the big Bible from its place upon the table, and turning the
leaves read aloud from the teachings of the world's greatest Master. It
was the parable of the talents.

“Rather hard on the failure,” he said as he closed the book.

“No, not the failure,” said his father, “the slacker, the quitter. It is
nature's law. There is no place in God's universe for a quitter.”

“You are right, dad,” said Barry. “Good-night.”

He kissed his father, as he had ever done since his earliest infancy.
Their prayers were said in private, the son, clergyman though he was,
could never bring himself to offer to lead the devotions of him at whose
knee he had kneeled every night of his life, as a boy, for his evening
prayer.

“Good-night, boy,” said his father, holding him by the hand for a moment
or so. “We do not know what is before us, defeat, loss, suffering. That
part is not in our hands altogether, but the shame of the quitter never
need, and never shall be ours.”

The little man stepped into his bedroom with his shoulders squared and
his head erect.

“By Jove! He's no quitter,” said his son to himself, as his eyes
followed him. “When he quits he'll be dead. God keep me from shaming
him!”



CHAPTER IV

REJECTED


The hour for the church service had not quite arrived, but already a
number of wagons, buckboards and buggies had driven up and deposited
their loads at the church door. The women had passed into the church,
where the Sunday School was already in session; the men waited outside,
driven by the heat of the July sun and the hotter July wind into the
shade of the church building.

Through the church windows came the droning of voices, with now and then
a staccato rapping out of commands heard above the droning.

“That's Hayes,” said a sturdy young chap, brown as an Indian, lolling
upon the grass. “He likes to be bossing something.”

“That's so, Ewen,” replied a smaller man, with a fish-like face, his
mouth and nose running into a single feature.

“I guess he's doin' his best, Nathan Pilley,” answered another man,
stout and stocky, with bushy side whiskers flanking around a rubicund
face, out of which stared two prominent blue eyes.

“Oh, I reckon he is, Mr. Boggs. I have no word agin Hayes,” replied
Nathan Pilley, a North Ontario man, who, abandoning a rocky farm in
Muskoka, had strayed to this far west country in search of better
fortune. “I have no word agin Mr. Hayes, Mr. Boggs,” he reiterated. “In
fact, I think he ought to be highly commended for his beneficent work.”

“But he does like to hear himself giving out orders, all the same,”
 persisted the young man addressed as Ewen.

“Yes, he seems to sorter enjoy that, too, Ewen,” agreed Nathan, who was
never known to oppose any man's opinion.

“He's doin' his best,” insisted Mr. Boggs, rather sullenly.

“Yes, he is that, Mr. Boggs, he is that,” said Nathan.

“But he likes to be the big toad in the puddle,” said Ewen.

“Well, he certainly seems to, he does indeed, Ewen.”

Clear over the droning there arose at this point another sound, a chorus
of childish laughter.

“That's the preacher's class,” said Boggs. “Quare sort o' Sunday School
where the kids carry on like that.”

“Seems rather peculiar,” agreed Nathan, “peculiar in Sunday School, it
does.”

“What's the matter with young Pickles?” enquired Ewen.

The eyes of the company, following the pointing finger, fell upon young
Pickles standing at the window of the little vestry to the church, and
looking in. He was apparently convulsed with laughter, with his hand
hard upon his mouth and nose as a kind of silencer.

“Do you know what's the matter with him, Pat?” continued Ewen.

Pat McCann, the faithful friend and shadow of young Pickles, after
studying the attitude and motions of his friend, gave answer:

“It's the preacher, I guess. He's kiddin' the kids inside. He's some
kidder, too,” he said, moving to take his place beside his friend.

“What's he doing anyway?” said Ewen. “I'm going to see.”

Gradually a little company gathered behind young Pickles and Pat McCann.
The window commanded a view of the room, yet in such a way that the
group were unobserved by the speaker.

“Say, you ought to seen him do the camel a minute ago,” whispered
Pickles.

In the little vestry room were packed some twenty children of all ages
and sizes, with a number of grownups who had joined the class in charge
of some of its younger members. There was, for instance, Mrs. Innes,
with the two youngest of her numerous progeny pillowed against her
yielding and billowy person; and Mrs. Stewart Duff, an infant of only a
few weeks upon her knee accounting sufficiently for the paleness of
her sweet face, and two or three other women with their small children
filling the bench that ran along the wall.

“Say! look at Harry Hobbs,” said Pat McCann to his friend.

Upon the stove, which in summer was relegated to the corner of the room,
sat Harry Hobbs, a man of any age from his appearance, thin and wiry,
with keen, darting eyes, which now, however, were fastened upon the
preacher. All other eyes were, too. Even the smallest of the children
seated on the front bench were gazing with mouths wide open, as if
fascinated, upon the preacher who, moving up and down with quick, lithe
steps, was telling them a story. A wonderful story, too, it seemed, the
wonder of it apparent in the riveted eyes and fixed faces. It was
the immortal story, matchless in the language, of Joseph, the Hebrew
shepherd boy, who, sold into slavery by his brethren, became prime
minister of the mighty empire of Egypt. The voice tone of the minister,
now clear and high, now low and soft, vibrating like the deeper notes
of the 'cello, was made for story telling. Changing with every changing
emotion, it formed an exquisite medium to the hearts of the listeners
for the exquisite music of the tale.

The story was approaching its climactic denouement; the rapturous
moment of the younger brother's revealing was at hand; Judah, the
older brother, was now holding the centre of the stage and making that
thrilling appeal, than which nothing more moving is to be found in our
English speech. The preacher's voice was throbbing with all the
pathos of the tale. Motionless, the little group hung hard upon the
story-teller, when the door opened quickly, a red head appeared, a
rasping voice broke in:

“Your class report, Mr. Dunbar, please. We're waiting for it.”

A sigh of disappointment and regret swept the room.

“Oh, darn the little woodpecker!” said Ewen from the outside, in a
disgusted tone. “That's the way with Hayes. He thinks he's the whole
works, and that he never can get in wrong.”

The spell was broken, never to be renewed. The story hurried to its
close, but the great climax failed of its proper effect.

“He's a hummer, ain't he?” exclaimed young Pickles to his friend, Pat
McCann.

“Some hummer, and then some!” replied Pat.

“I'm goin' in,” said Pickles.

“Aw, what for? He ain't no good preachin' to them folks. By gum! I think
he's scared of 'em.”

But Pickles persisted, and followed with the men and boys who lounged
lazily into the church, from which the Sunday School had now been
dismissed.

It appeared that the judgment of Pat McCann upon the merits of the
preacher would be echoed by the majority of the congregation present.
While the service was conducted in proper form and in reverent spirit,
the sermon was marked by that most unpardonable sin of which sermons can
be guilty; it was dull. Solid enough in matter, thoughtful beyond the
average, it was delivered in a style appallingly wooden, with an utter
absence of that arresting, dramatic power that the preacher had shown in
his children's class.

The appearance of the congregation was, as ever, a reflection of the
sermon. The heat of the day, the reaction from the long week in the open
air, the quiet monotony of the well modulated voice rising and falling
in regular cadence in what is supposed by so many preachers to be
the tone suitable for any sacred office, produced an overwhelmingly
somnolent effect. Many of them slept, some frankly and openly, others
under cover of shading hands, bowed heads, or other subterfuges. Others
again spent the whole of the period of the sermon, except for some
delicious moments of surreptitious sleep, in a painful but altogether
commendable struggle against the insidious influence of the god of
slumber.

Among the latter was Mrs. Innes, whose loyalty to her minister, which
was as much a part of her as her breathing, contended in a vigorous
fight against her much too solid flesh. It was a certain aid to
wakefulness that her two children, deep in audible slumber, kept her in
a state of active concern lest their inert and rotund little masses of
slippery flesh should elude her grasp, and wreck the proprieties of the
hour by flopping on the floor. There was also a further sleep deterrent
in the fact that immediately before her sat Mr. McFettridge, whose
usually erect form, yielding to the soporific influences of the
environment, showed a tendency gradually to sag into an attitude,
relaxed and formless, which suggested sleep. This, to the lady behind
him, partook of the nature of an affront to her minister. Consequently
she considered it her duty to arouse the snoozing McFettridge with a
vigorous poke in the small of the back.

The effect was instantaneously apparent. As if her insistent finger had
touched a button and released an electric current, Mr. McFettridge's
sagging form shot convulsively into rigidity, and impinging violently
upon the peacefully slumbering Mr. Boggs on the extreme end of the
bench, toppled him over into the aisle.

The astonished Boggs, finding himself thus deposited upon the floor, and
beholding the irate face of Mr. McFettridge glooming down upon him, and
fancying him to be the cause of his present humiliating position, sprang
to his feet, swung a violent blow upon Mr. Fettridge's ear, exclaiming
sotto voce:

“Take that, will you! And mind your own business! You were sleeping
yourself, anyway!”

Before the astonished and enraged Mr. McFettridge could gather his wits
sufficiently for action, there rang over the astonished congregation a
peal of boyish laughter. It was from the minister. A few irrepressible
youngsters joined in the laugh; the rest of the congregation, however,
were held rigid in the grip of a shocked amazement.

“Oh, I say! do forgive me, Mr. McFettridge!” cried the young man at the
desk. “It was quite involuntary, I assure you.” Then, quickly recovering
himself, he added, “And now we shall conclude the service by singing the
seventy-ninth hymn.”

Before the last verse was sung he reminded the audience of the
congregational meeting immediately following, and without further
comment the service was brought to a close.

A number of the congregation, among them Barry's father, departed.

“Sit down, Neil,” said Mrs. Innes to Neil Fraser. “You'll be wanted I
doot.” And Neil, protesting that he knew nothing about church business,
sat down.

At the back of the church were gathered Harry Hobbs, young Pickles,
and others of the less important attendants of the church, who had been
induced to remain by the rumour of a “scrap.”

By a fatal mischance, the pliant Nathan Pilley was elected chairman.
This gentleman was obsessed by the notion that he possessed in a high
degree the two qualities which he considered essential to the harmonious
and expeditious conduct of a public meeting, namely, an invincible
determination to agree with every speaker, and an equally invincible
determination to get motions passed.

In a rambling and aimless speech, Mr. Pilley set forth in a somewhat
general way the steps leading up to this meeting, and then called
upon Mr. Innes, the chairman of the Board of Management, to state more
specifically the object for which it was called.

Mr. Innes, who was incurably averse to voluble speech, whether public or
private, arose and said, in rolling Doric:

“Weel, Mr. Chair-r-man, there's no much to be done. We're behind a few
hundred dollars, but if some one will go about wi' a bit paper, nae doot
the ar-rear-rs wad soon be made up, and everything wad be ar-richt.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Pilley pleasantly. “Now will some one offer a
motion?”

Thereupon Mr. Hayes was instantly upon his feet, and in a voice thin and
rasping exclaimed:

“Mr. Chairman, there's business to be done, and we are here to do it,
and we're not going to be rushed through in this way.”

“Exactly, Mr. Hayes, exactly,” said Mr. Pilley. “We must give these
matters the fullest consideration.”

Then followed a silence.

“Perhaps Mr. Hayes--” continued the chairman, looking appealingly at
that gentleman.

“Well, Mr. Chairman,” said Mr. Hayes, with an appeased but slightly
injured air, “it is not my place to set forth the cause of this meeting
being called. If the chairman of the board would do his duty”--here he
glared at the unconscious Mr. Innes--“he would set before it the
things that have made this meeting necessary, and that call for drastic
action.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Mr. Boggs.

“Exactly so,” acquiesced the chairman. “Please continue, Mr. Hayes.”

Mr. Hayes continued: “The situation briefly is this: We are almost
hopelessly in debt, and--”

“How much?” enquired Neil Fraser, briskly interrupting.

“Seven hundred dollars,” replied Mr. Hayes, “and further--”

“Five hundred dollars,” said Mr. Innes.

“I have examined the treasurer's books,” said Mr. Hayes in the calmly
triumphant tone of one sure of his position, “and I find the amount to
be seven hundred dollars, and therefore--”

“Five hundred dollars,” repeated Mr. Innes, gazing into space.

“Seven hundred dollars, I say,” snapped Mr. Hayes.

“Five hundred dollars,” reiterated Mr. Innes, without further comment.

“I say I have examined the books. The arrears are seven hundred
dollars.”

“Five hundred dollars,” said Mr. Innes calmly.

The youngsters at the back snickered.

“Go to it!” said Harry Hobbs, under his breath.

Even the minister, who was sitting immediately behind Harry, could not
restrain a smile.

“Mr. Chairman,” cried Mr. Hayes, indignantly, “I appeal against this
interruption. I assert--”

“Where's the treasurer?” said Neil Fraser. “What's the use of this
chewin' the rag?”

“Ah! Exactly so,” said the chairman, greatly relieved. “Mr.
Boggs--Perhaps Mr. Boggs will enlighten us.”

Mr. Boggs arose with ponderous deliberation.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “in one sense Mr. Hayes is right when he states
the arrears to be seven hundred dollars--”

“Five hundred dollars A'm tellin' ye,” said Mr. Innes with the first
sign of feeling he had shown.

“And Mr. Innes is also right,” continued Mr. Boggs, ignoring the
interruption, “when he makes the arrears five hundred dollars, the two
hundred dollars difference being the quarterly revenue now due.”

“Next week,” said Mr. Innes, reverting to his wonted calm.

“Exactly so,” said the chairman, rubbing his hands amiably; “so that the
seven hundred dollars we now owe--”

This was too much even for the imperturbable Mr. Innes.

He arose in his place, moved out into the aisle, advanced toward the
platform, and with arm outstretched, exclaimed in wrathful tones:

“Mon, did ye no hear me tellin' ye? I want nae mon to mak' me a le-ear.”

At this point Mr. Stewart Duff, who had come to convey his wife home,
and had got tired waiting for her outside, entered the church.

“Oh, get on with the business,” said Neil Fraser, who, although enjoying
the scene, was becoming anxious for his dinner. “The question what's to
be done with the five hundred dollars' arrears. I say, let's make it up
right here. I am willing to give--”

“No, Mr. Chairman,” shouted Mr. Hayes, who was notoriously averse
to parting with his money, and was especially fearful of a public
subscription.

“There is something more than mere arrears--much more--”

“Ay, there is,” emphatically declared Mr. McFettridge, rising straight
and stiff. “I'm for plain speakin'. The finances is not the worst about
this congregation. The congregation has fallen off. Other churches in
this village has good congregations. Why shouldn't we? The truth is, Mr.
Chairman,”--Mr. McFettridge's voice rolled deep and sonorous over the
audience--“we want a popular preacher--a preacher that draws--a preacher
with some pep.”

“Hear! hear!” cried Mr. Boggs. “Pep's what we want. That's it--pep.”

“Pep,” echoed the chairman. “Exactly so, pep.”

“More than that,” continued Mr. McFettridge, “we want a minister that's
a good mixer--one that stands in with the boys.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Mr. Boggs again.

“A mixer! Exactly!” agreed the chairman. “A mixer!” nodding pleasantly
at Mr. Boggs.

“And another thing I will say,” continued Mr. McFettridge, “now that I
am on my feet. We want a preacher that will stick to his job--that will
preach the gospel and not go meddlin' with other matters--with politics
and such like.”

“Or prohibition,” shouted Harry Hobbs from the rear, to the undiluted
joy of the youngsters in his vicinity.

The minister shook his head at him.

“Yes, prohibition,” answered Mr. McFettridge, facing toward the rear
of the church defiantly. “Let him stick to his preaching the gospel; I
believe the time has come for a change and I'm prepared to make a motion
that we ask our minister to resign, and that motion I now make.”

“Second the motion,” cried Mr. Boggs promptly.

“You have heard the motion,” said the chairman, with business-like
promptitude. “Are you ready for the question?”

“Question,” said Mr. Hayes, after a few moments' silence, broken by the
shuffling of some members in their seats, and by the audible whispering
of Mrs. Innes, evidently exhorting her husband to action.

“Then all those in favour of the motion will please--”

Then from behind the organ a little voice piped up, “Does this mean, Mr.
Chairman, that we lose our minister?”

It was Miss Quigg, a lady whose years no gallantry could set below
forty, for her appearance indicated that she was long past the bloom of
her youth. She was thin, almost to the point of frailness, with sharp,
delicately cut features; but the little chin was firm, and a flash of
the brown eyes revealed a fiery soul within. Miss Quigg was the milliner
and dressmaker of the village, and was herself a walking model of her
own exquisite taste in clothes and hats. It was only her failing health
that had driven her to abandon a much larger sphere than her present
position offered, but even here her fame was such as to draw to her
little shop customers from the villages round about for many miles.

“Does this mean, sir, that Mr. Dunbar will leave us?” she repeated.

“Well,--yes, madam--that is, Miss, I suppose, in a way--practically it
would amount to that.”

“Will you tell me yes or no, please,” Miss Quigg's neat little figure
was all a-quiver to the tips of her hat plumes.

“Well,” said the chairman, squirming under the unpleasant experience of
being forced to a definite answer, “I suppose,--yes.”

Miss Quigg turned from the squirming and smiling Mr. Pilley in contempt.

“Then,” she said, “I say no. And I believe there are many here who would
say no--and men, too.” The wealth of indignation and contemptuous
scorn infused into the word by which the difference in sex of the
human species was indicated, made those unhappy individuals glance
shamefacedly at each other--“only they are too timid, the creatures! or
too indifferent.”

Again there was an exchange of furtive glances and smiles and an uneasy
shifting of position on the part of “the creatures.”

“But if you give them time, Mr. Chairman, I believe they will perhaps
get up courage enough to speak.”

Miss Quigg sat down in her place behind the organ, disappearing quite
from view except for the tips of her plumes, whose rapid and rhythmic
vibrations were eloquent of the beating of her gallant little heart.

“Exactly so,” said the chairman, in confused but hearty acquiescence.
“Perhaps some one will say something.”

Then Mr. Innes, forced to a change of position by the physical
discomfort caused by his wife's prodding, rose and said,

“I dinna see the need o' any change. Mr. Dunbar is no a great preacher,
but Ah doot he does his best. And the bairns all like him.”

Then the congregation had a thrill. In the back seat rose Harry Hobbs.

“I'm near forty years old,” he cried, in a high nasal tone that
indicated a state of extreme nervous tension, “and I never spoke in
meetin' before. I ain't had no use for churches and preachers, and I
guess they hadn't no use for me. You folks all know me. I've been in
this burg for near eight years, and I was a drinkin', swearin', fightin'
cuss. This preacher came into the barn one day when I was freezin' to
death after a big spree. He tuk me home with him and kep' me there
for two weeks, settin' up nights with me, too. Let me be,” he said
impatiently to Barry, who was trying to pull him down to his seat. “I'm
agoin' to speak this time if it kills me. Many a time I done him dirt
sence then, but he stuck to me, and never quit till he got me turned
'round. I was goin' straight to hell; he says I'm goin' to heaven now.”
 Here he laughed with a touch of scorn. “I dunno. But, by gum! if you
fire him and do him dirt, I don't know what'll become of me, but I guess
I'll go straight to hell again.”

“No, Harry, no you won't. You'll keep right on, Harry, straight to
heaven.” It was the preacher's voice, full of cheery confidence.

Mrs. Innes was audibly sniffling; Mrs. Stewart Duff wiping her eyes. It
was doubtless this sight that brought her husband to his feet.

“I don't quite know what the trouble is here,” he said. “I understand
there are arrears. I heard some criticism of the minister's preaching.
I can't say I care much for it myself, but I want to say right here that
there are other things wanted in a minister, and this young fellow has
got some of them. If he stays, he gets my money; if he doesn't, no one
else does. I'll make you gentlemen who are kicking about finances a
sporting proposition. I'm willing to double my subscription, if any
other ten men will cover my ante.”

“I'll call you,” said Neil Fraser, “and I'll raise you one.”

“I'm willing to meet Mr. Duff and Mr. Fraser,” said Miss Quigg, rising
from behind her organ with a triumphant smile on her face.

“I ain't got much money,” said Harry Hobbs, “but I'll go you just half
what I earn if you'll meet me on that proposition.”

“Ah may say,” said Mr. Innes, yielding to his wife's vigorous vocal and
physical incitations, “A'm prepair-r-ed to mak' a substantial increase
in my subscreeption--that is, if necessary,” he added cautiously.

Then Barry came forward from the back of the church and stood before the
platform. After looking them over for a few moments in silence, he said,
in a voice clear, quiet, but with a ring in it that made it echo in
every heart:

“Had it not been for these last speeches, it would have been unnecessary
to allow the motion to go before you. I could not have remained where I
am not wanted. But now I am puzzled, I confess, I am really puzzled to
know what to do. I am not a great preacher, I know, but then there are
worse. I don't, at least I think I don't, talk nonsense. And I am not
what Mr. McFettridge calls a 'good mixer.' On the other hand, I think
Mr. Innes is right when he says the bairns like me; at least, it would
break”--he paused, his lip quivering, then he went on quietly--“it would
be very hard to think they didn't.”

“They do that, then,” said Mrs. Innes, emphatically.

“So you see, it is really very difficult to know what to do. I would
hate to go away, but it might be right to go away. I suggest you let me
have a week to think it over. Can you wait that long?”

His handsome, boyish face, alight with a fine glow of earnestness and
sincerity, made irresistible appeal to all but those who for personal
reasons were opposed to him.

“You see,” he continued, in a tone of voice deliberative and quite
detached, “there are a number of things to think about. Those arrears,
for instance, are hardly my fault--at least, not altogether. I was
looking over the treasurer's books the other day, and I was surprised
to find how many had apparently quite forgotten to pay their church
subscription. It is no doubt just an oversight. For instance,” he added,
in the confidential tone of one imparting interesting and valuable
information, “you will be surprised to learn, Mr. Duff, that you are
twenty-five dollars behind in your payments.”

At this Neil Fraser threw back his head with a loud laugh. “Touche!” he
said, in a joyous undertone.

The minister looked at him in surprise, and went on, “And while Mr.
Innes and Miss Quigg are both paid up in full, Mr. Hayes has apparently
neglected to pay his last quarter.”

“Hit him again,” murmured Harry Hobbs, while Mr. Hayes rose in virtuous
indignation.

“I protest, Mr. Chairman!” he cried, “against these personalities.”

“Oh, you quite mistake me, Mr. Hayes,” said the preacher, “these are not
personalities. I am simply showing how easy it is for arrears to arise,
and that it may not be my fault at all. Of course, it may be right for
me to resign. I don't know about that yet, but I want to be very sure.
It would be easier to resign, but I don't want to be a quitter.”

“I move we adjourn,” said Neil Fraser.

“I second the motion,” said Stewart Duff. The motion was carried, and
the meeting adjourned.

At the door the minister stood shaking hands with all as they passed
out, making no distinction in the heartiness with which he greeted all
his parishioners. To Miss Quigg, however, he said, “Thank you. You were
splendidly plucky.”

“Nonsense!” cried the little lady, the colour flaming in her faded
cheeks. “But,” she added hastily, “you did that beautifully, and he
deserved it, the little beast!”

“Solar plexus!” said Neil Fraser, who was immediately behind Miss Quigg.

The minister glanced from one to the other in perplexity, as they passed
out of the door.

“But, you know, I was only--”

“Oh, yes, we know,” cried Miss Quigg. “But if those men would only take
hold! Oh, those men!” She turned upon Neil Fraser and shook her head at
him violently.

“I know, Miss Quigg. We are a hopeless and helpless lot. But we're going
to reform.”

“You need to, badly,” she said. “But you need some one to reform you.
Look at Mr. Duff there, how vastly improved he is,” and she waved her
hand to that gentleman, who was driving away with his wife in their
buckboard.

“He is a perfect dear,” sighed Mrs. Duff, as she bowed to the minister.
“And you, too, Stewart,” she added, giving his arm a little squeeze,
“you said just the right thing when those horrid people were going to
turn him out.”

“Say! Your preacher isn't so bad after all,” said her husband. “Wasn't
that a neat one for old Hayes?”

“He rather got you, though, Stewart.”

“Yes, he did, by Jove! Not the first time, either, he's done it. But I
must look after that. Say, he's the limit for freshness though. Or is it
freshness? I'm not quite sure.”

“Will he stay with us?” said his wife. “I really do hope he will.”

“Guess he'll stay all right. He won't give up his job,” said her
husband.

But next week proved Mr. Duff a poor prophet, for the minister after
the service informed his people that he had come to the conclusion that
another man might get better results as minister of the congregation; he
had therefore handed in his resignation to the Presbytery.

It was a shock to them all, but he adhered to his resolution in spite of
tearful lamentations from the women, wide-eyed amazement and dismay from
the bairns of the congregation, and indignation, loudly expressed, from
Neil Fraser and Stewart Duff, and others of their kind.

“Well,” said Miss Quigg, struggling with indignant tears, as she was
passing out of the church, “you won't see Harry Hobbs in this church
again, nor me, either.”

“Oh, yes, Miss Quigg, Harry has promised me that he will stick by the
church, and that he will be there every Sunday. And so will you, dear
Miss Quigg. I know you. You will do what is right.”

But that little lady, with her head very erect and a red spot burning in
each faded cheek, passed out of the church saying nothing, the plumes on
her jaunty little hat quivering defiance and wrath against “those men,
who had so little spunk as to allow a little beast like Hayes to run
them.”



CHAPTER V

THE WAR DRUM CALLS


“Well, dad,” said Barry next evening as they were sitting in the garden
after tea, “I feel something like Mohammed's coffin, detached from earth
but not yet ascended into heaven. It's unpleasant to be out of a job.
I confess I shall always cherish a more intelligent sympathy henceforth
for the great unemployed. But cheer up, dad! You are taking this thing
much too seriously. The world is wide, and there is something waiting me
that I can do better than any one else.”

But the father had little to say. He felt bitterly the humiliation to
which his son had been subjected.

Barry refused to see the humiliation.

“Why should I not resign if I decide it is my duty so to do? And why,
on the other hand, should not they have the right to terminate my
engagement with them when they so desire? That's democratic government.”

“But good Lord, Barry!” burst out his father, with quite an unusual
display of feeling; “to think that a gentleman should hold his position
at the whim of such whippersnappers as Hayes, Boggs et hoc genus omne.
And more than that, that I should have to accept as my minister a man
who would be the choice of cattle like that.”

“After all, dad, we are ruled by majorities in this age and in this
country. That is at once the glory and the danger of democratic
government. There is no better way discovered as yet. And besides, I
couldn't go on here, dad, preaching Sunday after Sunday to people who I
felt were all the time saying, 'He's no good'; to people, in short, who
could not profit by my preaching.”

“Because it had no pep, eh?” said his father with bitter scorn.

“Do you know, dad, I believe that's what is wrong with my preaching: it
hasn't got pep. What pep is, only the initiated know. But the long and
the short of this thing is, it is the people that must be satisfied. It
is they who have to stand your preaching, they who pay the piper. But
cheer up, dad, I have no fear for the future.”

“Nor have I, my boy, not the slightest. I hope you did not think for a
moment, my son,” he added with some dignity, “that I was in doubt about
your future.”

“No, no, dad. We both feel a little sore naturally, but the future is
all right.”

“True, my dear boy, true. I was forgetting myself. As you say, the world
is wide and your place is waiting.”

“Hello! here comes my friend, Mr. Duff,” said Barry in a low voice. “He
was ready to throw Mr. McFettridge out of the meeting yesterday, body
and bones. Awfully funny, if it hadn't been in church. Wonder what he
wants! Seems in a bit of a hurry.”

But hurry or not, it was a full hour before Mr. Duff introduced his
business. As he entered the garden he stood gazing about him in amazed
wonder and delight, and that hour was spent in company with Mr. Dunbar,
exploring the garden, Barry following behind lost in amazement at the
new phase of character displayed by their visitor.

“I have not had such a delightful evening, Mr. Dunbar, for years,” said
Duff, when they had finished making the round of the garden. “I have
heard about your garden, but I had no idea that it held such a wealth
and variety of treasures. I had something of a garden myself in the old
country, but here there is no time apparently for anything but cattle
and horses and money. But if you would allow me I should greatly like to
have the pleasure of bringing Mrs. Duff to see your beautiful garden.”

Mr. Duff was assured that the Dunbars would have the greatest pleasure
in receiving Mrs. Duff.

“Do bring her,” said Barry, “and we can have a little music, too. She is
musical, I know. I hear her sing in church.”

“Music! Why, she loves it. But she dropped her music when she came here;
there seemed to be no time, no time, no time. I wonder sometimes--Well,
I must get at my business. It is this letter that brings me. It is from
an American whom you know, at least, he knows you, a Mr. Osborne Howland
of Pittsburgh.”

Mr. Dunbar nodded.

“He is planning a big trip up the Peace River country prospecting for
oil and mines, and later hunting. He says you and your son engaged to
accompany him, and he asks me to complete arrangements with you. I am
getting Jim Knight to look after the outfit. You know Jim, perhaps. He
runs the Lone Pine ranch. Fine chap he is. Knows all about the hunting
business. Takes a party into the mountains every year. He'll take Tom
Fielding with him. I don't know Fielding, but Knight does. Mr. Howland
says there will be three of their party. Far too many, but that's his
business. I myself am rather anxious to look after some oil deposits,
and this will be a good chance. What do you say?”

Father and son looked at each other.

“It would be fine, if we could manage it,” said Mr. Dunbar, “but my work
is so pressing just now. A great many are coming in, and I am alone in
the office at present. When does he propose to start?”

“In six weeks' time. I hope you can come, Mr. Dunbar. I couldn't have
said so yesterday, but I can now. Any man with a garden like this, the
product of his own planning and working, is worth knowing. So I do
hope you can both come. By the way, Knight wants a camp hand, a kind of
roustabout, who can cook--a handy man, you know.”

“I have him,” said Barry. “Harry Hobbs.”

“Hobbs? Boozes a bit, doesn't he?”

“Not now. Hasn't for six months. He's a new man. I can guarantee him.”

“You can, eh? Well, my experience is once a boozer always a boozer.”

“Oh,” said Barry, “Hobbs is different. He is a member of our church, you
know.”

“No, I didn't know. But I don't know that that makes much difference
anyway,” said Duff with a laugh. “I don't mean to be offensive,” he
added.

“It does to Hobbs, he's a Christian man now. I mean a real Christian,
Mr. Duff.”

“Well, I suppose there is such a thing. In fact, I've known one or two,
but--well, if you guarantee him I'll take him.”

“I will guarantee him,” said Barry.

“Let me have your answer to-morrow,” said Duff as he bade them
good-night.

The Dunbars discussed the matter far into the night. It was clearly
impossible for Mr. Dunbar to leave his work, and the only question
was whether or not Barry should make one of the party. Barry greatly
disliked the idea of leaving his father during the hot summer months,
as he said, “to slave away at his desk, and to slop away in his bachelor
diggings.” He raised many objections, but one consideration seemed to
settle things for the Dunbars. To them a promise was a promise.

“If I remember aright, Barry, we promised that we should join their
party on this expedition.”

“Yes,” added Barry quickly, “if our work permitted it.”

“Exactly,” said his father. “My work prevents me, your work does not.”

Hence it came that by the end of August Barry found himself in the far
northern wilds of the Peace River country, a hundred miles or so from
Edmonton, attached to a prospecting-hunting party of which Mr. Osborne
Howland was the nominal head, but of which the “boss” was undoubtedly
his handsome, athletic and impetuous daughter Paula. The party had not
been on the trail for more than a week before every member was moving at
her command, and apparently glad to do so.

The party were camped by a rushing river at the foot of a falls. Below
the falls the river made a wide eddy, then swept down in a turbulent
rapid for some miles. The landing was a smooth and shelving rock that
pitched somewhat steeply into the river.

The unfortunate Harry, who after the day's march had exchanged his heavy
marching boots with their clinging hobnails for shoes more comfortable
but with less clinging qualities, in making preparation for the evening
meal made his way down this shelving rock of water. No sooner had he
filled his pail than his foot slipped from under him, and in an instant
the pail and himself were in the swiftly flowing river.

His cry startled the camp.

“Hello!” shouted Duff, with a great laugh. “Harry is in the drink! I
never knew he was so fond of water as all that. You've got to swim for
it now, old boy.”

“Throw him something,” said Knight.

Past them ran Barry, throwing off coat and vest.

“He can't swim,” he cried, tearing at his boots. “Throw him a line, some
one.” He ran down to the water's edge, plunged in, and swam toward the
unfortunate Harry, who, splashing wildly, was being carried rapidly into
the rough water.

“Oh, father, he will be drowned!” cried Paula, rushing toward a canoe
which was drawn up on the shore. Before any one could reach her she had
pushed it out and was steering over the boiling current in Barry's wake.
But after a few strokes of her paddle she found herself driven far
out into the current and away from the struggling men. Paula had had
sufficient experience with a canoe to handle it with considerable ease
in smooth water and under ordinary conditions, but in the swirl of this
rough and swift water the canoe took the management of its course out of
her hands, and she had all she could do to keep afloat.

“For God's sake, men, get her!” cried Brand. “She will be drowned before
our eyes.”

“Come on, Tom,” cried Jim Knight, swinging another canoe into the water.
A glance he gave at the girl, another at the struggling men, for by this
time Barry could be seen struggling with the drowning Hobbs.

“Get in, Tom,” ordered Knight, taking the stern. “We will get the men
first. The girl is all right in the meantime.”

“Get the girl!” commanded Brand. “For God's sake go for the girl,” he
entreated in a frenzy of distress.

“No,” said Knight, “the men first. She's all right.”

“Here,” said Duff to Brand, pushing out the remaining canoe, “get into
the bow, and stop howling. Those men are in danger of being drowned, but
Knight will get them. We'll go for the girl.”

It took but a few minutes for Knight and Fielding, who knew their craft
thoroughly and how to get the best out of her in just such an emergency,
to draw up upon Harry and his rescuer.

“Say, they are fighting hard,” said Fielding. “That bloody little fool
is choking the life out of Dunbar. My God! they are out of sight!”

“Go on,” roared Knight. “Keep your eyes on the spot, and for Heaven's
sake, paddle!”

“They are up again! One of them is. It's Barry. The other is gone. No,
by Jove! he's got him! Hold on, Barry, we're coming,” yelled Tom. “Stick
to it, old boy!”

Swiftly the canoe sped toward the drowning men.

“They are gone this time for sure,” cried Tom, as the canoe shot over
the spot where the men had last been seen.

“Not much!” said Knight, as reaching out of the stern he gripped Barry
by the hair. “Hold hard, Barry,” he said quietly. “No monkey work now or
you'll drown us all.” Immediately Barry ceased struggling.

“Don't try to get in, Barry. We'll have to tow you ashore.”

“All right, Jim,” he said between his sobbing breaths. “Only--hurry
up--I've got him--here.”

Knight reached down carefully, lifted Barry till his hand touched the
gunwale of the canoe.

“Not too hard, Barry,” he said. “I'll ease you round to the stern.
Steady, boy, steady. Don't dump us.”

“All right--Jim--but--he's under the water--here.”

“Oh, never mind him. We'll get him all right. Can you hold on now?” said
Knight.

“Yes--I think so.”

“Now, for God's sake, Tom, edge her into the shore. See that little eddy
there? Swing into that! You'll do it all right. Good man!”

By this time Knight was able to get Harry's head above water.

In a few minutes they had reached the shore, and were working hard over
Harry's unconscious body, leaving Barry lying on the sand to recover his
strength. A long fight was necessary to bring the life back into Harry,
by which time Barry was sufficiently recovered to sit up.

“Stay where you are, Barry, until we get this man back to camp,” ordered
Knight. “We'll light a bit of a fire for you.”

“I'm warm enough,” said Barry.

“Warm enough? You may be, but you will be better with a fire, and you
lie beside it till we get you. Don't move now.”

“There's the other canoes coming,” said Fielding. “They'll make shore
a little lower down. They're all right. Say, she's handling that canoe
like a man!”

“Who?” said Barry.

“Why, Miss Howland,” said Fielding. “She was out after you like a shot.
She's a plucky one!”

Barry was on his feet in an instant, watching anxiously the progress
of the canoes, which were being slowly edged across the river in a long
incline toward the shore.

“They'll make it, all right,” said Knight, after observing them for a
time. “Don't you worry. Just lie down by the fire. We'll be back in a
jiffy.”

In an hour they were all safely back in camp, and sufficiently recovered
to discover the humorous points in the episode. But they were all
familiar enough with the treacherous possibilities of rough and rapid
water to know that for Hobbs and his deliverer at least, there had been
some serious moments during their fierce struggle in the river.

“Another minute would have done,” said Fielding to his friend, as they
sat over the fire after supper.

“A half a minute would have been just as good,” said Knight. “I got
Barry by the hair under water. He was at his last kick, you bet! And
that rat,” he added, smiling good naturedly at Harry, “was dragging him
down for the last time.”

“I didn't know nothin' about it,” said poor Harry, who was lying
stretched out by the fire, still very weak and miserable. “I didn't
know nothin' about it, or you bet I woudn't ha' done it. I didn't know
nothin' after he got me.”

“After you got him, you mean,” said Fielding.

“I guess that's right,” said Harry, “but I wouldn't ha' got him if he
hadn't ha' got me first.”

They all joined in the discussion of the event except Paula, who sat
distrait and silent, gazing into the fire, and Barry, who lay, drowsy
and relaxed, on a blanket not far from her side.

“You ought to go to bed,” said Paula at length in a low voice to him.
“You need a good night's sleep.”

“I'm too tired to sleep,” said Barry. “I feel rather rotten, in fact. I
ought to feel very grateful, but somehow I just feel rotten.”

“Can one be grateful and feel rotten at the same time?” said Paula,
making talk.

“Behold me,” replied Barry. “I know I am grateful, but I do feel rotten.
I don't think I have even thanked you for risking your life for me,” he
added, turning toward her.

“Risking my life? Nonsense! I paddled 'round in the canoe for a bit,
till two strong men came to tow me in, and would have, if I had allowed
them. Thank the boys, who got you in time.” She shuddered as she spoke.

“I do thank them, and I do feel grateful to them,” said Barry. “It was
rather a near thing. You see, I let him grip me. I choked him off my
arms, but he slid down to my thigh, and I could not kick him off. Had to
practically drown him. Even then he hung on.”

“Oh, don't speak about it,” she said with a shudder, covering her face
with her hands. “It was too awful, and it might have been the end of
you.” Her voice broke a little.

“No, not an end,” answered Barry, in a quiet voice. “Not the end by a
long way, not by a very long way.”

“What do you mean? Oh, you are thinking of immortality, and all that,”
 said Paula. “It's a chilly, ghostly subject. It makes me shiver. I get
little comfort out of it.”

“Ghostly it is, if you mean a thing of spirits,” said Barry, “but
chilly! Why chilly?” Then he added to himself in an undertone: “I
wonder! I wonder! I wish sometimes I knew more.”

“Sometimes?” cried Paula. “Always!” she added passionately. “It's a
dreadful business to me. To be suddenly snatched out of the light and
the warmth, away from the touch of warm fingers and the sight of dear
faces! Ah, I dread it! I loathe the thought of it. I hate it!”

“And yet,” mused Barry, “somehow I cannot forget that out there
somewhere there is One, kindly, genial, true,--like my dad. How good
he has been to me--my dad, I mean, and that Other, too, has been good.
Somehow I think of them together. Yes, I am grateful to Him.”

“Oh, God, you mean,” said Paula, a little impatiently.

“Yes, to God. He saved me to-day. 'Saved,' I say. It is a queer way to
speak, after all. What I really ought to say is that God thought it
best that I should camp 'round here for a bit longer before moving in
nearer.”

“Nearer?”

“Yes, into the nearer circle. Life moves 'round a centre, in outer
and inner circles. This is the outer circle. Nearer in there, it is
kindlier, with better light and clearer vision. 'We shall know even as
we are known.'” Barry mused on, as if communing with himself.

“But when you move in,” said Paula, and there was no mistaking the
earnestness of her tone, “you break touch with those you love here.”

“I don't know about that,” answered Barry quickly.

“Oh, yes you do. You are out of all this,--all this,” she swept her
hand at the world around her, “this good old world, all your joy and
happiness, all you love. Oh, that's the worst of it; you give up your
love. I hate it!” she concluded with vehemence sudden and fierce, as she
shook her fist towards the stars.

“Give up your love?” said Barry. “Not I! Not one good, honest affection
do I mean to give up, nor shall I.”

“Oh, nonsense! Don't be religious. Just be honest,” said Paula, in a
low, intense voice. “Let me speak to you. Suppose I--I love a man with
all my soul and body--and body, mind you, and he goes out, or goes in,
as you say. No matter, he goes out of my life. I lose him, he is not
here. I cannot feel and respond to his love. I cannot feel his strong
arms about me. My God!” Her voice came with increasing vehemence. “I
want his arms. I want him as he is. I want his body--I cannot love a
ghost. No! no!” she added in a low, hopeless voice. “When he goes out
I lose him, and lose him as mine forever. Oh, what do I care for your
spirit love! The old Greeks were right. They are shades--shades, mere
shades beyond the river. I don't want a shade. I want a man, a strong,
warm-hearted, brave man. Yes, a good man, a man with a soul. But a MAN,
not a SOUL. My God!” she moaned, “how terrible it all is! And it came so
near to us to-day. But I should not be saying this to you, played out as
you are. I am going to bed. Good-night.”

She put out her hand and gripped his in warm, strong, muscular fingers.
“Thank God, yes God, if you like, you are still--still in this outer
circle,”--she broke into a laugh, but there was little mirth in her
laughter--“this good old outer circle, yet awhile.”

“Yes,” said Barry simply but very earnestly, “thank God. It is a good
world. But with all my soul I believe there is a better, and all that is
best in love and life we shall take with us. Good-night,” he added, “and
thank you, at least for the will and the attempt to save my life.”

“Sleep well,” she said.

“I hope so,” he replied, “but I doubt it.”

His doubts, it turned out, were justified, for soon after midnight Mr.
Howland was aroused by Harry Hobbs in a terror of excitement.

“Will you come to Mr. Dunbar, sir?” he cried. “I think he is dying.”

“Dying?” Mr. Howland was out of his cot immediately and at Barry's side.
He found him fighting for breath, his eyes starting from his head, a
look of infinite distress on his face.

“My dear boy, what is it? Hobbs says you are dying.”

“That con-con-founded--fool--shouldn't have--called you. I
forbade--him,” gasped Barry.

“But, my dear boy, what is the matter? Are you in pain?”

“No, no,--it's--nothing--only an old--friend come back--for a call,--a
brief one--let us--hope. It's only asthma. Looks bad--feels worse--but
really--not at all dangerous.”

“What can be done, my boy?” asked Mr. Howland, greatly relieved, as
are most laymen, when the trouble can be named. It is upon the terror
inspired by the unknown that the medical profession lives.

“Tell Harry--to make--a hot drink,” said Barry, but Harry had already
forestalled the request, and appeared with a steaming bowl. “This
will--help. Now--go to--bed, Mr. Howland. Do, please.--You distress--me
by remaining--there. Harry will--look after me. Good-night.”

Next morning Barry appeared at breakfast a little washed out in
appearance, but quite bright and announcing himself fit for anything.

The incident, however, was a determining factor in changing the party's
plans. Already they were behind their time schedule, to Mr. Cornwall
Brand's disgust. The party was too large and too heavily encumbered with
impedimenta for swift travel. Besides, as Paula said, “Why rush? Are we
not doing the Peace River Country? We are out for a good time and we
are having it.” Paula was not interested in mines and oil. She did not
announce just what special interest was hers. She was “having a good
time” and that was reason enough for leisurely travel. In consequence
their provisions had run low.

It was decided to send forward a scouting party to the Hudson's Bay Post
some thirty miles further on to restock their commissariat. Accordingly
Knight and Fielding were despatched on this mission, the rest of the
party remaining in camp.

“A lazy day or two in camp is what we all need,” said Mr. Howland. “I
confess I am quite used up myself, and therefore I know you must all
feel much the same.”

On the fourth day the scouting party appeared.

“There's war!” cried Knight as he touched land. He flung out a bundle of
papers for Mr. Howland.

“War!” The word came back in tones as varied as those who uttered it.

“War!” said Mr. Howland. “Between whom?”

“Every one, pretty much,” said Knight. “Germany, France, Russia,
Austria, Servia, Belgium, and Britain.”

“Britain!” said Barry and Duff at the same moment.

“Britain,” answered Knight solemnly.

The men stood stock still, looking at each other with awed faces.

“War!” again said Barry. “With Germany!” He turned abruptly away from
the group and said, “I am going.”

“Going! Going where?” said Mr. Howland.

“To the war,” said Barry quietly.

“To the war! You? A clergyman?” said Mr. Howland.

“You? You going?” cried Paula. At the pain in her voice her father and
Brand turned and looked at her. Disturbed by what he saw, her father
began an excited appeal to Barry.

“Why, my dear sir, it would surely be most unusual for a man like you
to go to war,” he began, and for quite ten minutes he proceeded to set
forth in fluent and excited speech a number of reasons why the idea
of Barry's going to war was absurd and preposterous to him. It must be
confessed that Barry was the only one of the men who appeared to give
much heed to him. They seemed to be dazed by the stupendous fact that
had been announced to them, and to be adjusting themselves to that fact.

When he had finished his lengthy and excited speech Brand took up the
discourse.

“Of course you don't think of going immediately,” he said. “We have this
expedition in hand.”

The men made no reply. Indeed, they hardly seemed to hear him.

“You don't mean to say,” continued Brand with a touch of indignation in
his voice, addressing Duff, the recognised leader of the party, “that
you would break your engagement with this party, Mr. Duff?”

Duff glanced at him, then looked away in silence, studying the horizon.
The world was to him and to them all a new world within the last few
minutes.

His silence appeared to enrage Brand. He turned to Barry.

“Do you mean to tell me, sir, that you approve of this? Do you consider
it right and fair that these men should break their engagement with us?
We have gone to great expense, we have extremely important interests at
stake in this exploration.”

Barry stood looking at him in silence, as if trying to take in exactly
what he meant, then in a low and awed tone he said:

“It is war! War with Germany!”

“We cannot help that,” cried Brand. “What difference can this war make
to you here a hundred miles from civilisation? These men are pledged to
us.”

“Their first pledge is to their country, sir,” said Barry gravely.

“But why should you, a Canadian, take part in this war?” argued Mr.
Howland. “Surely this is England's war.”

Then Barry appeared to awake as from a dream.

“Yes, it is England's war, it is Britain's war, and when Britain is at
war my country is at war, and when my country is at war I ought to be
there.”

“God in heaven!” shouted Duff, striking him on the back, “you have said
it! My country is at war, and I must be there. As God hears me, I am off
to-day--now.”

“Me, too!” said Knight with a shout.

“I'm going with you, sir,” said little Harry Hobbs, ranging himself
beside Barry.

“Count me in,” said Tom Fielding quietly. “I have a wife and three kids,
but--”

“My God!” gasped Duff. “My wife.” His face went white. He had not yet
fully adjusted himself to the fact of war.

“Why, of course,” said Mr. Howland, “you married men won't be called
upon. You must be reasonable. For instance you, Mr. Duff, cannot leave
your wife.”

But Duff had recovered himself.

“My wife, sir? My wife would despise me if I stayed up here. Sir, my
wife will buckle on my belt and spurs and send me off to the war,” cried
Duff in a voice that shook as he spoke.

With a single stride Barry was at his side, offering both his hands.

“Thank God for men like you! And in my soul I believe the Empire has
millions of them.”

“Does your Empire demand that you desert those you have pledged yourself
to?” enquired Brand in a sneering tone.

“Oh, Cornwall!” exclaimed Paula, “how can you?”

“Why, Brand,” said Mr. Howland, “that is unworthy of you.”

“We will see you into safety, sir,” said Duff, swinging round upon
Brand, “either to the Hudson's Bay Company's post, where you can
get Indians, or back to Edmonton, but not one step further on this
expedition do I go.”

“Nor I,” said Knight.

“Nor I,” said Fielding.

“Nor I,” said Barry.

“Nor I,” said Harry Hobbs.

“You are quite right, sir,” said Mr. Howland, turning to Barry. “I
apologise to you, sir, to all of you Canadians. I am ashamed to confess
that I did not at first get the full meaning of this terrific thing that
has befallen your Empire. Were it the U.S.A. that was in a war of this
kind, hell itself would not keep me from going to her aid. Nor you
either, Brand. Yes, you are right. Go to your war. God go with you.”

He shook hands solemnly with them one by one. “I only wish to God that
my country were with you, too, in this thing,” he said when he had
performed this function.

“Father,” cried Paula, “do you think for one minute that Uncle Sam won't
be in this? You put it down,” she said, swinging 'round upon Barry,
“where it will jump at you some day: We will be with you in this scrap
for all we are worth.”

“And now for the march,” said Barry, who seemed almost to assume
command. Then removing his hat and lifting high his hand, he said in a
voice thrilling with solemn reverence, “God grant victory to the right!
God save the king!”

Instinctively the men took off their hats and stood with bared and bent
heads, as if sharing in a solemn ritual. They stood with millions upon
millions of their kin in the old mother lands, and scattered wide upon
the seas, stood with many millions more of peoples and nations, pledging
to this same cause of right, life and love and all they held dear, and
with hearts open to that all-searching eye, praying that same prayer,
“God grant victory to the right. Amen and amen. We ask no other.”

Then they faced to their hundred miles' trek en route to the war.



CHAPTER VI

THE MEN OF THE NORTH


“Fifty miles--not too bad, boy, not too bad for a one day's go. We'll
camp right here at the portage. How is it, Knight?”

“Good place, Duff, right on that point. Good wood, good landing. Besides
there's a deuce of a portage beyond, which we can do after supper
to-night. How do you feel, Barry?” asked Knight. “Hard day, eh?”

“Feeling fit, a little tired, of course, but good for another ten
miles,” answered Barry.

“That's the stuff,” replied Knight, looking at him keenly, “but, see
here, you must ease up on the carrying. You haven't quite got over that
ducking of yours.”

“I'm fit enough,” answered Barry, rather more curtly than his wont.

They brought the canoes up to the landing, and with the speed of long
practice unloaded them, and drew them upon the shore.

Knight approached Duff, and, pointing toward Barry, said quietly:

“I guess we'll have to ease him up a bit. That fight, you know, took it
out of him, and he always jumps for the biggest pack. We'd better hold
him back to-morrow a bit.”

“Can't hold back any one,” said Duff, with an oath. “We've got to make
it to-morrow night. There's the devil of a trip before us. That big
marsh portage is a heartbreaker, and there must be a dozen or fifteen of
them awaiting us, and we're going to get through--at least, I am.”

“All right,” said Knight, with a quick flash of temper. “I'll stay with
you, only I thought we might ease him a bit.”

“I'm telling you, we're going to get through,” said Duff, with another
oath.

“You needn't tell me, Duff,” said Knight. “Keep your shirt on.”

“On or off, wet or dry, sink or swim, we're going to make that train
to-morrow, Knight. That's all about it.”

Then Knight let himself go.

“See here, Duff. Do you want to go on to-night? If you do, hell and
blazes, say the word and I'm with you.”

His face was white as he spoke. He seized a tump-line, swung the pack
upon his head, and set off across the portage.

“Come on, boys,” he yelled. “We're going through to-night.”

“Oh, hold up, Knight!” said Duff. “What the hell's eating you? We'll
grub first anyway.”

“No,” said Knight. “The next rapid is a bad bit of water, and if we're
going through to-night, I want that bit behind me, before it gets too
dark. So come along!”

“Oh, cut it out, Knight,” said Duff, in a gruff but conciliatory tone.
“We'll camp right here.”

“It's all the same to me,” said Knight, flinging his pack down. “When
you want to go on, say the word. You won't have to ask me twice.”

Duff looked over the six feet of bone and sinew and muscle of the young
rancher, made as if to answer, paused a moment, changed his mind, and
said more quietly:

“Don't be an ass, Knight. I'm not trying to hang your shirt on a tree.”

“You know damned well you can't,” said Knight, who was still white with
passion.

“Oh, come off,” replied Duff. “Anyway, I don't see what young Dunbar is
to you. We must get through to-morrow night. The overseas contingent is
camping at Valcartier, according to these papers and whatever happens I
am going with that contingent.”

Knight made no reply. He was a little ashamed of his temper. But during
the past two days he had chafed under the rasp of Duff's tongue and
his overbearing manner. He resented too his total disregard of Barry's
weariness, for in spite of his sheer grit, the pace was wearing the boy
down.

“We ought to reach the railroad by six to-morrow,” said Duff, renewing
the conversation, and anxious to appease his comrade. “There's a late
train, but if we catch the six we shall make home in good time. Hello,
what's this coming?”

At his words they all turned and looked in the direction in which he
pointed.

Down a stream, which at this point came tumbling into theirs in a
dangerous looking rapid, came a canoe with a man in the centre guiding
it as only an expert could.

“By Jove! He can't make that drop,” said Knight, walking down toward the
landing.

They all stood watching the canoe which, at the moment, hung poised upon
the brink of the rapid like a bird for flight. Even as Knight spoke the
canoe entered the first smooth pitch at the top. Two long, swallow-like
sweeps, then she plunged into the foam, to appear a moment later
fighting her way through the mass of crowding, crested waves, which,
like white-fanged wolves upon a doe, seemed to be hurling themselves
upon her, intent upon bearing her down to destruction.

“By the living, jumping Jemima!” said Fielding, in an awe-stricken tone,
“she's gone!”

“She's through!” cried Knight.

“Great Jehoshaphat!” said Fielding. “He's a bird!”

With a flip or two of his paddle, the stranger shot his canoe across the
stream, and floated quietly to the landing.

Barry ran down to meet him.

“I say, that was beautifully done,” he cried, taking the nose of the
canoe while the man stepped ashore and stood a moment looking back at
the water.

“A leetle more to the left would have been better, I think. She took
some water,” he remarked in a slow voice, as if to himself.

He was a strange-looking creature. He might have stepped out of one of
Fenimore Cooper's novels. Indeed, as Barry's eyes travelled up and down
his long, bony, stooping, slouching figure, his mind leaped at once to
the Pathfinder.

“Come far?” asked Duff, approaching the stranger.

“Quite a bit,” he answered, in a quiet, courteous voice, pausing a
moment in his work.

“Going out?” enquired Duff.

“Not yet,” he said. “Going up the country first to The Post.”

“Ah, we have just come down from there,” said Duff. “We started
yesterday morning,” he added, evidently hoping to surprise the man.

“Yes,” he answered in a quiet tone of approval. “Nice little run! Nice
little run! Bit of a hurry, I guess,” he ventured apologetically.

“You bet your life, we just are. This damned war makes a man feel like
as if the devil was after him,” said Duff.

“War!” The man looked blankly at him. “Who's fightin'?”

“Why, haven't you heard? It's been going on for a month. We heard only
three days ago as we were going further up the country. It knocked our
plans endways, and here we are chasing ourselves to get out.”

“War!” said the man again. “Who's fightin'? Uncle Sam after them
Mexicans?”

“No. Mexicans, hell!” exclaimed Duff. “Germany and Britain.”

“Britain!” The slouching shoulders lost their droop. “Britain!” he said,
straightening himself up. “What's she been doin' to Germany?”

“What's Germany been doing to her, and to Belgium, and to Servia, and
to France?” answered Duff, in a wrathful voice. “She's been raising hell
all around. You haven't seen the papers, eh? I have them all here.”

The stranger seemed dazed by the news. He made no reply, but getting out
his frying-pan and tea-pail, his only utensils, he set about preparing
his evening meal.

“I say,” said Duff, “won't you eat with us? We're just about ready.
We'll be glad to have you.”

The man hesitated a perceptible moment. In the wilds men do not always
accept invitations to eat. Food is sometimes worth more than its weight
in gold.

“I guess I will, if you've lots of stuff,” he said at length.

“We've lots of grub, and we expect to be home by tomorrow night anyway,
if things go all right. You are very welcome.”

The man laid down his frying-pan and tea-pail, and walked with Duff
toward his camp.

“Are you goin'?” he enquired.

“Going?”

“To the war. Guess some of our Canadian boys will be goin' likely, eh?”

“Going,” cried Duff. “You bet your life I'm going. But, come on. We'll
talk as we eat. And we can't stay long, either.”

Duff introduced the party.

“My name's McCuaig,” said the stranger.

“Scotch, I guess?” enquired Duff.

“My father came out with The Company. I was born up north. Never been
much out, but I read the papers,” he added quickly, as if to correct any
misapprehension as to his knowledge of the world and its affairs. “My
father always got the Times and the Spectator, and I've continued the
habit.”

“Any one who reads the Times and the Spectator,” said Barry, “can claim
to be a fairly well-read man. My father takes the Spectator, too.”

As they sat down to supper, he noticed that McCuaig took off his old
grey felt and crossed himself before beginning toast.

As a matter of courtesy, Barry had always been asked to say grace before
meals while with the Howland party. This custom, however, had been
discontinued upon this trip. They had no time for meals. They had “just
grabbed their grub and run,” as Harry Hobbs said.

While they ate, Duff kept a full tide of conversation going in regard to
the causes of the war and its progress, as reported in the papers. Barry
noticed that McCuaig's comments, though few, revealed a unique knowledge
of European political affairs during the last quarter of a century. He
noticed too that his manners at the table were those of a gentleman.

After supper they packed their stuff over the long portage, leaving
their tent and sleeping gear, with their food, however, to be taken in
the morning. For a long time they sat over the fire, Barry reading, for
McCuaig's benefit, the newspaper accounts of the Belgian atrocities, the
story of the smashing drive of the German hosts, and the retreat of the
British army from Mons.

“What,” exclaimed McCuaig, “the British soldiers goin' back! Runnin'
away from them Germans!”

“Well, the Germans are only about ten to one, not only in men but in
guns, and in this war it's guns that count. Guns can wipe out an army of
heroes as easily as an army of cowards,” said Duff.

“And them women and children,” said McCuaig. “Are they killing them
still?”

“You're just right, they are,” replied Duff, “and will till we stop
them.”

McCuaig's eyes were glowing with a deep inner light. They were wonderful
eyes, quick, darting, straight-looking and fearless, the eyes of a man
who owes his life to his vigilance and his courage.

Before turning in for the night, Barry went to the river's edge, and
stood looking up at the stars holding their steadfast watch over the
turbulent and tossing waters below.

“Quiet, ain't they?” said a voice at his shoulder.

“Why, you startled me, Mr. McCuaig; I never heard you step.”

McCuaig laughed his quiet laugh.

“Got to move quietly in this country,” he said, “if you are going to
keep alive.”

A moment or so he stood by Barry's side, looking up with him at the
stars.

“No fuss, up there,” he said, interpreting Barry's mood and attitude.
“Not like that there pitchin', tossin', threatenin' water.”

“No,” said Barry, “but though they look quiet, I suppose if we could
really see, there is a most terrific whirling of millions of stars up
there, going at the rate of thousands of miles a minute.”

“Millions of 'em, and all whirlin' about,” said McCuaig in an
awe-stricken voice. “It's a wonder they don't hit.”

“They don't hit because they each keep their own orbit,” said Barry,
“and they obey the laws of their existence.”

“Orbut,” enquired McCuaig. “What's that?”

“The trail that each star follows,” said Barry.

“I see,” said McCuaig, “each one keeps its own trail, its own orbut,
and so there's peace up there. And I guess there'd be peace down here if
folks did the same thing. It's when a man gets out of his own orbut
and into another fellow's that the scrap begins. I guess that's where
Germany's got wrong.”

“Something like that,” replied Barry.

“And sometimes,” continued McCuaig, his eyes upon the stars, “when a
little one comes up against a big one, he gets busted, eh?”

Barry nodded.

“And a big one, when he comes up against a bigger one gets pretty badly
jarred, eh?”

“I suppose so,” said Barry.

“That's what's goin' to happen to Germany,” said McCuaig.

“Germany's a very powerful nation,” said Barry. “The most powerful
military nation in the world.”

“What!” said McCuaig. “Bigger than Britain?”

“Britain has two or three hundred thousand men in her army; Germany has
seven millions or more, with seventy millions of people behind them,
organised for war. Of course, Britain has her navy, but then Germany has
the next biggest in the world. Oh, it's going to be a terrific war.”

“I say,” said McCuaig, putting his hand on Barry's shoulder. “You don't
think it will bother us any to lick her?”

“It will be the most terrible of all Britain's wars,” replied Barry. “It
will take every ounce of Britain's strength.”

“You don't tell me!” exclaimed McCuaig, as if struck by an entirely new
idea. “Say, are you really anxious, young man?”

“I am terribly anxious,” replied Barry. “I know Germany a little. I
spent a year there. She is a mighty nation, and she is ready for war.”

“She is, eh!” replied McCuaig thoughtfully. He wandered off to the fire
without further word, where, rolling himself in his blanket and scorning
the place in the tent offered him by Duff, he made himself comfortable
for the night.

At the break of day Duff was awakened by the smell of something frying.
Over the fire bent McCuaig, busy preparing a breakfast of tea, bacon and
bannocks, together with thick slices of fat pork.

Breakfast was eaten in haste. The day's work was before them, and there
was no time for talk. In a very few minutes they stood ready for their
trip across the portage.

With them stood McCuaig. His blanket roll containing his grub, with
frying-pan and tea-pail attached, lay at his feet; his rifle beside it.

For a moment or two he stood looking back up the stream by which, last
night, he had come. Then he began tying his paddles to the canoe thwarts
in preparation for packing it across the portage.

As he was tying on the second paddle, Duff's eye fell on him.

“What's up, McCuaig?” he said. “Aren't you going up to the Post?”

“No, I guess I ain't goin' up no more,” replied McCuaig slowly.

“What do you mean? You aren't going back home?”

“No. My old shack will do without me for a while, I guess.--Say,” he
continued, facing around upon Duff and looking him squarely in the face,
“this young chap says”--putting his hand upon Barry's shoulder--“Britain
is going to have a hell of a time licking Germany back into her own
orbut. Them papers said last night that Canada was going in strong. Do
you think she could use a fellow like me?”

A silence fell upon the group of men.

“What! Do you mean it, McCuaig?” said Duff at length.

The man turned his thin, eagle face toward the speaker, a light in his
eyes.

“Why, ain't you goin'? Ain't every one goin' that can? If a fellow stood
on one side while his country was fightin', where would he live when
it's all over? He read out of the papers that them Germans were shootin'
women and children. So--” his face began to work, “am I goin' to stand
by and ask some one else to make 'em quit? No, by God!”

The men stood watching his face, curiously twisted and quivering. Then
without a word Duff seized his pack, and swung into the trail, every
man following him in his order. Without pausing, except for a brief half
hour at noon, and another later in the day for eating, they pressed the
trail, running what rapids they could and portaging the others, until in
the early evening they saw, far away, a dirty blur on the skyline.

“Hurrah!” yelled Fielding. “Good old firebus, waiting for us.”

“Somebody run ahead and hold her,” said Duff.

Barry flung his pack down and started away.

“Come back here, Barry,” cried Knight. “You're not fit. You're all in.”

“That's right, too,” said McCuaig. “I guess I'll go.”

And off he set with the long, shuffling, tireless trot with which, for
a hundred years, the “runners of the woods” have packed their loads and
tracked their game in the wilds of northwestern Canada.



CHAPTER VII

BARRICADES AND BAYONETS


The city of Edmonton was in an uproar, its streets thronged with
excited men, ranchers and cowboys from the ranches, lumberjacks from the
foothill camps, men from the mines, trappers with lean, hard faces, in
weird garb, from the north.

The news from the front was ominous. Belgium was a smoking waste. Her
skies were black with the burning of her towns, villages and homesteads,
her soil red with the blood of her old men, her women and children. The
French armies, driven back in rout from the Belgian frontier, were being
pounded to death by the German hordes. Fortresses hitherto considered
impregnable were tumbling like ninepins before the terrible smashing of
Austrian and German sixteen-inch guns. Already von Kluck with his four
hundred thousand of conquering warriors was at the gates of Paris.

Most ominous of all, the British army, that gallant, little sacrificial
army, of a scant seventy-five thousand men, holding like a bulldog to
the flank of von Bulow's mighty army, fifty times as strong, threatened
by von Kluck on the left flank and by von Housen on the right, was
slowing down the German advance, but was itself being slowly ground
into the bloody dust of the northern and eastern roads of Northern and
Eastern France.

Black days these were for the men of British blood. Was the world to
see something new in war? Were Germans to overcome men of the race of
Nelson, and Wellington and Colin Campbell?

At home, hundreds of thousands were battering at the recruiting offices.
In the Dominions of the Empire overseas it was the same. In Canada
a hundred thousand men were demanding a place in the first Canadian
contingent of thirty-five thousand, now almost ready to sail. General
Sam at Ottawa was being snowed under by entreating, insistent, cajoling,
threatening telegrams. Already northern Alberta had sent two thousand
men. The rumour in Edmonton ran that there were only a few places left
to be filled in the north Alberta quota. For these few places hundreds
of men were fighting in the streets.

Alighting from their train, Duff and his men stood amazed, aghast,
gazing upon the scene before them. Duff climbed a wagon wheel and
surveyed the crowd packing the street in front of the bulletin boards.

“No use, this way, boys. We'll have to go around. Come on.”

They went on. Up side streets and lanes, through back yards and shops
they went until at length they emerged within a hundred yards of the
recruiting office.

Duff called his men about him.

“Boys, we'll have to bluff them,” he said. “You're a party of recruits
that Col. Kavanagh expects. You've been sent for. I'm bringing you in
under orders. Look as much like soldiers as you can, and bore in like
hell. Come on!”

They began to bore. At once there was an uproar, punctuated with
vociferous and varied profanity.

Duff proved himself an effective leader.

“Here, let me pass,” he shouted into the backs of men's heads. “I'm on
duty here. I must get through to Colonel Kavanagh. Keep up there, men;
keep your line! Stand back, please! Make way!”

His huge bulk, distorted face and his loud and authoritative voice
startled men into temporary submission, and before they could recover
themselves he and his little company of hard-boring men were through.

Twenty-five yards from the recruiting office a side rush of the crowd
caught them.

“They've smashed the barricades,” a boy from a telegraph pole called
out.

Duff and his men fought to hold their places, but they became conscious
of a steady pressure backwards.

“What's doing now, boy?” shouted Duff to the urchin clinging to the
telegraph pole.

“The fusileers--they are sticking their bayonets into them.”

Before the line of bayonets the crowd retreated slowly, but Duff and his
company held their ground, allowing the crowd to ebb past them, until
they found themselves against the line of bayonets.

“Let me through here, sergeant, with my party,” said Duff. “I'm under
orders of Colonel Kavanagh.”

The sergeant, an old British army man, looked them over.

“Have you an order, sir--a written order, I mean?”

“No,” said Duff. “I haven't, but the colonel expects us. He is waiting
for me now.”

“Sorry, sir,” replied the sergeant, “my orders are to let no one through
without a written pass.”

Duff argued, stormed, threatened, swore; but to no purpose. The N. C. O.
knew his job.

“Send a note in,” suggested Barry in Duff's ear.

“Good idea,” replied Duff, and wrote hurriedly.

“Here, take this through to your colonel,” he said, passing the note to
the sergeant.

Almost immediately Colonel Kavanagh came out and greeted Duff warmly.

“Where in this wide creation have you been, Duff?” he exclaimed. “I've
wanted you terribly.”

“Here I am now, then,” answered Duff. “Six of us. We're going with you.”

“It can't be done,” said the colonel. “I have only twenty places left;
every one promised ten times over.”

“That makes it easy, Kavanagh. You can give six of them to us.”

“Duff, it simply can't be done. You know I'd give it to you if I
could. I've wires from Ottawa backing up a hundred applicants, actually
ordering me to put them on. No! It's no use,” continued the colonel,
holding up his hand. “Look here, I'll give you a pointer. We have got
word to-day that there's to be a second contingent. Neil Fraser is out
there in your district, Wapiti, raising a company of two hundred and
fifty men. We have stripped that country bare already, so he's up
against it. He wants Wapiti men, he says. They are no better than any
other, but he thinks they are. You get out there to-night, Duff, and get
in on that thing. You will get a commission, too. Now hike! Hike! Go!
Honest to God, Duff, I want you with my battalion, and if I can work it
afterwards, I'll get you exchanged, but your only chance now is Wapiti.
Go, for God's sake, go quick!”

“What do you say, boys?” asked Duff, wheeling upon his men.

“I say, go!” said Knight.

In this decision they all agreed.

“Go it is,” said Duff. “Right about turn. Good luck, Kavanagh, damn you.
I see you have got a good sergeant there.”

“Who? McDowell? None better. You couldn't beat him, eh?” said the
colonel with a grin.

The sergeant stood at attention, with a wooden face.

“He's the kind of man they want in the front lines,” said Duff. “The
devil himself couldn't break through where he is.”

“That's why I have him. Good luck. Good-bye!”

Throughout the night they marched, now and then receiving a lift from a
ranch wagon, and in the grey of the morning, weary, hungry, but resolute
for a place in the Wapiti company, they made the village.

Early as it was, Barry found his father astir, with breakfast in
readiness.

“Hello, boy!” cried his father running to him with outstretched hands.

“Hello, dad!” answered Barry. His father threw a searching glance over
his son's face as he shook his hand warmly.

“Not a word, Barry, until you eat. Not a word. Go get ready for your
bath. I'll have it for you in a minute. No, not one word. Quick. March.
That is the only word these days. As you eat I'll give you the news.”

Resolutely he refused to talk until he saw his son begin upon his
breakfast. Then he poured forth a stream of news. The whole country was
aflame with war enthusiasm. Alberta had offered half a million bushels
of oats for the imperial army, and a thousand horses or more. The
Calgary district had recruited two thousand men, the Edmonton district
as many more. All over Canada, from Vancouver to Halifax, it was the
same.

From the Wapiti district twenty-six ranchers, furnishing their own
horses, had already gone. Ewen Innes was in Edmonton. His brother
Malcolm was in uniform, too, and his young brother Jim was keen to
enlist. Neil Fraser was busy raising a company of Wapiti men. Young
Pickles and McCann had joined up as buglers.

And so the stream flowed, Barry listening with grave face but making no
response.

“And I'm glad you're back, my boy. I'm glad you're back,” said his
father, clapping him on the shoulder.

The rest of the meal was eaten in silence. They were having each his own
thoughts, and for the first time in their life together, they kept their
thoughts to themselves.

“You're going to your office, Dad,” said Barry, when they had cleared
away, and set the house in order.

“No, the office is closed, and will be for some time, I imagine. I'm
busy with Neil Fraser. I'm acting paymaster, quartermaster, recruiting
sergeant, and half a dozen other things.”

“I'll go down with you,” said Barry, as his father rose to go.

His father came back to him, put his hands on his shoulders, and said:

“Barry, I want you to go to bed.”

“Nonsense, dad. I'm all right. I'm going downtown with you.”

“Barry,” said his father, “we have hard times before us, and you must be
fit. I ask you to go to bed and sleep there this forenoon. You're half
asleep now. This afternoon we shall face up to our job.”

His father's voice was quietly authoritative and Barry yielded.

“All right, dad. I'll do as you say, and this afternoon--well, we'll
see.”

At the noonday meal they were conscious of a mutual restraint. For the
first time in their lives they were not opening to each other their
innermost souls. The experience was as distressing as it was unusual.
The father, as if in dread of silence, was obviously exerting himself
to keep a stream of talk flowing. Barry was listening with a face very
grave and very unlike the bright and buoyant face he usually carried.
They avoided each other's eyes, and paid little heed to their food.

At length Barry pushed back his chair.

“Will you excuse me, dad,” he said. “I think I shall step out a moment
into the garden.”

“Do, Barry,” said his father, in obvious relief. “You are fagged out, my
boy.”

“Thanks, dad. I am a bit played out.”

“And take it easy this afternoon, Barry. To-night you will tell me about
your trip, and--and--we'll have a talk.”

“Good old dad!” said Barry. “You do understand a chap. See you later,
then,” he called back as he passed through the door.

His father sat gazing before him for some moments with a deep shadow on
his face.

“There is something wrong with that boy,” he said to himself. “I wish I
knew what it was.”

He set his house in order, moving heavily as if a sudden weight of years
had fallen upon his shoulders, and took his way slowly down the street.

“I wonder what it is,” he mused, refusing to give form to a horrible
thought that hovered like a spectre about the windows of his soul.

The first glance at his son's face at the time of the evening meal made
his heart sing within him.

“He's all right again! He's all right!” he said to himself jubilantly.

“Hello, dad,” cried Barry, as his father entered the room. “Supper's
just ready. How do you feel, eh?”

“Better, my boy--first rate, I mean. I'm properly hungry. You're rested,
I can see.”

“I'm all right, dad! I'm all right!” cried Barry, in his old cheery way.
“Dad, I want to apologise to you. I wasn't myself to-day, but now I'm
all right again. Dad, I've joined up. I'm a soldier now,” he said with a
smile on his face, but with anxious eyes turned on his father.

“Joined up!” echoed his father. “Barry, you have enlisted! Thank God, my
boy. I feared--I thought--No, damned if I did!” he added, with such
an unusual burst of passion that Barry could only gaze at him with
astonishment.

“Forgive me, my boy,” he said, coming forward with outstretched hand.
“For a moment I confess I thought--” Again he paused, apparently unable
to continue.

“You thought, dad,” cried Barry, “and--forgive me, dad--I thought too. I
ought to have known you better.”

“And I, you, my son.”

They shook hands with each other in an ecstasy of jubilation.

“My God, I'm glad that's through,” said the older man. “We were both
fools, Barry, but thank God that horror is past. Now tell me all about
everything--your trip, your plans. Let's have a good talk as we always
do.”

“Come on then, dad,” cried Barry. “Let's have an eat first. By Jove,
I feel a thousand years younger. I go to the M. O. to-morrow for an
examination.”

“He is quite unusually severe in his interpretation of the regulations,
I understand,” said his father. “He is turning men down right and left.
He knows, of course, that there are plenty to choose from. But there is
no fear of your fitness, Barry.”

“Not much,” said Barry, with a gay laugh.

Never had they spent a happier evening together. True, the spectre of
war would thrust itself upon them, but they faced it as men--with a full
appreciation of its solemn reality, but without fear, and with a quiet
determination to make whatever sacrifice might be demanded of them. The
perfect understanding that had always marked their intercourse with
each other was restored. The intolerable burden of mutual uncertainty in
regard to each other's attitude toward the war was lifted. All shadows
that lay between them were gone. Nothing else really mattered.

The day following, Barry received a rude shock. The M. O., after an
examination, to his amazement and dismay, pronounced him physically
unfit for service.

“And why, pray?” cried his father indignantly, when Barry announced the
astounding report. “Is the man a fool? I understood that he was strict.
But you! unfit! It is preposterous. Unfit! how?”

“Heart murmur,” said Barry. “Sets it down to asthma. You remember I told
you I had a rotten attack after my experience last week in the river. He
suggested that I apply for a position in an ambulance corps, and he is
giving me a letter to Colonel Sidleigh at Edmonton. I am going to-morrow
to Edmonton to see Sidleigh, and besides I have some church business to
attend to. I must call upon my superintendent. You remember I made an
application to him for another mission field.”

He found Colonel Sidleigh courteously willing to accept his application,
the answer to which, he was informed, he might expect in a fortnight;
and so went with a comparatively light heart to his interview with his
superintendent.

The interview, however, turned out not entirely as he had expected. He
went with an idea of surrendering his appointment. His superintendent
made him an offer of another and greater.

“So they turned you down,” said the superintendent. “Well, I consider
it most providential. You have applied for a position on the ambulance
corps. As fine as is that service, and as splendid as are its
possibilities, I offer you something much finer, and I will even say
much more important to our army and to our cause. We are in need of men
for the Chaplain Service, and for this service we demand the picked men
of our church. The appointments that have been made already are some
of them most unsuitable, some, I regret to say, scandalous. Let me
tell you, sir, of an experience in Winnipeg only last week. It was, my
fortune to fall in with the commanding officer of a Saskatchewan unit.
I found him in a rage against the church and all its officials. His
chaplain had become so hilarious at the mess that he was quite unable to
carry on.”

“Hilarious?” inquired Barry.

“Hilarious, sir. Yes, plain drunk. Think of it. Think of the crime! the
shame of it! A man charged with the responsibility of the souls of these
men going to war--possibly to their death--drunk, in their presence!
A man standing for God and the great eternal verities, incapacitated
before them! I took the matter up with Ottawa, and I have this
satisfaction at least, that I believe that no such appointment will ever
be made again. That chaplain, I may say too, has been dismissed. I have
here, sir, a mission field suitable to your ability and experience. I
shall not offer it to you. I am offering you the position of chaplain in
one of our Alberta battalions.”

Barry stood before him, dumb with dismay.

“Of course, I want to go to the war,” he said at length, “but I am sure,
sir, I am not the man for the position you offer me.”

“Sir,” said the superintendent, “I have taken the liberty of sending in
your name. Time was an element. Appointments were being rapidly made,
and I was extremely anxious that you should go with this battalion. I
confess to a selfish interest. My own boy, Duncan, has enlisted in
that unit, and many of our finest young men with him. I assumed the
responsibility of asking for your appointment. I must urge you solemnly
to consider the matter before you decline.”

Eloquently Barry pleaded his unfitness, instancing his failure as a
preacher in his last field.

“I am not a preacher,” he protested. “I am not a 'mixer.' They all say
so. I shall be impossible as a chaplain.”

“Young man,” said the superintendent, a note of sternness in his voice,
“you know not what transformations in character this war will work.
Would I were twenty years younger,” he added passionately, “twenty years
sounder. Think of the opportunity to stand for God among your men, to
point them the way of duty, and fit them for it, to bring them comfort,
when they need comfort sorely, to bring them peace, when they most need
peace.”

Barry came away from the interview more disturbed than he had ever been
in his life. After he had returned to his hotel, a message from his
superintendent recalled him.

“I have a bit of work to do,” he said, “in which I need your help. I
wish you to join me in a visitation of some of the military camps in
this district. We start this evening.”

There was nothing for it but to obey his superintendent's orders. The
two weeks' experience with his chief gave Barry a new view and a new
estimate of the chaplain's work. As he came into closer touch with camp
life and its conditions, he began to see how great was the soldier's
need of such moral and spiritual support as a chaplain might be able
to render. He was exposed to subtle and powerful temptations. He was
deprived of the wonted restraints imposed by convention, by environment,
by family ties. The reactions from the exhaustion of physical training,
from the monotonous routine of military discipline, from loneliness and
homesickness were such as to call for that warm, sympathetic, brotherly
aid, and for the uplifting spiritual inspiration that it is a chaplain's
privilege to offer. But in proportion as the service took on a nobler
and loftier aspect, was Barry conscious to a corresponding degree of his
own unfitness for the work.

When he returned to the city, he found no definite information awaiting
him in regard to a place in the ambulance corps. He returned home in an
unhappy and uncertain frame of mind.

But under the drive of war, events were moving rapidly in Barry's life.
He arrived late in the afternoon, and proceeding to the military H.Q.,
he found neither his father nor Captain Neil Fraser in the office.

“Gone out for the afternoon, sir,” was the word from the orderly in
charge.

Wandering about the village, he saw in a field at its outskirts, a squad
of recruits doing military evolutions and physical drill. As he drew
near he was arrested by the short, snappy tones of the N. C. O. in
charge.

“That chap knows his job,” he said to himself, “and looks like his job,
too,” he added, as his eyes rested upon the neat, upright, soldier-like
figure.

Captain Neil he found observing the drill from a distance.

“What do you think of that?” he called out to Barry, as the latter came
within hailing distance. “What do you think of my sergeant?”

“Fine,” replied Barry. “Where did you get him?”

“What? Look at him!”

“I am. Pretty natty sergeant he makes, too.”

“Let's go out there, and I'll introduce him.”

As they crossed the parade ground, the sergeant dropped his military
tone and proceeded to explain in his ordinary voice some details in
connection with the drill. Barry, catching the sound of his voice,
stopped short.

“You don't mean it, Captain Neil! Not dad, is it?”

“Nobody else,” said Captain Neil. “Wait a minute. Wait and let's watch
him at his work.”

For some time they stood observing the work of the new sergeant. Barry
was filled with amazement and delight.

“What do you think of him?” inquired Captain Neil.

But Barry made no reply.

“My company sergeant major got drunk,” continued Captain Neil. “I had no
one to take the drill. I asked your father to take it. He nearly swept
us off our feet. In consequence, there he stands, my company sergeant
major, and let me tell you, he will be the regimental sergeant major
before many weeks have passed, or I'm a German.”

“But his age,” inquired Barry, still in a maze of astonishment.

“Oh, that's all right. You don't want them too young. I assured the
authorities that he was of proper military age, telling them, at the
same time, that I must have him. He's a wonder, and the men just adore
him.”

“I don't wonder at that,” said Barry.

Together they moved over to the squad. The sergeant, observing his
officer, called his men smartly to attention, and greeted the captain
with a very snappy salute.

“Sergeant major, let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Barry Dunbar,”
 said Captain Neil with a grin.

“I say, dad,” said Barry, still unable to associate his father with this
N. C. O. in uniform who stood before him. “I say, dad, where did you get
all that military stuff?”

“I'm very rusty, my boy, very rusty! I hope to brush up, though. The men
are improving, I think, sir.”

“I'm sure of it,” said Captain Neil. “How is that wild man from
Athabasca doing?”

“He is finding it hard work, sir, I'm afraid. He finds it difficult to
connect up this drill business with the business of war. He wants to go
right off and kill Germans. But he is making an effort to put up with
me.”

“And you, with him, eh, sergeant major? But turn them loose. They have
done enough for to-day, and I know your son wants to take you off with
him, and get you to explain how you go into the army.”

The explanation came as they were walking home together.

“You see, boy, I felt keenly your disappointment in being rejected from
the fighting forces of the country. I felt too that our family ought
to be represented in the fighting line, so when Captain Fraser found
himself in need of a drill sergeant, I could hardly refuse. I would have
liked to have consulted you, my boy, but--”

“Not at all, dad; you did perfectly right. It was just fine of you. I'm
as proud as Punch. I only wish I could go with you. I'd like to be in
your squad. But never mind, I've two jobs open to me now, and I sorely
need your advice.”

Together they talked over the superintendent's offer of the position of
chaplain.

“I can't see myself a chaplain, dad. The position calls for an older
man, a man of wider experience. Many of these men would be almost twice
my age. Now the superintendent himself would be the man for the job. You
ought to see him at his work with the soldiers. I really can't think I'm
fit.”

In this opinion his father rather concurred.

“An older man would be better, Barry--a man of more experience would be
of more service, and, yet I don't know. One thing I am sure of, if you
accept the position, I believe you will fill it worthily. After all, in
every department, this war is a young man's job.”

“Of course,” said Barry. “If I went as chaplain, it would be in your
unit, dad, and that would be altogether glorious.”

“I do hope so. But we must not allow that, however, to influence our
decision,” replied his father.

“I know, I know!” hurriedly agreed Barry. “I trust I would not be unduly
influenced by personal considerations.”

This hope, however, was rudely dashed by an unexpected call for a draft
of recruits from Captain Neil's company that came through from Colonel
Kavanagh to replace a draft suddenly dispatched to make up to strength
another western regiment. Attached to the call there was a specific
request, which amounted to a demand for the sergeant major, for whose
special qualifications as physical and military instructor there was
apparently serious need in Colonel Kavanagh's regiment.

With great reluctance, and with the expenditure of considerable
profanity, Captain Neil Fraser dispatched his draft and agreed to the
surrender of his sergeant major.

The change came as a shock to both Barry and his father. For some days
they had indulged the hope that they would both be attached to the same
military unit, and unconsciously this had been weighing with Barry in
his consideration of his probable appointment as chaplain.

The disappointment of their hope was the more bitter when it was
announced that Colonel Kavanagh's battalion was warned for immediate
service overseas, and the further announcement that in all probability
the new battalion, to which the Wapiti company would be attached, might
not be dispatched until some time in the spring.

“But you may catch us up in England, Barry,” said his father, when Barry
was deploring their ill luck. “No one knows what our movements will be.
I do wish, however, that your position were definitely settled.”

The decision in this matter came quickly, and was, without his will or
desire, materially hastened by Barry himself.

Colonel Kavanagh's battalion being under orders to depart within ten
days, a final Church Parade was ordered, at which only soldiers and
their kin were permitted to be present. The preacher for the day falling
ill from an overweight of war work, and Barry being in the city with
nothing to do, the duty of preaching at this Parade Service was suddenly
thrust upon him.

To his own amazement and to that of his father, Barry accepted without
any fear or hesitation this duty which in other circumstances would
have overwhelmed him with dismay. But to Barry the occasion was of such
surpassing magnitude and importance that all personal considerations
were obliterated.

The war, with its horrors, its losses, its overwhelming sacrifice, its
vast and eternal issues, was the single fact that filled his mind. It
was this that delivered him from that nervous self-consciousness, the
preacher's curse, that paralyses the mental activities, chills the
passions, and cloggs the imagination, so that his sermon becomes
a lifeless repetition of words, previously prepared, correct, even
beautiful, it may be in form, logical in argument, sound in philosophy,
but dead, dull and impotent, bereft of the fire that kindles the powers
of the soul, the emotion that urges to action, the imagination that
lures to high endeavour.

“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye
present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which
is your reasonable service.”

The voice, clear, vibrant, melodious, arrested with its first word the
eyes and hearts of his hearers, and so held them to the end. With the
earnest voice there was the fascination of a face alight with a noble
beauty, eyes glowing as with lambent flame.

A second time he read the appealing words, then paused and allowed his
eyes to wander quietly over the congregation. They represented to him in
that hour the manhood and womanhood of his country. Sincerely, with
no attempt at rhetoric and with no employment of any of its tricks, he
began his sermon.

“This war,” he said, “is a conflict of ideals eternally opposed. Our
ambitious and ruthless enemy has made the issue and has determined the
method of settlement. It is a war of souls, but the method of settlement
is not that of reason but that of force--a force that finds expression
through your bodies. Therefore the appeal of the Apostle Paul, this
old-world hero, to the men of his time reaches down to us in this day,
and at this crisis of the world's history. Offer your bodies--these
living bodies--these sacred bodies--offer them in sacrifice to God.”

There was little discussion of the causes of the war. What need? They
knew that this war was neither of their desiring nor of their making.
There was no attempt to incite hatred or revenge. There was little
reference to the horrors of war, to its griefs, its dreadful agonies,
its irreparable losses.

From the first word he lifted his audience to the high plane of
sacrament and sacrifice. They were called upon to offer upon the altar
of the world's freedom all that they held dear in life--yea, life
itself! It was the ancient sacrifice that the noblest of the race had
always been called upon to make. In giving themselves to this cause they
were giving themselves to their country. They were offering themselves
to God. In simple diction, and in clear flowing speech, the sermon
proceeded without pause or stumbling to the end. The preacher closed
with an appeal to the soldiers present to make this sacrifice of theirs
at once worthy and complete. These bodies of theirs were sacred and were
devoted to this cause. It was their duty to keep them clean and fit.

For a few brief moments, he turned to the others present at the
service--the fathers, mothers, wives and sweethearts of the soldiers,
and reminded them in tones thrilling with tenderness and sympathy that
though not privileged to share in the soldiers' service in the front
lines, none the less might they share in this sacrifice, by patient
endurance of the separation and loss, by a cheerful submission to trial,
and by continual remembrance in prayer to Almighty God of the sacred
cause and its defenders they might help to bring this cause to victory.

In the brief prayer that followed the sermon, in words tender, simple,
heart-moving, he led the people in solemn dedication of themselves, soul
and body, to their country, to their cause, to their God.

The effect of the sermon and prayer was overpowering. There were
no tears, but men walked out with heads more erect, because of the
exaltation of spirit which was theirs. And women, fearful of the coming
hour of parting, felt their hearts grow strong within them with the
thought that they were voluntarily sending their men away. Upon the
whole congregation lay a new and solemn sense of duty, a new and
uplifting sense of privilege in making the sacrifice of all that they
counted precious for this holy cause.

It was the sermon that brought the decision in the matter of Barry's
appointment.

“What do you think of that, Colonel Kavanagh?” asked Captain Neil
Fraser, who came in for the service.

“A very fine sermon! A very notable sermon!” said the colonel. “Who is
he?”

“He is my own minister,” said Captain Neil, “and he gave me, to-day, the
surprise of my life. I didn't know it was in him. I understand there is
a chance of his being our chaplain. He is Sergeant Dunbar's son.”

“I wish to Heaven we could take him with us! What about it, Fraser?
We've got the father, why not the son, too? They'd both like it.”

“I say, Colonel, for Heaven's sake, have a heart. I hated to surrender
my company sergeant major. I don't think I ought to be asked to
surrender our chaplain.”

“All right, Fraser, so be it. But you have got a wonderful chaplain in
that boy. What a face! What a voice! And that's the kind of a spirit we
want in our men.”

That very afternoon, Captain Neil went straight away to Colonel
Leighton, the officer commanding the new regiment to which Captain
Neil's company belonged. To the colonel he gave an enthusiastic report
of the sermon, with Colonel Kavanagh's judgment thereon.

“I would suggest, sir, that you wire Ottawa on the matter,” he urged.
“If Colonel Kavanagh thought he had a chance, he would not hesitate. We
really ought to get this fixed. I assure you he's a find.”

“Go to it, then, Fraser. I'm rather interested to see your earnest
desire for a chaplain. The Lord knows you need one! Go up to
Headquarters and use my name. Say what you like.”

Thus it came that the following day Barry was informed by wire of his
appointment as chaplain of the new regiment of Alberta rangers.

“It's at least a relief to have the matter settled,” said his father, to
whom Barry brought his wire. “Barry, I'm glad of the opportunity to tell
you that since yesterday, my mind has undergone considerable change.
I am not sure but that you have found your place and your work in the
war.”

“No, dad,” answered Barry, “I wasn't responsible for that sermon
yesterday. The war was very near and very real to me. Those boys were
looking up at me, and you were there, dad. You drew that sermon stuff
out of me.”

“If once, why not again? At any rate, it greatly rejoiced me to know
that it was there in you. I don't say I was proud of you, my boy. I was
proud of you, but that is not the word that I should like to use. I was
profoundly grateful that I was privileged to hear a sermon like that
from a son of mine. Now, Barry,” continued his father, “this is our last
day together for some months, perhaps forever,” he added in a low tone.

“Don't, daddy, don't,” cried Barry, “I can't bear to think of that
to-day.”

“All right, Barry, but why not? It is really far better that we should
face all the possibilities. But now that we have this day--and what a
perfect day it is--for our last day together, what shall we do with it?”

“I know, dad--I think you would wish that we take our ride into the
foothills to-day.”

“It was in my mind, my boy. I hesitated to suggest it. So let us go.”

It was one of those rare November days that only Alberta knows, mellow
with the warm sun, and yet with a nip in it that suggested the coming
frost, without a ripple of the wind that almost constantly sweeps the
Alberta ranges. In the blue sky hung motionless, like white ships at
sea, bits of cloud. The long grass, brown, yellow and green in a hundred
shades, lay like a carpet over the rolling hills and wide spreading
valleys, reaching up on every side to the horizon, except toward the
west, where it faded into the blue of the foothills at the bases of the
mighty Rockies.

Up the long trail, resilient to their horses' feet, they cantered where
the going was good, or picked their way with slow and careful tread
where the rocky ridges jutted through the black soil.

They made no effort to repulse the thought that this was their last day
together, nor did they seek to banish the fact of the war. With calm
courage and hope they faced the facts of their environment, seeking
to aid each other in readjusting their lives to those facts. They
were resolutely cheerful. The day was not to be spoiled with tears
and lamentations. Already each in his own place and time had made his
sacrifice of a comradeship that was far dearer than life. The agony of
that hour, each had borne in silence and alone. No shadow should fall
across this sunny day.

By the side of the grave, in its little palisaded enclosure, they
lingered, the father recalling the days of his earlier manhood, which
had been brightened by a love whose fragrance he had cherished and
shared with his son through their years together, Barry listening with
reverent attention and tender sympathy.

“I had always planned that I too should be laid here, Barry,” said his
father, as they prepared to take their departure, “but do you know, boy,
this war has made many changes in me and this is one. It seems to me
a very little thing where my body lies, if it be offered, as you were
saying so beautifully yesterday, in sacrifice to our cause.”

Barry could only nod his head in reply. He was deeply moved.

“You are young, Barry,” said his father, noting his emotion, “and life
is very dear to you, my boy.”

“No, dad, no! Not life,” said Barry brokenly. “Not life, only you, dad.
I just want you, and, oh dad!” continued the boy, losing hold of himself
and making no effort to check or hide the tears that ran down his face,
“if one of us is to go in this war,--as is likely enough,--I only
want that the other should be there at the time. It would
be--terribly--lonely--dad--to go out myself--without you. Or to have you
go out--alone.--We have always been together--and you have been--so very
good to me, dad. I can't help this, dad,--I try--but I am not strong
enough--I'm not holding back from the sacrifice, dad,” hurrying his
words,--“No, no, not that, but perhaps you understand.”

For answer, his father put both his arms around his son, drew his head
down to his breast, as if he had been a child.

“There, there, laddie,” he said, patting him on the shoulder, “I know, I
know! Oh God, how I know. We have lived together very closely, without
a shadow ever between us, and my prayer, since this war began, has
been that in death, if it had to be, we might be together, and, Barry,
somehow I believe God will give us that.”

“Good old dad, good old boy! What a brick you are! I couldn't help that,
dad. Forgive me for being a baby, and spoiling the day--”

“Forgive you, boy,” still with his arms around his son, “Barry, I love
you for it. You've never brought me one sorrow nor will you. To-day and
every day I thank God for you, my son.”

They rode back through the evening toward the camp. By the time they
arrived there, the sun had sunk behind the mountains, and the quiet
stars were riding serenely above the broken, floating clouds, and in
their hearts was peace.



CHAPTER VIII

A QUESTION OF NERVE


“Gentlemen, may I introduce Captain Dunbar, your sky-pilot, padre,
chaplain, anything you like? They say he's a devil of a good preacher.
The Lord knows you need one.”

So Barry's commanding officer introduced him to the mess.

He bowed in different directions to the group of officers who, in the
ante-room of the mess, were having a pre-prandial cocktail. Barry found
a place near the foot of the table and for a few minutes sat silent,
getting his bearings.

Some of the officers were known to him. He had met the commanding
officer, Colonel Leighton, a typical, burly Englishman, the owner of
an Alberta horse ranch, who, well to do to begin with, had made money
during his five years in the country. He had the reputation of being a
sporting man, of easy morality, fond of his glass and of good living. He
owed his present position, partly to political influence, and partly
to his previous military experience in the South African war. His
popularity with his officers was due largely to his easy discipline, and
to the absence of that rigidity of manner which is supposed to go with
high military command, and which civilians are wont to find so irksome.

Barry had also met Major Bustead, the Senior Major of the Battalion, and
President of the mess, an eastern Canadian, with no military experience
whatever, but with abounding energy and ambition; the close friend and
boon companion of Colonel Leighton, he naturally had become his second
in command. Barry was especially delighted to observe Major Bayne, whom
he had not seen since his first meeting with him some months ago on the
Red Pine Trail. Captain Neil Fraser and Lieutenant Stewart Duff were the
only officers about the table whom he recognised, except that, among
the junior lieutenants, he caught the face of young Duncan Cameron, the
oldest son of his superintendent, and a fine, clean-looking young fellow
he appeared.

Altogether Barry was strongly attracted by the clean, strong faces about
him. He would surely soon find good friends among them, and he only
hoped he might be able to be of some service to them.

The young fellow on his right introduced himself as Captain Hopeton.
He was a young English public school boy, who, though a failure as a
rancher, had proved an immense success in the social circles of the
city. Because of this, and also of his family connections “at home,” he
had been appointed to a Civil Service position. A rather bored manner
and a supercilious air spoiled what would otherwise have been a handsome
and attractive face.

After a single remark about the “beastly bore” of military duty, Hopeton
ignored Barry, giving such attention as he had to spare from his dinner
to a man across the table, with whom, apparently, he had shared some
rather exciting social experiences in the city.

For the first half hour of the meal, the conversation was of the most
trivial nature, and was to Barry supremely uninteresting. “Shop talk”
 was strictly taboo, and also all reference to the war. The thin stream
of conversation that trickled from lip to lip ran the gamut of sport,
spiced somewhat highly with society scandal which, even in that little
city, appeared to flourish.

To Barry it was as if he were in a strange land and among people of a
strange tongue. Of sport, as understood by these young chaps, he knew
little, and of scandal he was entirely innocent; so much so that many
of the references that excited the most merriment were to him utterly
obscure. After some attempts to introduce topics of conversation which
he thought might be of mutual interest, but which had fallen quite flat,
Barry gave up, and sat silent with a desolating sense of loneliness
growing upon his spirit.

“After the port,” when smoking was permitted, he was offered a cigarette
by Hopeton, and surprised that young man mightily by saying that he
never smoked. This surprise, it is to be feared, deepened into disgust
when, a few moments later, he declined a drink from Hopeton's whisky
bottle, which a servant brought him.

Liquors were not provided at the mess, but officers were permitted to
order what they desired.

As the bottles circulated, tongues were loosened. There was nothing foul
in the talk, but more and more profanity, with frequent apology to the
chaplain, began to decorate the conversation. Conscious of a deepening
disgust with his environment, and of an overwhelming sense of isolation,
Barry cast vainly about for a means of escape. Of military etiquette he
was ignorant; hence he could only wait in deepening disgust for the
O. C. to give the signal to rise. How long he could have endured is
doubtful, but release came in a startling, and, to most of the members
of the mess, a truly horrifying manner.

In one of those strange silences that fall upon even the noisiest of
companies, Colonel Leighton, under the influence of a somewhat liberal
indulgence in his whisky bottle, began the relation of a tale of very
doubtful flavour. In the midst of the laughter that followed the tale,
Barry rose to his feet, his face white and his eyes aflame, and in a
voice vibrating with passion, said:

“May I be excused, sir?”

“Why, certainly,” said the colonel pleasantly, adding after a moment's
hesitation, “is there anything wrong, Dunbar? Are you ill?”

“No, sir.” Barry's voice had the resonant quality of a cello string.
“I mean, yes, sir,” he corrected. “I am ill. The atmosphere surrounding
such a tale is nauseating to me.”

In the horrified silence that followed his remark, he walked out from
the room. Upon his ears, as he stood in the ante-room, trembling with
the violence of his passion, a burst of laughter fell. A sudden wrath
like a hot flame swept his body. He wheeled in his tracks, tore open the
door, and with head high and face set, strode to his place at the table
and sat down.

Astonishment beyond all words held the company in tense stillness. From
Barry's face they looked toward the colonel, who, too dumfounded for
speech or action, sat gazing at his chaplain. Then from the end of the
table a few places down from Barry, a voice was heard.

“Feel better, Dunbar?” The cool, clear voice cut through the tense
silence like the zip of a sword.

“I do, thank you, sir,” looking him straight in the eye.

“The fresh air, doubtless,” continued the cool voice. “I always find
myself that even a whiff of fresh air is a very effective antidote for
threatening vertigo. I remember once--” continued the speaker, dropping
into a conversational tone, and leaning across the table slightly toward
Barry, “I was in the room with a company of men--” And the speaker
entered upon a long and none too interesting relation of an experience
of his, the point of which no one grasped, but the effect of which every
one welcomed with the profoundest relief. He was the regimental medical
officer, a tall, slight man, with a keen eye, a pleasant face crowned by
a topknot of flaming hair, and with a little dab of hair of like colour
upon his upper lip, which he fondly cherished, as an important item in
his military equipment.

“Say, the old doc is a lifesaver, sure enough,” said a young subaltern,
answering to the name of “Sally,” colloquial for Salford, as he stood
amid a circle of officers gathered in the smoking room a few minutes
later. “A lifesaver,” repeated Sally, with emphasis. “He can have me for
his laboratory collection after I'm through.”

“He is one sure singing bird,” said another sub, a stout, overgrown boy
by the name of Booth. “The nerve of him,” added Booth in admiration.

“Nerve!” echoed a young captain, “but what about the pilot's nerve?”

“Sui generis, Train, I should say,” drawled Hopeton.

“Suey, who did you say?” inquired Sally. “What's her second name? But
let me tell you I could have fallen on his neck and burst into tears of
gratitude. For me,” continued Sally, glancing about the room, “I don't
hold with that dirt stuff at mess. It isn't necessary.”

“Beastly bad form,” said Hopeton, “but, good Lord! Your Commanding
Officer, Sally! There's such a thing as discipline, you know.”

“What extraordinary thing is it that Sally knows?” inquired Major
Bustead, who lounged up to the group.

“We were discussing the padre's break, Major, which for my part,”
 drawled Hopeton, “I consider rotten discipline.”

“Discipline!” snorted the major. “By Gad, it was a piece of the most
damnable cheek I have ever heard at a mess table. He ought to be sent to
Coventry. I only hope the O. C. will get him exchanged.”

The major made no effort to subdue his voice, which was plainly audible
throughout the room.

“Hush, for God's sake,” warned Captain Train, as Barry entered the door.
“Here he is.”

But Barry had caught the major's words. For a moment he stood
irresolute; then walked quietly toward the group.

“I couldn't help hearing you, Major Bustead,” he said, in a voice
pleasant and under perfect control. “I gather you were referring to me.”

“I was, sir,” said the major defiantly.

“And why should I be sent to Coventry, or exchanged, may I ask?” Barry's
voice was that of an interested outsider.

“Because,” stuttered the Major, “I consider, sir, that--that--you have
been guilty of a piece of damnable impertinence toward your Commanding
Officer. I never heard anything like it in my life. Infernal cheek, I
call it, sir.”

While the major was speaking, Barry stood listening with an air of
respectful attention.

“I wonder!” he said, after a moment's thought. “If I thought I had been
impertinent, I should at once apologise. But, sir, do you think it is
part of my duty to allow any man, even my Commanding Officer, to--pardon
the disgusting metaphor, it is not so disgusting as the action
complained of--to spit in my soup, and take it without protest? Do you,
sir?”

“I--you--” The major grew very red in the face. “You need to learn your
place in this battalion, sir.”

“I do,” said Barry, still preserving his quiet voice and manner. “I
want to learn--I am really anxious to learn it. Do you mind answering
my question?” His tone was that of a man who is earnestly but quite
respectfully seeking information from a superior officer.

“Your question, sir?” stuttered the major, “your--your--question. Damn
your question, and yourself too.”

The major turned abruptly away. Barry heard him quite unmoved, stood
looking after him in silence a moment or two, then, shaking his head,
with a puzzled expression on his face, moved slowly away from the group.

“Oh, my aunt Caroline,” breathed Sally into his friend Hopeton's ear,
resting heavily meanwhile against his shoulder. “What a score! What a
score!”

“A bull, begad! a clean bull!” murmured Hopeton, supporting his friend
out of the room as he added, “A little fresh air, as a preventative of
vertigo, as the old doc says, eh, Sally.”

“Good Lord, is he just a plain ass, or what?” inquired young Booth, his
eye following Barry down the room.

“Ass! A mule, I should say. And one with a good lot of kick in him,”
 replied Captain Train. “I don't know that I care for that kind of an
animal, though.”

Before many hours had passed, the whole battalion had received with
undiluted joy an account of the incident, for though the Commanding
Officer was popular with his men, to have him called down at his own
mess by one of his own officers was an event too thrilling to give
anything but unalloyed delight to those who had to suffer in silence
similar indignities at the hands of their officers.

A notable exception in the battalion, however, was Sergeant Major
McFetteridge, who, because of his military experience, and of his
reputation as a disciplinarian, had been recently transferred to the
battalion. To the sergeant major this act of Barry's was but another and
more flagrant example of his fondness for “buttin' in,” and the sergeant
major let it be known that he strongly condemned the chaplain for what
he declared was an unheard of breach of military discipline.

Of course there were others who openly approved, and who admired the
chaplain's “nerve in standing up to the old man.” In their opinion he
was entirely justified in what he had said. The O. C. had insulted him,
and every officer at the mess, by his off-colour story, but on the whole
the general result of the incident was that Barry's life became more and
more one of isolation from both officers and men. For this reason and
because of a haunting sense of failure the months of training preceding
the battalion's departure for England were for Barry one long and almost
uninterrupted misery. It seemed impossible to establish any point of
contact with either the officers or the men. In their athletics, in
their social gatherings, in their reading, he was quietly ignored and
made to feel that he was in no way necessary. An impalpable but very
real barrier prevented his near approach to those whom he was so eager
to serve.

This unexpressed opposition was quickened into active hostility by the
chaplain's uncompromising attitude on the liquor question. By the army
regulations, the battalion canteen was dry, but in spite of this
many, both of the officers and the men, freely indulged in the use
of intoxicating drink. The effect upon discipline was, of course,
deplorable, and in his public addresses as well as private conversation,
Barry constantly denounced these demoralising habits, winning thereby
the violent dislike of those especially affected, and the latent
hostility of the majority of the men who agreed with the sergeant major
in resenting the chaplain's “buttin' in.”

It was, therefore, with unspeakable joy that Barry learned that the
battalion was warned for overseas service. Any change in his lot would
be an improvement, for he was convinced that he had reached the limit of
wretchedness in the exercise of his duty as chaplain of the battalion.

In this conviction, however, he was mistaken. On shipboard, he
discovered that there were still depths of misery which he was called
upon to plumb. Assigned to a miserable stateroom in an uncomfortable
part of the ship, he suffered horribly from seasickness, and for the
first half of the voyage lay foodless and spiritless in his bunk,
indifferent to his environment or to his fate. His sole friend was his
batman, Harry Hobbs, but, of course, he could not confide to Harry the
misery of his body, or the deeper misery of his soul.

It was Harry, however, that brought relief, for it was he that called
the M. O. to his officer's bedside. The M. O. was shocked to find the
chaplain in a state of extreme physical weakness, and mental depression.
At once, he gave orders that Barry should be removed to his own
stateroom, which was large and airy and open to the sea breezes. The
effect was immediately apparent, for the change of room, and more
especially the touch of human sympathy, did much to restore Barry to his
normal health and spirits. A friendship sprang up between the M. O.
and the chaplain. With this friendship a new interest came into Barry's
life, and with surprising rapidity he regained both his physical and
mental tone.

The doctor took him resolutely in hand, pressed him to take his part in
the daily physical drill, induced him to share the daily programme of
sports, and, best of all, discovering a violin on board, insisted on his
taking a place on the musical programme rendered nightly in the salon.
As might be expected, his violin won him friends among all of the music
lovers on board ship, and life for Barry began once more to be bearable.

Returning strength, however, recalled him to the performance of
his duties as chaplain, and straightway in the exercise of what he
considered his duty, he came into conflict with no less a personage than
the sergeant major himself. The trouble arose over his batman, Harry
Hobbs.

Harry was a man who, in his youthful days, had been a diligent patron of
the London music halls, and in consequence had become himself an amateur
entertainer of very considerable ability. His sailor's hornpipes, Irish
jigs, his old English North-country ballads and his coster songs were an
unending joy to his comrades. Their gratitude and admiration took forms
that proved poor Harry's undoing, and besides some of them took an
unholy joy in sending the chaplain's batman to his officer incapable of
service.

Barry's indignation and grief were beyond words. He dealt faithfully
with the erring Hobbs, as his minister, as his officer, as chaplain, but
the downward drag of his environment proved too great for his batman's
powers of resistance. Once and again Barry sought the aid of the
sergeant major to rescue Harry from his downward course, but the old
sergeant major was unimpressed with the account of Harry's lapses.

“Is your batman unfit for duty, sir?” he inquired.

“Yes, he is, often,” said Barry indignantly.

“Did you report him, sir?” inquired the sergeant major.

“No, I did not.”

“Then, sir, I am afraid that until you do your duty I can do nothing,”
 answered the sergeant major, with suave respect.

“If you did your duty,” Barry was moved to say, “then Hobbs would not
need to be reported. The regulations governing that canteen should
prevent these frequent examples of drunkenness, which are a disgrace to
the battalion.”

“Do I understand, sir,” inquired the sergeant major, with quiet respect,
“that you are accusing me of a failure in duty?”

“I am saying that if the regulations were observed my batman and
others would not be so frequently drunk, and the enforcing of these
regulations, I understand, is a part of your duty.”

“Then, sir,” replied the sergeant major, “perhaps I had better report
myself to the Commanding Officer.”

“You can please yourself,” said Barry, shortly, as he turned away.

“Very good, sir,” replied the sergeant major. “I shall report myself at
once.”

The day following, the chaplain received an order to app

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