Shorter works (a selection)

The doctor stood, with his hand on the door-knob, looking back into his wife's boudoir.

There was nothing in that room suggestive of town or of town life and work--delicate green and white, a mossy carpet, masses of spring flowers; cool, soft, noiseless, fragrant.

Standing in the doorway, the doctor could hear the agitated clang of the street-door bell, Stoddart crossing the hall, the opening and closing of the door, and Stoddart's subdued and sympathetic voice saying: "Step this way, please." A heavy, depressed foot, or an anxious, hurried one, according to the mental condition of its owner, obeyed; and the shutting of the library door meant another patient added to the number of those who were already listlessly turning over the pages of bound volumes of Punch, or scrutinizing with unseeing eyes the Landseer engraving over the mantelpiece.

In former days the waiting-room used to be the doctor's dining-room, but before he married his pretty wife she put her foot down firmly on this question. He had been explaining the Wimpole Street house and its arrangements, as they stood together in her sunny rose-garden.

"But, Deryck," she had exclaimed in dismay, waving her hands at him, full of a great mass of freshly gathered roses, "I could not possibly sit down and dine with you in a room where your horrible patients have sat waiting for hours, leaving behind them the germs of all their nasty, infectious diseases!"

The doctor caught the little hands, roses and all, and held them against his breast, looking down into her face with laughing eyes.

"Flower," he said, "my lovely, fragrant Flower! Am I doing a foolish thing in attempting to transplant you into the soil of busy London life? Should I not do better if I left you in your rose-garden? Ah, well, it is too late to ask that now; I can't leave Wimpole Street, and"--his voice, always deep, suddenly thrilled to a deeper depth; a tenderness of strong passion quivered in it--"I can't live without you." He let go her hands, and framed her upturned face in his strong, brown fingers.

"What have you done to me, Flower? I was always self-contained and self-sufficing, and now I find I can't live without you, Flower--my Flower."

His eyes glowed down into her face. She looked up sweetly at him.

"But Deryck," she said, "they do leave the germs of all their nasty infectious--"

The doctor's hands fell suddenly to his sides.

"My dear child," he said, and his voice instantly regained its usual evenness of tone, "have I not told you that I am a mind specialist? The people who come to my consulting-room are not, as a rule, suffering from measles, scarlet fever, or smallpox!"

"Oh, well, they leave their dreadful morbid thoughts behind them; and that is worse. I could not dine in a room where diseased minds have sat for hours, brooding. It would give me creeps. And oh, Deryck, you know that stupid article you read me the other day, about how mental impressions, when a mind was highly strung or unbalanced, could leave an impress upon walls or furniture--explaining ghost-stories, you know?--I forget who wrote it...You did? My dear boy, how clever of you!...Oh, no! How can you say I called it ' stupid'? Or if I did, I meant 'interesting,' of course. See how well I remembered it, though you thought I was not listening, because I had to keep counting the stitches in the heel of your golf stockings, you ungrateful man! And I am certain you are right about horrible thoughts sticking to furniture. And, however well Stoddart arranged the room, he couldn't sweep them away, and we should sit at dinner surrounded by them--oh, Deryck, surrounded!"

Her lovely eyes looked widely at him over the gathered roses.

The doctor laughed. It is so easy to a man to laugh before marriage.

"All right, Flower," he said. "There is nothing like convincing a fellow with his own arguments. We will remodel the house. I'll talk it over with Hunt. You shall have dining-room, drawing-room, and boudoir, all on the first floor, and I and my freaks will have the run of the ground-floor. You will need only to pass through the hall as you go in and out of the house. So, if they drop their poor minds about, you will not come across them. Now, choose me that promised buttonhole, and then let us go down to the stream. I don't like a rose garden, when half the windows of the house overlook it!"

This was seven years ago, and it now sometimes seemed to Dr. Brand as if his tall Wimpole Street house represented in its stories the various portions of the human anatomy; absolutely distinct in themselves, but held together and kept going by the brain; the ever-busy brain controlling all.

His wife's apartments on the first floor; his life with her there, into which his professional interests were so rarely allowed to intrude; certainly they represented the heartof things; the man's whole heart rested and centred there.

The floor above was given up to the nurseries, and there, already, two pairs of little feet pattered ceaselessly, and merry voices shouted clear and gleeful, and a little flower-faced girl peeped down at him through the balustrade; while a small boy, gazing earnestly with dark, steadfast eyes into the interior of a jumping rabbit which refused to jump, reproduced absurdly his own intent professional manner.

In the basement were the kitchens, and he was as ignorant of them as, he reflected with a smile, every perfectly healthy man should be of the digestive organs of his own anatomy.

Then on the ground-floor, between the life below-stairs and the life above, but generating the needful supplies to keep the whole establishment going, dwelt the Brain--his brain, his untiring, ever-growing capacity for hard work, represented by his consulting-room, where so many strenuous hours were spent, and the old dining-room, now called the library, where an ever-increasing number of patients waited daily. This floor of his life was practically unshared by any, excepting the faithful and punctilious old butler, whose monotonous "Step this way, sir," "Please to step this way, ma'am," served to punctuate the departure of one case and the arrival of the next.

Sometimes the desire to share the interest of this ever-varying daily work with another, gripped him in the throes of its human necessity. When his deep, penetrating eyes had been long bent upon the shifting, shuffling mind of a patient, at last piercing with tender mercilessness to the very core of that mind's malady; when his quick brain had grasped the case in all its bearings, and his magnificent will-power had compelled the shaken soul to see things as he saw them, to believe things as he believed them, to face the future as the future alone could rightly be faced; when his inspiring enthusiasm and belief in God and life and human nature had set that mental cripple on his feet, or loosed the bands which had bound some poor "daughter of Abraham--lo, these eighteen years"; when, conducted by Stoddart's mechanical "Step this way," they passed out from his consulting-room to tread with new hopes the path of a new life, he would stride to his window, squaring his shoulders, and taking in a deep breath of fresh air, he would say: "God, what a victory! I must tell Flower."

But once in Flower's boudoir, with a dainty china teacup in his hand and a muffin on his knee, hearing the blissful details of Blossom's new syllable, or Dicky's latest development, or Flower's own triumphal progress through the Park in the new motor-car, somehow the story of the strenuous fight, the hopeful victory, seemed out of place. This was the home of feeling; thought must not intrude. This was the domain of trivialities; the great issues of life must hide in the background. This was the realm of the Heart; the Brain must abide below.

Yet matrimony and motherhood had done much to deepen Flower. The linking with his nature; the having perforce to awaken in order to meet and satisfy the deep needs of his over-mastering love; the constant example of his unselfish nobility, singleness of purpose, and high ideal of life; and, above all, the pangs and joys of motherhood,--all these had made of the wilful, wayward little Flower of the rose-garden, a sweet and gracious woman; in outward face and form more exquisite than ever, and in the hidden part an awakening soul, which needed only an hour of deep agony, a tearing away of the flimsy veil of selfishness and conventionality now stifling it, to bring it to the birth.

But that time of pain and stress came not to Flower, because the strong, shielding love of a man was always around her, and his care warded off the very thing which alone could have brought about his comfort and her completion. And yet he was dimly conscious of a gradual growth in her, and sometimes, half wistfully, he called her "Mary," that name so sacred to perfect motherhood, and which had seemed such an incongruous gift from her sponsors to his Flower of the rose-garden.

On this particular morning, when the doctor stood at the door looking into the boudoir, Flower was bending over a huge bowl of daffodils arranging each golden trumpet to her liking.

The spring sunshine came glancing through the window and touched her hair to the gold of the blossoms. The doctor noted this, and a sudden look of adoration softened the cool clearness of his eyes.

The baby's godmother, on this last day of her visit, sitting by the fire with her feet on the fender, opening and smoothing a copy of the Times, glanced up, past the sunshine and the daffodils, saw that look, and promptly retired behind a leading article.

The baby's godmother was a perfectly beautiful woman, in an absolutely plain shell; but, unfortunately, no man had as yet looked beneath the shell and seen the woman herself in her perfection. She would have made earth heaven for a blind lover who, not having eyes for the plainness of her face or the massiveness of her figure, might have drawn nearer and apprehended the wonder of her as a woman; experiencing the wealth of tenderness of which she was capable, the blessed comfort of the shelter of her love, the perfect comprehension of her sympathy, the marvellous joy of winning and wedding her. But as yet no blind man with far-seeing vision had come her way, and it always seemed to be her lot to take a second place on occasions when she would have filled the first to infinite perfection.

She had been bridesmaid at the doctor's wedding, to whom she would have made a wife such as Flower, develop as she might, could never be. She was godmother to the baby--she whose arms ached for motherhood itself, and whose motherliness would have been a thing for men to kneel down and worship. She found her duties as godmother to various babies consisted chiefly in praying that the foolish mistakes made by their parents might be overruled by an all-wise Providence and work out somehow to their ultimate good.

She had a glorious voice, but, her face not matching it, its existence was rarely suspected; and, as she accompanied to perfection, she was usually in requisition to play for the singing of others. But there came a time when, the principal singer at a musical party failing unexpectedly, she filled the empty place, walking to the piano, when the moment came, in the double capacity of singer and accompanist. How she "brought down the house" on this occasion, and how a blind man's eyes were opened, belong to a later story. ("The Rosary.")

Meanwhile she was a woman of tact, and when she perceived the doctor's momentary dazzlement by the sunlight and the gold, she retired, obviously, behind the Times leader.

"Darling," said the doctor, "I am wired for to Brighton, in consultation over a very important case. I must go down by an afternoon train, and I doubt if I can get back to-night."

"How tiresome, Deryck! It is Myra's reception this evening, and I promised to bring you with me. I shall hate going alone. However, I suppose it cannot be helped. Did you ever see such daffodils? It makes one long to be back in the woods at home."

The doctor hesitated. Downstairs the bell rang again; the hall door opened and closed; Stoddart said: "Step this way, sir."

"Flower," said the doctor, "I have a jolly little plan for to-night. I want you to come to Brighton with me. We will put up at the Metropole, and have a real good time. I ought to be able to get back to you there soon after seven, and we can have dinner and go on the pier afterwards, and watch the moonlight on the sea. Or, if you prefer something more lively, there is a good concert on in the Dome. I will telephone for seats. It is a long while since we heard any music together."

He stopped, rather breathlessly.

The front door-bell rang again.

The doctor's wife took out a daffodil and replaced it to better advantage. Then she looked up with an exquisite smile.

"Dearest, you are so amusing with your sudden plans! It sounds delightful, of course. I love Brighton in spring. I shall never forget driving along the King's Road in the sunshine, with a huge bunch of violets on my muff. It was too heavenly! Early March, and the whole place seemed to sing of how summer was coming! But we cannot always do what we like. I must look in at Myra's party, and I should really have thought you might have returned in time. If you appeared at eleven, it would do."

The doctor's face, against the pale green wood-work of the door, suddenly looked rather worn and thin.

"I am afraid I could not get back, Flower," he said. "I may have to put in a second visit in the morning. And--darling--I want you to-night. This case will be rather a strain. It will be just everything to have you down there to come back to. The moment it is over I shall remember you are waiting for me."

The baby's godmother looked up quietly over the Times. She had heard the tone in his voice, and she saw on his face just what she expected to see. Notwithstanding his forty years, despite his brilliant powers, his ceaseless energy, he looked at that minute like a tired child, just needing to be gathered into a loving woman's arms and hushed to rest. He was facing, beforehand, what he would be feeling after the strain was over. He was yearning for the love and companionship, dreading the solitude and loneliness. The baby's godmother knew exactly what he needed. She awaited Flower's reply.

"Who is 'the case,' Deryck?"

The doctor hesitated an instant, then named a name so widely known that the baby's godmother bounded in her chair.

"My dear Deryck," she cried, "if you are successful there, it means fame--world-wide! Oh, what can we do to help? Must you see patients this morning?"

The doctor smiled.

"I must, Jeanette, unless you will see them for me. But work fits me for work. It is only after it is all over one feels a bit tired sometimes." He looked at Flower. "Well, sweet? Can you be ready at two o'clock sharp?

"Dear," she said, "I am so sorry, but I can't see my way clear about going with you to-day. If only it had been to-morrow! Nurse has asked to go out to tea and to stay the evening, and I promised to have the children down longer than usual. Of course there is Emma, and Marsdon could help. But I should not feel easy about it. And I promised Dicky and Blossom we would have all the stuffed animals out, and play menagerie. I never can feel it right to disappoint little children. And you know you often say to me yourself: 'If you have promised them a thing, keep to it at all costs.' Beside, there is Myra's tiresome 'at home' to consider. Really, Deryck, I don't see how I can be away to-day."

"All right, Flower," the doctor said quietly. "I am sorry I bothered you by proposing it. Don't expect me up to lunch. Every moment will be full this morning. Stoddart will put some sandwiches in my bag. Goodbye."

The door closed behind him. They heard his quick step on the stairs; then the consulting-room door shut sharply.

The baby's godmother laid down the Times, folded her skirt back over her knees, and stirred the fire with her shoe.

Flower sighed.

"Deryck really is trying," she said.

The baby's godmother bit her lip. She had found that she could help the doctor's wife best by never contradicting her.

"Very clever people usually are trying," she remarked after a pause, "to those who have to live with them."

Flower wheeled round and looked at her. "My good Jane, I don't know what you mean! Deryck is perfect to live with, perfect! Have you stayed here ten days without finding that out? He is only trying when he swoops down upon me with a sudden plan and expects me to be ready to rush away with him at a moment's notice. If he had let me know yesterday, it might have been managed."

"I gathered he only knew himself this morning."

"That has nothing whatever to do with it. The crux of the whole matter is that I had promised nurse she should have the evening, and I cannot leave the children with nurse away."

The baby's godmother bent over the grate, took up the poker, and carefully built a little castle of molten coal in the very heart of the bright fire. Her hands looked strong and firm and very capable. Her face flushed as she bent over the glowing flame.

The doctor's wife, cool and dainty, put masses of early white lilac into a tall crystal vase.

Silence reigned.

The clock struck eleven.

Then the baby's godmother laid down the fire-iron and began to speak, her hands clasped firmly around her large knees.

"Flower, when a man such as your husband wants you, you should leave everything-everything--to go to him. What are social engagements and servants' plans--aye, even children--compared with the needs of such a man as Deryck? Oh, my dear, couldn't you hear the appeal in his voice? It was like the cry of a tired child in the dark, groping for its resting-place, which just wants lifting up into its mother's arms and hushing to sleep. Strong man though he is--and I suppose you and I can hardly realise how strong he is when coping with the great needs of others--he will always be a boy where he loves. He is so young in heart; so eternally, passionately young. He wants mothering just now. He is doing the work of three men, and doing it at high pressure. I hear of it from outside, as perhaps you cannot. And when the day is over he needs a place of rest--a tender, understanding place of rest--where he can talk or be silent, sleep or wake, as the fancy takes him; but where he will never be left alone, to live again through the happenings of the day, too tired to escape them. And oh, Flower, you, and you only, can do this for him. Shall I tell you? I know half a dozen women at least who would throw over social engagements, leave husbands, children, everything, and go down to stay at Brighton or anywhere else on the chance of five minutes' conversation with Deryck, or of his needing, at the moment, a comrade and friend."

"Horrid creatures!" cried Flower, mockingly, "their husbands ought to have something to say to them for running after mine. I wonder a proper person like you, Jane, is not ashamed to talk of them. And you I need not try to make me jealous. It is one of my theories that only small minds are jealous. I have always stood far above the feeling."

"I know, dear, I know," said the baby's godmother hastily. "I had not the faintest hope of making you jealous. Besides, why should you be? Deryck has never looked twice at any woman but you. We all know that."

Flower laid down her scissors and came and knelt on the hearthrug, mollified and a little wistful. She spread out her damp hands to the blaze, and looked up into the baby's godmother's plain face, with a mischievous, inquisitive smile.

"Do you know, Jane," she said, "I have somnetimes wondered--you seem to know each other so intimately--whether in the long-ago days, before he met me, Deryck ever proposed to you?"

The baby's godmother laughed, and again stirred the fire with her toe.

"Well, my dear, you may rest assured he never did so, for the most conclusive of all reasons--I should not have refused him."

Flower laughed gaily.

"Good old Jane," she said. "I do enjoy talking to you; you are so deliciously unconventional." Then, more soberly, "It is not fair that you should think I do not take proper care of Deryck, and do not suffer during his absences. I go through perfect agonies of mind during the long hours of the night, when he is tearing down from Scotland by the mail train. I keep waking, and thinking how bumpy it must be to lie along the seat of a railway carriage. He never will take a sleeper. And I lie and think of all the signalmen who hold his life in their hands, and hope they don't drink."

Flower's voice trembled with emotion. "After reading about all those fearful railway smashes lately, I wrote on the back of one of his visiting cards: In case of accident, wire at once to Mrs. Deryck Brand, Wimpole Street, London, W. I put it into his pocket-book and it comforts me to know it is always upon him."

The lovely eyes of the doctor's wife were wet. Her lashes glistened in the firelight. The baby's godmother stooped and took the poker; then laid it down again, unused.

"Well, Flower," she said at length, very deliberately, "and suppose an accident happened, and they wired to you? What would you do?"

"Do?" exclaimed the doctor's wife, her lovely eyes dilating. "Why, go to him, course!"

"But supposing nurse happened to be out? Or you had people coming to tea? Or you had promised the children--"

"Jane, Jane, how odious you are! None of those things would matter, of course. If he were hurt or ill nothing could keep me from his side. I should not even stop to pack. I should fly... What?...Well, I might let Marsdon pack a handbag, but I should certainly catch the first possible train."

The baby's godmother stooped for the poker once more, and this time she assaulted the dying embers vigorously, remarking in a muffled voice: "Yes, I think a handbag would be wise. Decidedly, I would have Marsdon and a handbag in the programme." Then, suddenly dropping the poker with a clatter, she caught Flower's fluttering hands in hers and held them firmly, looking searchingly into her upturned face.

"Ah, child, child! You remind me of the story of a white rose-tree. Sit down for five minutes while I tell it to you.

"Two friends of mine have a lovely little place in Hertfordshire. She-Sybel--takes a great delight in her garden, particularly in growing roses. They had one tiny girl of four years old, rightly named Angela--the sweetest little angel-child I ever beheld. I ran down to them for one night last June. Sybel and I were having tea in the garden, close to a magnificent white rose-tree, a mass of fragrant bud and blossom. Sybel was very proud of it. Presently we heard little dancing feet down the gravel-path behind us, and the baby-girl appeared. She stood gravely contemplating us at tea, not asking for anything. Sybel is a firm disciplinarian. Suddenly the baby eyes fell upon the rose-tree, and a wistful look of longing passed into them. She drew close to Sybel and looked pleadingly up into her face. 'Oh, mummie, they are so lubly! May I pick one of your roses?' 'Certainly not,' said Sybel. 'How often am I to tell you, baby, that you are never to pick flowers in the garden! Run along to nurse, and don't be troublesome.'

"The baby said no more, but I saw the little mouth droop and quiver. The small feet trailed slowly away over the grass, all the dance gone out of them; and Sybel gave me a long dissertation on the bringing up of children, and the importance of checking their natural tendency to destructiveness, my only reply being, I am afraid: 'What on earth is the good of a garden full of flowers if your own baby can't gather and enjoy them!' To which Sybel made answer: 'It is just as well, my dear Jane, that you remain unmarried. You would hopelessly spoil your children if you had any.'

"With that we laughed and ceased sparring, for Sybel is a good sort, and was a devoted mother, provided her little child pleased her in all things."

The baby's godmother paused a moment, as if mentally reviewing a scene and seeking for words in which to describe it. Then she leaned forward, her arms upon her knees and her hands clasped in front of her, and as she spoke, slowly and quietly, she kept her eyes fixed upon those firmly folded hands.

"Three weeks later I was wired for, to go back there and comfort a despairing, childless mother.

"When poor Sybel took me up to see the little body, it lay upon the bed, smothered in white roses--roses in the little hands, roses round the tiny feet, snowy petals framing the baby face, now whiter than the whitest rose. When I saw them, and when poor Sybel fell on her knees at the foot of the little bed and moaned in anguish of heart, I knew why she had sent for me.

"'Oh, Jane,' she said, 'Jane! You remember? She wanted one white rose, just one, and I would not let her have it. Oh my baby, my baby!'

"'Sybel, dear,' I said helplessly, 'she has them all now.'

"'Now!' cried Sybel, in the most fearful accents of despair. 'What good is it now? Ten thousand roses strewn about her now are not worth the one gathered by her own little hand when she wanted it, which would have given her pleasure then. Too late! Too late! O God, the wheels of time! Will they never move backward? Shall I never hear again my baby's voice saying: 'Mummie, may I pick one of your roses?' Oh, baby, speak to poor mummie and say you know you may have them all!'

"But the little angel-face was calmly unresponsive, and the tiny marble hands so lightly clasped the rose-stems, that when the mother's desperate weeping shook the bed, the roses those baby hands seemed holding, dropped from them and fell unheeded.

"Ah, poor breaking heart! Love's offering came too late."

The baby's godmother still kept her eyes on her folded hands. The doctor's wife was crying softly.

"Oh, Flower," the deep, sad voice went on, "we are all apt to make the same terrible mistake. When our dear ones have passed beyond all ken of earthly pleasure we send our costly wreaths of rarest flowers, striving thus to atone for having denied them the one simple blossom which was all they asked and needed. Let us learn to give our flowers now--now, while they can hold and have them; now, while they can scent their perfume and enjoy their beauty. Oh, child, give Deryck his white rose while he asks it of you. A man requires the instant fulfilment of his heart's desires. We women can wait. Some of us enjoy the idea of waiting even for the wreaths and crosses, though we shall not be there to see them. The morbid picturesqueness of the idea appeals to us; but a man wants nothing for his cold clay save six feet of honest earth. His needs are stronger, simpler, more intense than ours. And what he needs, he needs now. When the battle is over and won, he will leave the old suit of armour behind and forge ahead to pastures new. Stand by him now, in the din and the dust and the heat, with the cup of cold water he craves. And oh, remember, the wheels of time go forward, always; backward, never. I want you to be spared the agony of vain regret."

The baby's godmother ceased speaking and looked up. The lines about her mouth and eyes were hard and stern, but the eyes themselves were soft and infinitely tender.

Flower rose, and, stooping, kissed her gently.

"I wish he had proposed to you," she said; "you would have done better for him. But as it was I he wanted, I must do my best, and I will go to Brighton."

Then slowly, with bent head, she left the room.

The baby's godmother sat lost in thought for many minutes. It had cost her much to say what she had said, and she felt doubtful how long the impression she had made would endure. Each heart must pass through the furnace for itself. To hear of the refining of others, has no lasting effect on the heart's own alloy.

She knew this, and her thoughts followed Flower anxiously. At length she rose, and stood leaning her elbow upon the mantel-piece and looking long at an old miniature of the doctor, placed there among Flower's special treasures; but the doctor before Flower knew him; the doctor as he had been in years gone by, when he and the baby's godmother were faithful chums, and she was his trusted confidante and the sharer of all his hopes and ambitions. So she stood looking into the bright, dark eyes of a very young man, a man with all the best of life before him, full of a noble courage, an unfaltering faith in his ideals, an intellect which should carry him anywhere he willed to go. A smile of conscious power curved the lips. There was no hint of weariness about the keen, clear eyes.

The baby's godmother took it up, and laid it in the palm of her large hand. Then she spoke to it softly.

"Oh, Boy!" she said, "oh, Boy! I have done my best for you. I would always have given you all I had to give. But you wanted loveliness, and I could only give you love. You have the loveliness, and now you are sighing for the love. God send you that, my dear--my dear. Oh, Boy! I have done what I could."

She put the portrait down and turned away as the door opened suddenly to admit the doctor's wife, breathless.

"Jane, such a nuisance! Madame Celestine has arrived. I entirely forgot the appointment. My gown for the next Drawing-room, the final fitting--oh, such a dream! Come up and see, and help and advise. You old darling, what a blessing to have you here! I never can be firm with Celestine."

The luncheon-gong had sounded on the stroke of one. The baby's godmother had waited, restlessly, ten minutes; then received a message not to wait, Mrs. Brand would be down from the workroom shortly.

Ready dressed for her railway journey, Jane helped herself to cold chicken and salad, and kept her eye on the clock, remembering "two sharp."

"If she comes down quite ready she can do it," thought the baby's godmother, and turned her healthy attention to apple-tart and custard.

The door opened and the doctor's wife trailed in, in a teagown.

"Dear Jane, I apologize. But I knew my absence would not impair your appetite and you should not have left me until that good creature had gone. The restraint of your presence removed, she launched out into fresh suggestions, and wheedled me into having a gown for the Devonshires' big squash, though I had meant to go in my Paquin. How beautifully you carve, my dear, or did Stoddart do it for you? This fowl looks as if it had been handled by a man and an expert. Now, I fear, I am going to make it look as if it had crossed the road in front of a motor-car. What on earth are you gazing at? 'My pretty Jane, my dearest Jane, oh, never look so shy!'" trilled the doctor's wife. "Is anything wrong with the custard?"

"Flower! How are you to be ready at two sharp, when it is now 1.45 and you in that flimsy teagown?"

"My dear, I am not going. It is always wisest to adhere to first plans. I should love to go; but I could not possibly be ready now, and I cannot feel it right to leave the children when nurse--"

The door opened quickly and the doctor came in.

"Dearest!" cried Flower, "lunch after all? If only I had known you were coming I would have saved a wing--"

"No," said the doctor brightly, "no time for lunch to-day, and I hardly ought to have come upstairs. I have one more patient to see, and my hansom is at the door. But I wanted to say good-bye, dear, and also to say"--he dropped his voice slightly--"don't worry about not having been able to come. It was selfish of me to ask it of you, Flower And then I remembered, too, Jeanette was returning to Overdene to-day, so I ran up to bid her good-bye; a longer farewell than ours."

He went round the table and held out his hand to the baby's godmother.

"Good-bye, Jeanette. My love to the duchess. Look us up again when you can. And thank you for all your loving-kindness to me and mine."

The baby's godmother rose, and her hand went firmly home to his. Their eyes were almost on a level as they stood together.

"Good-bye, Boy," she said. "Don't over-work. Rest whenever possible. And remember you and yours are always dear to me. Let me do all I can."

A half-puzzled look leaped into his eyes at sound of the old name. It was many years since she had used it. He held her hand and looked at her with steady scrutiny for a moment. She met his gaze full and clear. She had nothing to hide.

"Good-bye, dear," said the doctor, then turned to his wife and hesitated.

"Good-bye, Flower," he said, rather wistfully.

But Flower objected to any demonstration in public. She waved her napkin.

"Good-bye, my lord," she said, "and while you are gallivanting about at Brighton, please remember your poor little domesticated wife, staying at home to tend house and children."

The door closed sharply behind the doctor. The baby's godmother bent over her plate in silence. The doctor's wife laughed, moved round the table to cut a slice of cake; laughed again, rather mirthlessly; then reiterated all the reasons why it was unreasonable of Deryck to have asked her to go to Brighton, and of Jane to have made such a point of her acquiescing, concluding with: "And why do you call him 'Boy'? Such a silly, inappropriate name! And oh, I wish I had gone! I hear his hansom. What a hateful world!

Eight o'clock in the evening.

The soft, green curtains were drawn in Flower's boudoir, shutting out the chill of the spring night-air. The electric light, shining through water-lilies, gleamed, soft and bright, from walls and writing-table. Flower had turned on every spray, hoping to lighten with exterior brightness the heavy shadow of disappointment and foreboding which had fallen upon her heart.

Since the doctor's hansom had tinkled rapidly away towards Victoria, all had gone wrong with the doctor's wife.

The baby's godmother, who had had so much to say in the morning, became absolutely monosyllabic, and conversation languished and died.

It was a relief to see her depart, with her neat, gentlemanly luggage, for Charing Cross; and yet it seemed desolate without her, and the klip-klop of her rapidly receding hansom made a second sound to be added to the series of knells which should ring in Flower's heart that day.

Turning from the hall-door, she ran up to the nursery, to find out at what hour nurse wished to be free for her outing, and found it was to-morrow for which nurse had asked, not to-day. Nurse was quite sure she had said Wednesday; how could she have said Tuesday, when the married niece to whom she was going always went out to tea on Tuesdays with her mother-in-law in Pimlico? But, of course, Master Deryck was hammering at the time, which may have accounted for his mamma not rightly catching the day. Emma came forward, a ready witness to the fact that nurse had most certainly said Wednesday and stuck to her guns, in spite of Dicky's quiet little voice asserting gravely from the position he had taken up at his mother's side: "You had gone down for the milk."

So the doctor's wife retreated in discomfiture and trailed slowly downstairs, facing the fact that the one reason which had seemed an insuperable obstacle to her falling in with her husband's wish and plan, had been a mistake--a stupid, careless mistake.

What would Jane say if she knew?

The tersely expressed remark with which Jane would most likely define the situation came into her mind, and she smiled a wan little smile; for the doctor's wife possessed "the saving sense of humour."

Then she felt more cheerful; rang and ordered the motor, and dressed for a spin in the Park.

But there, everything spoke of Brighton and the enjoyment she might have had with the doctor on this lovely day.

The sun was almost warm, and there was a pursuing scent of violets in the air. The crocuses were shouting to the sparrows, and the many-coloured hyacinths pushed their bright heads up through the brown earth, obedient to the beckoning of the sunshine. The whole park sang of springtime, of life and love and joys to come. And she longed for him beside her, with his keen enjoyment; with his quick way of pointing out a fresh beauty which she might otherwise have overlooked; with his knack of making you feel that you were alive, and living every minute to the full, receiving all it had to give; and, above all, with the ever-kindling adoration of his love wrapping her round and making her feel herself to be good and beautiful and worthy.

This afternoon she sadly needed reinstating in her own esteem. She knew she was being unjust to herself, but she felt selfish and inadequate and unworthy of him and of his love. It was Jane who had given her this uncomfortable feeling. It was odious of Jane to call him "Boy" and to pretend to understand his needs better than she, his own wife, did...Oh, if only she had gone to Brighton! If only she had gone! But it was not her fault that she had been unable to fall in with the plan at so short notice. Deryck himself had admitted that it was he who was to blame and she was not to worry. It was all very well for men to tell poor, anxious women not to worry. He might have known she would be wondering all the rest of the day how he was faring at Brighton; whether he was too tired to eat, and too tired to sleep. If only horrid old celebrities would die at once when they fell ill, instead of causing all this fuss and trouble...It would be a great pity to be too tired to eat, at the Metropole, where the cuisine was so perfect...It was trying of Deryck to rush off with only a packet of sandwiches in his bag, when, by taking five minutes more from his tiresome patients, he might have had the wing of a chicken and some salad...What a good lunch Jane had made! If she had really been so troubled at the thought of Deryck going off alone, she would hardly have hurried into the dining-room the moment the gong sounded, and given her mind so completely to her food. Jane was the sort of person who enjoyed putting other people in the wrong. So different from Deryck, who saw at once where the blame really belonged, and never laid it upon others. Which was it most right to believe--Deryck or Jane? Deryck, of course. Then why feel condemned any longer?...How lovely it would have been at Brighton! A selfish person would have gone at once, and not have been so considerate for tiresome old nurse, with her changeable plans. People who change their plans without any adequate reason do not deserve much consideration. If she had been a less devoted mother--How sweet it was of Dicky to point out that Emma had gone down for the milk! So like Deryck, who never would allow her to be unjustly put in the wrong. It was wonderful to be so loved by two such natures, father and son. A woman who was selfish or unworthy could never have drawn out such love. Jane was not in the least likely ever to marry. How disgusting of her to speak so approvingly of married women who ran after Deryck! Perhaps, after all, one of those creatures would happen to be at the Metropole this evening, and would insist upon dining with him at a table for two.

Another wan little smile flitted across Flower's face. The dimple the doctor loved peeped out. She knew so exactly how he would feel and look, and how he would describe the whole occurrence to her afterwards, giving her unconsciously the gratifying certainty that in her absence no other woman could by any possibility usurp her place.

The gliding motion of the car made her drowsy. She leaned back with closed eyes enjoying the sensation of speeding forward trusting to the deft vigilance of her chauffeur, not even seeing for herself the possible collisions avoided, the rapid half-turn which meant gliding from danger into safety.

The roar of traffic on the distant thoroughfare sounded like the breaking of the waves on the beach at Brighton. She fancied herself driving along the King's Road, alighting at the Metropole and meeting Deryck, to whom she would say: "Dearest, I came after all."

The sudden stopping of the car aroused her. They were held up for a moment in a crossstream of carriages near the main gate. She opened her eyes, and they fell upon a man and woman close by, sitting side by side in a victoria. The woman had a spray of white roses on her muff. Her companion bent towards her with a whispered word. She instantly detached a milk-white bud from the rest and handed it to him. Her look of blissful, submissive love as she did this, reached to the motor as an enlightening beam. The man took the rose, and fastened it carefully in his buttonhole without any expressed thanks; but, as he leaned back in the carriage beside her, his look of restful and masterful possession of herself and all she possessed seemed fully to content the woman. Her eyes and lips smiled tenderly; and, lifting the white roses, she laid them for a moment against her cheek.

"Home," said the doctor's wife, suddenly; and as the car turned obediently and sped out at the gate, the voice of the baby's godmother seemed to pursue her relentlessly:

"Give Deryck his white rose while he asks it of you. A man requires the instant fulfilment of his heart's desires. When he needs a thing, he needs it NOW!"

Ah, Jeanette, you were very faithful and you did what you could.

Arrived at home, the doctor's wife had tea in company with one or two choice spirits who dropped in to discuss the reception at Myra Ingleby's and the coming big affair at the Devonshires', and much interest was aroused by the fact that the doctor's wife was not going in her Paquin, but was to have an absolutely new creation by that clever old dear, Celestine.

After all, Jane, with her attention fixed upon apple-tart, and her mind so completely, blankly unsympathetic, was enough to depress anybody. Deryck would be the first to be indignant, if he knew what Jane had said.

Her visitors gone, she rang for the children, and the promised game of menagerie began, though their small minds had leaped to something else, which they assured her they would like much better. But she insisted on the menagerie, rapidly pulling all the stuffed animals out of the toy cupboard and hurrying them into the middle of the room. She felt unable to endure that no part of the programme she had explained to Deryck should take place, and for many years to come the children used to speak between themselves of menageries as "mother's favourite game."

All went well for a time. She enjoyed sitting on the soft carpet, with Blossom rolling over her, a creamy billow of cashmere and lace, and small Deryck in his black velvet suit, with his neat little black silk legs and buckled shoes, gravely marshalling the animals and explaining the mental condition of each, their relation to one another, and their past and present experiences.

But by and by he began asking awkward questions about Noah's Ark, and would not be put off with evasive answers. The doctor's wife felt helpless. She knew little of animals, less of ships, and nothing whatever of ancient preachers of righteousness. A complete and comprehensive knowledge of all three would have been required, satisfactorily to answer Dicky's questions. Harassed and worried, she entrenched herself hastily in what appeared to be an impregnable position.

"My dear little boy, how can I possibly tell? I was not there."

Deryck, the younger, was arranging that a bear who could only sit--who had been born sitting and stiffened in that position--should ride, in the procession, on the wide back of an elephant.

But he stopped the procession at this, sat the bear down, and came and stood opposite his mother, surveying her gravely, with his hands deep in the pockets of his velvet breeches. She sat on the floor beside the sofa, her lovely head thrown back against a cushion, looking up at him with eyes full of love and almost wistful tenderness.

His little face at first was rather hard and stern; but, as he looked at her, it softened. Her ignorance of Noah's domestic arrangements seemed to matter less. She was so lovely that it seemed unreasonable to expect her to be other things!

"You are not much use at answering questions, darling, are you?" he said gravely. "I must let the point stand over until father comes home. You see, you never seem to know about anything you have not done yourself."

"Dicky, you are not kind to poor mummie," protested Flower, piteously. "No one could possibly know what Noah did to the animals in the Ark when the large ones trod upon the small ones; or how the elephant was kept from stepping on the grasshopper."

"An average person would know," Dicky insisted, coldly.

"Dicky, you are most unkind! You imply that I am stupid."

"I am afraid you are, darling," said the quiet little voice; then added in a sudden burst of admiration: "But you are much too lovely for it to matter." And the miniature edition of the doctor fell upon her and clasped her in his arms.

"We must say our text to you, mother, as father is away," Dicky remarked a few minutes later, when bedtime came.

Flower assented without enthusiasm. She did not approve of nurse's plan of teaching the children a daily text, and always wondered why Deryck encouraged it. But she did not wish again to present herself to her little son's mind in a disappointing light.

Dicky arranged Baby Blossom "in a row" with himself. She immediately began to say:

"Do it--do it!" and had to be sternly hushed by her brother. Then, with his hands behind him and his head erect, Dicky announced impressively:

"Jesus said: 'If you shall ask anythink in My name, I will--now, baby--"

"Do it!" chirped Baby Blossom.

"Very nice," commented Flower, perfunctorily.

Baby Blossom, her duty done, took a header into the soft sofa-cushion, shrieking with delight and waving her plump little legs in the air. Deryck, though deserted, kept his place in the "row." He had not yet finished with the text.

"Do you consider it true, mother?" he questioned, and his dark eyes searched her face.

"Why--well--yes, dear, I suppose so," answered Flower, vaguely. "Baby, take care! You will break your neck!"

"What does 'anythink' mean?" inquired Dicky.

"You should not say 'anythink'; it is anything."

"It is 'anythink' in nurse's Bible," asserted Dicky, "and I suppose it means all that comes into your head. Anything you can think of."

"I believe," said Flower, with a sudden inspiration, "that it merely refers to the religious experiences of the apostles."

"Goodness," said Dicky, in nurse's best manner when arguing with Marsdon, "then why don't it say so?" Adding, almost immediately, in his own quiet, rather sad little voice: "And what good is it to us, then, mummie?"

"None whatever," replied Flower, with decision, rising from the floor, and hugging baby. She felt she was scoring now, and reasserting her mental superiority. "That is why I object to people teaching such words to children," she remarked from among Blossom's curls.

The small Deryck was silent. He stood very erect and gave a sharp pull to the front of his little white waistcoat; swallowing hard, as if something had hurt him. Flower felt slightly uncomfortable at being thus suddenly left with the last word. Dicky was so very masculine, and she was not at all sure of her own theology.

The silence, growing strained, was relieved by the advent of nurse, who carried off Baby Blossom and bade Dicky make haste and say good-night to his mamma and come along. He turned to her gravely. "Good-night, mother," he said.

Flower embraced him effusively and suggested a visit to the Zoo, now the warm weather was coming. Dicky allowed himself to be kissed, but ignored the remark about the Zoo. When he reached the door he turned and looked back bravely.

"Mother," he said, "I don't know about the 'postles, but I think I ought to tell you that I have made that text my hown. Nurse says you can always make a text your hown if it meets your need. I feel this meets my need!"

He held his head bravely, though flinching a little, as if dreading his mother's scorn or laughter.

But Flower did not laugh. She looked across the room at the brave little figure, in blank astonishment. The sincerity of his convictions reached and convinced her. But what an extraordinary old Puritan nurse must be! At last she smiled at Dicky reassuringly.

"That may be true, darling. But my dear little boy, you haven't any 'needs.'"

"Oh, haven't I!" said Dicky, as one who would say, "That is all you know!" Then, taking hold of the outer handle, he drew the door slowly behind him, turning, before it quite closed, to fling back over his shoulder: "I need an entirely new inside to my rabbit."

Left alone, another remark of Dicky's returned to Flower's mind, and added to her despondency.

"You never seem to know about anything you have not done yourself," her little son had said; and this assertion let in a sudden light of revelation upon her whole mental standpoint. How true it was, how sickeningly, horribly true!

What did she know of Deryck's work? Of all the people who came and went in the rooms below? Of the lectures he gave, or the essays he wrote--eagerly attended, eagerly read, by hundreds? What share had she in the great interests of her husband's life? Jane had tried to speak of them more than once, and she had changed the subject.

And sitting there, deeply convicted by the grave little voice of her own tiny boy, she remembered times when Deryck had tried to talk to her of these questions so near his heart--of the methods he had thought out for curing diseased or weakened wills, for restoring shattered nerves and unbalanced brains, for giving a new lease of sane and healthy life to those who now walked fettered in the valley of a shadow worse than death.

And she had taken no interest, had not tried to understand, had listened without hearing, and, at the first opportunity, had talked of her own trivial doings. Was not an intelligent sympathy with his work one of the white roses for which Deryck might well ask?

Slowly she passed to her bedroom and dressed for the evening's function, wishing all the while that she need not go; then partook of an early dinner alone, her thoughts far away. Now it was eight o'clock, and she sat in her boudoir waiting until it should be time to be whirled through the noisy, lighted streets, to join the gay throng at Lady Ingleby's crush.

Oh! how different to have walked on the pier with him, nestling into her furs, enjoying the cold night air and salty smell of brine and seaweed! And then to have returned to their warm, bright room, Deryck, pleased as any schoolboy to have her away without her maid, amusing her by his delightful attempts to take Marsdon's place and assist at her toilet.

The fire, which had received so much unconscious attention from the baby's godmother that morning, fell together in the grate, signifying its need of coal. The doctor's wife rose and ministered to it, then knelt on the hearthrug and watched the brightening flame. Her mind had gone forward in its contemplation of that evening which might have been. Her eyes were soft and tender. Her sweet lips parted gently. Her hair gleamed golden in the firelight.

How wonderful was his love! Jane was right when she said: "He will always be a boy where he loves. He is so young in heart; so eternally, passionately young." How did Jane guess it? Only she, his wife, could know it to be true.

Seven years of married life had only added to the wonder and romance of Deryck's love. Each time he took her away with him, was like a fresh honeymoon, more perfect than the last. Why did she forget when she came home how sweet it was to be away with him? Why had she defrauded herself and him of the perfect hours which might have been theirs this day? Why had she failed him in his time of need?

Oh, selfish! shallow! self-absorbed! Loving to be loved; not rising to the joy of loving. Taking his care and thought and adoration as her due, giving no tender service in return. She bowed her head upon her arms.

"Oh, Boy," she said, "not Jane's, but mine! Oh, Boy, it shall be different! You will come back to find a wife who understands; a wife whose hands are filled with roses white, ready to give them now."

The door bell sounded. She rose and wrapped her cloak about her. She had little inclination for Lady Ingleby's party, but he would be thinking of her there, and anywhere would do to pass the hours till his return.

Stoddart brought in a telegram, retired softly, and closed the door. She looked at it with a sudden thrill of comprehending joy. A good-night message from Deryck? He nearly always sent her one. Ah! if she had remembered to do the same for him! She glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes past eight. Too late to get one through.

She slipped off her cloak and sank into an easy-chair, holding the unopened message in her hand. She wished to realise to the full the newness of what it meant to receive words from him. Then, when her heart was ready, she opened the orange envelope gently, and drew out the folded paper.

It seemed a long message. She read it through once. She read it through again. Then she sat quite still and listened to the ticking of the clock. Then she looked at it again, and heard a frightened voice, quite unlike her own, reading it aloud:

From the Commissioner of Police, Brighton. Regret to announce Dr. Deryck Brand knocked down by motor-car corner King's Road. Killed instantly. Wire instructions.

She rose and walked forward to the door. It opened as she reached it, and Stoddart stood before her, saying the brougham waited. She waved him aside.

"I shall not want it to-night, thank you." She passed into her room and closed the door. The electric light over her dressing-table shone brightly. She switched it off. Then, in the utter darkness, she felt her way to the empty bed--his bed and hers--laid down the telegram upon it, and stood quite still.

"O God," she whispered, "help me to think...I am not clever. My little boy thinks me stupid, and my big boy thinks me lovely; but Thou knowest my loveliness seems to me but filthy rags. But now, in my hour of need, oh, merciful God, let me think!...There is something I want to remember...Ah!" she almost shrieked, "the wheels of time! The wheels of time! Never move backwards, they say; always forwards--always forwards. And that is why it is too late. O God, too late, too late! My roses ready--ready for him; but too late... What did the children say? 'If ye shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.' And Dicky says anything means anything we need. God in heaven! I need the wheels of time to move back six hours, that I may go with him."

She flung herself upon her knees beside the bed.

"O God, O God, in Jesus' name, put back the wheels of time, that I may go with him!"

She shrieked; then crammed the quilt into her mouth, lest they should hear and find her there.

"O God, O God--in Jesus' name--the wheels of time--back--back--that I may go with him!"

She tore down her lovely hair and wound it round her hands. The pain kept her from swooning, helped her to think.

"O God in heaven, in Jesus' name--put back the wheels of time--that I may go with him. If ye shall ask anything--'anything' means anything, Dicky; not mere religious experiences, but anything we want! O God, I want another chance! Back--back--that I may go with him!"

Then she knelt very still, deathly still, while her heart thundered in her ears, and the room rocked to and fro. But she clung to the bedclothes and knelt on.

The street door banged. She heard a step come up the stairs.

She cried again: "O God, O God--the wheels of time-back--back!"

The door opened and closed. Some one stood just within, breathing quickly, listening intently.

Then the doctor's voice said: "In the dark, my darling? Why, what is the matter?" And the room flashed into light.

"O God," she said, "O God! The wheels of time--turned back--that I--may go with him!"

His arms were round her; he had lifted her bodily and placed her on the bed. His face was shocked and startled. He unwound the lovely hair from the clenched hands and noted how much of it fell away in scattered wisps to the floor. He wiped the blood from those sweet lips, bitten through. Then he knelt down, gathered her to his heart, and spoke very gently.

"Flower, my Flower! Something has frightened you. You have had a shock. But it is all right now, my heart's dearest. I have come back to you. Listen, beloved. I was so pleased, because I got through the consultation earlier than I expected, and found, if I made a dash for it, I could just catch the fast train up. I dined on board--listen, Flower! Don't keep on whispering, child. Never mind the wheels of time. Listen to me! I meant to hurry home and dress, and give you a surprise by turning up at the Inglebys'. But then I felt too chilled, and determined I must stay at home and have something hot. Some other chap in a hurry--a doctor who left before me--went off with my overcoat, and I had to turn out without one. No time to make inquiries. Such a cold fellow has come back to his little girl. Won't she see about warming him?"

The gay voice ceased. The set face bent over her. The quick professional eye noted each rigid muscle of that poor agonised face. He laid his lips on hers, with one broken sob.

"Oh, my beloved! For God's sake--" Then Flower lifted up her hand and pointed to the foot of the bed. He looked and saw the open telegram. Reaching with one long arm, he took it up and read it.

"Good heavens!" he said. "Run down and killed. The poor chap who took my coat. My pocket-book was in it, and a bundle of letters." Then he bent over her once more, and whispered in a tone of awed wonder:

"Oh, Flower! You cared like this?" And the wonder in his voice, the almost boyish surprise, saved Flower.

She turned her face to his breast and wept and wept; wept herself to calmness, and sobbed herself back into the haven of love, the earthly Paradise of her heart's peace.

When at last she found speech possible, she whispered: "If I had gone--"

"Hush, my own perfect one," the doctor said. "You were quite right."

But she laid her hand over his mouth, with a swift, silencing gesture; then took his hand, and kissed it, with infinite humility and tenderness.

"Deryck," she said, "it is your love which has been perfect. I have been quite wrong. But God, in His infinite mercy, has heard my prayer, and given me another chance. Oh, my beloved, I have but a poor white rose to offer you--a crushed and faded thing; but it is all your own. Give me another chance--oh, Deryck--a chance to serve. It is all I ask, it is all I want--to serve; because now, indeed, I truly love."

Then the doctor knew that at last life held for him all that his heart had craved through hungry years.

"Mary," he said, "oh, Mary!"

He dropped his head upon her breast, in sudden silence; and her white hands, like roses, clasped it softly, and lay upon the darkness of his hair.

It befell on a dark November afternoon, early in the century, that I--Simon Simple, barrister-at-law--was journeying in the old stage omnibus, from Westminster to Clapham.

It was barely five o'clock when I swung myself into the coach, and passing up to the end, took my seat in the furthest corner, in order that my fellow-travellers should not stumble over my long legs, as they passed in and out on the way.

We had rumbled over the bridge before the clock struck five; and yet it was quite dark, and most dismally dank and foggy.

The oil lamps were alight on the Stockwell Road, and, as we passed them at intervals, sent fitful gleams of yellow light into the otherwise dark interior of the coach.

The guard outside stamped his feet, and beat his chest, and blew husky frozen blasts upon his horn.

And I fell to thinking, with pleasant anticipation, of the good hot cup of tea which my aunt Priscilla would presently prepare for me, and of how my cousin Pauline's eyes would shine in the firelight as she sat upon the fenderstool, burning her pretty cheeks, and making my toast. For Pauline was not only my cousin, but also my promised bride; and we were to be married, she and I, as soon as I could succeed in making somewhat of an income by my profession.

I was a young barrister then, with an abundance of good brains in my head, and a remarkable scarcity of golden guineas in my pocket. I knew that my legal judgment was as sound as that of any judge on the bench; and that my knowledge of the law and my shrewd power of applying it to my client's interests would have been as good and as keen as that of any senior at the bar (had I had any clients). All this I knew, and so did aunt Priscilla, and so did Pauline; but, unfortunately no one else seemed to know it, and important briefs failed to come my way.

Nevertheless, youth and hope generally go hand in hand; and Pauline's eyes grew brighter every day; and aunt Priscilla used to fold her mittened hands and say complacently: "When the jewel Chance shall lie in our Simon's path, he will not fail to pick it up." She made this remark so often, and in so precisely the same tone of voice as that with which she led our family devotions, that Pauline and I grew to regard it in the light of a text of Scripture, and I felt that one of the prophets had indeed prophesied well of me.

But while I thus dozed in my dark corner of the coach, musing on my love, and my work and my hopes, to the accompaniment of the rumbling which sounded dim and distant through my dreams, my fellow-passengers had alighted one by one; also I might have dozed on in peace and solitude until I reached my destination on the further side of Clapham Common, had not the coach suddenly stopped; and the guard, opening wide the door, turned his lantern full up the steps, to aid the entrance of a lady passenger.

I heard the rustle of a silken petticoat and leaned forward to observe her as she stepped in; for, even when one has a little girl of one's own--who will ever be fairer than all others--one should not miss an opportunity of seeing anything worth seeing.

But I might have spared myself the pains. One glance proved the newcomer to be a middle-aged angular female, of the species spinster; tall, sallow, and big-boned; richly dressed in a green silk gown, a white fur tippet, and a green silk bonnet, of the shape called by the flippant "coalscuttle," from its resemblance to that useful, though scarcely ornamental, article of furniture.

This much I saw, by the light of the guard's lamp; then he banged to the door, and we were left in darkness.

At first, on entering, the good lady had made as if she would have passed up to the end of the vehicle; and I feared lest, taking me in the dim light for an empty seat, she would deposit herself upon my knee. But just as I was about to cough loudly, and thus make her aware of my presence, she changed her mind and took a seat, on my side of the coach, but near the door.

She evidently fancied herself alone, for she made various remarks as we went along, such as: "Ah me! What a night!" "Mercy, how flustered I did feel! " "Alack! that I must drag this most becoming gown through London mire." "Plague take the coachman for failing to meet me as appointed;" and I could tell, by the pitying tenderness of her tone, that she believed she was addressing herself alone. However, she shortly relapsed into silence, and we rumbled on towards Clapham Common.

I was about to close my own eyes, the better to behold my Pauline's grey ones, when my attention was attracted by something bright, resting upon the cushion on the back of the seat opposite. These old-fashioned vehicles, unlike the cheap omnibus of to-day, were well cushioned and padded, and upholstered in dark blue carriage cloth. This curious bright object appeared to be lying on the cushion, about half way up the back of the seat. It was the size and shape of a large filbert, and gleamed against the dark background like a beautiful pearl or a bright cornelian. It only shone out as we passed the oil lamps at intervals, or when an old watchman turned his lantern on the coach as it rumbled by.

I began to feel an interest in this stray jewel. It brought to my mind aunt Priscilla's text about the jewel, Chance. I fell to wondering whose it had been, and how they came to leave it there, and I said to myself that I would pick it up, on my way out, and examine it.

Presently I perceived that the maiden lady in the further corner had caught sight of it also. The guard's lantern threw a dim light on her place near the door, and I could see the shadowy outline of her aggressive green silk bonnet, as she leaned forward, intently watching it. Each time we passed a lamp it glittered; and she leaned further forward in her seat; and at last I saw her lift her mittened hand and point towards it, with a long inquiring finger.

Now I had seen the jewel first, and I was mighty curious to discover what it could be; but, manlike, I did keep my hands in my pockets, and a quiet tongue in my head.

Not so the spinster! She commenced an inward sepulchral whispering, and the long finger of her right hand twitched as she pointed it at the jewel.

"A gem!" she ejaculated excitedly. "A lost and forgotten gem! A lonely jewel in a stage coach. Strange! Prithee fair jewel, what art thou?"

A period of darkness, between the lamps, during which I meditated upon the wearying foolishness of a woman's remarks when she believes herself to be alone.

We drew slowly near another lamp. The gem gleamed out, and seemed to twinkle with an added lustre.

Then the spinster lady whispered tragically: "I must touch it, have it, hold it!" and rose up in her place, tall, gaunt, determined.

The object of our mutual interest was almost opposite to me, but some distance from her corner. She advanced towards it carefully, with outstretched finger.

The lamplight died away. The coach was left in darkness.

I knew she still stood waiting; and I scarce breathed, in my dark corner.

Suddenly a chance watchman turned on his lantern. The jewel shone out more brightly than ever.

With a rapid forward movement, the tall lady leaned across, and poked it with her finger.

Gentle reader! That jewel was a glass eye; and, awful to relate, the setting of that supposed stray jewel, was the head of an old gentleman! A small, nervous, old gentleman, completely clothed in black, and sitting so quiet and still, in the depths of his own comfortable seat, that neither the spinster nor I had been aware of his presence. Whether he was dozing with his other eye, I know not; but, be that as it may, he was perfectly unaware of the interest his glass one had awakened in his fellow passengers; and he was taken completely, horribly, appallingly by surprise, when this tall gaunt figure bent towards him, and poked an aggressive finger full in his eye.

He hopped up forthwith, uttering a yell like a frantic hyena, frightening the spinster clean out of her wits, and, making for the door, fell over my outstretched legs, straight into the poor lady's arms. He thereupon dealt her a blow in the body, which returned her, in a doubled up condition, to her seat; and yelling: "Murder! Thieves! Help!" speedily brought the coach to a standstill.

The old guard let down the window, inquiring what might be the matter.

"Let me out!" roared the little man. "There is a mad woman in here! She is trying to rob and murder me! Let me out, I say! Good heavens! I, Sir Benjamin Cossett, to be thus shut in with a female maniac. Let me out!"

The guard hastened to open the door, and the little gentleman bounded into the road, like an india-rubber ball.

The guard commenced attempting to assure him that the good lady could have meant no harm.

"Harm!" gasped the little man, as he stood panting in the road; "I tell you, fellow, she is a criminal lunatic. She assaulted me savagely, and on my endeavouring to escape, seized me in a strangulating embrace. Get in again? Good heavens, no! I shall go on foot the rest of the distance, over the Common, to Lawyer Clawby's. A sorry way to treat one of His Majesty's Judges! And hark you, fellow, mark where that woman alights, and bring me word to-morrow at the mansion of my friend, Mr. Lawyer Clawby."

After which, waiting for no reply from old Jonas, the agitated little judge hastened away, and was lost to view in the darkness.

Meanwhile, the poor lady lay, well-nigh prostrate, where she had fallen; her green bonnet crushed out of all shape, her face covered with her lace handkerchief, from behind which flimsy shelter she emitted sounds which seemed to me closely to resemble the proud cackling of a hen, who, having laid an egg, and thus accomplished the task appointed her by destiny, desires to inform the world of her praiseworthy act. Since then, fair reader, I have been a married man; and I therefore know now, what you have divined already, that the spinster had taken refuge in hysterics, a course usually pursued by ladies, when all other lines of action fail them. But I was young then, and a bachelor; and I listened, wonderingly, unable to associate so queer a sound with anything more tragic than the triumphant fowl.

At sound of Lawyer Clawby's name, she gave a kind of gasp, and thereafter remained motionless, in breathless desperate silence, until the judge's footsteps died away, and old Jonas, banging to the door, with a remark which must not be chronicled, we rumbled on our way.

Meanwhile, I, in my dark corner, had in no way revealed my presence; therefore, the poor frightened lady, gasped and crowed, and ejaculated, all unconscious that she was not alone. Presently she fumbled in her reticule, and I could distinguish the chink of gold. A few moments later, the coach stopped; the guard opened the door, and shining his lantern full on the weeping lady, said somewhat tartly: "Your destination, Mistress Kesia."

She drew her tippet round her, and hastened to alight; and, as she did so, I heard the sound of gold passing from her hand into that of the guard.

"I hope ye weren't frightened. Mistress Kesia?" he said, in deferential tones. "His lordship had taken over many prawns with his luncheon, I'm thinking, and suffered from the nightmare; for never a trace of any mad woman have I seen in my coach this night."

She bade him good evening, in an agitated voice, and vanished into the gloom of a large stone portico.

As I was leaving the coach some few minutes later, old Jonas stopped me, his small ferret-like eyes twinkling with curiosity, from under his shaggy brows.

"Ah, Master Simple," said he, "you lay low, did ye? Now, by old Harry, what in the name of wonder, did the good lady do, to fluster up his lordship, and create so mighty a disturbance?"

I explained the matter in as few words as might be; and old Jonas well nigh sat down in the mud, so side-splitting was his laughter.

"And now tell me, Jonas," said I, "why was the fair jewel-hunter so alarmed at mention of Sir Benjamin's destination, and Mr. Lawyer Clawby's name?"

Jonas went off into fresh contortions.

"Bless you, Master Simple," he said at last, in a weak voice, and holding his waistcoat with both hands. "Why? Because she is Mistress Kesia Clawby, Lawyer Clawby's eldest daughter!"

As I turned in at aunt Priscilla's gate, and ran up the steps, I left old Jonas leaning up against the wheel, and laughing in so excessive a manner, that when the coach commenced to move on, he straightway took a seat in the road.

Now it so happened that I myself had an invitation to a soirée at the Clawby mansion that night, to have the honour of meeting Sir Benjamin Cossett, and other legal lights; and much discussion had taken place in our little circle as to whether or not I should go. Aunt Priscilla maintained it to be my duty, as a possible means of advancement in my profession; Pauline would have it that all the Clawby girls were giddy flirts; and she needed Simon to hold skeins of wool, and sit beside her while she worked, just on that particular evening of all others.

Now the "Clawby girl" I had just seen was certainly not a "giddy flirt"; and the sight of her and Sir Benjamin, renewing their kind acquaintance, promised to be so interesting that--though I had been all on Pauline's side in the morning--I now changed round, and viewed the matter in the wise light set forth by aunt Priscilla.

This dutiful conduct highly gratified my kind relative, who--when I came arrayed in my best evening attire, to bid her good night--patted my hand fondly, and repeated her text about the jewel of Chance, little guessing how appropriate any mention of a jewel appeared to me just then.

My sweet Pauline pouted not a little, and threw a skein of wool in my face, when I went for to kiss her; but she ran after me down the stairs and did fully atone in the shadow of the hall door; though I discovered later in the evening, that she had made use of that opportunity, to slip the skein of wool into my pocket, which skein I afterwards flourished before an assembly of fair ladies in Lawyer Clawby's drawing-room, supposing it to have been my finest lace handkerchief.

As I made my way through the crowded reception rooms at the Clawby mansion, I soon caught sight of Mistress Kesia, and recognised her instantly, although the green bonnet had made way for a becoming head-dress of white lace, surmounted by a diamond tiara, and she was resplendent in flowing robes of yellow satin brocade.

I made my way, with all convenient speed, in her direction; and soon found myself wedged into a corner exactly behind the ottoman upon which she was seated.

Miss Kesia Clawby was exerting all her charms to please and captivate the guest of the evening, no less a personage than His Majesty's smallest and most pompous judge, Sir Benjamin Cossett.

Very different he appeared to the frightened, desperate, little gentleman in the coach, who had disappeared into the foggy night, all bespattered with mud, and livid with terror. His black velvet coat, and silken breeches, fitted his dapper figure to perfection; while his diamond buckles, silver buttons, and spotless lawn frills, relieved his otherwise somewhat sombre attire.

He seemed quite fascinated by his host's eldest daughter. He had conducted her to this secluded corner, and placed her upon a low seat; and now stood before her, one hand gracefully thrust into his breast, drawn up to his full height, after the manner of little men, who desire to make a large impression upon tall women. He was giving her a tragic and marvellous account of his shocking adventure of the afternoon, and enlarging greatly upon his own personal courage, and the coolness he had displayed under such trying circumstances, and upon the over-chivalrous tendencies of his disposition, which had prevented him from handing over the dangerous female to the stern arm of the law.

"But ah! my dear madam," I heard him say; "justice will overtake her yet. She has yet to learn that His Majesty's judges cannot be assaulted and insulted with impunity. If that daring female ever ventures into my presence, I shall recognise her instantly. There was an obnoxious atmosphere about her of which I should be conscious in a moment. Even in this crowded room, even under the sweet influence of your gracious presence, I should raise my head, and, gazing around with the calm majesty of the law, should say: 'That odious woman is here!'

As you may suppose, Mistress Kesia enjoyed herself finely, during this beautifully delivered peroration. Her complexion went the exact colour of pale primrose soap, and the long forefinger of her right hand, kept on pointing from sheer nervousness. But little Sir Benjamin was greatly flattered by the extreme emotion she displayed, attributing it solely to consideration for himself; and, bending over her most tenderly, begged her to forget the tale, which was indeed too alarming for her delicate ears.

His glass eye looked fishy, and decidedly the worse for the energetic poke administered by the lady's finger; but his natural one twinkled and beamed with kindly feeling, and his whole face and figure betokened conscious pride at the evidently strong impression he had made upon the fair damsel before him.

And then poor Miss Kesia found a voice, albeit a somewhat shaky one; and called on heaven not to let the vile wretch go unpunished; and used so many hard names about the creature, that I could scarce believe mine own ears. And after this, she and Sir Benjamin got on better than ever, and he, taking a high chair, sat himself down close beside her, and called her "sweet Mistress Kesia;" and when I saw her looking up at him, and clasping her hands, and sitting as low as possible upon the ottoman, and saying "Ah, Sir Benjamin," and "Oh, Sir Benjamin," and "Did you indeed, Sir Benjamin?" I perceived what sort of card the good lady was playing, and that she meant to own that jewel of a glass eye after all.

Not many weeks later we heard the news of the betrothal of Mistress Kesia Clawby to Sir Benjamin Cossett; the wedding being fixed for an early date. I had become better acquainted with the Clawby family since attending their soireé, although old Clawby had given me nothing as yet save painful and patronising claps on the back, and promises of good cases some day.

Now, as time went on, I was invited to a private view of the magnificent presents received by Mistress Kesia; and this invitation furnished me with an idea.

I went to a jeweller in town, and had a fine cornelian cut into the exact shape of an eye, and set as a pendant. I ordered a case to be made for it, lined with dark blue carriage cloth; and I forwarded it by post to Mistress Kesia Clawby, accompanied by this simple inscription: "With the congratulations of a fellow-passenger."

When I went to view the presents, mine was not displayed amongst them; but I overheard one of the younger Misses Clawby, telling a lady friend about it, and how greatly it had agitated and upset poor Kesia; she having felt it to be an unkind reflection upon Sir Benjamin's glass eye, over which she was almost morbidly sensitive; and most stringent inquiries were being made, to discover the perpetrator of so unseemly a joke.

When next I saw Sir Benjamin and Mistress Kesia, they were standing together in Clapham Parish Church, and he was endowing her with all his worldly goods, glass eye included; and she was bashfully murmuring the sentences which made her Lady Cossett.

At the reception afterwards, given with much splendour at the Clawby mansion, I contrived to have a word with the bride.

"May I be allowed to congratulate your ladyship?" I said, speaking for her ear alone. "After all, you possess the jewel, to have and to hold."

She started, and looked at me with terror in her eyes.

"What mean you, Master Simple?" she said in a convulsive whisper.

"Merely, my lady," I made answer, "that I wish the Law had an eye into which I could poke my finger, and thereby win the jewel of a chance to rise in my profession, and have some prospect of driving my own coach some day."

Here others came between us, and I, bowing low, turned away; but e'er the happy couple took their departure, I saw Lady Cossett draw old Clawby aside and make him a request in a most urgent and instant manner, and as old Clawby nodded consent, I fancied he looked my way. A few days later, he put into my hands one of the best cases to be had.

When it came on, after some delay, as chance ordained, it was tried before Justice Cossett, just returned from his honeymoon.

Some kind fairy had said a word in his ear, for he turned his glass eye on all the best points of the other side; but saw mine in a moment, and made much of them; giving me, in the end, a big and brilliant win.

This was my start. As the prophets had prophesied, when the jewel of Chance lay in my path, I had not failed to pick it up.

But in the midst of my success, my conscience smote me, seeing how worried and anxious Lady Cossett oft-times looked, and how she avoided me, like the plague, when we chanced to attend the same receptions.

Also, I had told my sweet Pauline the whole story, and she--after nearly dying of laughter--had suddenly, with perplexing rapidity of transition, dissolved into tears; and then, in an outburst of most unexpected anger, had rated me soundly for what she pleased to call my wicked, worldly, grasping, heartless conduct; and vowed she would never marry me, to live on the proceeds of the poor lady's terrors. Her lovely grey eyes flashed; her little foot beat the floor and I loved her all the better for giving me so sound a rating. So I wound her soft brown hair around my fingers, and promised to make all right for Lady Cossett.

Not long after, I chanced to be prosecuting before Sir Benjamin Cossett, a thorough London rogue,--a lank, lean, chap, who had perpetrated most evils under the sun. In an exceptionally brilliant cross-examination, I elicited the fact that, besides his other crimes it was he who, masquerading in female attire, had concealed himself in the Clapham Coach, and attacked Sir Benjamin Cossett, on a dark night in November. I even extorted such details as that he assumed, to aid his wicked purpose, a green silk bonnet of a large pattern, a fur tippet, and a silken gown.

Sir Benjamin's excitement was tremendous. He avowed afterwards that he had felt, from the first entrance of the prisoner into court, an undefinable sensation of having met with him before, under horrible circumstances; that his face and figure gradually grew more terribly familiar, until at last my brilliant forensic skill unveiled the fearful truth. He gave him the heaviest sentence the law allowed; and none but I knew why the culprit accepted it with gratitude.

My fortune was made. Sir Benjamin asked me to his house, and pointed me out as the rising barrister of the day.

A few weeks later my little girl and I were married at the parish church; she bestowing on me the most precious jewel this wide world contained,--her own sweet self.

Lady Cossett was pleased to grace our wedding, all smiles and affability. Sir Benjamin was there also, strutting about like a proud bantam, and making it evident to all assembled, that he honestly thought himself six feet high, and his tall lady barely five.

When the coach, in which I was to take my love away, was already at the door, and while aunt Priscilla was upstairs, assisting her to don her travelling attire, Lady Cossett drew me on one side, and, tapping my coat sleeve with her fan, said playfully:

"In truth, Master Simon, it strikes me you are not so simple as our good old nurses would have had us to believe!"

I made reply, bowing low before her:

"You praise me too highly, my lady."

"But tell me," she said seriously, a troubled look shadowing her kindly face, "did not Sir Benjamin sentence that poor man more hardly than his real offence deserved? I cannot but feel sad when I think of him in prison."

"Madam," I said, "to you I owe an explanation of the matter. I, and I alone, had discovered against that fellow sure proof of an offence which would have been a hanging matter. I saw him in the prison, and he was thankful to find that having once worn a green silk bonnet and assaulted His Majesty's judge in a coach, would save him the gallows. So your ladyship's mind may be easy on that score."

She heaved a deep sigh of relief, and then said gaily;

"Well, Master Simple, count on me always as your very good friend; and I have here a little private wedding gift for your sweet bride, and also one for yourself, which will, I hope, enable you to have as fine a coach as you please, to yourselves, with no fear of mad fellow-passengers, during your honeymoon journey. And more I cannot wish you, than that you may be as happy as are my good Sir Benjamin and I."

She slipped a little packet into my hand, and, with another kind smile, turned away.

My Pauline's step was on the stair; but e'er I turned to go and meet her, and pass her little hand proudly through my arm I had time to glance at Lady Cossett's present.

It was the eye-shaped cornelian pendant but now set in fine brilliants, and wrapped in a cheque on her ladyship's bankers, for one hundred pounds!

And this is how I found my jewel, Chance, in a stage-coach; and, as aunt Priscilla had oft-times prophesied, when it lay in my path, I did not fail to pick it up.

The soldier's baby girl, in her blue print frock and white pinafore, firmly fixed into a high chair, sat up at the kitchen table, eagerly awaiting her dinner.

The high chair had seen its best days at the Rectory, where a succession of little feet had been planted upon the foot-board, adventurous bodies had been kept in place by the mahogany bar, and small, untiring fingers had screwed and unscrewed the brass knobs.

But when the final Rectory baby had been promoted to the school-room, and the pretty under-nurse had married the stalwart soldier who, having passed unscathed through the South African War and a long term of foreign service, had returned to her faithful, and eager for banns--the high nursery chair, into which she had so often fastened her little charges, had been presented to Polly as a keepsake.

"To remember us by!" shouted half a dozen gay young voices, as they trooped up the cottage garden path, carrying the chair between them.

"To remember us by!" they proclaimed--with the cheerful certainty of extreme youth, that all memory of them would be desirable and blessed--as they raced the chair headlong into Polly's shining kitchen.

"To remember us by!" they explained again, as they bore it through in triumph to Polly's little parlour, and found it a place of honour there.

They stood round, watching while Polly dusted it and rubbed it up, in the zealous way they all remembered, giving extra attention to well-known dents, which no amount of polishing could remove. Their faces glowed as Polly, in simple words, expressed her pleasure, declaring that to have the high chair here, almost made her feel as if she were back at the Rectory.

"Don't you wish you was?" inquired Master Benny--the most recent occupant of the chair--his head thrown back, his masterful little chin cleft by its dimple, his eyes shining with the certainty that, of all men, he was, to Polly, most desirable.

"Nonsense!" said Miss Lilian, crushingly. "She has Jim. And you know what old Jabez said at the wedding: 'If ever there was a love-match'!"

"She has her kitchen," said fat little Miss Constance, "where she can play at cooking, all day long, with those lovely pots and pans."

"She has a shed," said Master Eric, "where she can chop wood all day long, if she likes."

Little Benny had been ruminating. He lifted his eyes to Polly's face.

"What is a love-match? " he asked. "Is it the same as a safety-match?"

Polly caught him up in her arms, and kissed his solemn little face.

"Yes, Master Benny," she said. "That's just exactly what it is. A love-match is a safety-match. It makes a woman feel safer than she ever thought to feel, in this world of ups-and-downs."

She hid her glowing face behind his curls. In one short week, her soldier-man had taught her many wonderful things.

Miss Lilian stood on one foot and gazed at her, in dawning comprehension.

The remainder of the Rectory party became restive, and intimated a wish to explore the woodshed.

Little Benny slipped his arms around her neck.

"Is I still your Best of Boys, my Polly?" he whispered, seductively. "Shall you always--always--love me?"

Polly hugged him. "Of course I shall, Master Benny-Boy! Of course I shall!"

Then the budding manhood in him awoke. "Better'n Jim?" he insisted, with authority.

"Come and see the woodshed," cried Polly. "And, if we open the door very softly, we may see bright eyes peeping out from under the wood, and hear a scamper."

A wise woman can always distract a man's attention from an unanswered question.

Master Benny was the first to bound--on tiptoe--into the woodshed; and Jim's young wife met her soldier-man on his return from work, as he swung up the garden path in the sunset, with no shade upon her conscience. Master Benny was no longer Polly's "Best of Boys"; but--there was not any need to tell him so.

For a year the high chair stood in its place of honour in the parlour--a thing which had apparently outlived its usefulness; a relic of times gone by.

Then Polly placed it in a secluded corner, out of sight; yet polished it more carefully, and touched it with renewed interest and affection. And, presently, a little child came to the cottage home; and, in course of time, grew old enough to be fastened into the Rectory chair; whereupon Polly apprehended very clearly the difference between meum and tuum. Past visions of the Rectory young ladies and gentlemen faded forever from the chair when her own baby filled it, hammering the tray with her china mug just as Master Benny had hammered it with his silver tankard; her baby--who looked up at her with Jim's eyes, clear and blue, from under a tumbled mass of soft fair hair, just what her own would be, if it were not smoothed back, neatly.

The coming of the little child filled up her time, which before had been scarce full enough; for Jim had, from the first, put down his foot quite firmly on the question of any going out to work on Polly's part.

"No, my girl," he had said; "I shouldn't have married you, if I hadn't known I could keep you, without you lending a hand. Your work's in the home. Away in the Eastern desert, where the sand burns through your boots by day, and the great silver stars are so uncanny large at night and hang so low that it seems, if they swing any lower, they must drop out--we used to start singing:

'Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.'

And I used to say to myself: 'There'll be no place like home, to me, with my Polly in it.' And no more there ain't. But--suppose I came home from work and up the garden path, tired and glad, and found the house dark, the door locked, and the key gone. And suppose the neighbours called to me: 'Your wife ain't back from work yet.' What sort of a 'no place like home' would that be, d'you think? That's the kind of thing which drives a man to turn and look for lights and welcome, where they keep open house. And if once he starts doing that, bad times begin. Now, Polly my dear," said her soldier-man, "I'll not deny that I did hear Parson mention 'for better for worse'; and it's an understood thing that the Parson has it all his own way in church, and a man mayn't express a contrary opinion. However, a man's thoughts are his own, even in church; and when Parson mentioned 'for better, for worse,' and you said: ' I will,' so sweet in your little grey gown--says I to myself: 'Please God, it shall be all "better" and no "worse"'; and so it shall, my Polly."

During four happy years, Jim kept his word. It was all "better "-better and better, as each year went by.

Then--just before Tiny's third birthday--the senseless demoniacal ambition of one man, decreed that peace and prosperity should be things of the past, in tens of thousands of happy homes.

Ambition Incarnate led the Kaiser striding to the summit of the Mount of Imagination--that "exceeding high mountain" from which can be seen "all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them." The Tempter of men then whispered in the Imperial ear:

"All these things will I give thee...if thou wilt fall down and worship me."

Unlike that Kingly One, long centuries before, Whose right was world-wide sovereignty, yet Whose answer was to choose the lowly place of obedience and of service--the Kaiser fell down and worshipped; the ministering angels of Love, Joy, and Peace, veiled their faces and fled away; the Devil entered into him, and set Europe in a blaze.

The cottage homes of England yielded their toll of men.

Jim was among the first to go.

Polly and little Tiny were left alone. Jim's portrait--in his smartest uniform, with a row of medals on his breast and a little cane beneath his arm--was moved, in its plush frame, from the parlour table, and placed upon the kitchen mantel-piece where Polly and Tiny could see it, all day. A snapshot postcard, in khaki, taken just before he left for the Front, had its place upstairs, on the little table beside Polly's bed.

Jim had been gone two months, on this particular day when Tiny, in her blue print frock, sat perched upon the high chair, awaiting her dinner.

Tiny was hungry, and the stew her mother was making gave out a most promising fragrance.

Tiny beat a loud tattoo upon her plate, with the spoon and fork clasped tightly in her little hands.

Tiny's tattoo was ear-splitting in its vehemence of anticipation; but Polly never said "Hush" to a joyful noise. She had belonged to the village choir, during her time of service at the Rectory...What? Oh! No reflection on the village choir. Merely, she had sung so often: "Make a joyful noise!" It inclined her to be patient with Tiny's noises, which were nearly always joyful.

Also she welcomed it on this particular day, because it covered the catching of her breath, and the short quick sobs which would not be kept back, as she stirred the stew.

Tiny sat facing the fire-place. She could see the lovely steam and watch the stirring, but she could not see the silent tears running down her mother's cheeks, nor hear the torment of suspense which broke into hard sobs.

Polly had had a letter that morning from her soldier-man, written in pencil from the trenches. It was full of "courage and gaiety," chucking jokes and stories on to paper, in order to make her laugh. Polly laughed at each one; not because she felt amused, but because she knew how disappointed Jim would be, if she did not laugh.

Jim's letters were remarkable for their simple vividness of description. He had always been more of a scholar than Polly. A gamekeeper's son, he had lived, in his boyhood, much in the open, among the wild things of the woods. But his mother had been a woman of superior education, possessing a little library of standard books; and she had encouraged her boy to read and to try to express his own thoughts in clear and connected language.

Thus it came to pass, that Jim's letters from the Front, brought the scenes of war very forcibly to the mind of the anxious loving woman, at home, who conned them over many times, her eyes sometimes wide with horror, sometimes dimmed by tears.

Surely the dignity of expression, the nobility of thought to be found in so many of our soldiers' letters from the Front, go to prove what unsuspected mental powers are developed by the great happenings they are called upon to face, the noble part they are so finely playing in the making, to-day, of history for all time. Yet perhaps the true secret of the hold their letters take upon our hearts, is the total absence of any striving after effect; the fact that they are simple records of heroism, by men who do not know that they are heroes; who daily do fine deeds, without for a moment dreaming that their deeds are fine.

After the gay little stories, Polly reached the place where Jim mentioned, casually, that all he had had to eat that day, was a raw turnip he had grubbed up in a field. His ration of bread, he had given to a starving Belgian woman and her baby girl--who cried when she saw the bread in his hand. He had given them the whole chunk, because the young woman reminded him of Polly, and the baby girl was wonderfully like Tiny; just her large blue eyes and fuzzy hair.

"But, bless you, don't they look wan and hungry, poor things, and dazed with sorrow. I couldn't have laid down, snug and comfy in my dig-out, if I'd 'a kept a crust of my bread back from that mother and child. She was a bit like you in the figure, my girl--not in the face-- there's only one going, of that! But the kiddie was Tiny all over. Tiny--just going to cry to come to her Daddy. I couldn't let her go hungry; now could I, my dear?"

This was where Polly's tears began to flow. At first she hated the Belgian woman and child, for taking her Jim's rations.

Then she realised the unconscious exhibition of his tenderness toward herself and his own little child, shown in the story.

Then the simple unselfishness of the British soldier, stirred her own generous pity for these homeless wanderers.

Ah, but the turnip--the raw turnip! Her tears flowed afresh as she stirred the fragrant stew she was making for herself and Tiny.

Why could she not have been there, just to--just to cook it for him? Why must her man face danger and death alone? What happened to his buttons, without her ready needle? "His buttons!" she said. "His buttons!" And the hard sobs broke out afresh.

Tiny paused in her tattoo. "Hurry, Mummy," she said. "I's hungry."

Jim's wife pulled herself together.

"Just ready, Baby," she said. "Just ready."

She poured the stew into a dish, took some Suffolk dumplings out of the oven, brought all to the table, and helped little Tiny to gravy and vegetables. She helped herself; then stood beside the table to ask the Blessing on the food, without which no meal in this cottage home began.

But just at that moment, her anguish of anxiety seized her afresh. "What are they doing to him now--now, while Baby and I sit quietly at dinner? Are they killing my man? Is his strong splendid body being torn by bursting shells, or trampled in the mud by horses' pounding hoofs, or hurrying feet of men?

She put her hand to her throat.

"Baby," she said, "you say grace, today. Say the grace Daddy taught you."

The soldier's baby girl laid down her spoon and fork, and gravely folded her tiny hands.

At mention of her Daddy she seemed to feel him laying his big hand over her little hands, and to hear him say, so that she might repeat it after him: "Please God, bless my nice dinner. Amen."

Her eyes grew solemn, with that wonderful solemnity--vibrant with the chant of Seraphim--only to be seen in the eyes of a very little child.

She turned them away from the eagerly awaited food, and, lifting them to the mantel-piece, gazed at the picture of her Daddy, standing straight and strong, with the medals on his breast.

"Say grace, Baby," urged the soldier's young wife.

And the soldier's little child shut her blue eyes, bent her curly head, and said:

"Please God--bless my dear Daddy. Amen."

So that was the baby's grace.

A sudden sense of calm came to Polly. She could not have put it into words, but somehow she felt that this change in Tiny's grace, expressed a change which should take place in the home life, in the habits, in the ways of thought, throughout the land.

Hitherto we have been too selfish, too self-centred. It has been a question of:

"What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" Our prayers and praises have largely concerned our own "nice dinners," whether spiritual, mental, or physical. There has been too much thanking the goodness and the grace which on our birth has smiled, without enough regard of the less good fortune, the suffering, the need, the intolerable anguish of others.

If this war has already served to turn our mind's eye away from the contemplation of our own particular stew--however savoury--to the great essentials of life; if it has begun to give us a wider, a more extensive, outlook, not bounded by our own particular horizon, but by our knowledge of the needs of others; if it has done this for us, in our own individual lives, which, after all, go to make up the great whole of national life--then already we see a gleam of the eternal good which is going to work out from this apparently intolerable evil.

Surely in no home, throughout Great Britain, will people find it possible to sit down to the good cheer of Christmas Day without giving thoughts of earnest sympathy to our brave men in the trenches; to the homeless heartbroken people of faithful Belgium, and of heroic France.

Yet these thoughts must not depress us. To yield to overwhelming sorrow, never yet helped others to win back the crown of joy. Our earnest sympathy should make us bright and brave, forgetful of self; eager to help; ready to act; able to do.

The lessons of the war will be many. The effect upon the character of the people will be great and abiding. And, surely, one of the first and simplest, yet deepest, lessons, is the lesson of the unconscious change in the baby's grace.

A vague comprehension of this great underlying truth came to the soldier's young wife, as she watched Tiny's dinner disappearing with astonishing rapidity, and tried to force herself to take her own.

But each time she tried to swallow she was gripped at the throat by that nightmare thought: "What are they doing to him now? What is happening in those distant trenches to the man whose flesh is as my flesh, while I sit here safe and well; helpless to help him?"

Why was it so bad to-day? She had not suffered like this before. Was it not a presentiment, a foreshadowing, a sombre presage of coming awful tidings?

And, even as the certainty of this dawned upon her, she heard the halting klip-klop of the old postman's ancient pony, coming along the road.

The red cart, lettered Royal Mail, drew up at her little gate.

She saw it through the window.

As a rule, she flew down the garden path to fetch her letter; for the old postman was "rheumaticky," and his descent from the cart, apt to be both difficult and profane.

But to-day she seemed rooted to the ground.

Even when old Jonas rattled his gnarled knuckles indignantly upon the door, she could scarcely move across to open it.

The letter would be in a long envelope.

It would be grand and official.

It would be from the War Office, ON HIS MAJESTY'S SERVICE, to tell her that her Jim was dead.

Quite distinctly she could see the letter, through the closed door. It hardly seemed necessary to open, and take it in.

Yet she opened, and she took it in.

Her hand shook so pitiably, that she dropped the letter twice before she regained her seat.

It was not from the War Office. It was neither grand nor official.

It was in Jim's handwriting, written in pencil as usual, yet without that disconcerting blankness--the no-postmark effect. The postmark was London; the date, the day before.

Polly opened it, and began to read.

At first she could not take in the full significance of the fact that the address of a large house in the west end of London headed the letter.

"My dear Wife"--wrote Jim--"Now don't you be startled, my girl, to find that I am on the same side of the English Channel as yourself and Tiny, and Home. It's the right side of it, I can tell you!

"I'm in a Red Cross hospital in London. I'm wounded--but nothing to matter; so don't you worry. A German ran his bayonet into my shoulder, and a bullet found a billet in the muscle of my leg. But the steel made a good clean wound, which is healing quickly, and they moved on the bullet, before they brought me over.

"My dear, this is no end of a grand place--but the best of it is, I'm doing so well that they say I may come home to you in a few days. They want my bed for poor chaps done in worse than I am; and they asked me what sort of a wife and what sort of a home I'd got; and when I told them, they said I'd be as well off there as here, as soon as I can do without difficult dressings.

"Polly, my girl, as I say, this is a grand place, and I feel like the King, in fine pyjamas, full of pockets, and lots of ladies--tip-top ladies, mind you, for all they wear caps and aprons--to wait on me.

"They do make a lot of me and my wounds! It seems as if they can't do enough. Everything you want is there to hand, almost before you can wish for it, let alone ask. They give me smokes--of the best. They also stick a little glass tube under my tongue at intervals, which seems to interest them, though I can't say as I find it particularly repaying.

"Yes, as I say, it seems as if they can't do enough. And yet I know quite well it is not because it's me and my wounds; it's because I stand to them for what they feel for the whole great glorious British Army. While they're doing me, they're thinking of all the other chaps, still fighting in the trenches, or lying helpless and wounded on the battlefields. Ay, and some of them are thinking of quiet graves, left behind, lying silent and alone, where the thunder of battle has passed on; of lips under the sod, they'll never kiss again; or tumbled hair they would like just to have smoothed at the last. And all this pent up feeling makes them very tender to me and my mates. But I don't feel a bit set up, because I know there's nothing personal in it. I just represent the entire British Army, for the time being.

"It's a proud position; indeed it is! But it gives me a lonely kind of feeling, and makes me downright hungry to get to the one woman who'll nurse me for myself, and want me to get well, because I'm her man and she can't do without me. Even if she don't wear a red cross on her chest, or give me glass tubes to suck, I want to come limping home to my own dear girl. I'm tired of calling grand ladies, 'Sister.' I want to call one simple little woman 'Wife.'

"Don't think I'm ungrateful. They're perfect Angels of kindness, and a deal cleverer than the angels, from all accounts. But I'm homesick already for you. When a man's down and wounded, there's just one woman he wants.

"Well, please God, it won't be many days before I walk up the little path; and we'll get best part of a month together--you, and I, and Tiny.

"Ain't I writing small and crowded? I hope you can read it, Polly. It's taken some time getting it all down. But I can't close without telling you the best thing of all; a sort of crowning thing--not that they had 'em on. Oh, no!

"Well, the very day I was brought here, the King and Queen came to see the hospital, walked through all the wards, and spoke to the men.

"I heard afterwards that as soon as they knew the visit was going to be, everybody was getting out their Ps and Qs and brushing themselves up. But I was too dead beat by the journey, to know much about it. Oh, nothing to matter; don't you worry; just so to say, sleepy.

"But, by and by, something sort o' made me open my eyes, and there, by my bed, stood the King and Queen, looking down at me. I knew them at once, by their pictures--as I naturally would, seeing we have them framed in the parlour. It made it seem very homelike to see them standing there; which was perhaps why, when the King asked me what I wanted most, I up and said to see my little village home again, and my wife Polly--I thought you'd like to be named to the King--and my baby girl we call Tiny, though her name is Mary, after her mother. At that, the King smiled, and looked at the Queen. And I knew I hadn't been quite honest, because it was in Coronation Year we named her. So I up and said:

'And after the Queen, Sir, if I may make so bold as to say so.'

"I felt such a funny hot and cold feeling, and my hand shook, as it lay on the counterpane. I couldn't, for the life of me, keep it still.

"But then the sweetest kindest voice I ever heard, said: 'I am glad your little Tiny is called after me, as well as after her mother.' And I looked up; and the Queen was smiling down at me with a kind of glisten in her eyes, like very gentle tears.

"And all of a sudden I knew, that I wasn't the British Army to Them; I didn't stand for all sorts of other chaps who were fighting or wounded or dying or dead. It was just me They were sorry for--a man who was down, knocked out, lying there in horrible pain. It was me They wanted to help and comfort.

"My fool of a hand stopped shaking. I lay there, calm and proud; answered all questions about my wounds and how I got 'em; and about our little home. You might have thought there was nobody else in the hospital--nobody else in the whole army--wounded but me, for just those few minutes while They stood beside my bed. And the King told me to make haste and get well, because I was the sort of chap he wanted.

"Polly--it's one thing to read in print on a placard, YOUR KING AND COUNTRY WANT you; and quite another thing to hear it from himself, as man to man, so to speak--straight from him to you.

"After They had gone, though I hadn't been able before to do much more than whisper, I felt as if I must lie and shout 'God save the King' right through, from beginning to end. And I wanted to be up and out at the Front again, to start 'scattering his enemies,' right away. Then, all on a sudden, I found myself up on my elbow, laughing and cheering and singing, in a shaky kind of voice: 'See how they run! See how they run!'

"The Head Sister of the ward came herself and laid me down, and popped the glass thing in my mouth, which put a stopper on my singing. And she placed cool firm fingers on my wrist, and something in her touch made it easy to lie still; it was so very kind and quieting.

"And next thing that happened was, I felt tears running down my cheeks. I couldn't think where they came from. Sister wiped them away with a very soft handkerchief, not making any remark.

"But I'm not one to blub. So, the moment she took the glass thing out of my mouth, I said: 'They ain't my tears.' And she laughed softly and said: 'No, no! They're just stray tears. We have a lot of them going about in the wards. Now, you go to sleep, and dream of going home.'

"So to sleep I went; and I've been doing well ever since.

"Now, my girl, this is the longest letter you ever got, or I ever wrote. It has kept me happy and content writing it, a bit at a time, for hours. I didn't send you a postcard, or let anybody else send you one, because I didn't want you to know how near I was, till I was almost ready to come home. It won't be long after you get this, before you see me come up the path.

"There's no place like home 'Polly,' and 'my heart's right there!'"

The soldier's young wife laid the precious sheets upon the table, covered them with her arms, and dropped her head upon them.

Complete silence reigned in the little kitchen.

Tiny had finished her dinner, and was methodically licking the spoon, back and front.

The old clock in the corner started ticking very loudly, with solemn insistence.

The canary, in the window, hopped up and down, up and down, in his cage--from perch to floor, and floor to perch.

Tiny, growing uneasy, fidgeted in the high chair.

She looked at her mother's fair head--bowed, in such an abandonment of feeling, upon her outstretched arms--and perplexity dawned in her blue eyes. She dared not speak to that quiet figure.

Then she had an inspiration.

Folding her hands, but keeping her eyes half open to watch the effect, she remarked, tentatively:

"Thank God for my good dinner Amen."

Nothing happened.

The clock ticked louder. The canary stopped hopping up and down, and stood with his head on one side peering uncomfortably, through the bars of his cage, at Tiny.

The baby's lip quivered. If only Dicky would say "sweet"; the clock stop ticking; and Mummy sit up.

She lifted her eyes, filling with tears, to the portrait on the mantel-shelf; and, meeting her Daddy's brave gay smile from out the plush frame, recovered, and smiled back.

Then she leaned forward, and gently laid her spoon upon her mother's head.

"Thank God for my dear Daddy," she said.

Then Polly sprang up, flinging wide her arms in the sunshine.

"Ah, yes!" she cried. "Yes, Tiny. Thank God, indeed! And Daddy's coming home. He's in a grand London house. Fine ladies wait on him; the King and Queen have talked to him! Yet Daddy wants, more than anything else, to get back to us--to you and me, Tiny. And when he comes, I shall make a lovely stew; no more raw turnips! And you shall say your new grace, Baby--your little blessing on Daddy at the Front."

She caught up the child and carried her to the window.

The sunbeams shone on the two fair heads. The canary said "sweet," and began to sing.

"Look at the garden path, Tiny. Up that path your Daddy will come walking. I'm afraid he will limp at first; but we shall be proud of his limping, because it's for King and Country. He'll soon get well when we nurse him, Baby. I shall borrow the glass tube from the Rectory. I know all about it. We used it for measles, and chickenpox, and when Master Eric fell into the duck-pond, and got pneumonia."

She stood for a moment in the silence of a supreme thanksgiving.

Then her face grew firm and purposeful. "I must lay in a stock of buttons," she said. "His clothes will want a lot of seeing to." A proud, shy light was in her eyes. "That's a thing the great ladies couldn't do for my Jim; no, nor even the Queen herself! A man turns to his own wife when it's a matter of buttons."

Jim stood upon the hearth-rug in the bright little kitchen, and a look of supreme content was in his eyes, as he took in every detail which told of welcome and home.

His broad shoulders hid the portrait on the mantel-shelf, wreathed in Virginian creeper and Michaelmas daisies. But what matters a photograph, when the original is before you--large as life? And what smart uniform can compare with the stained worn suit of khaki, which has come through forced marches, hard fighting, days and nights in the trenches?

Polly had had him for half an hour; and she was beginning to be able to look at her man, without a blinding rush of tears.

She had known his left arm would be in a sling; she had known he would limp as he came up the garden path. But she had not expected him to be so gaunt and worn; to have a look in his sunken eyes which suddenly told Polly more about what battles really mean, than anything she had read in the papers, or gathered from his letters.

A man who--calm and unafraid--has looked Death in the face, day after day, ever after looks out upon life with different eyes. The baptism of fire is a very real sacrament to the true soldier.

Even before the train, which brought her man back to her, had come to a standstill at the platform, Polly had seen in his eyes that look which told of things beyond her comprehension; the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual growth, which had made of him a different man from the gay soldier who had marched away, to the stirring strains of "Tipperary."

For one brief moment, Polly had felt herself insignificant, and the little home to which he was returning, hopelessly inadequate--notwithstanding the red leaves and purple blossoms with which she and Tiny had wreathed the pictures. A man with that look on his worn face, should have been met at the station by a brass band and flying banners. Yet here was only--just a loving woman, waiting; with a baby girl, in new shoes and a clean frock, waving a penny flag.

But the next minute Jim's right arm was round them both, and the love in his eyes had taken the place of that other look.

"Are you glad to be back, Jim?" she said.

"Glad ain't the word, Polly. Thankful's more like it."

"Tiny an' me ain't much, Jim, after the King and Queen."

Then Jim had laughed, his big hearty laugh.

"All I want," he had said. "Tiny and you are all I want. Let's get home quick."

As the little party had passed through to the Rectory carriage, Jim's hand on Polly's shoulder, the people in the train waved their handkerchiefs, and the stationmaster stood still and raised his hat. Jim was looking straight ahead, and did not notice. But Polly saw, and glowed with silent pride. It seemed to her that the waving banners and the brass band had been more than supplied, after all.

And now, safely at home, Jim noticed everything; the decorations; the shining pots and pans; the willow-pattern plates, on the dresser, which had been his grandmother's; the old clock, standing where it had always stood in the corner behind the door; the new table-cover, a present from the Rectory young ladies and gentlemen, in honour of his home-coming; the cosy red curtains, made by Polly out of a remnant given her by the draper. The only thing he did not see, standing with his back to it, was his own picture, in the central place upon the mantelshelf.

His right arm was around his wife. Little Tiny, unable to find a hand, clasped his leg, rubbing her cheek against his putties.

A light of deep content was in Jim's eyes.

Polly began asking questions, but he put them aside.

"Don't talk of the war," he said. "I only want to talk of you, and Tiny, and home. How's the canary?"

He whistled, and Dicky began to sing.

But when evening came, and Tiny was asleep in her little cot; when the red curtains were drawn, and Jim lay stretched upon the wicker couch lent from the Rectory, Polly saw in his eyes the look she had noticed as the train drew into the station--that deep brooding look, focused upon things invisible to Polly, far removed from the range of her vision and experience. It made her almost afraid of her soldier-man. And yet he was so much to her; she could not bear that any thought of his should be beyond her sharing.

She had found him lying thus, in the fading twilight, when she came back from putting Tiny to bed. She had fetched his pipe, filled it, and held a match for him. Then she had lighted the lamp, drawn the new curtains, and sat down to her sewing.

Jim lay, smoking contentedly. He watched Polly's flying needle; yet she knew his thoughts were far away.

Each time she lifted her head and his eyes met hers in the lamplight, he smiled; yet a dark shadow lay behind the lovelight in Jim's eyes.

During half an hour the silence remained unbroken.

Then Polly folded her work, put away her needle and thimble, left the table, and came and knelt down beside the couch.

"What is it, Jim dear?" she said, gently. "Can't you tell me what's in your mind? I don't want to worry you with questions; but I think I could understand."

Jim laid down his pipe, and touched her hair with his big fingers. It had looked so bright and pretty, as she bent over her work in the lamplight.

"Polly," he said, "there are things in these past weeks which a man can't speak of to anybody at home--least of all to the woman he loves best. He could only speak of them to the chaps who've been with him in the trenches, who've marched through the ruined villages, who've seen--God help them!--what he has seen; who know, what he knows. You would have cause never to forgive me--I should never forgive myself--if, to ease my own mind by sharing them, I passed on to you the ghastly things I've been forced to know and to see, away where the Devil has been let loose to work his will on defenceless women, and on little children.

"But there are some things I can tell you, Polly; and I've been lying here, trying to think how to begin! Before we go to sleep this night, my girl, I want to tell you the prayer I prayed every day in the trenches; and I want to tell you why I prayed it, and where I found it."

From the breast-pocket of his tunic, Jim produced a small book, bound in khaki, stamped on the cover, in red lettering:

"ACTIVE SERVICE" TESTAMENT.

"This was given me, Polly, just as we were starting for the Front. I don't know that I should have set such great store by it--though it was given me with a kind word and was a handy size to carry in my pocket--but when I opened it, there, just inside the cover was a written message from the man whose word meant more to me than the word of any man on earth. Now, you take it to the light, my girl, and read it out. I've read it to myself, many a time; but I'd like to hear it read out loud, here in my little home, by you."

Polly took the book from Jim's hand, carried it to the table, held it close to the lamp, and bent over the open page.

There was silence in the cottage room. The strong, eager face of the soldier was in shadow, but the light shone upon his bandages, and upon the big limbs stretched on the couch. His eyes were fixed, expectant, on his wife's gentle face.

Polly was all of a flutter, at being suddenly called upon to read aloud to Jim; but she would not fail him, in this his first request. She carefully mastered the meaning of the short sentences; and they were so grandly simple, that this was easy. Then, steadying her voice with an effort, she began to read, slowly and clearly.

LORD ROBERT'S MESSAGE

AUGUST 25, 1914

I ASK YOU TO PUT YOUR TRUST IN GOD. HE WILL WATCH OVER YOU AND STRENGTHEN YOU. YOU WILL FIND IN THIS LITTLE BOOK GUIDANCE WHEN YOU ARE IN HEALTH, COMFORT WHEN YOU ARE IN SICKNESS, AND STRENGTH WHEN YOU ARE IN ADVERSITY.

ROBERTS

F.M.

Polly lifted her eyes from the page, and looked at Jim.

His face glowed.

"That's it, my girl," he said. "'Roberts, F. M.' Do you know what 'F. M.' stands for? Why Field Marshal, of course. But to me, and many other chaps, it stands for more than that. It stands for First of Men!

"I was only a youngster at the time of the Boer War; but I marched under him to relieve Kimberley, and then on to Pretoria. There's nobody like him! The greatest soldier ever was. Yet he'd get off his horse to give a drink of water out of his own bottle to a man who'd fallen out on the march and was lying dead-beat by the roadside. A chum of mine went lame on a march. Bobs riding by, noticed it. He dismounted, put my chum on his own horse, and himself marched the rest of the way. I saw that with my own eyes. Do you wonder we loved him? Always a cheery word for everybody; always careful thought for all; and to march with him, meant to march to victory.

"Well, you can see what it was to me, to find this message straight from him, in my Testament. 'If Bobs says it, it's true!' says I. And I made up my mind, I'd look in it each day for 'guidance' 'comfort' and 'strength'; and, the Lord knows, it wasn't long before we needed all three.

"Well, I started to read James; because being my own name, it seemed more particularly meant for me. And there, in the very first chapter, I found these words: 'That ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.' 'That's the prayer for me,' says I. So every day I used to pray: 'O God, if I'm called upon to die, let it be a bullet, through my heart, swift and clean. But, if I'm to live and go back to Polly, let me get home perfect and entire, wanting nothing.'"

Jim swung himself off the couch, and stood, tall and straight, upon the hearth-rug.

"And here I am, my girl, a whole man--wounded, I grant you--but perfect and entire, arms and legs, all here; nothing missing!"

Polly surveyed him with tender pride and thankfulness; but grave doubt was in her mind.

"Jim dear," she said, "I don't think the text means that; really, I don't. The Rector preached on it, two Sundays ago; and he said nothing at all about bodies. He applied it all to souls."

Jim's hearty laugh sounded no whit abashed.

"I'll tell you what it is, my girl," he said. "Texts are wonderful things. They have a way of holding all sorts of meanings--just according to a man's needs. I can well believe that the Rector, safely boxed up in his pulpit, a-looking down on his peaceful congregation, in the quiet of an English Sabbath Day, had no thought of anything but souls when he preached on that text. But if he'd ha' been in the trenches, with lyddite shells droppin' and burstin' all around; with arms and legs, and worse, being torn off on all sides--well, the Rector would have had his mind turned on to bodies; and he'd ha' known the comfort a promise like that can bring to a man under fire, when he applies it to his own need, and makes it into a prayer.

"Lor'," cried Jim, slapping his thigh with his right hand, "wouldn't it wake up the congregations in some o' these village churches, if a shell arrived amongst 'em--slap bang, in the middle of the sermon! Shall I tell you what it's like, Polly, when you lie waiting for them, in the trenches, and they come?

"Well, you can't hear the big guns go off; they're too far away; but you hear the shells coming, for about ten seconds before they burst. It first sounds like wind in the trees. Then it gets louder and louder, gradually going up the scale, till at last it sounds like an express train rushing through a station. Then a hellish row, and the whole ground shakes; then a lot of falling earth comes down; and then, last of all, come what we call 'the bees'--pieces of shell that are blown straight up in the air. We call them the bees, because they make a noise like a bee as they come down. That's a lyddite shell; and it's no manner of use being in a funk-hole for them; because they dig holes, ten feet broad and six feet deep, on a hard road. The nerve-breaking work is just sitting, waiting for the next shell to come. It's not that one's a bit afraid to die; it's the uncertainty as to whether the next shell is going to kill you, or the one after that. A shrapnel shell bursts in the air, and blows out about two hundred lead bullets, just like marbles; and so long as you're in your funk-hole for those, it's all right."

Jim paused. He had been speaking with eager interest, not noticing Polly's whitening face. She tried to hide from him the terror at her heart. She wanted to hear all he could tell; she wanted to know. She forced her voice into a semblance of cheerful unconcern.

"Will it soon be over, Jim?"

"Over?" said Jim. "Not yet awhile. Polly, this is an awful war. In the whole history of the world, there's never been a war like it; and I'll tell you why.

"We ain't only fighting against men, out there. We're fighting the Devil. No, my girl. I'm not speaking lightly, nor taking anybody's name in vain. I'm telling you a solemn, awful truth. Wiser an' better men than me, think the same thing. You ask the Archbishop of Canterbury!

"The Boer War was a different thing altogether. I was quite a youngster then and didn't know much about the rights of it; but we all knew we were fighting men--honest men, most of 'em; brave men all of 'em; good old farmers who were fighting, as they thought, for their own homesteads--not wrecking and burning the homes of other people. You see they'd been led into it by one gamey old chap, who thought he could put his big foot down on the British flag, and stand on it. We had to make him step off; we had to hoist the flag, and keep it flying; we had to prove that the Queen was on the throne, and that England knew how to look after her Colonists. But, when it was all over, we could shake hands and be friends. There was respect for each other, and good faith on both sides; and let's bear no malice.'

"But this war, Polly, is more than a fight for earthly crowns and kingdoms; ay, more even than a struggle to keep our homes safe, and our wives and little children free from perils worse than shot and shell. We're fighting for right and justice, against treachery and wrong.

"It's a righteous war, my girl; and every man who fears God and honours the King, should be up, and out, and ready to do his share; and every woman who loves her home, must be willing bravely to do her part, by letting her man go. And if she has to hear that he has given his life, she must stand up, brave and true--as a soldier's wife or a soldier's mother--and say: 'God save the King!'"

Jim paused. Polly knew something more was coming. She laid down the khaki Testament, folded her hands and looked up at her husband with lips which trembled, but with a light of earnest resolve in her eyes.

"Polly, my dear girl," said Jim, slowly; "when I prayed that, even if I were wounded, I might come home 'perfect and entire, wanting nothing,' it wasn't to stay at home. It was so that I might be fit and able as soon as could be, to go out again. If I had lost an arm or a leg, I should have been done for, where fighting is concerned; but, thank God, I haven't. These wounds will soon heal; you must get me fit as quick as may be; and then I'm off to the Front again; and you must be glad to let me go."

Polly stood up and faced her big soldier, bravely. Her face was very white and her lips trembled. But the high courage in her eyes matched his.

"God save the King!" said Polly simply.

Upstairs, they stood together beside Tiny's cot, and watched her rosy sleep. Then Polly told Jim the little story of the change in Tiny's grace.

"Ain't she precious, Jim?" said Polly. "See her pretty curls upon the pillow."

And suddenly Jim remembered a baby girl just Tiny's age, that he had seen lying dead in the street of a Belgian village, her little head dashed upon the cobbles; her fair curls matted with blood; the small dead hands still clasping a battered doll.

Tears were in the big soldier's eyes. They were not stray tears, this time; they were the brave tears of a man who was facing the fact that he must fight for the safety of his little sleeping child, and for the honour of his fair young wife.

He put his right arm around her, and caught her to his breast.

"Oh, Polly," he said; "it's for King and Country and Home!"

Polly held him close. She knew she must let him go again; she meant to be brave about letting him go. But, anyway she had him now.

Then she remembered the first part of his prayer: "If I'm called upon to die, let it be a bullet through my heart, swift and clean." Ah, thank God, it had not been that! She slipped her hand under the sling, and laid it on his breast. She could feel the steady beat, beneath her palm.

Laughing, Jim lifted her face to his, and looked into her eyes.

"Yes, Polly," he said; "there's no doubt at all about it. 'My heart's right there!'"

TO HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF THE BELGIANS SIRE,

As my contribution to the tribute of universal sympathy and admiration now presented to Your Majesty, I have been asked to write a short story, bearing upon the great events of the past months.

In humbly accepting this privilege, I cannot but be conscious that this is not a time for fiction; therefore the story which I now have the honour of offering to Your Majesty is fact--true in its main details--given as it reached me, in the sublime simplicity of a soldier's letter from the front.

During the masterly retreat of the allied forces after the battle of Mons, a young British officer was ordered to round up stragglers in a small town, which had just been evacuated by our troops.

There was no time to lose. The enemy, in overwhelming force, was sweeping down upon the defenceless place. Shells were falling on all sides. The distant rumble of a relentless approach drew every moment nearer.

The young officer, marching his little company rapidly along the deserted streets, crossed a cobbled square, and came upon a municipal building, temporarily converted into a hospital.

He stepped within.

"Any men here, able to march?" he began--then paused abruptly and looked around him.

There was no question of stragglers, here. Scores of wounded and of dying lay helpless upon the floor, each where he had been hurriedly placed.

A little party of British Red Cross nurses moved among them, doing their utmost to tend, relieve, and comfort.

While the tall youth in khaki stood silent in the doorway, a shell shrilled over the building, crashed into a house close by and burst with a deafening noise. A moment of tense silence. Then a Tommy laughed.

"It'll save the doctors trouble, if a few of them things come in here," he said. "Do our amputating for nothing, they will!"

The Sister in charge of the little band of English nurses chanced to be kneeling near the door, supporting the head of a dying lad. He pushed away the cup she was holding to his lips and gazed into her face, sudden terror in his eyes.

"They won't shoot on the Red Cross, will they, nurse?" he whispered. "Ain't we safe under the flag?"

Her quiet smile was reassuring. "Perfectly safe, my lad. Don't you worry. Drink this, and lie still."

Then, looking up, she saw the young officer standing in the doorway.

He raised his hand in salute.

"I suppose there is nothing I can do," he said. "I am rounding up stragglers and marching them out. But nobody here could do any marching. Shall I take a message through for you? I'll send back help, if possible."

Kneeling there, with the dying boy's head upon her arm, she looked steadily at him and it struck him that he had never before met eyes so full of a calm and steadfast courage.

"We are all right," she said, slipping a folded jacket beneath the head she was supporting; "quite all right--doing famously!"

But the next moment she was beside him in the doorway, and had caught him by the arm.

"Don't go!" she whispered. "For God's sake, don't go! I need help; and you must help me."

"Do you want to get out of this?" asked the young officer, speaking hurriedly, and very low.

The Englishwoman looked at him.

"Oh, I say, I beg your pardon! Of course I know you wouldn't leave them. Tell me how I can help. What can I do?"

"Listen," she said. "There is not a moment to lose. Did you notice the roof of this building, as you crossed the square? There's a flagstaff and cord, all complete; but no flag. Do you understand? No Red Cross flag. And the Germans are beginning to shell the town. You must find me a Red Cross flag, and hoist it, before you go."

The young officer stood beside her, uncertain, perplexed; dismay in his honest eyes.

"I'm awfully sorry," he said. "But I have no Red Cross flag; and, for the life of me, I don't know where to get one."

"Then you must make one," she urged. "We have over a hundred wounded men under this roof." She shook him by the sleeve. "Can't you contrive something? Can't you think of something? Can't you make me a Red Cross flag?"

The boy stood for a moment in stern thought. All the man in him awoke, eager to meet this woman's desperate need.

His eye travelled slowly round the bare, unfurnished hall. At length it rested on the floor.

Suddenly he started. She saw him hesitate. Then his face grew firm and purposeful.

"Give me half a sheet," he said, "and some bandages."

He helped her to tear the sheet in two.

At sound of the sharp rending, many eyes turned their way.

He spread the sheet upon the floor, and held out his hand for the bandages. "Give me some pins," he said, huskily, "plenty of them. Then leave the rest to me. This is my job."

All at once she knew what he was going to do; and she, who had times without number faced unspeakable sights without flinching, turned away while, stooping, he dipped the bandages in the blood which lay in pools upon the floor.

When she looked again, he was on his knees, carefully pinning the crimson strips across the white sheet.

Her hand flew to her throat, striving to control an irrepressible sob.

He had not recognised her, in her nurse's uniform, but at first sight she had known him, and now vividly recalled the scene of their former meeting--a sunny cricket-field in England; he, in spotless flannels, the hero of the hour, winning a match for his school eleven. She had sat beside his mother and watched her pride in the gay, handsome boy. All eyes had been bent upon him, as he hit out straight and true, made the winning stroke, and carried his bat for top score in the match.

And now..As he knelt in his stained khaki, dying eyes watched, in the quiet calm of a strange detachment, the making of that Red Cross flag. Wounded men rolled over, raised themselves on their elbows, and smiled in grim approval.

After that one choking sob, she also smiled bravely back at them.

Her flag was ready.

He rose to his feet. "Now then! Show me the way to the roof, please. No--I can carry it. No need for you to touch it, Sister. This is my show."

She stood beside him on the roof.

As he drew the cord taut and fastened it, the breeze caught and unfurled the heavy folds of the sheet, and, slowly opening out, the Red Cross flew, clear and unmistakable, in the sunshine.

She laid her hand once more upon the khaki sleeve.

"God bless you," she said, a tremor of emotion in her quiet voice. "And, when you write home, don't forget to tell your mother of this thing which you have done."

Half an hour later, as he marched his men, under cover of a wood, over the crest of the hill, the young officer stepped out for a moment into a clearing and looked back upon the little town.

German shells were falling, to right and left; but above the hospital flew the Red Cross flag, brave in the breeze, bright in the gold of the sunset; and the wounded lay beneath, sheltered by the crimson of their own life-blood.

SIRE, we see in this an emblem of that which you, your noble Consort, your brave Army, and your devoted people have done for Europe; and also, we trust and believe, a symbol of the ultimate result of that stupendous sacrifice.

You did not shrink from the cross, though it meant, alas! the very heart's blood of your beautiful kingdom; and, thanks to that blood-stained banner, so heroically unfurled, Belgium and her Allies shall pass, at last, into the safety and shelter of an abiding peace.

The Calvary of self-sacrifice must ever mean a blood-stained cross. But Calvary leads to the triumph of Resurrection, to the glory of Ascension. Surely, from the Calvary of her suffering, Belgium shall rise again to a new and fuller life, and shall ascend to heights she has not reached before.

Florence L. Barclay

DEAR WOLF CUBS,

I am glad to be able to talk to you in this first copy of your own paper. And I want you to come for a walk with me.

Have you noticed how well you can talk when you are walking, and how easy it is to learn to know a new friend if you go for a walk together? You may feel rather shy, sitting on chairs thinking what to say next! But nobody can feel shy tramping along in the open, blue sky overhead, something fresh to see every minute, bright sunshine all around--if it happens to be a fine day; and it is sure to be a fine day when we go for our walk, because, as we shall be arranging the walk, we can also arrange the weather. You see, we must take our walk in the pages of your magazine.

This is really better than if I could look in at the door and say: "Wolf Cubs! Will you come for a walk with me?" The whole Pack would come, no doubt, but I could not talk to more than two or three Cubs at a time as we walked, and we should have to go along roads you know already. But this way I can talk to every Cub in each Pack, and I am going to take you to places to which you have never been, show you things you have not already seen, and tell you things you have not heard before.

Have you ever noticed that reading a story is very much like going for a walk? Your body sits still, but your mind travels. Do you remember, just as you were beginning to read a new book the other day, somebody asked you how you liked it? And you answered: "I don't know. I haven't got into it yet." You see, you hadn't really started. Opening the covers is like opening the door and stepping out onto the road, and turning the first page is like turning the first corner--and the interesting thing about corners is that you are never sure what you will see when you get round them!

If an author knows his business, he takes you firmly by the hand and walks with you all the way. And you do not want him to leave go, or to stop, or to go more slowly. You want to go right on to the end of that jolly, breathless walk. That is what people mean when they say that a story "grips" them.

And when you open that magic door--the covers of a new book--you may find yourself walking in wonderful places.

If it is a war-story, you creep along the trenches, you hear the rush and roar of the shells, you see the gleam of the bayonets, you listen to shouting and cheering, and you watch our splendid soldiers doing brave things.

If it is a book of the sea, instead of trotting down a country lane or along town pavements, you find yourself pacing the quarter-deck of a big battleship; you overhear the most private things the Captain says to the Commander, and, of course, you get the first sight of the enemy ships when they sneak out of the mist on the horizon, and you are in for every moment of the battle, when it comes off.

Sometimes you read a story of olden days, and then you walk right into a past century and find yourself among people who wear queer clothes, ruffles, and doublets, and jerkins, who use all sorts of funny words, and keep saying "Ha!" "Forsooth!" and "By my halidom!"--people who have leisure for all they wish to do and say, because there are no motor cars or trains to make them hurry, no telegrams to make them jump, nor penny post to keep them busy. So you go nice calm walks in those romantic olden days, and find plenty of time to go to the fairs and the tourneys, and plenty of time for adventures, with outlaws and robbers and people who spring up from behind bushes; and plenty of time for the blacksmiths to turn into earls, and the dairymaids into duchesses. Don't you like going back into those good old days, when the fastest you could go was to jump on to your horse and set off at a gallop?

But the book in which we can go for the most wonderful walks of all, is the Bible. And we walk into such perfectly true scenes that, though they happened so long ago, the part of them that matters most, happens over again for us each time we think of them.

As we walk along the green Jordan valley or the dusty Jericho road, sail on the Sea of Tiberias, or climb the hills of Galilee, we soon see an eager crowd, with little children scampering on before, and there is our dear Lord Jesus coming!--and when He comes wonderful things soon begin to happen. And as we watch him doing those wonderful things nineteen hundred years ago, suddenly we know that He is close beside us, here and now, ready to do them for us also.

I used to go walks in the Bible many years ago, before I was able really to go to the land where most of the Bible scenes took place. But at last I went there, and stayed a long time, living in tents, and riding to all sorts of interesting places. So next month you shall come for a walk with me in Palestine, and I will tell you a very funny story about Eastern beggars, and you shall learn two Arabic words, "backsheesh" and "bookrah"--I have spelled them as they are pronounced. See if you can find out, before next month, what they mean.

Well, after all, we have not been for a walk to-day! I think you asked me in, and gave me a very comfortable chair, and all sat round "in the circle," while I talked to you. I seem to see a ring of happy faces and bright eyes. Next time we must start off at once for our first walk in Palestine.

Till then, good-bye. God bless you every day, and help us all to DO OUR BEST.

Very truly your friend,

FLORENCE L. BARCLAY.

DEAR WOLF CUBS,

Now we are going to Palestine together, and as we jump into our magic flying-machine to cover in one moment the two thousand miles of distance, we must also slip back a few years, so that you may see Palestine as it was when I travelled there in the spring of 1881, before any modern inventions had reached it, when it was still exactly the Holy Land of our Bible stories.

At that time, not only were there no railways, but there were no carriages. Travellers had to ride on horseback. People who could not afford to buy or hire horses or mules had to tramp from place to place on their own feet.

Living in tents

Do you remember that we only once read in the Gospels of our Lord Jesus riding? He seems to have done all His journeys on foot with His disciples. As I rode along the rocky highways, dusty and hard and full of loose stones, with hedges of prickly pears on either side, I used to think of how He walked these very roads as He went from village to village bringing healing and help to all along the way. When He had walked the forty miles from Jerusalem to Samaria, no wonder He was wearied with His journey and sat resting at the Well.

On our tour through Palestine we rode up the country from Jerusalem to Damascus; then on over Lebanon to Beyrout. We lived in tents, and our camp went with us all the way. I will tell you of that next time, and about the Syrian men we had as servants, and the great baggage mules.

To-day I have promised to tell you about the beggars. Do you remember how often we read of beggars sitting by the wayside and asking the Lord Jesus to help them? There are still a great many beggars in Palestine. The word travellers hear more often than any other is "Backsheesh," which means "a present," and is the word the beggars use when they ask for alms.

I have often seen a crowd of poor lepers squatting on the ground just outside the city wall. As we rode through the gateway they would cry, "Backsheesh! Backsheee-sh!" in very dismal tones. Or a blind man sitting by the wayside, as soon as he heard us coming, would begin chanting "Backsheesh! Backsheesh!" and would keep it up until the sound of our horses' hoofs died away in the distance.

But it was not only poor afflicted people who used the favourite word. In the city of Bethlehem, where our Lord Jesus was born, we happened to notice a very beautiful young woman carrying a baby boy of about a year old. She was wearing the picturesque dress of the Bethlehem women, with silver ornaments on her head. Her baby had on a little silk coat of many colours, and a necklace of red beads round his little brown neck. He had bright brown eyes and such a roguish smile, and when he saw that we were looking at him he gave a little chuckle, and suddenly doubled up, and hid his face against his mother's shoulder. Have you seen your baby at home do that? Any baby in its mother's arms may remind us, as we have just been remembering this Christmas, how the Lord Jesus was born on earth, a little baby, for our sakes. But this little Jewish boy at Bethlehem, and his lovely young mother, really made us stand still and think of it. She evidently enjoyed our admiration. She smiled and nodded, and made the baby sit up so that we could see his merry face, his necklace, his fat legs, and his little brown wriggling toes. They made a beautiful picture, standing in the sunshine, with the Church of the Nativity and the flat-roofed houses behind them, and Bethlehem's purple hills in the distance. But, as we turned to go, what do you think she said? She held out her hand and said. "Backsheesh!"

Bookrah!

Now, do you remember the second word I promised to teach you? As we rode out of the villages on our way north, crowds of beggars would run after us, through the gates and a long way up the road, calling out, "Backsheesh! Backsheesh!" It was impossible to get rid of them. They would even catch hold of our horses' tails! Then Joseph, our Syrian Dragoman, who had stayed behind making some little payment in the village, would come galloping up, and hearing the beggars saying "Backsheesh," he would turn in his saddle and answer them with just one word: "Bookrah." And when Joseph said "Bookrah" the beggars stopped running after us, left off clamouring, turned, and went sadly back to the village.

When this had happened several times I thought I should like to use this magic word for getting rid of beggars. But we must never use a word unless we are quite sure what it means, or we may be let in for saying something we should wish not to have said. So I asked Joseph the meaning of "Bookrah," and after a little hesitation he told me. "Bookrah" means "To-morrow." Do you see? We were riding away from the village; we were never coming back that way again. So when the beggars asked for backsheesh and Joseph said "To-morrow," to-morrow meant "Never."

And if you look in the 3rd chapter of the book of Proverbs, and read the 27th and 28th verses you will find this command: "Withhold not good, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. Say not: 'To-morrow, I will give,' when thou hast it by thee." So, you see, even in the days of Solomon they used to say "Bookrah," and God had specially to tell them, that they must not say "To-morrow," about a gift which could be given "To-day."

And now, Wolf Cubs, I have something important to say to you! I want you to give up saying "Bookrah." Make this one of your New Year resolutions.

As you pass along life's highway, many hands are held out to you asking for alms. No, I do not mean pennies; pennies don't really count for much. I mean gifts of love and kindness, of brightness and sympathy; of doing the right thing at the right moment, when it may mean so much, instead of putting it off to a time when it will perhaps mean nothing at all.

The new year

When a boy goes away from home, his mother watches so anxiously for a letter. When she wakes in the morning she says to herself: "Perhaps Harry's letter will come to-day." But each day she is disappointed, because every time Harry thought about writing to his mother he always said: "I'll do it to-morrow." So, because it was always "to-morrow," to the boy, it could never be "to-day" for his mother.

Perhaps you know a boy who would love to be a Wolf Cub if he understood about them; and you are the very one who could best tell him. You quite mean to do it, but it is rather difficult to begin explaining, and it is more fun talking to other Cubs who know it all. So every time you remember that rather dull small boy, who would so like to be a Cub if he only knew, you say, "Bookrah," and "Bookrah" may mean "never," and be a loss to that boy's whole life.

Then there is one gift which all those we meet on life's highway have the right to ask of us--the gift of cheerfulness. What a difference it will make at home if you give them the backsheesh of a bright face!

One smile can glorify a day,
One word, fresh hope impart;
The least disciple need not say:
I have no alms to give away,"
If love be in the heart.

Remember, as we start out into this New Year, each day's march takes us further on, and we shall never come back this way again.

Do your best, and DO IT NOW.

Truly your friend,

FLORENCE L. BARCLAY.

DEAR WOLF CUBS,

To-day I am going to tell you about camp-life in Palestine.

I should like to show you our camp, as I first saw it from the sea--four white tents, pitched on high ground above the orange groves at Jaffa, flying the Union Jack to show that they were ready for British travellers.

Our dragoman was waiting with horses at the quay, and we rode, through the quaint streets of Jaffa, up to the camp on the hill. So, with Joseph riding on ahead, we reached the camping ground, and rode to the entrance of our tents, through an avenue the men had made by sticking great boughs of orange trees, covered with golden fruit, into the sandy soil.

Flowers beneath the bed

There was a dining-tent, well furnished with tables and chairs; a large square sitting-room and bedroom tent, with a curtain across, plenty of easy chairs, and two little white camp beds. This tent was carpeted and made very comfortable; but there was not any carpet underneath the beds, and my first sight of Eastern wild-flowers was a lovely mass of crimson and blue and yellow blossoms growing in fragrant profusion under my bed! I remember being so much amused to gather a nosegay for my dressing-table from beneath my bed. This was where I first saw the scarlet anemone--the most beautiful wildflower of Palestine. It blooms all over the hills and fields of Judea, like blood-drops on the grass, reminding us that this is the place of which we sing: "There is a green hill far away"--the Land of Calvary.

The scarlet anemones are probably the flowers called in our Bible "the lilies of the field," of which the Lord Jesus said: "Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." The royal scarlet glows in the petals of this wild-flower of the fields.

In our camp there was also a tent for the men, and a kitchen tent, containing a portable kitchen range, and a great array of pots and pans. Our cook's name was Khalil, Arabic for "the Friend." He was a very funny old fellow, but an excellent cook. He could have a four-course dinner ready within an hour of arriving at a fresh camping ground.

He never lost a moment in beginning his own work. I have seen him catch the mule which was carrying the kitchen things, lift off the portable range, set it down in the field where we were going to camp, unpack his pots and pans and provisions, light a fire, sit down on a three-legged stool, and calmly proceed to stir the soup and roast the chickens, while the unloading of the mules went on all around with a tremendous shouting and hullabaloo. But so absorbed in his work was old Khalil that he would not look up or take the slightest notice, even when the other men lifted the kitchen tent and pitched it over him as he sat.

Camping in Palestine

And now I must explain to you why camping in Palestine was quite unlike the camp life we know of in England. When the Scouts go into camp and have such jolly times, a good camping ground is chosen, in a field where they can have games and sports, near water in which they can bathe, with places of interest within easy reach for picnics, and there the tents are pitched, and they spend a delightful fortnight. But we were travelling up the country from Jaffa to Jerusalem; then on to Jericho and the Jordan Valley to Samaria, Nazareth, the Sea of Galilee, and on up to Damascus and the snowy heights of Lebanon. And all the way our camp went with us.

After breakfast we used to mount our horses and start off on a long day's ride, going round by places we specially wanted to see, riding perhaps twenty miles or more in the day. Directly we were gone our men would pack up, take down the tents, load up the seven or eight big baggage mules, mount the spare horses, and set off to the place we had appointed, twelve or fifteen miles on, for our next camping ground. They usually arrived there before we did, got all the tents pitched, and everything unpacked and ready, so that when we rode in at sunset we would find our camp looking exactly as it had looked when we left it in the morning, and it used to be almost impossible to realize that it had moved on twelve miles.

The tent dwellers

By the way, the one thing which would distract old Khalil's attention from his cooking was looking up and seeing us riding in. He never could resist running out from the kitchen tent to hold my horse's bridle while I dismounted, repeating in tones of warmest welcome the one English word he knew:

"Good-bye! Good-bye! Good-bye!"

Now I want you to look in your Bibles and see how much you can find in the Old Testament about tents and camping. The very first mention of tents is in Genesis iv. 20, where we read that Jabal, a descendant of Cain, was "the father of such as dwell in tents," and the name Jabal means "moving," so at once we get the idea of the tent-dwellers being a people who were always moving on.

Old-time Wolf Cubs

When Abraham was chosen to be the man who should learn to know and love and obey the true God, he was called to leave his home and his father's country and become a tentdweller in the land of Palestine.

From the story in Genesis we should not know what God meant to teach him by this.

But when we turn to the New Testament, which so often explains the Old, we find in Hebrews xi. 8, 9, 10, and 16 that he dwelt in tents because the city he looked for was a heavenly city, with eternal foundations whose Builder and Maker was God.

Towards that heavenly city, with steadfast faith and consecrated heart, he was ever moving on, not rooted to this earth by anything more permanent than a tent-peg.

So this was the Divine way, so long ago, of teaching the earnest pilgrim heart how to hold the passing things of Time, in view of the abiding glories of Eternity.

One more story of tent-dwellers I want you to find in your Bibles--the splendid story of the Rechabites in the 35th chapter of Jeremiah. These sons of Jonadab, the son of Rechab, were called to make special promises and to be specially faithful and obedient. They kept these promises always, in the spirit and to the letter. I am sure the young Rechabites would have been Wolf Cubs, and the older ones Scouts. They had the true Cub and Scout spirit. And if you read about them you will find that one of the rules they had to keep was not to build houses, but always to live in tents, so as to remind all the people living in cities of the great lesson taught by tent-dwelling.

A day's march

And this is what we must learn to be--tent-dwellers in heart. Though our homes are built of brick and stone with solid foundations, yet we can live in the spirit of the hymn which says:

"Here in the body pent,
Absent from Him I roam;
Yet nightly pitch my moving tent
A day's march nearer home."

When we come back after a day's work or a day at school and look round the familiar rooms in the house which is our home, everything looks exactly as it did when we went off in the morning; just as I told you our camp used to look when we rode in at sunset, yet it had moved on a whole day's march; and we, in these dear earthly homes of ours, have also moved "a day's march nearer home."

May God give to us now the joyful "looking forward" of the tent-dwellers!

FLORENCE L. BARCLAY.

DEAR WOLF CUBS,

A good many years ago, in a little out of the way village in England, a clergyman who had just come back from travelling in Palestine was spending a few weeks at the Rectory. He had to send an important letter to a man with whom he had stayed in Jerusalem. It was such an important letter that, after he had written it and addressed and stamped and sealed the envelope, he walked down the pretty village street and himself popped the letter into the letter-box at the post-office.

Why the letter couldn't go

In those days the village post-office was usually also the principal village shop. At the counter on one side you could buy bacon or bootlaces, cheese, or cloth caps, treacle, marbles, saucepans--in fact, everything a well-ordered household could possibly require. But the counter on the other side was "official," and was kept for post-office business only.

Now, a day or two after the clergyman at the Rectory had posted his important letter, he heard a rumour in the village which made him decide to go to the post-office and ask a few questions.

When he pushed open the door and went in, although the tempting smell of apples and twine and calico belonged to the counter on the left, and the cheery old woman behind it curtsied and smiled and said "Good-morning, sir," he turned firmly to the "official" counter on the right and stood waiting while she hastened round, putting on her glasses, and presently appeared as the post-mistress, and said:

"Well, sir?" in a stern voice.

"I posted a letter here a few days ago," explained the clergyman. "It was a very important letter to a friend at Jerusalem, and I am anxious to make sure--"

But there he stopped, for the old Postmistress was gazing severely at him through her spectacles.

"So it's your letter, is it?" she said; turned, and took a letter down from the shelf behind her, and handed it to him.

Then she slipped her spectacles to the end of her nose, and, looking at him over instead of through them, explained quite kindly and unofficially:

"You can't send a letter to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is in the Bible."

This really happened about forty years ago. It could not happen now, when everybody learns geography and there are postal guides and telegraph books in every post-office. But we still find something of the same idea unconsciously in people's minds; that Bible scenes are just "in the Bible," and not so real as the places we see every day.

Only this morning I heard of a young soldier who has gone out to fight on our Eastern Front, and has lately been marching through Mesopotamia. When he was a boy he went to Sunday School and heard all the Bible stories, but he thought--as the old Postmistress did--that the places where the stories happened were just "in the Bible." But now he has written a long letter to his mother full of interest and pleasure, because he has been himself to lots of the very places he had read about in the Old Testament He writes:

"Why, mother, they're all here, and they're all real!"

Now, Wolf Cubs, this is why, in our talks at the Council Rock I have tried to take you to the Holy Land. I want you to be quite sure, as this young soldier is now finding out, that it is all there, and all real, and all absolutely true.

Just the same

In older days, as early as the time of King Canute--1027--when travelling was very difficult, people used often to make pilgrimages to Palestine. King Edward I. granted "£30,000 for a hundred and forty knights to go to the Holy Land." And in the reign of Richard I.--1189--a law was enacted "concerning the People of England, that no one should use scarlet cloth, sable, or fair furs, or more than two dishes at dinner, because the King and all the great men of the Kingdom were going to the Holy Land at great cost." This is rather like the wise rules our Government is making in order to help us to economise and win the war. In reading, in old books, the accounts of these early pilgrimages, it is interesting to find the pilgrims visiting all the same places to which we went on our very modern pilgrimage seven hundred years later. The Land is very little changed, and the life of the people is even less changed than the Land. Many of their Eastern customs are the same as in the time of Abraham, which takes us back nearly four thousand years.

Some well-known cities, such as Capernaum, have fallen completely into ruins, and we cannot be sure of the exact spot where they stood. But I must tell you one thing I noticed. Wherever there was water in Bible times there is water now. The Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee, the river Jordan, the Abana and Pharpar rivers of Damascus, Gideon's spring, Elisha's fountain, the Pool of Siloam, Philip's fountain in which he baptised the Ethiopian--in fact, every river, pool, or spring mentioned in the Bible is still to be found.

In riding down the steep stony road from Jerusalem to Jericho--where the man fell among thieves--we get a distant view of the Jordan Valley, through a gap in the rocky hills. We do not see the river itself, which runs through a deep narrow channel, but we can see just where the river is flowing, by a broad band of green--the beautiful tropical vegetation which in an Eastern land springs up at once where there is water. What a picture of a true Christian life! When you see somebody who is always bright and happy, always loving and kind, ready to give up pleasing self for the sake of helping others, then you know the Grace of God must be flowing through that heart. You cannot see the Living Water deep down in the inner life, but you can see the beauty and the fruit-bearing, because the river of God's Grace is there.

The needle's eye

Now I must tell you a queer thing we saw as we were riding down to Jericho. Up from the valley, climbing the road towards us, came a big haystack with a small haystack walking beside it! They looked so funny in the distance. The big haystack moved along very sedately, but the small haystack every now and then dropped behind and then did a little trot to catch up. When they came nearer we saw four long legs and four great spongy feet under the big haystack, and the mild patient face of a camel looking out from beneath the grass. And four little thin legs with black hoofs trotted under the small haystack; but the donkey's head could not be seen at all.

Camels carry very large and heavy loads. Do you remember Our Lord saying that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for certain people to enter the Kingdom of God? Have you sometimes wondered what that means? There is a very narrow gate in the wall of the City of Jerusalem called the Needle's Eye. If a heavily-laden camel comes to this gate it can't go through because the load it is carrying would catch on each side and hold it back. So the camel kneels down in front of the gate, and its master lifts off the burden, and then the camel gets up and passes through the Needle's Eye into the city.

Have you read in the Pilgrim's Progress how when Christian came to the Cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and he went joyfully forward on his journey to the Celestial city?

And now, Wolf Cubs, I must bid you good-bye. I have work to do which will keep me from being able to meet you at the Council Rock again. But I shall read your paper every month, often think of you, and always be

Very truly your friend,

FLORENCE L. BARCLAY.

This little book has been written in response to many anxious questions; and as the result of much personal experience of the necessity for a careful study of Holy Scripture, on the important matter of intercessory prayer.

No attempt is made to deal with the wide subject of the prayer-life, in all its bearings. Attention is mainly concentrated upon the one point under consideration.

The subject has not been approached along the lines of sentiment, nor of preconceived habits of thought; but entirely along the clear pathway of Bible precept and practice.

Every idea put forward, every suggestion made, is based upon the Scriptures. The passages quoted will be found to range from Genesis to Revelation.

Should any other view of the subject occur to the reader, let it equally rest upon the firm foundation of the Word of God.

Let us study, as we also seek to pray, guided entirely by the Holy Spirit and may our prayers and aspirations ascend to the mercy-seat, wafted thither by the Golden Censer of His Sacred Presence within the soul.

M.L.B.

In studying the earthly prayer-life of the Lord Jesus Christ, we realise one great fact: that every prayer of His was heard and answered.

We have His own testimony to this:

"Father...Thou hearest me always" [1]; and the testimony of a thoughtful and practical woman, who knew Him well: "Whatsoever Thou wilt ask of God, God will give it Thee." [2]

Why was this? All other lives, even of Bible saints, abound with prayers which cannot be granted, requests which may not be bestowed, desires which must not be fulfilled.

The prayers of the Lord Jesus were always in accordance with the will of God; they never clashed with the working out of the Divine purpose, or disturbed the harmony of spiritual law.

One instance only, do we find, of a prayer which could not have been granted; a prayer wrung from Him by great trouble of soul:

"Father, save me from this hour." [3] But it was instantly amended; self was eliminated, the glory of God taking its place; and that prayer reached the Father's throne in a form which brought down an immediate and audible response: "Father, glorify Thy name." [4] Then came there a voice from heaven, saying: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again."

When doubtful as to whether a cry of the soul is in harmony with the will of God, apply this sacred test. Cut out the "I" and the "Me," and, where self stood at first, substitute "the glory of God." Then the answer will come with a power which shall reach and thrill, not only the troubled soul itself, [5]but those also that stand by.

In considering this difficult and important question as to how to pray always within the Will of God, we cannot do better than study the manner and method of the Lord Jesus in prayer; not only as regards those things for which He prayed, but also those things for which He did not pray. Foremost, and all-important among these, is the great statement of John xvii, 9 " I pray not for the world." [6]

Jesus Christ did not pray for the world. Such a prayer as "O God, save India!" or "O God, have mercy upon the millions of China!" so common in our missionary prayer-meetings, would never have been heard from those inspired lips.

Jesus Christ died for the world, but He did not pray for it. His followers pray for the world, but they very rarely die for it.

A great and far-reaching truth underlies this statement of John xvii, 9.

Human prayer, either individual or collective, must never clash with any great law of the spiritual kingdom.

Foremost among the laws of that kingdom, affecting mankind, is the great fact of free-will. "Whosoever will, let him take." [7]

The right of choice, the responsibility of choice, rests with every human soul, and is its birthright.

Prayer must never clash with this Divine law of free-will. If a soul could be prayed into the Kingdom of Heaven, it would cease to be a free agent, and would become an automaton, unconsciously forced into salvation by a motive power, outside its own faith or its own desires. Its new birth would be the result, not of belief on its own part, but of an act of faith, and a responsive act of omnipotence, between another soul and God.

When the world believes, the world will be saved. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." [8]

You can win the world into belief, but you cannot pray the world into salvation; nor are you meant to do so.

Even He, Who came to save the world, had to say: " I pray not for the world." [9]

A mistaken idea on this subject is responsible for much disappointed faith, and for a vast amount of wasted prayer-energy, which might work wonders if directed into the right channel.

Prayer for the world at large, for any particular country, for any community of unsaved people, or even for unconverted individuals, if it takes the form of pleading with God to "save them," to "bring them in," to "pour out His Holy Spirit upon them," to "have mercy on them," to "convert them," is uninspired and unscriptural prayer. It is either thoughtlessly urging upon God to do that which He has already most fully and completely done, thus practically disregarding and denying the "It is finished" [10] of Calvary, and the great Gift [11] at Pentecost; or it is beseeching God to intervene between His own law of free-will and the souls to whom He has granted the right of choice; taking from them that right, and saving them, apart from their own desire, in response to the faith of others.

GOD CAN is a glorious fact; but GOD CANNOT is equally blessed, [12] in its might and in its majesty. And the greatest of all the "Cannots" is that He cannot do this.

Bowing to that fundamental law, the loving, yearning, human Christ, Who came

To save the world [13]

To give life to the world [14]

To give light to the world [15]

To take away the sin of the world [16]

To be the propitiation for the whole world [17] yet had to say: "Father...I pray not for the world." [18]

The Bible is full of instructions concerning prayer; but you will not find therein any command to pray directly for outsiders, for the heathen, or for the world at large. Search and see.

For whom are we told to pray?

1st For one another. [19]

2nd For all the Saints. [20]

3rd For the Apostles. [21]

4th For the sick [22]

5th For them that persecute you [23]

Now examine in detail some of the prayers of the Lord Jesus Christ.

"Simon, Simon, behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not." [24]

"I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; Whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: but ye know Him; for He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." [25]

Can we wonder that the apostles never thought it necessary to supplement their Master's prayer with petitions of their own? The Early Church knew well how fully this prayer had been answered on the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was sent to abide with us forever. It was left for a later generation, to whom perhaps the Blessing of Pentecost was less of a fully experienced reality, to form the habit of constantly reiterating: "Send Thy Holy Spirit!" Oh, hush such vain repetition, in presence of the sublime prayer of the Christ, eighteen centuries ago: "I will pray the Father, and He shall give you another Comforter, that He may abide with you for ever"; and Peter's testimony, on the Day of Pentecost to the complete fulfilment of that prayer and promise: "Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, He hath shed forth this, which ye now see and hear." [26] Instead of praying that the Holy Ghost may be "sent," let us ask that we may realise His Presence here, and receive in full measure His wonderful Indwelling, with all it involves of grace, of peace, and of power.

The longest recorded prayer of the Lord Jesus is in the 17th chapter of the Gospel according to St. John, rightly called "The Holy of Holies of the Bible." This prayer is full of petitions for His own people. Notice particularly the 20th verse, which widens out those petitions, embracing-prophetically--"them also which shall believe on Me through their word" [27]; and the 21st verse, which explains that the world is to be won into belief, by observing the unity of Christians: "That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be one in Us: that the world may believe that Thou hast sent Me."

Now study the prayers of the apostles. Take a most comprehensive passage of St. Paul's in his epistle to the Colossians, the 1st chapter, 2nd and following verses:

"To the saints and faithful brethren in Christ which are at Colosse: Grace be unto you, and peace, from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. [28] We give thanks to God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, praying always for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus." [29] Note that it was their act of faith and acceptance of Jesus Christ, which brought them within the radius of the apostle's prayers. [30]

In the 5th and 6th verses he goes on to mention the gospel message, which came to them as to the whole world, but was bearing fruit in them, because hearing it had meant believing it, receiving it, and entering into "the grace of God in truth." To which he adds: "For this cause we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you," [31]; and then follow the wonderful and inspired requests, put up daily by St. Paul to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, on behalf of these young believers--prayers which were fully and richly answered.

Now it may be suggested that the apostle's statement that he prayed for these early Christians after he heard of their faith, does not necessarily imply that he did not pray beforehand for their conversion. Quite so. But where in the whole Bible do we find a single instance or record of any such prayer? The nearest approach to it is Romans x, 1.

"Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is, that they might be saved."[32] And we need not enter into a lengthy discussion as to whether that passage implies definite prayer, or is merely an outburst of earnest longing; nor as to whether Israel, being the chosen people of God, can be considered to correspond in any sense to the heathen or to the unconverted of this dispensation. It is sufficient to inquire: Was that prayer granted? Were the people of Israel, as a nation, saved in response to the apostle's supplication?

One single recorded prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ was for outsiders: the Roman soldiers for whom He pleaded: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." [33] But that request was not for a general forgiveness of the sins of those soldiers, such as would affect their eventual salvation; but rather that God the Father would overlook one definite act then being done to Himself, for which the suffering Saviour, in perfect justice, but with a marvellous exhibition of loving kindness, pleaded ignorance.

Let us pause for one moment to ask ourselves: do we, when pierced by the sharp pain of insult or injury, hasten to explain that those who are doing us the wrong most likely do it unwittingly, without realising the extent of the hurt they are inflicting; and that, therefore, we wish it at once forgotten and forgiven? This is a very Christlike trait. In suggesting prayer of this kind for our enemies and traducers--and, alas, they are more often found within the Church than without it--our Lord Jesus Christ mentions three things which should come to them as the result of having been our persecutors and slanderers: love, blessing, and good. [34]

We like to think of those Roman soldiers as never altogether losing the effect of having passed for one moment into the prayer realm of the heart and mind of Jesus. And surely the prayer of the dying Stephen [35]

must have pursued young Saul, of Tarsus, with a haunting blessing. Perhaps it became one of those pricks, against which his conscience found it so hard to kick. [36]

But this is a digression. Let us return to our subject.

What is to be our attitude toward the world? If we may not pray the world into salvation, what then can we do? We need not seek far for the answer.

"Go! Preach!"[37]

Go! Preach!

This is our duty; this is our privilege; this is the sacred trust committed to us by our ascended Lord. "As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you." [38] "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." [39]

It is easier to remain upon our knees, than to arise and go.

It is easier to pray, than to preach.

But the clear command is: "Go! Preach!"

And notice that with the fulfilling of that command, our responsibility ceases. The great law of individual choice comes in. The mind, now made aware of the good news of the love of God and the finished work of Jesus, through our instrumentality and by the enlightening power of the Holy Spirit accompanying the Word, must now come to a decision, face to face with the God Who calls it, and with the Saviour Who has redeemed it. "He that believeth...shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned." [40] The Spirit and the bride may say, "Come." He that heareth may say "Come."[41] But there all pressure from without must cease. The final issue remains with the individual will. "And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."

What are we to do for the world?

Up to the measure of our possible capacity, exactly what our Lord and Master did for it. For, "As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you." [42]

We have already seen what the Lord Jesus Christ came to do for the world, and when we go forth at His bidding it is to strive to bring light, life, and the message of reconciliation and forgiveness.

"Go ye into all the world."[43]

But if you cannot go? Then pray for those who can, and who do, go.

And this brings us to the right channel for missionary prayer-energy.

Our Lord himself gives us a very clear and precise missionary prayer.

After pointing out, as He well might do to-day, the greatness of the need and the inadequacy of the means for meeting it, He adds: "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest." [44]

Notice how completely this--the great missionary prayer of the Bible--is within the will of God; even leaving entirely in His hands the question as to whom He would choose, although the men who prayed it were very ready to go themselves; and, as a matter of fact, were almost immediately sent.

Mark also that the first suggestion of this prayer arose from the fact that the heart of the Saviour was "moved with compassion" [45] over a wandering multitude, "because they were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd."

On another occasion, somewhat later in His ministry, when again He was "moved with compassion" [46] toward a great waiting multitude, He said to His disciples: "Give ye them to eat."[47] It is helpful to note that this yearning of the loving heart of the Christ over the crowds who needed helping, healing, teaching, feeding, always took the form of calm and practical prayer and action. Emotion never moved Him from His steadfast purpose of walking, serene and ready, within the will of God. [48]

Now examine in detail our Bible directions as to how we should help by prayer in evangelistic and missionary work.

St. Paul says, in 2 Corinthians i, 11, "Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons, thanks may be given by many of our behalf." [49]And in Romans xv, 30, 31, "Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me in your prayers to God for me; that I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judæa; and that my service which I have for Jerusalem may be accepted of the saints." [50]And, most important of all: Colossians iv, 2-4, "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving; withal praying also for us, that God would open unto us a door of utterance, to speak the mystery of Christ...that I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak." [51]

Here are the true channels for our intercessory prayers on behalf of foreign lands, and of evangelistic work in our own land. Pray for the messengers--that a "door of utterance" may be opened unto them. Pray about the message--that it may be truth Divine to every heart, and may go forth in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And, even this, is taking you three steps beyond the injunction of the Lord Jesus Christ, and is presupposing that you have already prayed the labourers out into the harvest fields [52]. Always be ready to retrace those steps when necessary; and, in answer to that primary prayer, you may find yourself standing before a "door of utterance," and depending upon the prayers of those at home, for its opening.

One more very comprehensive passage of instructions as to how to pray for all fellowbelievers, and for ministers, evangelists, and preachers. "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints; and for me, that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly, to make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in bonds: that therein I may speak boldly, as I ought to speak."[53]

Notice that in all these explicit petitions there is no trace of such expressions as "O God, save souls!" or "Lord, convert the impenitent!" "May sinners be converted unto Thee."

These latter words take us to the 51st Psalm, where we almost expect to find them. But no. In the form taken by this wonderful prayer, we have our subject borne out, in every detail: first, prayer for the messenger; then, power in the message. For here the messenger pleads for himself: "Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and uphold me with Thy free Spirit. Then will I teach transgressors Thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto Thee." [54]

In the first epistle of Paul the Apostle, to Timothy, the 2nd chapter and the first four verses, we find this very comprehensive passage about prayer. "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men; for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth."[55]

While this passage undoubtedly commands universal intercession, there is not a word in it countenancing the mistaken lines of prayer which form the subject of our consideration; in fact the passage, taken as a whole, implies with absolute clearness, that the supplications, prayers and intercessions apply rather to the life and conduct of those for whom the Early Church thus prayed; the closing clause beautifully bearing out the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, given in the 13th chapter of the gospel according to St. John: "By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another." [56] Also in the 17th chapter of the same Gospel, and the 21st verse: "That they all may be one...that the world may believe" [57]; and in the 23rd verse: "That they may be made perfect in one...that the world may know that Thou hast sent Me."[58]

A quiet and peaceable life, a spirit of love and unity amongst all branches of the Church of Christ, would do more to bring all men to the knowledge of the truth, than any amount of praying and preaching while discord is rife.

Here then is another inspired channel for our prayer-energy. Pray the Church into love and unity, so that the world may have some chance of believing in the Church's Lord.

Now, before turning to the more practical, experimental, and individual application of our subject, let us examine one instance, given in God's Holy Word, of importunate prayer for the salvation of a family--a salvation to be accomplished against their own will and inclination, without any act of repentance, faith, or surrender on their part.

We shall see how these urgent and persistent prayers, for the salvation of a backsliding relative and his worldly family, were granted by the Lord; but with what strange and disastrous results.

Turn to Genesis xviii, and you find yourself on the plains of Mamre [59], overlooking the Vale of Siddim, which is now the Dead Sea. On this high table-land, Abraham walked in earnest communion with his God.

The two angels had gone on to Sodom--see verse 22 of chapter xviii and verse 1 of chapter xix--Thus Abraham found himself alone with that blessed One--the Angel of Jehovah--Who "appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre." [60]

During this quiet time of converse, the Lord's purposes of investigation and of judgment [61] were fully revealed to Abraham; and Abraham's whole soul yearned over his own kindred in that doomed city.

Though not actually named in the account it is impossible to doubt that the anxious cry of his heart was for Lot, and for Lot's erring family. And we know the Lord took it to be so; for we read in the 19th chapter: "And it came to pass [62], when God destroyed the cities of the plain, that God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when He overthrew the cities in the which Lot dwelt." Also we find how, owing to this special mercy of God, in response to Abraham's importunate prayer, Lot and his family were saved from out the destruction of that condemned city, against their will; for "While he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city." [63]

Mark the result, and then let us ask ourselves: Is this the sort of salvation we desire for our unconverted relatives and friends, when we so persistently cry: "O Lord, save them! O Lord, have mercy upon them!"

(True, this was a forcible leading into safety from physical death, rather than from spiritual danger. But there is no doubt that, in all these Old Testament happenings, the natural typified the spiritual. Just as Abraham's call to be a tent-dweller [64] typified consecration of heart and life, so Lot's progress toward Sodom [65], and eventual abandonment of tent-dwelling for a house in that city [66], clearly indicates the backslider; while his wife and daughters, wholly absorbed in the life of Sodom, stand unmistakably for the unconverted of this dispensation.

It may be useful here to note, in passing, the solemn lesson of Genesis xix, 14. When Lot, alarmed by the angel's warning, attempted to pass on the message to his own children, saying: "Up, get you out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city!" his words had no effect. "He seemed as one that mocked, unto his sons in law." [67] It is useless for a backslider to attempt to be a preacher, especially in his own home circle. Backsliding and preaching are not compatible.)

Now mark the result of Divine intervention in response to Abraham's urgent and repeated requests.

Lot's wife was no sooner free from the compelling control of the angel, than she paused, and looked back. The pause must have been a long one, and the intention to return if possible, very determined, for a descending wave of molten bitumen caught her, swept over her where she stood, and left her standing there, firmly fixed to the ground, a living woman, in a fast-hardening prison; a solitary statue of Unregenerate Despair, at which Jesus pointed a warning finger, nineteen hundred years later, when He said: "Remember Lot's wife." [68] Better far for that poor woman to have perished among the multitude in the city, who, like herself, preferred sin to safety. What must have been Abraham's feelings whenever, in crossing the plain, he passed near that upright tomb, and traced in its outline the form and figure of one for whom he had offered such insistent prayer.

Into the darkness of the mountain cave we dare not follow Lot and his two daughters. Suffice it to say, that from that infamous dwelling-place there issued forth two nations, the Moabites and the Ammonites, who in the years to come were a perpetual hindrance, stumbling-block, and cause of defeat and disaster to the descendants of Abraham in their attempts to enter into God's promises to him, and to dwell in the promised land. Even one thousand four hundred and fifty-three years later [69], it was Tobiah the Ammonite who opposed and discouraged Nehemiah and his brave little band, in their noble work of rebuilding the ruined wall of Jerusalem; because "it grieved him exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel."[70]

Truly "we know not what we should pray for as we ought." [71] How thankfully we remember that "The Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God." [72]

If your "intercessions for all men" [73] are to be within the will of God, they must be inspired by that patient, all-wise Spirit.

We now reach the very essential of all true prayer: "Praying in the Holy Ghost." [74]

Never attempt unaided prayer. To do so, is to court unreality, and consequent disappointment.

A prayer-meeting held without the realised Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit. resembles a group of perished people gathering for warmth and brightness around a fireplace in which the fuel is all laid and ready, but to which no match has been applied. Would they not go away chilled and disheartened? Coal, logs, and seats around a hearth do not, in themselves, constitute a fire, if the essential be lacking.

The incense, used in the tabernacle worship, is, throughout the Bible, the special type of prayer. See Psalm cxli, verse 2 "Let my prayer be set forth before Thee as incense." [75] Also Revelation viii, 3rd and 4th verses: "And another angel came and stood at the altar, having a golden censer; and there was given unto him much incense, that he should offer it with the prayers of all saints upon the golden altar which was before the throne. And the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand." [76]

Now turn to Leviticus xvi in order to find the great lesson taught by this type.

In the 12th and 13th verses we read: "And Aaron shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar before the LORD, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the veil. And he shall put the incense upon the fire before the LORD, that the cloud of the incense may cover the mercy-seat." [77]

Incense, we remember, is a hard, aromatic substance, somewhat resembling resin or gum. In its natural condition it has very little perfume, and no rising power. But put fire beneath it, and, at once, clouds of all-pervading fragrance mount and rise, filling and permeating the entire place.

Have you been conscious sometimes of a coldness and deadness in your prayers? Have you said: "Alas, they rise no higher than the ceiling! They do not reach the mercy-seat; they are not wafted to the throne of God."

Have you forgotten the Fire? Have you entered the Holy of Holies, the inmost sanctuary of prayer, with your hands full of incense--incense beaten small, it may be; for great need and long vigil have a way of breaking the anxious heart--yet hard and cold, for all that; devoid of rising power?

Where is the Fire? Must you lay that hard, cold, broken incense before the mercy-seat and go your way sadly, sighing for the fragrance, yearning for the ascending clouds?

Where is the Fire, upon which to place your incense?

It is here! "Praying in the Holy Ghost." [78] "Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit." [79] For "The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities." [80]

No more cold, formal, earth-weighted prayers, when you have learned to lay your broken incense upon the almighty Fire in the Golden Censer of His Presence within the soul.

This is the precious secret of Inspired Prayer.

Let us now consider this subject in its practical bearings: firstly, as regards collective petitions; secondly, as regards individual prayers for individuals.

Many who read these pages will remember a certain gathering, at a Convention, a few years ago, which unexpectedly became an all-night of prayer and testimony. Hundreds of earnest-minded people spent hours upon their knees, and a large part of the proceedings consisted in one voice exclaiming: "O God, convert Ireland!" most of those present immediately taking up the cry, "Ireland! Ireland! Ireland!" until the entire neighbourhood rang with it. "O God, save Scotland!" came from another voice in the assembly. "Scotland! Scotland! Scotland!"--"O God, revive London!" "London! London! London!"

The quiet night resounded with these cries of impassioned faith and zeal.

But--was Ireland converted? Was Scotland saved? Has a revival reached London?

Now, we want to realise this. If prayer for the salvation of a country, of a town, of a community of people were an inspired and legitimate prayer, it would not necessitate hours of vigil and agonising before the Lord, nor would it require shouts which resembled the cries of the prophets of Baal [81], rather than the quiet mountain-top prayers [82] of the Lord Jesus Christ. It would be sufficient that one child of God, with "faith as a grain of mustard seed" [83] should say: "Father, convert every unconverted soul in London to-night; for Jesus Christ's sake: Amen"--and every unconverted soul in London would necessarily be converted, because of two promises: "If we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us" [84]. And "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father, in My name, He will give it you."[85]

No desire could be more clearly in accordance with the Father's will, [86] than the desire for the salvation of others. And every prayer put up in the name of the Lord Jesus [87] reaches the throne.

Why then is the world not saved? What renders these prayers practically null and void?

The fact that God cannot deny Himself. He cannot take from man a gift bestowed.

The great law of human free-will intervenes. It is the law to which the Redeemer of the World bowed, when He said: "I pray not for the world." [88] It is the law to which His people must bow when they face the problem of the unbelievers and the unsaved.

"Go, and preach" [89] is our Lord's command; and we need to realise that we have no right to change that command into "kneel and pray."

It is as easy to say, "O God, save China!" as to put a threepenny bit into the plate at a missionary meeting; in fact such a prayer is worth less than a threepenny bit, and partakes rather of the nature of the proverbial button, because it is uncashable. China will be saved, when China's millions believe; "and how shall they believe in Him of Whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? [90] And how shall they preach, except they be sent?" "Pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest." [91]

Now, as regards the important subject of prayer for individuals--a wife's prayers for an unbelieving husband; a husband's prayers for an unsaved wife; parents' for children; a friend's for a friend. Will the right understanding of this subject curtail or limit these earnest, anxious pleadings, or cause them altogether to cease? Oh, far from it! Rather shall we continue to pray with fresh hope, and with renewed comfort and expectation, when we realise that our petitions are flowing through inspired channels, and that the Holy Spirit is making intercession for us, "according to the will of God." [92]

Also, when we have definitely realised that the final responsibility of choice rests with each individual soul, a burden, which we were never meant to bear, will be lifted from us, and there will be no danger of a dark cloud of misunderstanding arising between us and our loving Heavenly Father.

Surely those of us who are called to minister to souls, are frequently confronted with this difficulty. Heartbroken children of God, worn with yearning prayer, come to us sighing: "Ah, I have prayed for the salvation of various relatives and friends for years, yet they are still unconverted. Now I feel my own faith failing. Why does not God save them? Surely this petition is according to His will?"

Quite lately the case was brought to the knowledge of the writer of this little book, of an aged Christian lady whose faith in her God and in prayer was practically wrecked, because her son, for whom she had prayed daily during forty years, had died an atheist.

Now, however grievous might be such a sorrow, there could be no question of loss of faith, or of any cloud between the trustful soul and its God, if we realise that He could not respond to prayers which asked Him to go behind His own great primal laws of human choice, and of free-will.

Confronted by so hard a test, we should stand with faithful Abraham upon the plains of Mamre, and say: "Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" And the deep rest of fellowship with our Divine Lord in this, would prove an added blessing to our prayer-life.

Furthermore, a right apprehension of this subject will be an incentive to fulfilling in the home, and in the inner circle of friendship, the command of our Lord Jesus Christ: "Go, preach." [93]

How often a wife, who speaks sadly of having prayed for her unconverted husband during many years, considers that she has completely fulfilled her part, by all the hours of secret prayer in her own chamber, and she must now "leave the rest to God," Who, "in His own good time," will hear and answer her prayers, and will save that soul.

Ah, poor anxious heart, ask thyself, honestly! Has not this easier way of prayer, served to close thine eyes to the clear duty of brave word and faithful testimony? Hast thou been asking thy God to do that which thou thyself shouldst rather have been doing? "Go, preach!"

The word "go" is very simple, and in your case probably means: rise from your knees and go downstairs to the familiar room, where sits one, for whom you have prayed during all these years, but to whom you have never spoken of your Lord.

Or, if your prayers have been on behalf of an unconverted son, abroad, it may mean that you must go to your desk and sit down to write a letter--a simple, earnest letter--which shall open his eyes to God's high calling [94] for him, in Christ Jesus; and which shall cause him to listen at last to the pleading of that patient, loving Spirit, Whom he has long resisted, but Who, in response to your prayers, has never ceased to strive with him.

Yes; the meaning of "go" is very simple. The exact word, in the Greek, used in Mark xvi, 15 (poreuomai) [95] signifies to pass on.

The word "preach" is more complicated, and requires careful study; because many Greek words in the original are all translated "preach" in our version; yet they hold many meanings other than that connected, as a rule, with pulpit and gown.

Let us glance at a few of these, giving one reference, only, for each.

"To tell, or announce thoroughly." Luke ix, 6o.

"To speak throughout." Acts xx, 7 and 9.

"To tell good news or tidings." Luke iv, 43.

"To tell thoroughly." Acts iv, 2.

"To proclaim as a herald." Matt. iii, 1.

"To talk, or discourse." Mark ii, 2.

Study these various passages and meanings, then ask yourself whether you have done all these things in your own home; amid your circle of friends; throughout your neighbourhood.

If not, look up, O praying soul! You, whose faith seems clouded by long silent waiting; look up and see your risen Lord standing before you, His hand upon the open door, as He points the way, with a look of unutterable comprehension and love, and says to you: "Go; preach."

But possibly some may still say: "Are we then to cease praying for the unconverted?"

Most emphatically not. "Pray without ceasing;" [96] but taking careful heed that your prayer-energy is directed along inspired channels; that is to say along the lines clearly laid down, by precept and by practice, in God's Holy Word.

Moreover, should you find therein any line of prayer for the unconverted, not mentioned in these pages--any method of petition warranted by the Word, which has been here overlooked--then use that method, pray along that line, and the Divine blessing will rest upon your prayers; for "This is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us: [97]And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him." [98]

But we need to remember that actual "petition"--even of a wise and an inspired kind--is but one phase of prayer.

Of the many Hebrew and Greek words translated "to pray" in our version, only a few mean "to ask"; while of those translated "prayer," two only actually mean a request or supplication. Other meanings are--in the former case: "To bow down," "To meditate," "To want," "To ask or interrogate," "To call for"; and, in the latter: "A whisper," "An intercession," "A pouring out," and "A song of praise."

Surely one or other of these definitions will meet our every need.

How often a prayer for an unconverted child, takes the form of an outpouring. "O, my son, Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!" [99]

How consoling to remember that the heart of "the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulations" [100]--"God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace" [101]--can understand the cry of anguish of an earthly parent's heart over a son who is "dead in trespasses and sins." [102] He shall "Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work." [103] Even "a whisper," or an earnest meditation, can penetrate to the Infinite, and shall soon become a "Song of Praise," as you say: "For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found." [104]

But, remember, the prodigal had to "Come to himself" in the "far country." He had to make the effort of will, which turned from the far country to the father's house, leaving behind both the riotous living, and the consequent famine and husks. Alone and unaided he had to come to the point of saying:

" I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, 'Father, I have sinned.'" [105]

This little volume will probably be read by some who are yet in the "far country"; who are spending all the best of life in the pursuit of amusement; in the absorbing pressure of business; in the rush for self-advancement; even, perhaps, in that weary bondage of "serving divers lusts and pleasures" [106] upon which St. Paul himself looked back, in vivid remembrance; a condition of soul which our Lord described as being "choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life," [107] and bringing "no fruit to perfection."

The "pleasures of this life" are, without doubt, satisfying at the moment; but--there comes an "afterward."[108]

Esau thoroughly enjoyed the red pottage; but, "afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance; though he sought it carefully with tears." And the most solemn point in the story is, that "no place of repentance" might be more correctly translated "No way to change his mind." If sorrow had been all that was needed, Esau was sorry enough. He "cried with a great and exceeding bitter cry" [109]; he even "lifted up his voice, and wept"; but, for all that, "he found no way to change his mind." He had given in for so long to self-indulgence and self-pleasing, that he could not arrive at the change of mind which alone could have brought him into blessing.

For those in the "far country" our subject holds just one clear message. It is this.

When you give yourself a few quiet moments in which to face the "afterward," do you not have a vague sort of idea that all is bound to come right in the end; that a life which began in the light of a Christian home, cannot close in the outer darkness; that your mother's prayers cannot fail to be heard; and that, in answer to those prayers, God will save you somehow--some day?

Undoubtedly your mother's prayers have been heard.

It may even be in answer to some prayer; on your behalf that you now find yourself with this little book in your hand, and have been led to read it, up to this point.

But its message for you is clearly this. Your birthright as a human soul is the great gift of free-will, the power and the responsibility of choice.

No prayers, however yearning, however constant, however persistent, can take from you that gift. Omnipotence Itself cannot save you against your will.

There is one very solemn passage on prayer for others, to which the attention of those for whom the first seven chapters of this book were written, was not directed. We came very near it, once or twice, yet we passed it by. We left it for this final chapter. Let us look at it now.

The First Epistle of St. John, the 5th chapter, and the 16th verse. "If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask [110], and He shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. [111] There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it."

Oh, mark those closing words! Every other sin you have committed has been fully atoned for by the Lord Jesus Christ. The three facts of Isaiah liii, 6, are each equally true. "All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all." [112] If we are forced, by self-knowledge, to assent to these first two facts, in their sadness, how can we withhold our assent to the glad certainty of a finished redemption?

What then is the sin unto death--that sin which is past praying for?

Obviously, it is the only damning sin--the sin of unbelief. "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life [113]...He that believeth on Him is not condemned: but He that believeth not is condemned already." [114]

Belief and life; unbelief and death. Throughout the Word, they go together.

Again we are confronted with the solemn fact that the unbelieving mind cannot be prayed into belief. "I do not say that he shall pray for it," says the tenderest writer of all the Bible scribes.

What then is to be done with this sin past praying for?

Each soul, for itself, must definitely give it up; making the mental surrender which means passing from death unto life; from unbelief into the belief which involves possession. "He that hath the Son hath Life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life."[115]

But this entering into the blessing of life eternal, must be a definite act of your own free-will.

Mark this. A young man of the world, impelled by a certain amount of good intention, consulted the Lord Jesus Christ as to his chances of inheriting eternal life He stood face to face with the Saviour of the World. He heard the lips of the Son of God Himself say "Come, and follow Me." [116] Yet--he went away!

"The Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come...And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." [117]

Prayer may have held open the door for you, during all these years; but prayer cannot compel you to enter; prayer cannot pass you in.

The door is open still. There are watchers at the gate.

But, out in the far country, you, yourself, must say: "I will arise and go."

Dawn at last--the sudden brilliant dawning of an eastern day.

It has been a weary night, a night of restless pacing to and fro; a night of anxious listening to the tramping of the Roman guard outside; a night during which the horror of anticipated agony has grown moment by moment, and become at last a dull frenzy of hopeless terror.

Dawn at last!

But daylight brings no comfort to Barabbas in his prison cell.

He must die, to-day.

This sun, now rising so softly from behind the Mount of Olives, shall, at noon, beat down remorselessly on Golgotha, where he by then shall hang in agony, betwixt earth and heaven, as if by both rejected.

No help; no hope; none to take pity; no, not one.

Oh that the cold, clear Pascal moon, that he cursed it for its pure brightness as it flooded his cell last night, might have shone on forever!

But the long night is over. It is dawn--at last; and the day now dawning is his day of death.

There had been an unusual stir outside during the night. A hurrying crowd went by, with lanterns and flaring torches. He could hear the clashing of swords and staves, and the suppressed excitement of an expected capture, as they passed hurriedly out of the City.

Soon after midnight they returned; and, as they tramped by, beneath his prison grating, he guessed, from the rough jests and tones of triumph, that they had secured their prisoner.

His mind went back to the hour of his own capture, and that of several of his comrades,--two of whom are doomed to die with him in the morning. Again they have been out as against a thief, with swords and staves. No doubt the prisoner is yet another of the robber band led on by him to rapine, revolt, and insurrection in the city. For a moment, in his despairing loneliness, he seemed in touch once more with the outer world; and reaching up to the narrow grating, he seized the iron bars with both his hands, and shook them in a frenzied longing for liberty; shouting aloud the names of various of his comrades. But no voice answered him. The footsteps died away. All again was silent.

And so the long hours passed slowly; and at last a sudden sound broke the stillness; a homely, familiar sound enough, and yet one which thrilled Barabbas with shrinking, nervous dread, for it trumpeted his day of doom. A cock crowed twice, shrill and clear, heralding the dawn.

And now the moon has come; and there is no help; no hope; none to take pity--no, not one.

The morning relief-guard marches up: and he learns, from the loud talk of the sentries outside, the name of the prisoner captured at midnight:--Jesus of Nazareth, the holy teacher from Galilee, taken at last by the malicious contrivance of the chief priests and scribes, and now being tried for His life, before Pilate, on some trumped up charge of treason against Cæsar.

And then dies out the last ray of hope in the poor felon's soul!

Through that long night, though he had scarcely dared to build upon it, he could not but remember that the day on which he was to die, chanced to be that day of the Feast, when his fellow-citizens might demand of the Roman Governor the life and pardon of one prisoner, whomsoever they desired. His past career has been so black; his two comrades, condemned with him, are so far less guilty that he had but little hope of being chosen. Still, he is a notable prisoner. His name is well known. And his dare-devil bravery may have gained him a popularity amongst a section of the common people, which the influence, certain to be brought to bear against him, of the chief priests and elders, and the more respectable members of the community, may not be able to withstand.

It was a forlorn hope; but he had clung to it. Only now he realises how desperately he had clung to it; for now, indeed, he has no chance.

He knows this latest prisoner well. Jesus, the holy young Rabbi, whom the common people hear so gladly, Jesus, who has walked in and out amongst them for three years, bringing blessings with Him everywhere. Jesus, who sits down with publicans and sinners, winning the hardest and the vilest to yield to His holy influence. Jesus, who can afford to reach out a strong hand of forgiving pity to a poor outcast of the city,--and yet can hold His own before all, even with Pharisees and Scribes. The men follow Him. The women worship Him. The little children gather round His knee. Only the other day the city rang with Hosannas, as they gave Him a right royal welcome to the Feast. The world is gone after Him!

What chance has Barabbas now?

Listening breathlessly, he can hear the sound of many feet, hastening to the Judgment Hall; the murmur in the distance of an eager excited crowd. All Jerusalem is coming to the rescue! Voices will now be raised on Christ's behalf which, but for His word of power, had remained dumb for ever. Pilate's question will fall on ears which had never heard mortal voice, but for the mighty Ephphatha of Jesus. Eyes will gaze upon Him as He stands before that Judgment seat, which, but for His tender touch, had never known the light. And surely, strong right arms will be raised in His defence, which, till He spoke the word, were helpless--withered.

What chance has Barabbas? None!

But now a wild shout from the multitude bursts upon his ear:

"BARABBAS! BARABBAS! BARABBAS!"

Why do they shout His name?

A breathless silence; then a yet louder cry; a yell of derisive anger:

"CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM!"

What? Has it come to this? Are the rabble clamouring for his blood?

He rushes round his cell like a hunted beast at bay.

He beats his open palms against the hard stone walls.

Already he seems to feel the nails crush through the quivering flesh.

Hark!

They come.

A surging multitude surrounds his prison. The tramp of Roman soldiers rings on the outer pavement.

A cold sweat breaks out upon his brow. They have come to bring him forth to die.

The prison door is flung wide open. A ray of heavenly sunshine streams in, flooding his cell with golden light.

The Captain of the Guard stands in the entrance.

He speaks.

"Barabbas--thou art free."

"Free?" stammers the robber. "I? Free? Oh, mock me not! How can I be free?"

The Captain of the Guard steps in, and lays his hand roughly, yet kindly, on the robber's trembling shoulder. The full flood of morning sunlight streams through the doorway. Bolts, bars, chains, sentries--all are gone. The Roman soldier lifts his hand, and points to the open door.

"Thou art free, Barabbas. Jesus of Nazareth dies to-day, upon the very cross prepared for thee. Thou canst step out into life and liberty."

Reader--pause here, and see yourself. "Thou art the man." Have you not felt yourself walled in by wrath and sin; helpless, hopeless, condemned; cut off from all chance of a fresh beginning; despairing of ever starting a new and better life?

What Jesus did for Barabbas on that Good Friday, He can do for you, to-day.

To-day your dungeon doors are opened wide. You may step out into life and liberty. For HE has suffered on your cross; HE has borne your sin--the Just for the unjust, that He might bring you to God.

You are free!

Think you Barabbas crouched on in his prison, sighing for liberty, trembling in dread of death? Surely not. Who can doubt that he bounded through the open door, and out into the sunlight, breathing in deeply the sweets of life and liberty.

And, perhaps, later on, drawn thither by a strange and awful attraction, Barabbas found his way to that hill-top,--where many stood 'watching afar off,'--and saw Jesus, hanging where he should have hung; suffering as he should have suffered; dying that he might live. And may we not believe that the sight melted the robber's heart, and that the Just dying for the unjust, brought him indeed to God?

Reader--go and do thou likewise. Use thy first moments of glad liberty to find thy way to Calvary. Kneel on the blood-sprinkled ground, and clasp the cross which should have been thine own. Let thy heart break for love of Him who hangs thereon.

And then the cross shall vanish from thy view. Thy risen crowned King shall stand before thee, and claim thee as His own; for "HE DIED FOR ALL; THAT THEY WHICH LIVE, SHOULD NOT HENCEFORTH LIVE UNTO THEMSELVES, BUT UNTO HIM, WHO DIED FOR THEM, AND ROSE AGAIN."--2 Cor. v. 14-15.

"Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all."