unattended
with a sense of personal relief.

* * * * *

PARABLES FOR BOSCHES.

Once upon a time there was a Father who was devoted to his child. He fed
it and nursed it and watched it grow and gave it toys to play with--both
soldiers and boats. Also he made it promises that some day he would
extend their house and garden until no house and garden were bigger.
Every year he took it to the top of a high precipice and showed it
beautiful lands and water which should some day be theirs.

The child had heard this promise so often that it used to ask, "When?
when?" And always the answer was, "Some day, some day."

And then at last the day came, and the Father took the child to the high
precipice yet once more, but behold it chanced that they both fell over
and were smashed, the Father hopelessly and the child very, very badly,
so that it would for long years or perhaps for evermore be a cripple.

* * * * *

ONE OF OUR ALLIES.

Somewhere in France--no, let me be bold and say in Paris--there is a
young French soldier named Charles. Less than two years ago he was a
plumber and whole; to-day he has but one arm, his left; the other and a
piece of his shoulder with it having gone in saving his country from the
foe.

Charles is shy and very modest, and no bigger than so many French
youths--he is only twenty-two--with dark-brown hair and blue eyes with
very black centres, and a moustache that never succeeds in looking more
than three weeks old. Being, however, brave, he does not let his maimed
condition unduly trouble him, but runs his errands (all that he can now
do) and whistles as he runs, and is glad to be alive at all, instead of
dead, as so many of his comrades are and as his Colonel is, as I shall
tell.

At the Front Charles's duties were these. A despatch--a _pli_, as they
call it--would be given him either back of the lines to deliver in the
trenches, or in the trenches to deliver back of the lines, and in order
to get there, if fighting was in progress, it was necessary for him to
crawl for perhaps one or two kilometres on his stomach. On a certain day
of intense activity, Charles in his trench was handed one of these
critical missives for the commanding officer, who was a kilometre or so
behind, and this he placed in his satchel and then began the hazardous
journey.

No one ever knows when the supreme moment of his life is coming; nor did
Charles