at a price! Pay me twice what I paid for it and it shall be yours!"

There was a Scots bargain for you! They must have thought me mean and
grasping that day. But out they went. They worked for the money. It
was but just a month after war had been declared, and money was still
scarce and shy of peeping out and showing itself. But, bit by bit, they
got the siller. A shilling at a time they raised, by subscription. But
they got it all, and brought it to me, smiling the while.

"Here, Harry--here's your money!" they said. "Now give us back our flag!"

Back to them I gave it--and with it the money they had brought, to be
added to the fund for the soldier boys. And so that one flag brought
three hundred pounds sterling to the soldiers. I wonder did those
folk at Christchurch think I would keep the money and make a profit
on that flag?

Had it been another time I'd have stayed in New Zealand gladly a long
time. It was a friendly place, and it gave us many a new friend. But
home was calling me. There was more than the homebound tour that had
been planned and laid out for me. I did not know how soon my boy
might be going to France. And his mother and I wanted to see him
again before he went, and to be as near him as might be.

So I was glad as well as sorry to sail away from New Zealand's
friendly shores, to the strains of pipers softly skirling:

"Will ye no come back again?"

We sailed for Sydney on the _Minnehaha_, a fast boat. We were glad of
her speed a day or so out, for there was smoke on the horizon that
gave some anxious hours to our officers. Some thought the German
raider _Emden_ was under that smoke. And it would not have been
surprising had a raider turned up in our path. For just before we
sailed it had been discovered that the man in charge of the principal
wireless station in New Zealand was a German, and he had been
interned. Had he sent word to German warships of the plans and
movements of British ships? No one could prove it, so he was only
interned.

Back we went to Sydney. A great change had come since our departure.
The war ruled all deed and thought. Australia was bound now to do her
part. No less faithfully and splendidly than New Zealand was she
engaged upon the enterprise the Hun had thrust upon the world.
Everyone was eager for news, but it was woefully scarce. Those were
the black, early days, when the German rush upon Paris was being
stayed, after the disasters of the first fortnight of the