from a
thrashing. I was always singing about you when I sang that old song,

"'My love is young and fair,
My love has golden hair,
And eyes so blue and heart so true
That none with her compare.'

"It was partly because you were so much to me that I wanted to enlist.
I felt that I would be fighting for you. And if I do not come back
to-morrow I will be glad to feel that I will be helping to save you
from harm. You will not miss me, but the Aunties will, and I am going
to ask a great favour of you. Will you always go to see them, and
comfort them? And tell them they must not grieve for me. It is so
much better to come out here and die for a good cause than to live in
peace and safety at home. I am so glad, and they must be glad too, for
my sake. I will have your little ring----"

Christina could read no more just then. Her bright head went down on
the sunny window sill, she slipped to the floor in a very passion of
grief. She was realising with overwhelming remorse that a most
beautiful thing had happened to her and her eyes had been too blind to
see until the pageant had faded. Her True Knight--and what lady of
high degree had a knight more noble?--her True Knight had ridden out to
mortal combat, and she had not even waved him farewell from her window!

She left the work with Mitty the next day and went up over the hills to
see the Grant Girls. She did not take her letter, it was too sacred
for even their loving eyes, but she wanted to talk to them about Gavin
and, if she were alone with Auntie Elspie, she would whisper to her
that her heart had gone out into the storm and darkness after Gavin
that night he went to the war, and that it still followed him somewhere
in the shining regions where he moved.

She went slowly up over the dun fields, lying all quiet and restful,
waiting for the stirring of the Spring. Away down in the beaver meadow
a soft green flush told that the pussy willows were already out, a bold
robin was singing the opening song of the Spring concert, and the crows
cawed derisively over the memories of a vanquished Winter.

But Christina's sad heart could not respond to these little, gay
greetings of Spring. She lingered in the bare slash, remembering the
day of the berry-picking when Gavin had been in such deep trouble. She
stood in the place where he had stood when he pulled the bind-weed, and
when they had listened to the call of the opening drum beat of the war.
An