IV. PICTURES 53

V. SAVING OUR SOULS 58

VI. SURPRISES 70

VII. CONSERVATION 92

VIII. "PERMISSION" 112

IX. THE SLACKER--IN UNIFORM 142

X. NATIONAL SERVICE--ONE WAY 154

XI. THE ORPHAN 171

XII. THE WAR-MOTHER 193

XIII. THE BELIEVING CHURCH 210

XIV. THE LAST RESERVES 227

XV. LIFE'S TRAGEDY 241

XVI. WAITING! 247

The Next of Kin

FOREWORD

It was a bleak day in November, with a thick, gray sky, and a great,
noisy, blustering wind that had a knack of facing you, no matter which
way you were going; a wind that would be in ill-favor anywhere, but in
northern Alberta, where the wind is not due to blow at all, it was
what the really polite people call "impossible." Those who were not so
polite called it something quite different, but the meaning is the
same.

There are districts, not so very far from us, where the wind blows so
constantly that the people grow accustomed to it; they depend on it;
some say they like it; and when by a rare chance it goes down for a
few hours, they become nervous, panicky, and apprehensive, always
listening, expecting something to happen. But we of the windless
North, with our sunlit spaces, our quiet days and nights, grow
peevish, petulant, and full of grouch when the wind blows. We will
stand anything but that. We resent wind; it is not in the bond; we
will have none of it!

"You won't have many at the meeting to-day," said the station agent
cheerfully, when I went into the small waiting-room to wait for the
President of the Red Cross Society, who wanted to see me before the
meeting. "No, you won't have many a day like this, although there are
some who will come out, wind or no wind, to hear a woman speak--it's
just idle curiosity, that's all it is."

"Oh, come," I said, "be generous; maybe they really think that she may
have something to say!"

"Well, you see," said this amateur philosopher, as he dusted the
gray-painted sill of the wicket with a large red-and-white
handkerchief, "it _is_ great to hear a woman speak in public, anyway,
even if she doe