ue eyes
staring out under the dusty forelock. Then he grunted, and going up to
him, laid a hand on his shoulder.

"_Your_ heart's all right, my lad, but you can't pass."

The little cowman looked at him, turned, and went straight out. An hour
later he sat again beside the farmer on the way home, staring before him
and jolting up and down.

"They won't get me," he said suddenly: "I can fight, but I'se not
goin'." A fire of resentment seemed to have been lit within him. That
evening he ate his tea, and next day settled down again among his
beasts. But whenever, now, the war was mentioned, he would look up with
his puckered smile which seemed to have in it a resentful amusement, and
say:

"They a'nt got me yet."

His dumb sacrifice passing their comprehension, had been rejected--or so
it seemed to him He could not understand that they had spared him. Why!
He was as good as they! His pride was hurt. No! They should not get him
now!

1916.

VIII

THE PEACE MEETING

Colin Wilderton, coming from the West on his way to the Peace Meeting,
fell in with John Rudstock, coming from the North, and they walked on
together. After they had commented on the news from Russia and the
inflation of money, Rudstock said abruptly:

"We shall have a queer meeting, I expect."

"God knows!" answered Wilderton.

And both smiled, conscious that they were uneasy, but predetermined not
to show it under any circumstances. Their smiles were different, for
Rudstock was a black-browed man, with dark beard and strong, thick
figure, and Wilderton a very light-built, grey-haired man, with kindly
eyes and no health. He had supported the war an immense time, and had
only recently changed his attitude. In common with all men of warm
feelings, he had at first been profoundly moved by the violation of
Belgium. The horrors of the German advance through that little country
and through France, to which he was temperamentally attached, had
stirred in him a vigorous detestation, freely expressed in many ways.
Extermination, he had felt all those early months, was hardly good
enough for brutes who could commit such crimes against humanity and
justice; and his sense of the need for signal defeat of a noxious force
riding rough-shod over the hard-won decency of human life had survived
well into the third year of the war. He hardly knew, himself, when his
feeling had begun--not precisely to change, but to run, as it were, in a
different channel.