many of our finest young men with him. I assumed the
responsibility of asking for your appointment. I must urge you solemnly
to consider the matter before you decline."

Eloquently Barry pleaded his unfitness, instancing his failure as a
preacher in his last field.

"I am not a preacher," he protested. "I am not a 'mixer.' They all say
so. I shall be impossible as a chaplain."

"Young man," said the superintendent, a note of sternness in his voice,
"you know not what transformations in character this war will work.
Would I were twenty years younger," he added passionately, "twenty years
sounder. Think of the opportunity to stand for God among your men, to
point them the way of duty, and fit them for it, to bring them comfort,
when they need comfort sorely, to bring them peace, when they most need
peace."

Barry came away from the interview more disturbed than he had ever been
in his life. After he had returned to his hotel, a message from his
superintendent recalled him.

"I have a bit of work to do," he said, "in which I need your help. I
wish you to join me in a visitation of some of the military camps in
this district. We start this evening."

There was nothing for it but to obey his superintendent's orders. The
two weeks' experience with his chief gave Barry a new view and a new
estimate of the chaplain's work. As he came into closer touch with camp
life and its conditions, he began to see how great was the soldier's
need of such moral and spiritual support as a chaplain might be able
to render. He was exposed to subtle and powerful temptations. He was
deprived of the wonted restraints imposed by convention, by environment,
by family ties. The reactions from the exhaustion of physical training,
from the monotonous routine of military discipline, from loneliness and
homesickness were such as to call for that warm, sympathetic, brotherly
aid, and for the uplifting spiritual inspiration that it is a chaplain's
privilege to offer. But in proportion as the service took on a nobler
and loftier aspect, was Barry conscious to a corresponding degree of his
own unfitness for the work.

When he returned to the city, he found no definite information awaiting
him in regard to a place in the ambulance corps. He returned home in an
unhappy and uncertain frame of mind.

But under the drive of war, events were moving rapidly in Barry's life.
He arrived late in the afternoon, and proceeding to the military H.Q.,
he found n