I felt that I ought to put it on and wear
it--proclaiming myself to all Redmond the coward I know I am. The boys
of my year are going--going. Every day two or three of them join up.
Some days I almost make up my mind to do it--and then I see myself
thrusting a bayonet through another man--some woman's husband or
sweetheart or son--perhaps the father of little children--I see myself
lying alone torn and mangled, burning with thirst on a cold, wet field,
surrounded by dead and dying men--and I know I never can. I can't face
even the thought of it. How could I face the reality? There are times
when I wish I had never been born. Life has always seemed such a
beautiful thing to me--and now it is a hideous thing. Rilla-my-Rilla,
if it weren't for your letters--your dear, bright, merry, funny,
comical, believing letters--I think I'd give up. And Una's! Una is
really a little brick, isn't she? There's a wonderful fineness and
firmness under all that shy, wistful girlishness of her. She hasn't
your knack of writing laugh-provoking epistles, but there's something
in her letters--I don't know what--that makes me feel at least while
I'm reading them, that I could even go to the front. Not that she ever
says a word about my going--or hints that I ought to go--she isn't that
kind. It's just the spirit of them--the personality that is in them.
Well, I can't go. You have a brother and Una has a friend who is a
coward."

"Oh, I wish Walter wouldn't write such things," sighed Rilla. "It hurts
me. He isn't a coward--he isn't--he isn't!"

She looked wistfully about her--at the little woodland valley and the
grey, lonely fallows beyond. How everything reminded her of Walter! The
red leaves still clung to the wild sweet-briars that overhung a curve
of the brook; their stems were gemmed with the pearls of the gentle
rain that had fallen a little while before. Walter had once written a
poem describing them. The wind was sighing and rustling among the
frosted brown bracken ferns, then lessening sorrowfully away down the
brook. Walter had said once that he loved the melancholy of the autumn
wind on a November day. The old Tree Lovers still clasped each other in
a faithful embrace, and the White Lady, now a great white-branched
tree, stood out beautifully fine, against the grey velvet sky. Walter
had named them long ago; and last November, when he had walked with her
and Miss Oliver in the Valley, he had said, looking at the leafless
Lady, with