sue so breathlessly. It isn't
merely the question of a few forts changing hands or a few miles of
blood-soaked ground lost and won."

"I wonder," said Gertrude dreamily, "if some great blessing, great
enough for the price, will be the meed of all our pain? Is the agony in
which the world is shuddering the birth-pang of some wondrous new era?
Or is it merely a futile

struggle of ants
In the gleam of a million million of suns?

We think very lightly, Mr. Meredith, of a calamity which destroys an
ant-hill and half its inhabitants. Does the Power that runs the
universe think us of more importance than we think ants?"

"You forget," said Mr. Meredith, with a flash of his dark eyes, "that
an infinite Power must be infinitely little as well as infinitely
great. We are neither, therefore there are things too little as well as
too great for us to apprehend. To the infinitely little an ant is of as
much importance as a mastodon. We are witnessing the birth-pangs of a
new era--but it will be born a feeble, wailing life like everything
else. I am not one of those who expect a new heaven and a new earth as
the immediate result of this war. That is not the way God works. But
work He does, Miss Oliver, and in the end His purpose will be
fulfilled."

"Sound and orthodox--sound and orthodox," muttered Susan approvingly in
the kitchen. Susan liked to see Miss Oliver sat upon by the minister
now and then. Susan was very fond of her but she thought Miss Oliver
liked saying heretical things to ministers far too well, and deserved
an occasional reminder that these matters were quite beyond her
province.

In May Walter wrote home that he had been awarded a D.C. Medal. He did
not say what for, but the other boys took care that the Glen should
know the brave thing Walter had done. "In any war but this," wrote
Jerry Meredith, "it would have meant a V.C. But they can't make V.C.'s
as common as the brave things done every day here."

"He should have had the V.C.," said Susan, and was very indignant over
it. She was not quite sure who was to blame for his not getting it, but
if it were General Haig she began for the first time to entertain
serious doubts as to his fitness for being Commander-in-Chief.

Rilla was beside herself with delight. It was her dear Walter who had
done this thing--Walter, to whom someone had sent a white feather at
Redmond--it was Walter who had dashed back from the safety of the
trench to drag in a wounded c