her time than that accursed hour.'

"Susan looked dubious over Gertrude's adjective, but evidently
concluded that the 'a' saved the situation.

"'I wish it were possible to take some magic draught and go to sleep
for the next three months--and then waken to find Armageddon over,'
said mother, almost impatiently.

"It is not often that mother slumps into a wish like that--or at least
the verbal expression of it. Mother has changed a great deal since that
terrible day in September when we knew that Walter would not come back;
but she has always been brave and patient. Now it seemed as if even she
had reached the limit of her endurance.

"Susan went over to mother and touched her shoulder.

"'Do not you be frightened or downhearted, Mrs. Dr. dear,' she said
gently. 'I felt somewhat that way myself last night, and I rose from my
bed and lighted my lamp and opened my Bible; and what do you think was
the first verse my eyes lighted upon? It was 'And they shall fight
against thee but they shall not prevail against thee, for I am with
thee, saith the Lord of Hosts, to deliver thee.' I am not gifted in the
way of dreaming, as Miss Oliver is, but I knew then and there, Mrs. Dr.
dear, that it was a manifest leading, and that Hindenburg will never
see Paris. So I read no further but went back to my bed and I did not
waken at three o'clock or at any other hour before morning.'

"I say that verse Susan read over and over again to myself. The Lord of
Hosts is with us--and the spirits of all just men made perfect--and
even the legions and guns that Germany is massing on the western front
must break against such a barrier. This is in certain uplifted moments;
but when other moments come I feel, like Gertrude, that I cannot endure
any longer this awful and ominous hush before the coming storm."

23rd March 1918

"Armageddon has begun!--'the last great fight of all!' Is it, I
wonder? Yesterday I went down to the post office for the mail. It
was a dull, bitter day. The snow was gone but the grey, lifeless
ground was frozen hard and a biting wind was blowing. The whole Glen
landscape was ugly and hopeless.

"Then I got the paper with its big black headlines. Germany struck on
the twenty-first. She makes big claims of guns and prisoners taken.
General Haig reports that 'severe fighting continues.' I don't like the
sound of that last expression.

"We all find we cannot do any work that requires concentration of
thought. So we al