l knit furiously, because we can do that mechanically.
At least the dreadful waiting is over--the horrible wondering where and
when the blow will fall. It has fallen--but they shall not prevail
against us!

"Oh, what is happening on the western front tonight as I write this,
sitting here in my room with my journal before me? Jims is asleep in
his crib and the wind is wailing around the window; over my desk hangs
Walter's picture, looking at me with his beautiful deep eyes; the Mona
Lisa he gave me the last Christmas he was home hangs on one side of it,
and on the other a framed copy of "The Piper." It seems to me that I
can hear Walter's voice repeating it--that little poem into which he
put his soul, and which will therefore live for ever, carrying Walter's
name on through the future of our land. Everything about me is calm and
peaceful and 'homey.' Walter seems very near me--if I could just sweep
aside the thin wavering little veil that hangs between, I could see
him--just as he saw the Pied Piper the night before Courcelette.

"Over there in France tonight--does the line hold?"

CHAPTER XXVIII

BLACK SUNDAY

In March of the year of grace 1918 there was one week into which must
have crowded more of searing human agony than any seven days had ever
held before in the history of the world. And in that week there was one
day when all humanity seemed nailed to the cross; on that day the whole
planet must have been agroan with universal convulsion; everywhere the
hearts of men were failing them for fear.

It dawned calmly and coldly and greyly at Ingleside. Mrs. Blythe and
Rilla and Miss Oliver made ready for church in a suspense tempered by
hope and confidence. The doctor was away, having been summoned during
the wee sma's to the Marwood household in Upper Glen, where a little
war-bride was fighting gallantly on her own battleground to give life,
not death, to the world. Susan announced that she meant to stay home
that morning--a rare decision for Susan.

"But I would rather not go to church this morning, Mrs. Dr. dear," she
explained. "If Whiskers-on-the-moon were there and I saw him looking
holy and pleased, as he always looks when he thinks the Huns are
winning, I fear I would lose my patience and my sense of decorum and
hurl a Bible or hymn-book at him, thereby disgracing myself and the
sacred edifice. No, Mrs. Dr. dear, I shall stay home from church till
the tide turns and pray hard here."

"I think I mi