immaterial flame. She looked like a priestess performing some mystic,
splendid rite.

"Germany and Austria are suing for peace," she said.

Rilla went crazy for a few minutes. She sprang up and danced around the
room, clapping her hands, laughing, crying.

"Sit down, child," said Mrs. Clow, who never got excited over anything,
and so had missed a tremendous amount of trouble and delight in her
journey through life.

"Oh," cried Rilla, "I have walked the floor for hours in despair and
anxiety in these past four years. Now let me walk in joy. It was worth
living long dreary years for this minute, and it would be worth living
them again just to look back to it. Susan, let's run up the flag--and
we must phone the news to every one in the Glen."

"Can we have as much sugar as we want to now?" asked Jims eagerly.

It was a never-to-be-forgotten afternoon. As the news spread excited
people ran about the village and dashed up to Ingleside. The Merediths
came over and stayed to supper and everybody talked and nobody
listened. Cousin Sophia tried to protest that Germany and Austria were
not to be trusted and it was all part of a plot, but nobody paid the
least attention to her.

"This Sunday makes up for that one in March," said Susan.

"I wonder," said Gertrude dreamily, apart to Rilla, "if things won't
seem rather flat and insipid when peace really comes. After being fed
for four years on horrors and fears, terrible reverses, amazing
victories, won't anything less be tame and uninteresting? How
strange--and blessed--and dull it will be not to dread the coming of
the mail every day."

"We must dread it for a little while yet, I suppose," said Rilla.
"Peace won't come--can't come--for some weeks yet. And in those weeks
dreadful things may happen. My excitement is over. We have won the
victory--but oh, what a price we have paid!"

"Not too high a price for freedom," said Gertrude softly. "Do you think
it was, Rilla?"

"No," said Rilla, under her breath. She was seeing a little white cross
on a battlefield of France. "No--not if those of us who live will show
ourselves worthy of it--if we 'keep faith.'"

"We will keep faith," said Gertrude. She rose suddenly. A silence fell
around the table, and in the silence Gertrude repeated Walter's famous
poem "The Piper." When she finished Mr. Meredith stood up and held up
his glass. "Let us drink," he said, "to the silent army--to the boys
who followed when the Piper summone