m of national service. You will all receive three
months' salary in lieu of notice. Mr. Murdoch will look after the
details. When that has been done my wealth, or such part of it as
remains, will be placed at the disposal of the Government. If we win it
will be well invested in a good cause; if we lose, it would have been
lost anyway."

"We are not going to lose!" It was one of the younger clerks who
interrupted; he stood up and for a moment looked straight at his chief.
In that instant's play of vision there was surely something more than
can be told in words, for the next moment he rushed forward and seized
one of Grant's hands in both his own. There was a moment's handclasp,
and the boy had become a man.

"I'm going, Grant," he said. "I'm going--NOW!"

He turned and made his way out of the room, leaving his chief breathless
in a rapture of joy and pride. Others crowded up. They too were
going--NOW. Even old Murdoch tried to protest that he was as good a man
as ever. It seemed to Grant that the drab everyday costumings of his
staff had fallen away, and now they were heroes, they were gods!

No one knew just how the meeting broke up, but Grant had a confused
remembrance of many handclasps and some tears. He was not sure that he
had not, perhaps, added one or two to the flow, but they were all
tears of friendship and of an emotion born of high resolve.... The most
wonderful thing was that the youngster had called him Grant!

As he stood in his own office again, trying to get the events of these
last few days into some sort of perspective, Phyllis Bruce entered. He
motioned dumbly to a chair, but she came and stood by his desk. Her face
was very white and her lips trembled with the words she tried to utter.

"I can't go," she managed to say at length.

"Can't go? I don't understand?"

"Hubert has joined," she said.

"Hubert, the boy! Why, he is only in school--"

"He is sixteen, and large for his age. He came home confessing, and
saying it was his first lie, and the first important thing he ever did
without consulting mother. He said he knew he wouldn't be able to stand
it if he told her first."

"Foolish, but heroic," Grant commented. "Be proud of him. It takes more
than wisdom to be heroic."

"And Grace is going to England. She was taking nursing, you know, and so
gets a preference. We can't ALL leave mother."

He found it difficult to speak. "You wanted to go to the Front?" he
managed.

"Of course; w