It seemed a very little thing, in the face of their stupendous loss, when the news came that Gavin had died a very glorious death, that he would have been given the Victoria Cross had he lived, and that they were sending it to Auntie Elspie. He had held back a rush of the enemy, alone and single-handed, until his comrades got to a place of safety. He had stayed on in a desperate position, working his machine gun, while the world rocked beneath him and the mad heavens raged with shot and shell above him, had held on though he was wounded again and again, saying between his teeth, "Stand Fast, Craig-Ellachie!" And then a shell had come and the gallant stand was over. But he had saved the Blue Bonnets from destruction, and spared many lives in losing his own. The Aunties held up their poor bowed heads, as Mr. Sinclair read them the splendid story. They knew Gavie would do something great, and it was just the way he would have wished to go, Auntie Elspie said tremulously. But the light had gone out of their lives, and it was small comfort that it had blazed so gloriously in the going. CHAPTER XV THE GARDEN BLOOMS AGAIN The day that Gavin's picture appeared in the Algonquin paper with an account of the gallant deed in which he had given his life, Christina received a letter in an unknown handwriting. Mitty brought it up to her room on a sunny April afternoon, where she was sitting, trying to interest herself in some sewing for baby Hugh. She laid the letter aside while she finished her work, too indifferent even to open it, but when the last button-hole was fashioned in the dainty little muslin dress she remembered it. She opened it slowly, noticing with some interest that it was from the Front, and then she suddenly sat up very straight and read the written pages greedily. The letter was signed, Harry Kent, and was from a comrade of Gavin's in the Blue Bonnets, a boy whom he had often mentioned in his letters to Christina. And inside was a letter from Gavin himself sealed in a separate envelope. The first was a formal note from a shy boy. "Dear Miss Lindsay: I hope you won't mind if I take the liberty to write to you, though I am a stranger. Gavin Grant and I were pals, and when he went up to the Front for the last time he gave me the letter I am enclosing, and he asked me to mail it to you. We knew his company was going into a hot place, and he said he did not think he would get back. So he wrote you this letter and when I heard he was killed I said I would mail it to you. Gavin was the finest fellow I ever knew. He was always singing and he taught the fellows a lot of songs. There was one he was always singing, it was called a 'Warrior Bold,' and he was singing it that morning just before the Boche came over. The fellows in our Company would rather we had all gone West than Gavin, he was worth them all put together...."