"And so, Gavot," she said, "’tis taking this cause to bring you to your senses? I hear of your talking of Tom as if he was a big thing. Why, he’s been big ever since he was born, and you took no heed." Pierre drew back. Tom was not yet revealed as a hero, but Gavot could not conceive of the boy being anything else. "I’m ready to lay my only son on the altar," mumbled Pierre grandiloquently. "I can sacrifice my all for my country." Jo laughed, a hard, bitter laugh. "You men!" she sneered, "ever since Abraham carried his poor boy up the mountain to lay him on the altar, you’ve all been alike, you fathers! You don’t lay yourselves on the fire, not you! You don’t even live your decent best when you might, but you’re ready enough with the sacrifice of your young. Gavot, have you ever noticed that the Sarahs of the world don’t carry their sons to the altar?" Jo’s feelings choked her. Gavot looked at the woman before him with bleared and strangely serious eyes. "That’s wild talk," he mumbled, "bad talk. The right has to be done. Could such as _I_ fight?" Jo looked at the wretched creature by the roadside and she did not laugh now. That intangible something that was settling on the faces of her people hushed her. *CHAPTER XX* *GAVOT GETS HIS CALL* And Tom Gavot was in Quebec. The alarm had stilled, for an instant, his very heart, and the first terrible sense of fear that always came to him in danger rose fiercely within him. His vivid imagination began to burn and light the way on ahead. Horrors that he had read of and shuddered at clutched at his brain and made it ache and throb. No one knew of his sad marriage. He was going about his work bearing his heavy secret as best he could, but now he began to view it in a new light. He was married; he could remain behind with honour. But could he? "Going to enlist, Tom?" the head of his firm asked one day. "We’d hate to lose you, we want to send you to Vancouver. There’s something special to do there. After all, the matter will soon be settled and we need some boys here." "I’m thinking it over," Tom replied, and so he was, over and over while his quivering flesh challenged his bright spirit. He walked daily in front of the Chateau Frontenac and watched and watched the gallant boys, oh! so pitifully young, marching, drilling with that look in their eyes that he could not comprehend. He went to the Plains of Abraham and stood spellbound while the past and present flayed his fevered imagination. He stood in front of the pictured appeals that the Government posted on fences and buildings, and still his flesh held his spirit captive. Then one day, quite unconsciously, the Government reached him—him, Tom Gavot! There was a new picture among the many, an old mother with a transfigured face, her hand on the shoulder of her boy. "My son, your country needs you."