Mr Hambly took off his spectacles and wiped them, for his eyes were moist. "Do you know," said he, smiling, "that I was on my way to visit you with a very similar proposal? . . . Now, as you are a good thirty years younger than I, and, moreover, have been springing downhill while I have been toiling laboriously up--" He glanced down at his club foot. --"That I took duty for you and did the long-windedness," put in the Vicar with a laugh. "And I haven't quite finished yet. The idea is (I should add) that, as in politics, so with our religious differences, we all declare a truce of God. In Heaven's name let us all pull together for once and forget our separation of creeds!" The Minister rubbed his eyes gently; for the trouble, after all, seemed to be with them and not with his spectacles. "And I ought to add," said he, "that the first suggestion of such a Committee came from the ladies of my congregation. The only credit I can claim is for a certain obstinacy in resisting those who would have confined the effort to our Society. . . . Most happily I managed to prevail--and it was none the easier because I happen just now to be a little out of odour with some of the more influential members of what I suppose must be termed my 'flock.'" "Yes: I heard that your sermon last Sunday had caused a scandal. What was it you said? That, in a breakdown of Christianity like the present, we might leave talk of the public-houses and usefully consider Sunday closing of churches and chapels--or something of the sort." "Was it in that form the report reached you?" the Minister asked with entire gravity. "There is an epigrammatist abroad in Polpier, and I have never been able to trace him--or her. But it is the truth--and it may well have leaked out in my discourse--that I feel our services to have lost their point and our ministrations their savour. . . . I--I beg your pardon," he corrected himself: "I should have said '_my_ ministrations.'" "Not at all. . . . Do you suppose I have not been feeling with you-- that all our business has suddenly turned flat, stale, unprofitable?" "It is a natural discouragement. . . . Let us own it to none until we have found our hearts again. I see now that even that hint of it in my sermon was a momentary lapse of loyalty. Meanwhile I clutch on this proposal of yours. It will give us all what we most want--a sense of being useful." The Vicar stepped back a pace and eyed him. Then, on an impulse-- "Hambly," he said, "you have to hear Confession. I am going to tell you something I have kept secret even from my wife. . . . I have written to the Bishop asking his permission to volunteer for service." "May God bring you safely back, my friend! If I were younger. . . . And the Army will want chaplains." "But I am not offering myself as a chaplain." "How, then?"