Bitterly this soldier of God regretted now that he had not chosen in his youth the other branch of his profession. Man of sixty as he was, there were times when he burned to be with his three boys in the fight. His own father, a fine old Crimean warrior, had once given him the choice of Sandhurst or Oxford, and the vicar was now constrained to believe that he had chosen the lesser part. By this time he might have been on the General Headquarters Staff, whereas he was not even permitted to wear the uniform of the true Church Militant. At last with a groan of vexation the vicar dipped his pen again. And then something happened. Without conscious volition, or overt process of the mind, the pen began to move across the page. Slowly it traced a succession of words, whose purport he didn’t grasp until an eye had been passed over them. “Let us cast off the works of darkness, let us put on the armor of light.” Sensible at once of high inspiration he took a vital force from the idea. It began to unseal faculties latent within him. His thoughts came to a point at last, they grew consecutive, he could see his way, his mind took wings. And then suddenly, alas, before he could lay pen to paper, there came a very unfortunate interruption. II THERE was a knock on the study door. “Come in,” called the vicar rather sharply. The whole household knew that on Sunday morning those precincts were inviolable. His daughter Edith came hurriedly into the room. A tall, thin, eager-looking girl, her large features and hook nose were absurdly like her father’s. Nobody called her handsome, yet in bearing and movement was the lithe grace the world looks for in a clean-run strain. But lines of ill-health were in the sensitive face, and the honest, rather near-sighted eyes had a look of tension and perplexity. An only girl, in a country parsonage, thrown much upon herself, the war had begun to tell its tale. Intensely proud that her brothers were in it, she could think of nothing else. Their deeds, hazards, sacrifices were taken for granted as far as others could guess, but they filled her with secret disgust for her own limited activities. Limited they must remain for some little time to come. It had been Edith’s wish to go to Serbia with her cousin’s Red Cross unit. And in spite of the strong views of her doctor she would have done so but for a sharp attack of illness. That had been three months ago. She was not yet strong enough for regular work in a hospital or a munition factory, but as an active member of a woman’s volunteer training corps, she faithfully performed certain local and promiscuous duties.