I see a woman with the deep pain in her eyes, one of the many mothers whom I have met in these terrible four years.... They were afraid to tell her when the War Office telegram came.... He had crept out in the night to bring in a wounded chum, and the German sniper got him. At first she could not believe it. It must be some mistake,--some one of similar name. But the days passed on. And the light died in her eyes and she became suddenly old. Her prayers ceased. God had disappointed her. There was nothing left to pray for now. Nothing to be ambitious for any more. Her boy was dead--buried in a shallow grave in France with a little wooden cross at his head. And he was only twenty-two! * * * * * The awful waste of it! All her loving thought over his childhood--all her care, her anxiety, her efforts, her prayers that God would make him a good and noble man. All her hope and pride in the high promise of his boyhood. He was dead. All that he might have been and done in the world was lost. Her life was forever desolate. And God had let it happen! Kindly friends came to comfort and sympathise. But it was of little use. They had not lost their boy. They could not understand. They bade her be proud that he had died in a noble cause--that he had died to save another. They told her that time would bring a blessed easing to her pain. They told her she must bow to God's mysterious will. Ah! what is the use of it? How can any outsider intermeddle in the pain of a mother whose boy has just been killed? Not all the talking since Adam Can make death to be other than death. * * * * * God help us all if there were no better comfort for a tortured world in this hour of its bitterest need--to "make death to be other than death." * * * * * She was a brave woman. She faced the issue clearly. She talked with wise friends. She came back to her prayers. She recalled and relearned the teaching of her Bible and her church which had lain hazily in memory till her need arose. And gradually God's blessed comfort came to her "as to one whom his mother comforteth." Slowly peace came to her heart, and in spite of her pain life became worth living again.... He was a good boy. He loved his God. He loved his mother. He had his faults, but she could trust Christ with them. She had had high ambitions for him. Her ambitions came back. She learned to think of him in the wondrous new adventure, living a full conscious life, thinking and remembering, growing and becoming fitted for the eternal Heaven that is still in front. She believed that the high promise of his boyhood might be fulfilled after all, and that she might one day see it.