Stealthily the children began to move among the bushes, alert for the watching eyes and the shy faces of the wild things that made their homes in these dark dwellings. The girls sat silent, looking out through the interlacing boughs upon the gleam of the lake below. They dearly loved this spot. It was a favourite haunt with them, the very spot for confidence, and many a happy hour had they spent together here. To-day they sat without speech; there was nothing that they cared to talk about. It was only yesterday in this same place they had talked over all things under the sun. They had exchanged with each other their stores of kindly gossip about all their friends and their friends' friends. Only yesterday it was that Ethel for the twentieth time had gone over with Jane all the intricately perplexing and delightful details in regard to her coming-out party next winter. All the boys and girls were to be invited, and Jane was to help with the serving. It was only yesterday that in a moment of quite unusual frankness Ethel had read snatches of a letter which had come from Macleod, who was out in a mission field in Saskatchewan. How they had laughed together, all in a kindly way, over the solemn, formal phrases of the young Scotch Canadian missionary, Ethel making sport of his solemnity and Jane warmly defending him. How they had talked over the boys' affairs, as girls will talk, and of their various loves and how they fared, and of the cruelties practised upon them. And last of all Ethel had talked of Larry, Jane listening warily the while and offering an occasional bit of information to keep the talk going. And all of this only yesterday; not ten years ago, or a year ago, but yesterday! And to-day not a word seemed possible. The world had changed over night. How different from that unshaded, sunny world of yesterday! How sunny it was but yesterday! Life now was a thing of different values. Ah, that was it. The values were all altered. Things big yesterday had shrunk almost to the point of disappearance to-day. Things that yesterday seemed remote and vague, to-day filled their horizon, for some of them dark enough. Determined to ignore that gaunt Spectre standing there, in the shadow silent and grim, they would begin to talk on themes good yesterday for an hour's engrossing conversation, but before they were aware they had forgotten the subject of their talk and found themselves sitting together dumb and looking out upon the gleam of the waters, thinking, thinking and ever thinking, while nearer and ever more terrible moved the Spectre of War. It was like the falling of night upon their world. From the landscape things familiar and dear were blotted out, and in their place moved upon them strange shapes unreal and horrible.