The war did not trouble Kirsty much. She was rather provoked that it should have happened, for it hurt the church attendance and sadly thinned the choir, and when Andrew had finished reading the papers he would sometimes sit quite silent, looking before him, which made her vaguely uneasy. Her own family were untouched by it. Archie had no thought of going to train, the notion seemed to him ludicrous in the extreme, but he saw his way to making some money fishing in the troubled waters. The Rev. Johnston Christie confined his usefulness to violent denunciations of the Kaiser from the pulpit every Sunday. He had been much impressed by a phrase used by a prominent Anglican bishop about the Nailed Hand beating the Mailed Fist--neat and telling he considered it, and used it on every possible occasion. One afternoon in late October the Hamiltons were walking in their garden. They had been lunching at Etterick, and were going in shortly to have tea cosily by the study fire. It was a still day, with a touch of winter in the air--_back end_, the village people called it, but the stackyards were stocked, the potatoes and turnips were in pits, the byres were full of feeding cattle, so they were ready for what winter would bring them. To Andrew Hamilton, country-born and bred, every day was a delight. To-day, as he stood with his wife by the low fence at the foot of the gardens and looked across the fields to the hills, he took a long breath of the clean cold air, and said: "This--after ten years of lodging in Garnethill! Our lives have fallen to us in pleasant places, Kirsty." "Yes," she agreed contentedly. "I never thought the country could be so nice. I like the feel of the big stacks, and to think that the stick-house is full of logs, and the apples in the garret, and everything laid in for winter. Andrew, I'm glad winter is coming. It will be so cosy the long evenings together--and only one meeting in the week." Her husband put out his hand to stop her. "Don't, Kirsty," he said, as if her words hurt him. In answer to her look of surprise, he went on: "Did you ever think, when this war was changing so much, that it would change things for us too? Kirsty, my dear, I have thought it all out and I feel I must go." Kirsty was apt to get cross when she was perturbed about anything, and she now said, moving a step or two away, "What in the world d'you mean? Where are you going?" "I'm going to enlist, with as many Langhope men as I can persuade to accompany me. It's no use. I can't stand in the pulpit--a young strong man--and say Go. I must say Come!" Now that it was out, he gave a sigh of relief. "Kirsty," he pleaded, "say you think I'm right." But Kirsty's face was white and drawn. "I thought you were happy," she said at last, with a pitiful little sob on the last word.