The collection the boys had taken up had been so heavy that we carried it to the French lady’s house for her. As we entered her home she said in her simple way, as her eyes grew radiant with gratitude, "I like the English soldiers." It was the voice of France. And she was worthy to speak for France. For two-and-a-half years her house had stood within a mile of the German trenches, and but a few hundred yards from our own firing line. Yet she and her mother had never left it. She introduced me to her mother, who had lived in London, and spoke English. Then she brought in coffee. I had noticed a most remarkable thing about the house. There was not a piece of glass broken, nor a mark of war on the walls. It was the only house I have seen, either in Achicourt or Arras, upon which the war has not laid its monstrous and bloody finger. "How is it," I asked the mother, "that your house has not been touched?" Her eyes shone and a sweet smile lit up her face. "It is the will of God," she said simply. "Shells have fallen a little short of us and a little beyond us. They have passed within a yard of the house, and we have heard the rushing of the wind as they passed, but they have not touched us. When the village has been bombarded we have gone down into the cellar as was but discretion and duty, but we have had the conviction all along that we should be spared, and we refused to leave the house. We do not know God’s purpose but we believe that it is God’s will to spare us." I leave the fact to speak for itself and offer no explanation. Skeptics will say the house was spared by accident; but they would not have stayed there two-and-a-half years trusting to such an accident. These two women, without a man in the house, stayed on the very confines of hell with its hourly suspense and danger for nearly three years, because they believed it was God’s will and that, though they walked through the fiery furnace heated seven times hotter than it was wont to be heated, He would not allow so much as a hair of their heads to be singed. And not a hair was singed. They were women in whom faith burned like a bright pillar of fire. One caught its light, and felt its heat. I have met patriots and heroes and know their quality when I see them and come near them. These were "the real thing." Faith in God and faith in their country were interwoven in their spirits like sun and shower in a rainbow. They were of the same breed as the Maid of France, and like her, with their white banner bearing the device of the Cross, they withstood and defied the might and terror of the invader. They believed it was God’s will they should stay, to "Be still and know that I am God." Their experience was expressed by the Psalmist centuries ago: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea. Though the