Poor Mrs. Kindred! it was all so strange and sweet, and perplexing and delightful, that she was on the very edge of a burst of tears. That touch of her boy's fingers and face, so long unfelt, and for so long to be again, just wrung her heart. And when so many other confusing ideas came to tangle themselves in with this, no wonder her nerves got out of order. And so, as such dear people will, finding earth altogether too much for her, Mrs. Kindred took refuge where the ways are marked out, and the standing sure. "I am glad you reminded me of Daniel," she said, her voice faltering in spite of her. "Yes, 'My God will send his angel' to look after you." "He _has_," put in Magnus. "But dear," the mother went on, "Daniel risked everything, for loyalty to his master. I should go home with a glad heart if I knew that was true of you." How sweet the summer silence lay between the two. The soft plash of the river quickened just now by the swell of a passing boat; the bird notes waking up a little as the day wore on; the lengthening shadows, the descending sun. And no human voice broke the hush. If a sigh came to Mrs. Kindred's lips, it was stayed there; if deprecating, excusing words were ready with Magnus, not one came out. Hand in hand, so they sat; but presently the mother's heart went up in such eager, wordless prayer that, except that hand-clasp, she was conscious of nothing else. Magnus, glancing at her furtively from under his cap, saw the closed eyes and the rapt face; but even as he looked, the eyes opened and lifted with a glow of love and trust that sent his own face down, down into her lap. "Well?" she said gently. "How is it dear? Are you like that?" "Not much!" Magnus answered, sitting straight up again, and gazing off at the shining river. "About as little as you'd like to have me. But mother, you don't know how hard it is." "Perhaps I do," she said. "The world power does not go by places, nor is the devil shut up to any State. Didn't you tell me that you had always at least a storm flag out?" "Did you guess what I meant?" "Cherry guessed," said Mrs. Kindred. "She said you never took your flag down, even on the stormiest days." "Like Cherry!" cried Magnus. "Her true heart could not even imagine anything else. Well, mother, that's what it ought to mean--and what it _does_ mean, for that blessed old banner down yonder. The toughest wind that blows never finds that flagstaff empty, from reveille to retreat. And in the deadest sort of a calm you can see a touch of blue and a gleam of red clinging and glowing about the top of the old pole." "And for you, Magnus? What does it mean for you?" the mother said anxiously. "Oh, nothing very bad!" Magnus answered. "Only sometimes I seem to fly my storm flag in fair weather."