The Cow Puncher Part 31

he continued. "I couldn't go it. . . And yet--there may be something in it. It's sacrifice here, Edith. War is sacrifice. Sacrifice for other people. It's not all on the surface. There's something deeper than we know."

"'He that loseth his life shall find it,'" I quoted.

He did not answer, but I could see his lips smiling again. His breath was more labored. A few drops of rain fell, and some of them spattered on his face.

Presently he chuckled. It was an eerie sensation, out on that broad plain of death, alone by the side of this man who was already far into the shadow,--to hear him chuckle.

"That splash of water--you remember--it made me think of the time we pulled the old car into the stream, and the harness broke, or something, and I had to carry you. You remember that, Reenie?" I could only say "Yes," and press his hand. His mind was back on the old, old trails.

He became suddenly sober. "And when Brownie was killed," he went on, "I said it was the innocent thing that got caught. Perhaps I was right. But perhaps it's best to get caught. Not for the getting caught, but for the--the compensations. It's the innocent men that are getting killed. And perhaps it's best. Perhaps there are compensations worth while."

His voice was weaker, and I had to lean close to catch his words.

"I'm going--out," he said. "Kiss me, Reenie."

And then I kissed him--for you.

Suddenly he sat up.

"The mountains!" he exclaimed, and his voice was a-thrill with the pride of his old hills. "See, the moonlight--on the mountains!"

Then his strength, which seemed to have gathered itself for this one last vision of the place of his boyhood, gave way, and he fell back.

And he did not speak any more.

And what can I add? Dear, it is not defeat. It is promise. It is hope.

Some day we shall know. But until then we shall go on. It is woman's bit to carry on. But not in despondency; not in bitterness; not in anger or despair. _He_ didn't go out that way. He was reverent--and a little curious, and he went out with a smile. And we shall go on, and carry his smile and his confidence through the valley of our sacrifice.

What am I doing, speaking of _our_ sacrifice?

I salute you, sister in the Order of Suffering--and of hope.

EDITH DUNCAN.

I handed the letter back to her, and for a time I had no words. "Won't you let me tell the story?" I said at length. "The world is full of sorrow, and it needs voices to give that sorrow words, and perhaps turn it into hope--as this letter does."

She hesitated, and I realized then how much I had asked. "It is the story of my life--my soul," she said. "Yet, if it would help----"

"Without names," I hastened to explain. "Without real names of places or people."

And so, in that little white-washed home, where the brown hills rise around and the placid mountains look down from the distance, and a tongue of spruce trees beyond the stream stands sentinel against the open prairie, she is carrying on, not in despondency and bitterness, but in service and in hope. And so her sisters, all this world over, must carry on, until their sweetness and their sacrifice shall fill up and flood over all the valleys of hate. . . . And if you should chance that way, and if you should win the confidence of young Three-year-old, he may stand for you and say, with his voice filled with the honour and the glory and the pride of it,

"My father was a soldier. He was killed at Courcelette."

THE END