Chapter 12 - Page 2

anxious," He had said. "Consider the birds of the air. Not one of them falleth to the ground without your Father. How much more precious are you than the birds."

What a message for men going up to face the terrors and perils of the front line. "Be not anxious!"

"I was afraid," his father had said to him. That to him was inconceivable. That that gallant spirit should know terror seemed to him impossible. Yet even he had said, "I was afraid." And for the loneliness, what a message he now had. In their loneliness men cried out for the presence of a friend, and the Master had said:

"When ye pray, pray to your Father. Your Father knoweth. When ye pray, say, 'Our Father'!" And he had missed all this. What a mess he had made of his work! How sadly misread his Master's teaching and misinterpreted his Master's spirit!

Barry looked down upon the grave at his feet.

"But you knew, dad, you knew!" he whispered.

For the first time since he had become a chaplain, he thought of his work with gratitude and eagerness. He longed to see his men again. He had something to tell them. It was this: that God to them was like their fathers, their mothers, their brothers, their friends; only infinitely more loving, and without their faults.

With his head high and his feet light upon the earth, he returned to the R. A. M. C. Hospital, where he found Harry Hobbs, with his handbag and a letter from his O. C.

"Take a few days off," said the O. C. "We all sympathise with you. We miss you and shall be glad to see you, but take a few days now for yourself."

Barry was greatly touched, but he had only one desire now, and that was to return to his unit. His batman brought him also an order from the Assistant Director of Chaplain Service bidding him report at the earliest moment.

At Headquarters he learned that the A. D. C. S. had been in Boulogne, but had gone to Etaples, some thirty or forty miles distant, to visit the large hospitals there. He determined that to-morrow he would go to Etaples and report, after which he would proceed to his battalion.

That evening, he visited the men in the hospital, coming upon many Canadians whose joy in seeing a chaplain from their own country touched Barry to the heart. He took their messages which he promised to transmit to their folks at home, and left with them something of the serene and exultant peace that filled his own soul.

From Ewen Innes and others of the Wapiti draft, he learned something of his father's work and place in their battalion. Soldiers are not eloquent in speech, but mostly in silence. Their words halted when they came to speak of their sergeant major's soldierly qualities,--for his father had become the sergeant major of the battalion--his patience, his skill, his courage.

"He knew his job,