THE months went by. In the meantime, upon the fields of France, was being decided the fate of the world for generations to come. Day followed day whose story will echo down the ages, but in the cottage with the green shutters at the head of the valley there was little to indicate that it was a time of destiny.

The Corporal was allowed to return to his old regiment. Experience had made him doubly valuable and its ranks had been grievously thinned. After three months at the DepÔt he was sent to France.

When at the end of July he came home on draft leave to bid Melia good-by, her time was drawing near. And in spite of the burdens life had laid upon them, the feeling now uppermost was a subtle sense of triumph. In the final bitterness of conflict the dark Fates had given them courage to bear their heads high.

A strange reward was coming to them, bringing with it new obligations, new responsibilities. But they were not afraid. Somewhere, a Friend was helping them. It must be so, or else the dire perils to which they had been exposed would not have allowed their happiness to bear so late a flower. Besides, they had been given a specific token that in the sum of things they mattered.

As the Corporal held his wife in a last embrace it came to him all at once that he was never to see the young life that was to bear his name. “If we can put the job through to a finish,” he whispered huskily, “I’d like it to be a boy. If we can’t, a girl’d be better.”

She asked why a girl would be better. As usual she was not very quick in the uptake.

“The world’ll not be a place for boys—unless we can do the job clean.”

“But you will do it, Bill.” The almost cowlike eyes expressed a divine instinct. “God won’t let the Germans win.”

Somehow the words shamed him, yet not for the reason that turned her own heart to fire. It was treason to the Chaps to talk of girls.

“O’ course we’ll make a clean job on it.” He pressed a final caress upon her. “You can set there, my dear, in that nice chair all covered with wild flowers, and the door open just as it is, so that you can get a glimpse o’ that old river with the sun on it and when your eyes get tired-like, my dear, you can fix ’em on that little picture over the chimneypiece opposite. See what I mean, like? There’s the sun in that, too. John Torrington painted it. Look at it sometimes. We are going to win—it isn’t right to think otherwise. That means a boy. And if a boy it is, I’d like him to be called Jim.”

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