"He is quite unusually severe in his interpretation of the regulations, I understand," said his father. "He is turning men down right and left.

He knows, of course, that there are plenty to choose from. But there is no fear of your fitness, Barry."

"Not much," said Barry, with a gay laugh.

Never had they spent a happier evening together. True, the spectre of war would thrust itself upon them, but they faced it as men--with a full appreciation of its solemn reality, but without fear, and with a quiet determination to make whatever sacrifice might be demanded of them. The perfect understanding that had always marked their intercourse with each other was restored. The intolerable burden of mutual uncertainty in regard to each other's attitude toward the war was lifted. All shadows that lay between them were gone. Nothing else really mattered.

The day following, Barry received a rude shock. The M. O., after an examination, to his amazement and dismay, pronounced him physically unfit for service.

"And why, pray?" cried his father indignantly, when Barry announced the astounding report. "Is the man a fool? I understood that he was strict.

But you! unfit! It is preposterous. Unfit! how?"

"Heart murmur," said Barry. "Sets it down to asthma. You remember I told you I had a rotten attack after my experience last week in the river. He suggested that I apply for a position in an ambulance corps, and he is giving me a letter to Colonel Sidleigh at Edmonton. I am going to-morrow to Edmonton to see Sidleigh, and besides I have some church business to attend to. I must call upon my superintendent. You remember I made an application to him for another mission field."

He found Colonel Sidleigh courteously willing to accept his application, the answer to which, he was informed, he might expect in a fortnight; and so went with a comparatively light heart to his interview with his superintendent.

The interview, however, turned out not entirely as he had expected. He went with an idea of surrendering his appointment. His superintendent made him an offer of another and greater.

"So they turned you down," said the superintendent. "Well, I consider it most providential. You have applied for a position on the ambulance corps. As fine as is that service, and as splendid as are its possibilities, I offer you something much finer, and I will even say much more important to our army and to our cause. We are in need of men for the Chaplain Service, and for this service we demand the picked men of our church. The appointments that have been made already are some of them most unsuitable, some, I regret to say, scandalous. Let me tell you, sir, of an experience in Winnipeg only last week. It was, my fortune to fall in with the commanding officer of a Saskatchewan unit.

I found him in a rage against the church and all its officials. His chaplain had become so hilarious at the mess that he was quite unable to carry on."

"Hilarious?" inquired Barry.

"Hilarious, sir. Yes, plain drunk. Think of it. Think of the crime! the shame of it! A man charged with the responsibility of the souls of these men going to war--possibly to their death--drunk, in their presence!

A man standing for God and the great eternal verities, incapacitated before them! I took the matter up with Ottawa, and I have this satisfaction at least, that I believe that no such appointment will ever be made again. That chaplain, I may say too, has been dismissed. I have here, sir, a mission field suitable to your ability and experience. I shall not offer it to you. I am offering you the position of chaplain in one of our Alberta battalions."

Barry stood before him, dumb with dismay.

"Of course, I want to go to the war," he said at length, "but I am sure, sir, I am not the man for the position you offer me."

"Sir," said the superintendent, "I have taken the liberty of sending in your name. Time was an element. Appointments were being rapidly made, and I was extremely anxious that you should go with this battalion. I confess to a selfish interest. My own boy, Duncan, has enlisted in that unit, and many of our finest young men with him. I assumed the responsibility of asking for your appointment. I must urge you solemnly to consider the matter before you decline."

Eloquently Barry pleaded his unfitness, instancing his failure as a preacher in his last field.

"I am not a preacher," he protested. "I am not a 'mixer.' They all say so. I shall be impossible as a chaplain."

"Young man," said the superintendent, a note of sternness in his voice, "you know not what transformations in character this war will work.

Would I were twenty years younger," he added passionately, "twenty years sounder. Think of the opportunity to stand for God among your men, to point them the way of duty, and fit them for it, to bring them comfort, when they need comfort sorely, to bring them peace, when they most need peace."

Barry came away from the interview more disturbed than he had ever been in his life. After he had returned to his hotel, a message from his superintendent recalled him.

"I have a bit of work to do," he said, "in which I need your help. I wish you to join me in a visitation of some of the military camps in this district. We start this evening."

There was nothing for it but to obey his superintendent's orders. The two weeks' experience with his chief gave Barry a new view and a new estimate of the chaplain's work. As he came into closer touch with camp life and its conditions, he began to see how great was the soldier's need of such moral and spiritual support as a chaplain might be able to render. He was exposed to subtle and powerful temptations. He was deprived of the wonted restraints imposed by convention, by environment, by family ties. The reactions from the exhaustion of physical training, from the monotonous routine of military discipline, from loneliness and homesickness were such as to call for that warm, sympathetic, brotherly aid, and for the uplifting spiritual inspiration that it is a chaplain's privilege to offer. But in proportion as the service took on a nobler and loftier aspect, was Barry conscious to a corresponding degree of his own unfitness for the work.

When he returned to the city, he found no definite information awaiting him in regard to a place in the ambulance corps. He returned home in an unhappy and uncertain frame of mind.

But under the drive of war, events were moving rapidly in Barry's life.

He arrived late in the afternoon, and proceeding to the military H.Q., he found neither his father nor Captain Neil Fraser in the office.

"Gone out for the afternoon, sir," was the word from the orderly in charge.

Wandering about the village, he saw in a field at its outskirts, a squad of recruits doing military evolutions and physical drill. As he drew near he was arrested by the short, snappy tones of the N. C. O. in charge.

"That chap knows his job," he said to himself, "and looks like his job, too," he added, as his eyes rested upon the neat, upright, soldier-like figure.

Captain Neil he found observing the drill from a distance.

"What do you think of that?" he called out to Barry, as the latter came within hailing distance. "What do you think of my sergeant?"

"Fine," replied Barry. "Where did you get him?"

"What? Look at him!"

"I am. Pretty natty sergeant he makes, too."

"Let's go out there, and I'll introduce him."

As they crossed the parade ground, the sergeant dropped his military tone and proceeded to explain in his ordinary voice some details in connection with the drill. Barry, catching the sound of his voice, stopped short.

"You don't mean it, Captain Neil! Not dad, is it?"

"Nobody else," said Captain Neil. "Wait a minute. Wait and let's watch him at his work."

For some time they stood observing the work of the new sergeant. Barry was filled with amazement and delight.

"What do you think of him?" inquired Captain Neil.

But Barry made no reply.

"My company sergeant major got drunk," continued Captain Neil. "I had no one to take the drill. I asked your father to take it. He nearly swept us off our feet. In consequence, there he stands, my company sergeant major, and let me tell you, he will be the regimental sergeant major before many weeks have passed, or I'm a German."

"But his age," inquired Barry, still in a maze of astonishment.

"Oh, that's all right. You don't want them too young. I assured the authorities that he was of proper military age, telling them, at the same time, that I must have him. He's a wonder, and the men just adore him."

"I don't wonder at that," said Barry.

Together they moved over to the squad. The sergeant, observing his officer, called his men smartly to attention, and greeted the captain with a very snappy salute.

"Sergeant major, let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Barry Dunbar,"

said Captain Neil with a grin.

"I say, dad," said Barry, still unable to associate his father with this N. C. O. in uniform who stood before him. "I say, dad, where did you get all that military stuff?"

"I'm very rusty, my boy, very rusty! I hope to brush up, though. The men are improving, I think, sir."

"I'm sure of it," said Captain Neil. "How is that wild man from Athabasca doing?"