He was sobbing, but very quietly.

"Forgive me, dad; I'm not crying. I'm just thinking about God and you.

Oh, dad, you are both wonderful! Wonderful!"

"Barry, my boy, tell them. Don't worry yourself about them. Just tell them about God. He is responsible for them, not you."

"Oh, I will, dad; I promise you I will. I've been all wrong, but I'll tell them. I'll tell them."

"Thank God, my boy," said his father, with a deep sigh. "Now I'm tired.

Say 'Our Father.'"

Together they whispered those greatest of words in human speech, those words that have bound heaven to earth in yearning and in hope for these two thousand years.

"Don't move, Barry," whispered his father. "I like you there."

With their faces thus together they fell asleep.

Barry was awakened by his father's voice, clear and strong.

"Are you there, Barry?" it said.

"Here, dad, right here!"

"Good boy. Good boy. You won't leave me, Barry. I mean you don't need to go?"

"No, dad, I'll never leave you."

"Good boy," again murmured his father softly. "Always a good boy, always, always--"

He was breathing heavily, long deep breaths.

"Lift me up, Barry," he said.

Barry sat on the bed, put his arm around his father's shoulders, and lifted him up.

"That's better--hold me closer, Barry--You won't hurt me--Oh, it's good--to feel--your arms--strong arms--Barry."

"You made them strong, dad," said Barry, in a clear, steady voice.

The father nestled his head upon his son's shoulder.

"Barry," he said in the low tone of one giving a confidence, "don't ever forget--to thank God--for these eighteen years--together--You saved me--from despair--eighteen years ago--when she went away--you know--and you have been--all the world to me--my son--"

"And you to me, dad," said his son in the same steady tone.

"I've tried all my life--to make you know--how I love you--but somehow I couldn't--"

"But I knew, dad," said Barry. "All my life I have known."

"Really?" asked his father. "I--wonder--I don't think--you quite know--Ah--my boy--my boy--You don't--know--you--can't. Barry," he said, "I think--I'm going out--I'm going--out--no, in--your word--my boy--in--eh--Barry?"

"Yes, dad," said his son. "Going in. The inner circle, you know."

"The--inner--circle--" echoed his father. "Warmth--light--love--Now--I think--I'll sleep--Good night--Barry--Oh--my boy,--you--don't quite--know--Kiss me--Barry--"

Barry kissed him on the lips.

"So--Good--night--"

A deep breath he took; another--Barry waited for the next, but there was not another.

He laid his father down and looked into his quiet face, touched even now with the noble stateliness of death. He put his arms about the unresponsive form, and his face to the cheek still warm.

"Dad, oh, dad," he whispered. "Do you know--do you know--Oh, God, tell him how I love him. Tell him! Tell him! I never could."

The little V. A. D. came softly and stood looking from a distance. Then coming to the bedside, she laid her hand upon the head and then the heart of the dead man. Then she drew back, and beckoning to an orderly, they placed a screen about the cot. She let her eyes rest for a moment or two upon the kneeling boy, then went softly away.

Death was to her an all too familiar thing. She had often seen it unmoved, but to-night, as she walked away, the brown eyes could not hold their tears.

CHAPTER XII

A MAN OF GOD

Barry was standing beside his father's grave, in a little plot in the Boulogne cemetery set apart for British officers. They had, one by one, gone away and left him until, alone, he stood looking down on the simple wooden cross on which were recorded the name, age, and unit of the soldier with the date of his death, and underneath the simple legend, eloquent of heroic sacrifice, "Died of wounds received in action."

Throughout the simple, beautiful burial service he had not been acutely conscious of grief. Even now he wondered that he could shed no tears.

Rather did an exultant emotion fill his soul as he looked around upon the little British plot, with its rows of crosses, and he was chiefly conscious of a solemn, tender pride that he was permitted to share that glorious offering which his Empire was making for the saving of the world. But, in this moment, as he stood there alone close to his father's grave, and surrounded by those examples of high courage and devotion, he became aware of a mighty change wrought in him during these last three days. He had experienced a veritable emancipation of soul. He was as if he had been born anew.

The old sense of failure in his work, the feeling of unfitness for it, and the old dread of it, had been lifted out of his soul, and not only was he a new man, but he felt himself to be charged with a new mission, because he had a new message for his men. No longer did he conceive himself as a moral policeman or religious censor, whose main duty it was to stand in judgment over the faults and sins of the men of his battalion. No more would the burden of his message be a stern denunciation of these faults and sins. Standing there to-day, he could only wonder at his former blindness and stupidity and pride.

"Who am I," he said in bitter self-humiliation, "that I should judge my comrades? How little I knew myself."

"A man of God," his superintendent had said in his last letter to him.

Yes, truly a man of God! A MAN not God! A MAN not to sit in God's place in judgment upon his fellow sinners, but to show them God, their Father.

Barry thought of the frequent rebukes he had administered to the officers and men for what he considered to be their sins. He groaned aloud.

"God will forgive me, I know," he said. "But will they?"

He tried to recall what the burden of his message to his battalion had been during these past months, but to him there came no clear and distinct memory of aught but warnings and denunciations, with reference to what he judged to be faulty in their conduct. To-day it seemed to him both sad and terrible.

How had he so failed and so misconceived the Master's plain teaching? He moved among sinners all His days, not with denunciations in His heart or voice, but only with pity and love.

"Be not 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."