"This farewell business is something too fierce," he said to himself savagely, thinking with a sinking heart of the little group at Wolf Willow in the West to whom he must say farewell, and of the one he must leave behind in Winnipeg. "How do these women send their husbands off and their sons? God knows, it is beyond me."Throughout the train journey to Calgary his mind was chiefly occupied with the thought of the parting that awaited him. But when he reached his destination he found himself so overwhelmed with the rush of preparation and with the strenuous daily grind of training that he had no time nor energy left for anything but his work. A change, too, was coming swiftly over the heart of Canada and over his own heart. The tales of Belgian atrocities, at first rejected as impossible, but afterwards confirmed by the Bryce Commission and by many private letters, kindled in Canadian hearts a passion of furious longing to wipe from the face of the earth a system that produced such horrors. Women who, with instincts native of their kind, had at the first sought how they might with honour keep back their men from the perils of war, now in their compassion for women thus relentlessly outraged and for their tender babes pitilessly mangled, consulted chiefly how they might best fit their men for the high and holy mission of justice for the wronged and protection for the helpless. It was this that wrought in Larry a fury of devotion to his duty. Night and day he gave himself to his training with his concentrated powers of body, mind and soul, till he stood head and shoulders above the members of the Officers' Training Corps at Calgary.
After six weeks of strenuous grind Larry was ordered to report to his battalion at Wolf Willow. A new world awaited him there, a world recreated by the mysterious alchemy of war, a world in which men and women moved amid high ideals and lofty purposes, a world where the dominant note was sacrifice and the regnant motive duty.
Nora met him at the station in her own car, which, in view of her activity in connection with the mine where her father was now manager, the directors had placed at her disposal.
"How big and fine you look, Larry! You must be pounds heavier,"she cried, viewing him from afar.
"Twenty pounds, and hard as hickory. Never so fit in my life,"replied her brother, who was indeed a picture of splendid and vigorous health.
"You are perfectly astonishing. But everything is astonishing these days. Why, even father, till he broke his leg--""Broke his leg?"
"There was no use worrying you about it. A week ago, while he was pottering about the mine, he slipped down a ladder and broke his leg. He will probably stay where he belongs now--in the office.
But father is as splendid as any one could well be. He has gripped that mine business hard, and even Switzer in his palmiest days could not get better results. He has quite an extraordinary way with the men, and that is something these days, when men are almost impossible to get.""And mother?" enquired Larry.
"Mother is equally surprising. But you will see for yourself. And dear old Kathleen. She is at it day and night. They made her President of the Women's War Association, and she is-- Well, it is quite beyond words. I can't talk about it, that's all." Nora's voice grew unsteady and she took refuge in silence. After a few moments she went on: "And she has had the most beautiful letter from Jack's colonel. It was on the Big Retreat from Mons that he was killed at the great fight at Landrecies. You know about that, Larry?""No, never heard anything; I know really nothing of that retreat,"said Larry.
"Well, we have had letters about it. It must have been great. Oh, it will be a glorious tale some day. They began the fight, only seventy-five thousand of the British--think of it! with two hundred guns against four hundred thousand Germans with six hundred guns.
