"It was good enough for my father and it is good enough for me," cries many a good tory (small t, please), thinking that by this utterance he convinces an admiring world that all his folks have been exceedingly fine people for generations.

But changes are inevitable. What is true to-day may not be true to-morrow. All our opinions should be marked, "Subject to change without notice." We cannot all indulge ourselves in the complacency of the maiden lady who gave her age year after year as twenty-seven, because she said she was not one of these flighty things who say "one thing to-day and something else to-morrow."

The principle of conservation is not at enmity with the spirit of change. It is in thorough harmony with it.

Personal thrift comes naturally to our minds when we begin to think of the lessons that we should take to heart. Up to the time of the war and since, we have been a prodigal people, confusing extravagance with generosity, thrift with meanness. The Indians in the old days killed off the buffalo for the sport of killing, and left the carcases to rot, never thinking of a time of want; and so, too, the natives in the North Country kill the caribou for the sake of their tongues, which are considered a real "company dish," letting the remainder of the animal go to waste.

There is a growing sentiment against the holding-up of tracts of land by speculators waiting for the increase in value which comes by the hard work of settlers. Every sod turned by the real, honest settler, who comes to make his home, increases the value of the section of land next him, probably held by a railway company, and the increase makes it harder for some other settler to buy it. By his industry the settler makes money for the railway company, but incidentally makes his own chance of acquiring a neighbor more remote!

As it is now, people who have no money to buy land have to go long distances from the railroad to get homesteads, and there suffer all the inconveniences and hardships and dangers of pioneer life, miles from neighbors, many miles from a doctor, and without school or church; while great tracts of splendid land lie idle and unimproved, close beside the little towns, held in the tight clasp of a hypothetical owner far away.

Western Canada has a land problem which war conditions have intensified. But people are beginning to talk of these things, and the next few years will see radical changes.

In New Zealand the first political activity of women was directed toward lowering the death-rate among children, by sending out trained nurses to care for them and give instruction to the mothers. Ours will follow the same line, because the heart of woman is the same everywhere. Dreams will soon begin to come true. Good dreams always do—in time; and why not? There is nothing too good to be true! Here is one that is coming!

It was a mean wind that came through the valley that night; a wind that took no notice of Christmas, or Sunday, or even of the brave little girl doing the chores, so that her father might not have them to do when he came home. It was so mean that it would not even go round Mary Wood, aged eleven, and small for her age—it went straight through her and chattered her teeth and blued her hands, and would have frozen her nose if she had not at intervals put her little hand over it.

But in spite of the wind, the chores were done at last, and Mary came back to the house. Mary's mother was always waiting to open the door and shut it quick again, but to-night, when Mary reached the door she had to open it herself, for her mother had gone to bed.

Mary was surprised at this, and hastened to the bedroom to see what was wrong.

Going back to the kitchen she saw the writing-pad on which her mother had been writing. Her mother did not often write letters; certainly did not often tear them up after writing them; and here in the home-made waste-paper basket was a torn and crumpled sheet. Mary did not know that it was not the square thing to read other people's letters, and, besides, she wanted to know. She spread the letter on the table and pieced it together. Laboriously she spelled it out:—

Mary read the letter over and over, before she grasped its meaning. Then the terrible truth rolled over her, and her heart seemed to stop beating. Mary had not lived her eleven years without finding out some of the grim facts of life. She knew that the angels brought babies at very awkward times, and to places where they were not wanted a bit, and she also knew that sometimes, when they brought a baby, they had been known to take the mother away. Mary had her own opinion of the angels who did that, but it had been done. There was only one hope: her father always knew what to do.

She thawed a hole in the frosted window and tried to see down the trail, but the moon was foggy and it was impossible to see more than a few yards.

It was ten o'clock when her father came in, pale and worried. Mary saw that he knew, too.

He went past her into the bedroom and spoke hurriedly to his wife; but Mary did not hear what they said.

Suddenly she heard her mother cry and instinctively she ran into the room.

Her father stood beside the bed holding his head, as if in pain. Mary's mother had turned her face into the pillow, and cried; and even little Bobbie, who had been awakened by the unusual commotion, sat up, rubbing his eyes, and cried softly to himself.

Mary's father explained it to Mary.

"Mrs. Roberts has gone away," he said. "I went over to see her to-day. We were depending on her to come over and take care of your mother—for a while—and now she has gone, and there is not another woman between here and the Landing."

Mr. Wood sat down beside her, and patted her hand.

"I know, dear," he said; "it's hell, this lonely life. It's too much for any woman, and I'll give it all up. Better to live on two meals a day in a city than face things like this. We wanted a home of our own, Millie,—you remember how we used to talk,—and we thought we had found it here—good land and a running stream. We have worked hard and it is just beginning to pay, but we'll have to quit—and I'll have to work for some one else all my life. It was too good to be true, Millie."

He spoke without any bitterness in his voice, just a settled sadness, and a great disappointment.

Mr. Wood reached out and took her big valise and brought her into the house, too astonished to speak. He was afraid she might vanish.

She threw off her heavy coat before she spoke, and then, as she wiped the frost from her eyebrows, she explained:—

"But I don't understand!" Mr. Wood began.

"So here I am," concluded Mrs. Sanderson, as she hung up her coat and cap. "I am a monument to those who are gone, and the free gift of the people of Alberta to you and your wife, in slight appreciation of the work you are doing in settling the country and making all the land in this district more valuable. They are a little late in acknowledging what they owe the settler, but it took the women a few years to get the vote, and then a little while longer to get the woman's point of view before the public."

Mary Wood stood at her father's side while the nurse spoke, drinking in every word.

"But who pays?" asked Mary's father—"who pays for this?"

"The idea is to tax the wild land so heavily that it will not be profitable for speculators to hold it, and it will be released for real, sure-enough settlers. The Government holds to the view that it is better to make homes for many people than to make fortunes for a few people."

"What is it you said the women have now?" asked Mary.

The nurse explained carefully to her small but interested audience. When she was done, Mary Wood, aged eleven, had chosen her life-work.

"Now I know what I'll be when I grow big," she said; "I intended to be a missionary, but I've changed my mind—I am going to be a Voter!"

Stanley Goodman came to our neighborhood when he was a lad of sixteen. The Church of England clergyman, who knew his people in England, brought him to Mrs. Corbett, who kept the Black Creek Stopping House, and asked her if she could give him a room and look after him. He told her of the great wealth and social position of the family who were willing to pay well for the boy's keep.

"If they are as well off as all that," said Mrs. Corbett, "why are they sending the wee lad out here, away from all of them?"

"Do you mean," said Mrs. Corbett, "that they are ashamed of the poor little fellow, and are sending him out here to get rid of him? Faith, if that's the kind of heathen there is in England I don't know why they send missionaries out here to preach to us. Bad and all as we are, there is none of us that would do the like of that!"

"They will provide handsomely for him in every way, Mrs. Corbett, and leave no wish ungratified," the minister said uneasily.

Mrs. Corbett was a difficult person in some ways.

"Oh, sure, they will give him everything but love and home, and that'll be what the poor wee lad will hunger for! Money is a queer thing for sure, when it will make a mother forget the child that she brought into the world!"

"A poor soft fool, that's all she is, to let a domineering old reprobate send her poor lad away, just because he did not like to see him around, and him his own child! And even you, Mr. Tilton, who have been out here living with civilized people for three years, have enough of the old country way in you yet to say that a true wife should consent to this to please the old tyrant! Faith, I don't blame the Suffragettes for smashing windows, and if I wasn't so busy feeding hungry men, I believe I would go over and give them a hand, only I would be more careful what I was smashing and would not waste my time on innocent windows!"

"But you will take him, won't you, Mrs. Corbett? I will feel quite easy about him if you will!"

Stanley was soon established in the big white-washed room in Mrs. Corbett's boarding-house. He brought with him everything that any boy could ever want, and his room, which he kept spotlessly clean, with its beautiful rug, pictures, and books, was the admiration of the neighborhood.

Stanley understood the situation and spoke of it quite frankly.

"My father thought it better for me to come away for a while, to see if it would not toughen me up a bit. He has been rather disappointed in me, I think. You see, I had an accident when I was a little fellow and since then I have not been—quite right."

"Stanley is not what any one would call crazy," said one of the Stoppers; "the only thing I can see wrong with him is that you always know what he is going to say, and he is too polite, and every one can fool him! He certainly is a good worker, and there's another place he shows that he is queer, for he doesn't need to work and still he does it! He likes it, and thanked me to-day for letting him clean my team; and as a special favor I'm going to let him hitch them up when I am ready to go!"

Stanley busied himself about the house, and was never so happy as when he was rendering some service to some one. But even in his happiest moments there was always the wistful longing for home, and when he was alone with Mrs. Corbett he freely spoke of his hopes and fears.

Another day, as he dried the dishes for her, assuring her that it was a real joy for him to be let do this, he analyzed the situation again:—

Every week his letter came from home, with books and magazines and everything that a boy could wish for. His delight knew no bounds. "They must think something of me," he said over and over again! At first he wrote a letter to his mother every day, but a curt note came from his father one day telling him that he must try to interest himself in his surroundings and that it would be better if he wrote only once a week! The weekly letter then became an event, and he copied it over many times. Mrs. Corbett, busy with her work of feeding the traveling public, often paused long enough in her work of peeling the potatoes or rolling out pie-crust to wipe her hands hastily and read the letter that he had written and pass judgment on it.

After the weapons had come "The Exterminators" held a session behind closed doors to see what was the best plan of attack, and decided that they would not wait for the Indians to begin the trouble, but would make war on them. They decided that they would beat the bushes for Indians down in the river-bottom, while Stanley would sit at a certain point of vantage in a clump of willows, and as the Indians ran past him, he would pot them!

The plan was carried out and would no doubt have been successful, but for the extreme scarcity of Indians in our valley.

All night long Stanley sat at his post, peering into the night, armed to the teeth, shivering with the cold wind that blew through the valley. His teeth chattered with fright sometimes, too, as the bushes rustled behind him, and an inquisitive old cow who came nosing the willows never knew how near death she had been. Meanwhile his traitorous companions went home and slept soundly and sweetly in their warm beds.

"And even after he found out that we were fooling him, he was not a bit sore," said Pat. "He tried to laugh! That is what made me feel cheap—he is too easy; it's too much like taking candy from a kid. And he was mighty square about it, too, and he never told Aunt Maggie how he got the cold, for he slipped into bed that morning and she didn't know he was out."

Stanley was wild with enthusiasm when he heard this and hastened to pack a box full to send home. "They will be surprised," he said. Fortunately, Mrs. Corbett found out about this before the box was sent, and she had to tell him that the boys were only in fun.

When she told him that the boys had been just having sport there came over his face such a look of sadness and pain, such a deeply hurt look, that Mrs. Corbett went back to the barn and thrashed her sturdy young nephew, all over again.

"Well, they won't have sport with you when I am round," declared Mrs. Corbett stoutly.

Years rolled by and Stanley still cherished the hope that some day "permission" would come for him to go home. He grew very fast and became rather a fine-looking young man. Once, emboldened by a particularly kind letter from his mother, he made the request that he should be allowed to go home for a few days. "If you will let me come home even for one day, dearest mother," he wrote, "I will come right back content, and father will not need to see me at all. I want to stand once more before that beautiful Tissot picture of Christ holding the wounded lamb in his arms, and I would like to see the hawthorn hedge when it is in bloom as it will be soon, and above all, dear mother, I want to see you. And I will come directly away."

"I do not want to give my mother trouble," he said. "She has already had much trouble with me; but it might make her more content to see me and to know that I am so well—and happy."

After the letter had been sent, Stanley counted the days anxiously, and on the big map of Canada that hung on the kitchen wall he followed its course until it reached Halifax, and then his mind went with it tossing on the ocean.

"I may get my answer any day after Friday," he said. "Of course I do not expect it right off—it will take some little time for mother to speak to father, and, besides, he might not be at home; so I must not be disappointed if it seems long to wait."

In a month a bulky parcel came to him by express. It contained a framed picture of the Good Shepherd carrying the lost lamb in his arms; a box of hawthorn blossoms, faded but still fragrant, and a book which gave directions for playing solitaire in one hundred and twenty-three ways!!

Mrs. Corbett hastened to his room when she heard the cry of pain that escaped his lips. He stood in the middle of the floor with the book in his hand. All the boyishness had gone out of his face, which now had the spent look of one who has had a great fright or suffered great pain. The book on solitaire had pierced through his cloudy brain with the thought that his was a solitary part in life, and for a few moments he went through the panicky grief of the faithful dog who finds himself left on the shore while his false master sails gayly away!

"I will be all right directly," he stammered, making a pitiful effort to control his tears.

How this letter was received at Mayflower Lodge, Bucks, England, is not known, for no answer was ever sent; and although the letters to Stanley came regularly, his wish to go home was not mentioned in any of them. Neither did he ever refer to it again.

"Say, Stan," said young Pat one day, suddenly smitten with a bright thought, "why don't you go home anyway? You have lots of money—why don't you walk in on 'em and give 'em a surprise?"

"It would not be playing the game, Pat; thank you all the same, old chap," said Stanley heartily, "but I will not go home without permission."

When he was not busy in the garden, he spent long hours beside the river in a beautifully fashioned seat which he had made for himself, beneath a large poplar tree. "It is the wind in the tree-tops that I like," he said. "It whispers to me. I can't tell what it says, but it says something. I like trees—they are like people some way—only more patient and friendly."

The big elms and spruce of the river valley rustled and whispered together, and the poplars shook their coin-like leaves as he lay beneath their shade. The trees were trying to be kind to him, as the gray olive trees in Gethsemane were kind to One Other when his own had forgotten Him!

At the first recruiting meeting Stanley volunteered his services by walking down the aisle of the church at the first invitation. The recruiting officer motioned to him to be seated, and that he would see him after the meeting.

Stanley waited patiently until every person was gone, and then timidly said, "And now, sir, will you please tell me what I am to do?"

The recruiting officer, a dapper little fellow, very pompous and important, turned him down mercilessly. Stanley was dismayed. He wandered idly out of the church and was about to start off on his four-mile walk to the Stopping House when a sudden impulse seized him and he followed the recruiting agent to the house where he was staying.

The recruiting officer hesitated. Confound it all! It is a hard thing to tell a man that he is not exactly right in the head.

But he did not need to say it, for Stanley beat him to it. "I know what's wrong," he said; "you think I'm not very bright—I am not, either. But don't you see, war is an elemental sort of thing. I can do what I'm told—and I can fight. What does it matter if my head is not very clear on some things which are easy to you? And don't you see how much I want to go? Life has not been so sweet that I should want to hold on to it. The young men here do not want to go, for they are having such a good time. But there is nothing ahead of me that holds me back. Can't you see that, sir? Won't you pass me on, anyway, and let me have my chance? Give me a trial; it's time enough to turn me down when I fail at something. Won't you take me, sir?"

Then the recruiting officer pulled himself together and grew firm and commanding. "I won't take you," he said, "and that's all there is about it. This is a job for grown-up men and men with all their wits about them. You would faint at the sight of blood and cry when you saw the first dead man."

"My word!" he mimicked, "'ere's a rum 'un—somebody should warn the Kaiser! It's not fair to take the poor man unawares—here is some of the real old English fighting-stock."

Stanley turned in surprise and looked his tormentor in the face. His look of insipid good-nature lured the German on.

"That is what is wrong with the British Empire," he jeered; "there are too many of these underbred aristocrats, all pedigree and no brains, like the long-nosed collies. God help them when they meet the Germans—that is all I have to say!"

He was quite right in his last sentence—that was all he had to say. It was his last word for the evening, and it looked as if it might be his last word for an indefinite time, for the unexpected happened.

People who were there said that Stanley seemed to grow taller, his eyes glowed, his chin grew firm, his shoulders ceased to be apologetic. He whirled upon the German and landed a blow on his jaw that sounded like a blow-out! Before any one could speak, it was followed by another and the German lay on the floor!

Then Stanley turned to the astonished audience and delivered the most successful recruiting speech that had ever been given in the Pembina Valley.

That night recruiting began in the valley and Stanley was the first man to sign on. The recruiting agent felt that it was impossible to turn down a man who had shown so much fighting spirit; and, besides, he was a small man and he had a face which he prized highly!

They were sent overseas almost at once, and, after a short training in England, went at once to the firing-line.

It was a dull, foggy morning, and although it was quite late the street-lamps were still burning, and while they could not make much impression on the darkness, at least they made a luminous top on the lamp-posts and served as a guide to the travelers who made their way into the city. In the breakfast-room of Mayflower Lodge it was dark, and gloomier still, for "the master" was always in his worst mood in the morning, and on this particular morning his temper was aggravated by the presence of his wife's mother and two sisters from Leith, who always made him envious of the men who marry orphans, who are also the last of their race.

Mr. Goodman was discussing the war-situation, and abusing the Government in that peculiarly bitter way of the British patriot.

Mr. Goodman gradually worked back to his old grievance.

"This is a time for every man to do his bit, and here am I too old to go and with no son to represent me—I who came from a family of six sons! Anyway, why doesn't the Government pass conscription and drag out the slackers who lounge in the parks and crowd the theaters?"

Aunt Louisa paused in the act of helping herself to marmalade and regarded him with great displeasure; then cried shrilly:—

"What has that to do with conscription?" asked her brother-in-law gruffly. "I tell you it is coming and no one will be gladder than I am."

"I think it is nothing short of unkind the way that you have been speaking of the Germans. I know I never got muffins like the muffins I got in Berlin that time; and, anyway, there are plenty of the commoner people to go to fight, and they have such large families that they will not miss one as I would miss my Bertie, and he has just recently become engaged to such a dear girl! In our home we simply try to forget this stupid war, but when I come here I hear nothing else—I wonder how you stand it, dear Clara."

"You will hear more about the war some of these days," he said, "when a German Zeppelin drops bombs on London."

Aunt Louisa came as near snorting as a well-bred lady could come, so great was her disdain at this suggestion.

"Zeppelin!" she said scornfully—"on England!! You forget, sir, that we are living in a civilized age! Zeppelin! Indeed, and who would let them, I wonder! I am surprised at you, sir, and so is mother, although she has not spoken."

"You will probably be more surprised before long; life is full of surprises these days."

Just then the butler brought him a wire, the contents of which seemed to bear out this theory, for it told him that Private Stanley Goodman, of the First Canadian Battalion, for conspicuous bravery under fire had been recommended for the D.C.M., but regretted to inform him that Private Goodman had been seriously wounded and was now in the Third Canadian Hospital, Flanders.

"I had to leave a dead friend of mine on the field to-night," said Stanley, speaking with difficulty. "And I could not leave him there with the rain falling on him, could I, sister? It seemed hard to have to leave him, anyway, but we got all the wounded in."

When at last Stanley opened his eyes, there was a broken and sorrowful old man, from whose spirit all the imperious pride had gone, kneeling by his bedside and humbly begging his forgiveness. On the other side of the bed his mother stood with a great joy in her faded face.

"Stanley—Stanley," sobbed his father, every reserve broken down; "I have just found you—and now how can I lose you so soon. Try to live for my sake, and let me show you how sorry I am."

Stanley's eyes showed the distress which filled his tender heart.

He lay still for a long time; then, rousing himself, said, "I'm afraid I have been dreaming again—no, this is father; you are sure, sir, are you?—about the medal and all that—and this is mother, is it?—it is all quite like going home—I am so happy; it seems as if permission had come."

He laughed softly behind his bandages, a queer, little, choking, happy laugh; and there, with his mother's arms around him, while his father, stern no longer, but tender and loving, held his hand, "permission" came and the homesick, hungry heart of the boy entered into rest.