from all others.  She could suffer; she could have gone over there light-hearted and faced any danger to save them.  Of course!  That was natural!  But—­Brock and Hugh!  The little heads that had lain in the hollow of her arm; the noisy little boys who had muddied their white clothes, and broken furniture, and spilled ink; the tall, beautiful lads who had been her pride and her everlasting joy, her playmates, her lovers—­Brock and Hugh!  Why, there had never been on earth love and friendship in any family close and unfailing like that of the four.

Night after night, nearer and nearer, the ghosts from Belgium and Serbia and Poland stood about her bed, and she fought with them as one had fought with the beasts at Ephesus.  Day after day she cheered Brock and the two Hughs and filled them with fresh patriotism.  Of course, she would not have her own fail in a hair’s breadth of eager service to their flag.  Of course!  And as she lifted up, for their sakes, her heart, behold a miracle, for her heart grew high!  She began to feel the words she said.  It came to her in very truth that to have the world as one wanted it was not now the point; the point was a greater goal which she had never in her happy life even visualized.  It began to rise before her, a distant picture glorious through a mist of suffering, something built of the sacrifice, and the honor, and the deathless bravery of millions of soldiers in battle, of millions of mothers at home.  The education of a nation to higher ideals was reaching the quiet backwater of this one woman’s soul.  There were lovelier things than life; there were harder things than death.  Service is the measure of living.  If the boys were to compress years of good living into a flame of serving humanity for six months, who was she, what was life here, that she should be reluctant?  To play the game, for herself and her sons, this was the one thing worth while.  More and more entirely, as the stress of the strange, hard vision crowded out selfishness, this woman, as thousands and tens of thousands all over America, lifted up her heart—­the dear things that filled and were her heart—­unto the Lord.

And with that she was aware of a recurring unrest.  She was aware that there was something her husband did not say to her about the boys, about young Hugh.  Brock had been hard to hold for nearly two years now, but his father had thought for reasons, that he should not serve until his own flag called him.  Now it would soon be calling, and Brock would go instantly.  But young Hugh?  What did the boy’s attitude mean?

“I can’t make out Hughie,” his father had said to her in March, 1917, when it was certain that war was coming.  “What does this devil-may-care pose about the war mean?”

And she answered:  “Let Hughie work it out, Hugh.  He’s in trouble in his mind, but he’ll come through.  We’ll give him time.”

“Oh, very well,” Hugh the elder had agreed, “but young Americans will have to take their stand shortly.  I couldn’t bear it if a son of mine were a slacker.”