He spoke with a bright face and in a cheerful voice, as if he really was asking a favor for himself; and, though he did not try to put his offer into fine, heroic words, nothing could have been finer or more heroic than the perfect self-abnegation of his manner.

The poor old wife shed a few bitter tears; but she also had been practicing self-denial for a lifetime, and the end of it was that Davie went to weary marches and lonely watches, and Sandy staid at home.

This was the break-up of Davie’s life.  His wife went to live with Sandy and Sallie, and the furniture was mostly sold.

Few people could have taken these events as Davie did.  He even affected to be rather smitten with the military fever, and, when the parting came, left wife and son and home with a cheerful bravery that was sad enough to the one old heart who had counted its cost.

In Davie’s loving, simple nature there was doubtless a strong vein of romance.  He was really in hopes that he might come across his long-lost brother.  He had no very clear idea as to localities and distances, and he had read so many marvelous war stories that all things seemed possible in its atmosphere.  But reality and romance are wide enough apart.

Davie’s military experience was a very dull and weary one.  He grew poorer and poorer, lost heart and hope, and could only find comfort for all his sacrifices in the thought that “at least he had spared poor Sandy.”

Neither was his home-coming what he had pictured it in many a reverie.  There was no wife to meet him—­she had been three months in the grave when he got back to New York—­and going to his daughter-in-law’s home was not—­well, it was not like going to his own house.

Sallie was not cross or cruel, and she was grateful to Davie, but she did not love the old man.

He soon found that the attempt to take up again his trade was hopeless.  He had grown very old with three years’ exposure and hard duty.  Other men could do twice the work he could, and do it better.  He must step out from the ranks of skilled mechanics and take such humble positions as his failing strength permitted him to fill.

Sandy objected strongly to this at first.  “He could work for both,” he said, “and he thought father had deserved his rest.”

But Davie shook his head—­“he must earn his own loaf, and he must earn it now, just as he could.  Any honest way was honorable enough.”  He was still cheerful and hopeful, but it was noticeable that he never spoke of his brother Sandy now; he had buried that golden expectation with many others.  Then began for Davie Morrison the darkest period of his life.  I am not going to write its history.

It is not pleasant to tell of a family sinking lower and lower in spite of its brave and almost desperate efforts to keep its place—­not pleasant to tell of the steps that gradually brought it to that pass, when the struggle was despairingly abandoned, and the conflict narrowed down to a fight with actual cold and hunger.