“It is a pity that your poor lad did not inherit some of your hardness of heart, Mr. Goodman,” the letter began, “for if he did he would not be upstairs now breakin his and sobbin it out of him at your cruel answer to his natural request that he might go home and see his mother.  But he has a heart of gold wherever he got it I don’t know, and it is just a curse to him to be so constant in his love for home, when there is no love or welcome there for him.  He is a lad that any man might well be proud of him, that gentle and kind and honest and truthful, not like most of the young doods that come out here drinkin and carousin and raisin the divil. mebbe you would like him better if he was and this is just to tell you that we like your boy here and we dont think much of the way you are using him and I hope that you will live to see the day that you will regret with tears more bitter than he is sheddin now the way you have treated him, and with these few lines I will close M corbett.”

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.”

After that Stanley got more and more reticent about the people at home.  He seemed to realize that they had cut him off, but the homesick look never left his eyes.  His friends now were the children of the neighborhood and the animals.  Dogs, cats, horses, and children followed him, and gave him freely of their affection.  He worked happy hours in Mrs. Corbett’s garden, and “Stanley’s flowers” were the admiration of the neighborhood.

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!

* * * * *

When the news of the war fell upon the Pembina Valley, it did not greatly disturb the peacefulness of that secluded spot.  The well-to-do farmers who had held their grain over openly rejoiced at the prospect of better prices, and the younger men, when asked to enlist, replied by saying that the people who made the war had better do the fighting because they had no ambition to go out and stop German bullets.  The general feeling was that it would soon be over.