“No, I wouldn’t tell him.  We women may be scared to death, but it ain’t the time to tell our men that we are scared.”

“Are you scared to death, Mrs. Connolly?”

The steady eyes met hers.  “Sometimes, in the night, when I think of the wet and cold, and the wounded groaning under the stars.  But when the morning comes, I cook the breakfast and get Jim off, and he don’t know but that I am as cheerful as one of our old hens, and then I go over to the church, and tell it all to the blessed Virgin, and I am ready to write to my boys of how proud I am, and how fine they are—­and of every little tiny thing that has happened on the farm.”

Thus the heroic Mary Connolly—­type of a million of her kind in America—­of more than a million of her kind throughout the world—­hiding her fears deep in her heart that her men might go cheered to battle.

The omelette was finished, and the Doctor and Jim Connolly had come in.  “The stars are out,” the Doctor said.  “After supper we’ll walk a bit.”

Jean was never to forget that walk with her father.  It was her last long walk with him before he went to France, her last intimate talk.  It was very cold, and he took her arm, the snow crunched under their feet.

Faintly the chimes of the old College came up to them.  “Nine o’clock,” said the Doctor.  “Think of all the years I’ve heard the chimes, I have lived over half a century—­and my father before me heard them—­and they rang in my grandfather’s time.  Perhaps they will ring in the ears of my grandchildren, Jean.”

They had stopped to listen, but now they went on.  “Do you know what they used to say to me when I was a little boy?

  ’The Lord watch
  Between thee and—­me—­’”

“My mother and I used to repeat it together at nine o’clock, and when I brought your mother here for our honeymoon—­that first night we, too, stood and listened to the chimes—­and I told her what they said.

“Men drift away from these things,” he continued, with something of an effort.  “I have drifted too far.  But, Jean, will you always remember this, that when I am at my best, I come back to the things my mother taught her boy?  If anything should happen, you will remember?”

[Illustration:  “If anything should happen, you will remember?”]

She clung to his arm.  She had no words.  Never again was she to hear the chimes without that poignant memory of her father begging her to remember the best—.

“I have been thinking,” he said, out of a long silence, “of you and Derry.  I—­I want you to marry him, dear, before I go.”

“Before you go—­Daddy—­”

“Yes.  Emily says I have no right to stand in the way of your happiness.  And I have no right.  And some day, perhaps, oh, my little Jean, my grandchildren may hear the chimes—­”

White and still, she stood with her face upturned to the stars.  “Life is so wonderful, Daddy.”