Everyman's Land

By C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON Author of The Lightning Conductor Discovers America , Lady Betty Across the Water , Set in Silver , Etc . Frontispiece A. L. BURT COMPANY Publishers New York Published by arrangement with Doubleday, Page & Company COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY C. N. & A. M. WILLIAMSON ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY
TO ALL SOLDIERS WHO HAVE FOUGHT OR FIGHT FOR EVERYMAN'S LAND AND EVERYMAN'S RIGHT; AND TO THOSE WHO LOVE FRANCE
I can't believe that the castle of Ham was as striking in its untouched magnificence, as now, in the rose-red splendour of its ruin!




Padre, when you died, you left a message for me. You asked me to go on writing, if I were in trouble, just as I used to write when you were on earth. I used to confess, and you used to advise. Also you used to scold. How you used to scold! I am going to do now what you asked, in that message.
I shall never forget how you packed me off to school at Brighton, and Brian to Westward Ho! the year father died and left us to you—the most troublesome legacy a poor bachelor parson ever had! I'd made up my mind to hate England. Brian couldn't hate anything or anybody: dreamers don't know how to hate: and I wanted to hate you for sending us there. I wanted to be hated and misunderstood. I disguised myself as a Leprechaun and sulked; but it didn't work where you were concerned. You understood me as no one else ever could—or will, I believe. You taught me something about life, and to see that people are much the same all over the world, if you take them by the heart.
You took me by the heart, and you held me by it, from the time I was twelve till the time when you gave your life for your country. Ten years! When I tell them over now, as a nun tells the beads of her rosary, I realize what good years they were, and how their goodness—with such goodness as I had in me to face them—came through you.