Jo laughed, a hard, bitter laugh.
"You men!" she sneered, "ever since Abraham carried his poor boy up the mountain to lay him on the altar, you've all been alike, you fathers! You don't lay yourselves on the fire, not you! You don't even live your decent best when you might, but you're ready enough with the sacrifice of your young. Gavot, have you ever noticed that the Sarahs of the world don't carry their sons to the altar?" Jo's feelings choked her.
Gavot looked at the woman before him with bleared and strangely serious eyes. "That's wild talk," he mumbled, "bad talk. The right has to be done. Could such as I fight?"
Jo looked at the wretched creature by the roadside and she did not laugh now. That intangible something that was settling on the faces of her people hushed her.
CHAPTER XX
GAVOT GETS HIS CALL
And Tom Gavot was in Quebec. The alarm had stilled, for an instant, his very heart, and the first terrible sense of fear that always came to him in danger rose fiercely within him. His vivid imagination began to burn and light the way on ahead. Horrors that he had read of and shuddered at clutched at his brain and made it ache and throb.
No one knew of his sad marriage. He was going about his work bearing his heavy secret as best he could, but now he began to view it in a new light. He was married; he could remain behind with honour. But could he?
"Going to enlist, Tom?" the head of his firm asked one day. "We'd hate to lose you, we want to send you to Vancouver. There's something special to do there. After all, the matter will soon be settled and we need some boys here."
"I'm thinking it over," Tom replied, and so he was, over and over while his quivering flesh challenged his bright spirit.