It was something her heart would not accept. How could it be, it argued, that Neil, so strong and steady and full of high purpose, and Jimmie, so radiant and full of life, could be lying dead in the mud of a trench? It was unbelievable. And at last she came to understand, through watching with her mother, whose faith leaped over even this barrier of death, that the instincts of her heart were right. Jimmie and Neil were not dead. They were gone, somewhere, beyond her sight, but they were still living and moving and working as they had done here on earth. Some fault of vision, some failure of the senses made it impossible for her to communicate with them. But they were there, and alive! Her mother was sure of that. And Grandpa was right, he had met them the sooner for their untimely call to the Life Beyond.
Allister came home as soon as the news about Neil and Jimmie reached him. He stayed a week with them, comforting his mother and Uncle Neil, helping John about the barn, and trying to keep Christina from going too often to Grandpa's empty room. He brought a long letter from Ellen, offering to come home just as soon as the hospital authorities would spare her. She was getting on wonderfully well, Allister reported, and had determined, should the war continue, that she would offer herself as a Red Cross nurse, but had decided to come home if she were needed.
Christina was longing for her elder sister's presence and help, but the remembrance of Neil's sacrifice for Jimmie made her ashamed of the thought. So she wrote bravely to Ellen bidding her stay until she finished her course.
On the evening before Allister left, he and Christina sat by the fire talking, long after the others had gone to bed. Wallace had been there earlier in the evening, and to Christina's amazement Allister did not share in the universal admiration for him.
"He's got money, that young chap, Christine," he said. "But money isn't everything, girl, remember that."
"But you like Wallace, don't you?" asked Christina in surprise.
"Oh, I guess he's all right. But he's got things too easy. And he'll want to get them easy all his life or he'll kick over the traces."
Christina was not conscious of any feeling of resentment. She did not even take the trouble to attempt to defend Wallace, and Allister seemed surprised.
"Yes, I thought money was the whole thing," he went on, "and now the war has made me a poor man. I've got the farm I had when I went West first, and I've got something more, I've got a pocketful of debts that will take me years to pay off. But, I guess I'm about as well off in some ways as I ever was."
Christina would have been very much dismayed at this some months earlier, but in the face of the stupendous events of her life the loss of property or even of the chance of wealth seemed trivial. She said so to Allister and was glad to find that he agreed with her.