Barry choked back a convulsive sob.
“You, dad, you!” He laughed scornfully.
“I didn't run, Barry, thank God! But the boys—my boys—they are only lads, many of them—lonely and afraid—and they must go on. They must go on. Oh, Barry, in that hour they need some one to go with them. They need God.”
His son was listening with his heart in his eyes. He was getting a new view of the soldier and of the soldier's needs.
“Unhappily,” continued his father, “God is at best a shadowy being, to many of them a stranger, to some a terror. Barry,” he said, “they need some one to tell them the truth about God. It's not fair to God, you know.” Here again his father paused and then said very humbly: “I think I may say, Barry, I know God now, as I did not before. And you helped me, boy, to know him.”
“Oh, dad,” cried Barry, passionately. “Not I! I don't know Him at all!”
“Let me tell you how you helped me, Barry. Before I went up the last time, I wanted—”
He paused abruptly, his face working and his lip quivering.
“Forgive me, my boy. I'm a little weak.”
A few moments of silence and then he continued quietly: