One of Ours.........................................................................................................................................................1

Willa Cather .............................................................................................................................................1

Claude Wheeler opened his eyes before the sun was up and vigorously shook his younger brother, who lay in

"Car's all right. Let me alone." The boy turned over and pulled the sheet up to his face, to shut out the light

Claude rose and dressed,a simple operation which took very little time. He crept down two flights of stairs,

feeling his way in the dusk, his red hair standing up in peaks, like a cock's comb. He went through the kitchen

into the adjoining washroom, which held two porcelain stands with running water. Everybody had washed

before going to bed, apparently, and the bowls were ringed with a dark sediment which the hard, alkaline

water had not dissolved. Shutting the door on this disorder, he turned back to the kitchen, took Mahailey's tin

basin, doused his face and head in cold water, and began to plaster down his wet hair.

Old Mahailey herself came in from the yard, with her apron full of corncobs to start a fire in the kitchen

stove. She smiled at him in the foolish fond way she often had with him when they were alone.

"What air you gittin' up for aready, boy? You goin' to the circus before breakfast? Don't you make no noise,

"All right, Mahailey." Claude caught up his cap and ran out of doors, down the hillside toward the barn. The

sun popped up over the edge of the prairie like a broad, smiling face; the light poured across the

closecropped August pastures and the hilly, timbered windings of Lovely Creek, a clear little stream with a

sand bottom, that curled and twisted playfully about through the south section of the big Wheeler ranch. It

was a fine day to go to the circus at Frankfort, a fine day to do anything; the sort of day that must, somehow,

Claude backed the little Ford car out of its shed, ran it up to the horsetank, and began to throw water on the

mudcrusted wheels and windshield. While he was at work the two hired men, Dan and Jerry, came

shambling down the hill to feed the stock. Jerry was grumbling and swearing about something, but Claude

wrung out his wet rags and, beyond a nod, paid no attention to them. Somehow his father always managed to

have the roughest and dirtiest hired men in the country working for him. Claude had a grievance against Jerry

Molly was a faithful old mare, the mother of many colts; Claude and his younger brother had learned to ride

on her. This man Jerry, taking her out to work one morning, let her step on a board with a nail sticking up in

it. He pulled the nail out of her foot, said nothing to anybody, and drove her to the cultivator all day. Now she

had been standing in her stall for weeks, patiently suffering, her body wretchedly thin, and her leg swollen

until it looked like an elephant's. She would have to stand there, the veterinary said, until her hoof came off

and she grew a new one, and she would always be stiff. Jerry had not been discharged, and he exhibited the

Mahailey came out on the hilltop and rang the breakfast bell. After the hired men went up to the house,

Claude slipped into the barn to see that Molly had got her share of oats. She was eating quietly, her head

hanging, and her scaly, deadlooking foot lifted just a little from the ground. When he stroked her neck and

talked to her she stopped grinding and gazed at him mournfully. She knew him, and wrinkled her nose and

drew her upper lip back from her worn teeth, to show that she liked being petted. She let him touch her foot

When Claude reached the kitchen, his mother was sitting at one end of the breakfast table, pouring weak

coffee, his brother and Dan and Jerry were in their chairs, and Mahailey was baking griddle cakes at the

stove. A moment later Mr. Wheeler came down the enclosed stairway and walked the length of the table to

his own place. He was a very large man, taller and broader than any of his neighbours. He seldom wore a coat

in summer, and his rumpled shirt bulged out carelessly over the belt of his trousers. His florid face was clean

shaven, likely to be a trifle tobaccostained about the mouth, and it was conspicuous both for goodnature

and coarse humour, and for an imperturbable physical composure. Nobody in the county had ever seen Nat

Wheeler flustered about anything, and nobody had ever heard him speak with complete seriousness. He kept

As soon as he was seated, Mr. Wheeler reached for the twopint sugar bowl and began to pour sugar into his

"I shouldn't wonder if I happened in town sometime before the elephants get away." He spoke very

deliberately, with a StateofMaine drawl, and his voice was smooth and agreeable. "You boys better start in

early, though. You can take the wagon and the mules, and load in the cowhides. The butcher has agreed to

"And what about Dan and Jerry? They want to see the circus just as much as you do, and I want the hides

should go in; they're bringing a good price now. I don't mind about your washing the car; mud preserves the

The hired men hawhawed and Ralph giggled. Claude's freckled face got very red. The pancake grew stiff

and heavy in his mouth and was hard to swallow. His father knew he hated to drive the mules to town, and

knew how he hated to go anywhere with Dan and Jerry. As for the hides, they were the skins of four steers

that had perished in the blizzard last winter through the wanton carelessness of these same hired men, and the

price they would bring would not half pay for the time his father had spent in stripping and curing them. They

had lain in a shed loft all summer, and the wagon had been to town a dozen times. But today, when he wanted

to go to Frankfort clean and carefree, he must take these stinking hides and two coarsemouthed men, and

drive a pair of mules that always brayed and balked and behaved ridiculously in a crowd. Probably his father

had looked out of the window and seen him washing the car, and had put this up on him while he dressed. It

Mrs. Wheeler looked at Claude sympathetically, feeling that he was disappointed. Perhaps she, too, suspected

When Claude started for the barn after breakfast, she came running down the path, calling to him

faintly,hurrying always made her short of breath. Overtaking him, she looked up with solicitude, shading

her eyes with her delicately formed hand. "If you want I should do up your linen coat, Claude, I can iron it

Claude stood kicking at a bunch of mottled feathers that had once been a young chicken. His shoulders were

drawn high, his mother saw, and his figure suggested energy and determined selfcontrol.

"You needn't mind, mother." He spoke rapidly, muttering his words. "I'd better wear my old clothes if I have

to take the hides. They're greasy, and in the sun they'll smell worse than fertilizer."

"The men can handle the hides, I should think. Wouldn't you feel better in town to be dressed?" She was still

"Don't bother about it. Put me out a clean coloured shirt, if you want to. That's all right."

He turned toward the barn, and his mother went slowly back the path up to the house. She was so plucky and

so stooped, his dear mother! He guessed if she could stand having these men about, could cook and wash for

Half an hour after the wagon left, Nat Wheeler put on an alpaca coat and went off in the rattling buckboard in

which, though he kept two automobiles, he still drove about the country. He said nothing to his wife; it was

her business to guess whether or not he would be home for dinner. She and Mahailey could have a good time

There were few days in the year when Wheeler did not drive off somewhere; to an auction sale, or a political

convention, or a meeting of the Farmers' Telephone directors;to see how his neighbours were getting on

with their work, if there was nothing else to look after. He preferred his buckboard to a car because it was

light, went easily over heavy or rough roads, and was so rickety that he never felt he must suggest his wife's

accompanying him. Besides he could see the country better when he didn't have to keep his mind on the road.

He had come to this part of Nebraska when the Indians and the buffalo were still about, remembered the

grasshopper year and the big cyclone, had watched the farms emerge one by one from the great rolling page

where once only the wind wrote its story. He had encouraged new settlers to take up homesteads, urged on

courtships, lent young fellows the money to marry on, seen families grow and prosper; until he felt a little as

if all this were his own enterprise. The changes, not only those the years made, but those the seasons made,

People recognized Nat Wheeler and his cart a mile away. He sat massive and comfortable, weighing down

one end of the slanting seat, his driving hand lying on his knee. Even his German neighbours, the Yoeders,

who hated to stop work for a quarter of an hour on any account, were glad to see him coming. The merchants

in the little towns about the county missed him if he didn't drop in once a week or so. He was active in

politics; never ran for an office himself, but often took up the cause of a friend and conducted his campaign

The French saying, "Joy of the street, sorrow of the home," was exemplified in Mr. Wheeler, though not at all

in the French way. His own affairs were of secondary importance to him. In the early days he had

homesteaded and bought and leased enough land to make him rich. Now he had only to rent it out to good

farmers who liked to workhe didn't, and of that he made no secret. When he was at home, he usually sat

upstairs in the living room, reading newspapers. He subscribed for a dozen or morethe list included a

weekly devoted to scandaland he was well informed about what was going on in the world. He had

magnificent health, and illness in himself or in other people struck him as humorous. To be sure, he never

suffered from anything more perplexing than toothache or boils, or an occasional bilious attack.

Wheeler gave liberally to churches and charities, was always ready to lend money or machinery to a

neighbour who was short of anything. He liked to tease and shock diffident people, and had an inexhaustible

supply of funny stories. Everybody marveled that he got on so well with his oldest son, Bayliss Wheeler. Not

that Bayliss was exactly diffident, but he was a narrow gauge fellow, the sort of prudent young man one

Bayliss had a farm implement business in Frankfort, and though he was still under thirty he had made a very

considerable financial success. Perhaps Wheeler was proud of his son's business acumen. At any rate, he

drove to town to see Bayliss several times a week, went to sales and stock exhibits with him, and sat about

his store for hours at a stretch, joking with the farmers who came in. Wheeler had been a heavy drinker in his

day, and was still a heavy feeder. Bayliss was thin and dyspeptic, and a virulent Prohibitionist; he would have

liked to regulate everybody's diet by his own feeble constitution. Even Mrs. Wheeler, who took the men God

had apportioned her for granted, wondered how Bayliss and his father could go off to conventions together

and have a good time, since their ideas of what made a good time were so different.

Once every few years, Mr. Wheeler bought a new suit and a dozen stiff shirts and went back to Maine to visit

his brothers and sisters, who were very quiet, conventional people. But he was always glad to get home to his

Mrs. Wheeler had come out from Vermont to be Principal of the High School, when Frankfort was a frontier

town and Nat Wheeler was a prosperous bachelor. He must have fancied her for the same reason he liked his

son Bayliss, because she was so different. There was this to be said for Nat Wheeler, that he liked every sort

of human creature; he liked good people and honest people, and he liked rascals and hypocrites almost to the

point of loving them. If he heard that a neighbour had played a sharp trick or done something particularly

mean, he was sure to drive over to see the man at once, as if he hadn't hitherto appreciated him.

There was a large, loafing dignity about Claude's father. He liked to provoke others to uncouth laughter, but

he never laughed immoderately himself. In telling stories about him, people often tried to imitate his smooth,

senatorial voice, robust but never loud. Even when he was hilariously delighted by anything,as when poor

Mahailey, undressing in the dark on a summer night, sat down on the sticky flypaper,he was not

boisterous. He was a jolly, easygoing father, indeed, for a boy who was not thinskinned.

Claude and his mules rattled into Frankfort just as the calliope went screaming down Main street at the head

of the circus parade. Getting rid of his disagreeable freight and his uncongenial companions as soon as

possible, he elbowed his way along the crowded sidewalk, looking for some of the neighbour boys. Mr.

Wheeler was standing on the Farmer's Bank corner, towering a head above the throng, chaffing with a little

hunchback who was setting up a shellgame. To avoid his father, Claude turned and went in to his brother's

store. The two big show windows were full of country children, their mothers standing behind them to watch

the parade. Bayliss was seated in the little glass cage where he did his writing and bookkeeping. He nodded at

"Hello," said Claude, bustling in as if he were in a great hurry. "Have you seen Ernest Havel? I thought I

Bayliss swung round in his swivel chair to return a plough catalogue to the shelf. "What would he be in here

for? Better look for him in the saloon." Nobody could put meaner insinuations into a slow, dry remark than

Claude's cheeks flamed with anger. As he turned away, he noticed something unusual about his brother's

face, but he wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of asking him how he had got a black eye. Ernest Havel

was a Bohemian, and he usually drank a glass of beer when he came to town; but he was sober and thoughtful

beyond the wont of young men. From Bayliss' drawl one might have supposed that the boy was a drunken

At that very moment Claude saw his friend on the other side of the street, following the wagon of trained

dogs that brought up the rear of the procession. He ran across, through a crowd of shouting youngsters, and

"I'm going to eat my lunch before showtime. I left my wagon out by the pumping station, on the creek.

Claude would have liked to take Ernest to the hotel for dinner. He had more than enough money in his

pockets; and his father was a rich farmer. In the Wheeler family a new thrasher or a new automobile was

ordered without a question, but it was considered extravagant to go to a hotel for dinner. If his father or

Bayliss heard that he had been thereand Bayliss heard everything they would say he was putting on airs, and

would get back at him. He tried to excuse his cowardice to himself by saying that he was dirty and smelled of

the hides; but in his heart he knew that he did not ask Ernest to go to the hotel with him because he had been

so brought up that it would be difficult for him to do this simple thing. He made some purchases at the fruit

stand and the cigar counter, and then hurried out along the dusty road toward the pumping station. Ernest's

wagon was standing under the shade of some willow trees, on a little sandy bottom half enclosed by a loop of

the creek which curved like a horseshoe. Claude threw himself on the sand beside the stream and wiped the

dust from his hot face. He felt he had now closed the door on his disagreeable morning.

"I got a couple bottles of beer cooling in the creek," he said. "I knew you wouldn't want to go in a saloon."

"Oh, forget it!" Claude muttered, ripping the cover off a jar of pickles. He was nineteen years old, and he was

After lunch, Claude tools out a handful of good cigars he had bought at the drugstore. Ernest, who couldn't

afford cigars, was pleased. He lit one, and as he smoked he kept looking at it with an air of pride and turning

The horses stood with their heads over the wagonbox, munching their oats. The stream trickled by under the

willow roots with a cool, persuasive sound. Claude and Ernest lay in the shade, their coats under their heads,

talking very little. Occasionally a motor dashed along the road toward town, and a cloud of dust and a smell

of gasoline blew in over the creek bottom; but for the most part the silence of the warm, lazy summer noon

was undisturbed. Claude could usually forget his own vexations and chagrins when he was with Ernest. The

Bohemian boy was never uncertain, was not pulled in two or three ways at once. He was simple and direct.

He had a number of impersonal preoccupations; was interested in politics and history and in new inventions.

Claude felt that his friend lived in an atmosphere of mental liberty to which he himself could never hope to

attain. After he had talked with Ernest for awhile, the things that did not go right on the farm seemed less

important. Claude's mother was almost as fond of Ernest as he was himself. When the two boys were going to

high school, Ernest often came over in the evening to study with Claude, and while they worked at the long

kitchen table Mrs. Wheeler brought her darning and sat near them, helping them with their Latin and algebra.

Mrs. Wheeler said she would never forget the night Ernest arrived from the Old Country. His brother, Joe

Havel, had gone to Frankfort to meet him, and was to stop on the way home and leave some groceries for the

Wheelers. The train from the east was late; it was ten o'clock that night when Mrs. Wheeler, waiting in the

kitchen, heard Havel's wagon rumble across the little bridge over Lovely Creek. She opened the outside door,

and presently Joe came in with a bucket of salt fish in one hand and a sack of flour on his shoulder. While he

took the fish down to the cellar for her, another figure appeared in the doorway; a young boy, short, stooped,

with a flat cap on his head and a great oilcloth valise, such as pedlars carry, strapped to his back. He had

fallen asleep in the wagon, and on waking and finding his brother gone, he had supposed they were at home

and scrambled for his pack. He stood in the doorway, blinking his eyes at the light, looking astonished but

eager to do whatever was required of him. What if one of her own boys, Mrs. Wheeler thought . . . . She went

up to him and put her arm around him, laughing a little and saying in her quiet voice, just as if he could

Ernest said afterwards that it was his first welcome to this country, though he had travelled so far, and had

been pushed and hauled and shouted at for so many days, he had lost count of them. That night he and Claude

only shook hands and looked at each other suspiciously, but ever since they had been good friends.

After their picnic the two boys went to the circus in a happy frame of mind. In the animal tent they met big

Leonard Dawson, the oldest son of one of the Wheelers' near neighbours, and the three sat together for the

performance. Leonard said he had come to town alone in his car; wouldn't Claude ride out with him? Claude

was glad enough to turn the mules over to Ralph, who didn't mind the hired men as much as he did.

Leonard was a strapping brown fellow of twentyfive, with big hands and big feet, white teeth, and flashing

eyes full of energy. He and his father and two brothers not only worked their own big farm, but rented a

quarter section from Nat Wheeler. They were master farmers. If there was a dry summer and a failure,

Leonard only laughed and stretched his long arms, and put in a bigger crop next year. Claude was always a

little reserved with Leonard; he felt that the young man was rather contemptuous of the haphazard way in

which things were done on the Wheeler place, and thought his going to college a waste of money. Leonard

had not even gone through the Frankfort High School, and he was already a more successful man than Claude

was ever likely to be. Leonard did think these things, but he was fond of Claude, all the same.

At sunset the car was speeding over a fine stretch of smooth road across the level country that lay between

Frankfort and the rougher land along Lovely Creek. Leonard's attention was largely given up to admiring the

faultless behaviour of his engine. Presently he chuckled to himself and turned to Claude.

"You saw Bayliss today? Notice anything queer about him, one eye a little off colour? Did he tell you how he

"Just as well. A lot of people did ask him, though, and he said he was hunting around his place for something

Leonard laughed. "Lord, no! Don't you know Bayliss? I went in there to pay a bill yesterday, and Susie Gray

and another girl came in to sell tickets for the firemen's dinner. An advance man for this circus was hanging

around, and he began talking a little smart, nothing rough, but the way such fellows will. The girls handed it

back to him, and sold him three tickets and shut him up. I couldn't see how Susie thought so quick what to

say. The minute the girls went out Bayliss started knocking them; said all the country girls were getting too

fresh and knew more than they ought to about managing sporty men and right there I reached out and handed

him one. I hit harder than I meant to. I meant to slap him, not to give him a black eye. But you can't always

regulate things, and I was hot all over. I waited for him to come back at me. I'm bigger than he is, and I

wanted to give him satisfaction. Well, sir, he never moved a muscle! He stood there getting redder and

redder, and his eyes watered. I don't say he cried, but his eyes watered. 'All right, Bayliss,' said I. 'Slow with

your fists, if that's your principle; but slow with your tongue, too,especially when the parties mentioned

"He don't have to!" Leonard threw up his head. "I'm a good customer; he can like it or lump it, till the price of

For the next few minutes the driver was occupied with trying to get up a long, rough hill on high gear.

Sometimes he could make that hill, and sometimes he couldn't, and he was not able to account for the

difference. After he pulled the second lever with some disgust and let the car amble on as she would, he

"I'll tell you what, Leonard," Claude spoke in a strained voice, "I think the fair thing for you to do is to get out

Leonard swung his steering wheel savagely to pass a wagon on the down side of the hill. "What the devil are

"You think you've got our measure all right, but you ought to give me a chance first."

Leonard looked down in amazement at his own big brown hands, lying on the wheel. "You mortal fool kid,

what would I be telling you all this for, if I didn't know you were another breed of cats? I never thought you

"I don't, but I won't have you thinking you can slap the men in my family whenever you feel like it." Claude

knew that his explanation sounded foolish, and his voice, in spite of all he could do, was weak and angry.

Young Leonard Dawson saw he had hurt the boy's feelings. "Lord, Claude, I know you're a fighter. Bayliss

The ride ended amicably, but Claude wouldn't let Leonard take him home. He jumped out of the car with a

curt goodnight, and ran across the dusky fields toward the light that shore from the house on the hill. At the

little bridge over the creek, he stopped to get his breath and to be sure that he was outwardly composed before

Listening to the deep singing of the frogs, and to the distant barking of the dogs up at the house, he grew

calmer. Nevertheless, he wondered why it was that one had sometimes to feel responsible for the behaviour

The circus was on Saturday. The next morning Claude was standing at his dresser, shaving. His beard was

already strong, a shade darker than his hair and not so red as his skin. His eyebrows and long lashes were a

pale corncolourmade his blue eyes seem lighter than they were, and, he thought, gave a look of shyness

and weakness to the upper part of his face. He was exactly the sort of looking boy he didn't want to be. He

especially hated his head,so big that he had trouble in buying his hats, and uncompromisingly square in

shape; a perfect blockhead. His name was another source of humiliation. Claude: it was a "chump" name,

like Elmer and Roy; a hayseed name trying to be fine. In country schools there was always a redheaded,

wartyhanded, runnynosed little boy who was called Claude. His good physique he took for granted;

smooth, muscular arms and legs, and strong shoulders, a farmer boy might be supposed to have.

Unfortunately he had none of his father's physical repose, and his strength often asserted itself

inharmoniously. The storms that went on in his mind sometimes made him rise, or sit down, or lift

The household slept late on Sunday morning; even Mahailey did not get up until seven. The general signal

for breakfast was the smell of doughnuts frying. This morning Ralph rolled out of bed at the last minute and

callously put on his clean underwear without taking a bath. This cost him not one regret, though he took time

to polish his new oxblood shoes tenderly with a pocket handkerchief. He reached the table when all the

others were half through breakfast, and made his peace by genially asking his mother if she didn't want him

"I'd like to go if I can get the work done in time," she said, doubtfully glancing at the clock.

Mrs. Wheeler hesitated. "Everything but the separator, she can. But she can't fit all the parts together. It's a

"Now, Mother," said Ralph goodhumouredly, as he emptied the syrup pitcher over his cakes, "you're

prejudiced. Nobody ever thinks of skimming milk nowadays. Every uptodate farmer uses a separator."

Mrs. Wheeler's pale eyes twinkled. "Mahailey and I will never be quite uptodate, Ralph. We're

oldfashioned, and I don't know but you'd better let us be. I could see the advantage of a separator if we

milked halfadozen cows. It's a very ingenious machine. But it's a great deal more work to scald it and fit it

"It won't be when you get used to it," Ralph assured her. He was the chief mechanic of the Wheeler farm, and

when the farm implements and the automobiles did not give him enough to do, he went to town and bought

machines for the house. As soon as Mahailey got used to a washingmachine or a churn, Ralph, to keep up

with the bristling march of invention, brought home a still newer one. The mechanical dishwasher she had

Claude told his mother to go upstairs and dress; he would scald the separator while Ralph got the car ready.

He was still working at it when his brother came in from the garage to wash his hands.

"You really oughtn't to load mother up with things like this, Ralph," he exclaimed fretfully. "Did you ever try

"Mrs. Dawson is a younger woman. Anyhow, there's no point in trying to make machinists of Mahailey and

Ralph lifted his eyebrows to excuse Claude's bluntness. "See here," he said persuasively, "don't you go

encouraging her into thinking she can't change her ways. Mother's entitled to all the laboursaving devices

Claude rattled the thirtyodd graduated metal funnels which he was trying to fit together in their proper

The younger boy giggled and ran upstairs for his panama hat. He never quarrelled. Mrs. Wheeler sometimes

After Ralph and his mother had gone off in the car, Mr. Wheeler drove to see his German neighbour, Gus

Yoeder, who had just bought a blooded bull. Dan and Jerry were pitching horseshoes down behind the barn.

Claude told Mahailey he was going to the cellar to put up the swinging shelf she had been wanting, so that

"Thank you, Mr. Claude. I don't know what does make the rats so bad. The cats catches one most every day,

"I guess they come up from the barn. I've got a nice wide board down at the garage for your shelf." The cellar

was cemented, cool and dry, with deep closets for canned fruit and flour and groceries, bins for coal and cobs,

and a darkroom full of photographer's apparatus. Claude took his place at the carpenter's bench under one of

the square windows. Mysterious objects stood about him in the grey twilight; electric batteries, old bicycles

and typewriters, a machine for making cement fenceposts, a vulcanizer, a stereopticon with a broken lens.

The mechanical toys Ralph could not operate successfully, as well as those he had got tired of, were stored

away here. If they were left in the barn, Mr. Wheeler saw them too often, and sometimes, when they

happened to be in his way, he made sarcastic comments. Claude had begged his mother to let him pile this

lumber into a wagon and dump it into some washout hole along the creek; but Mrs. Wheeler said he must not

think of such a thing; it would hurt Ralph's feelings. Nearly every time Claude went into the cellar, he made a

desperate resolve to clear the place out some day, reflecting bitterly that the money this wreckage cost would

While Claude was planing off the board he meant to suspend from the joists, Mahailey left her work and

came down to watch him. She made some pretence of hunting for pickled onions, then seated herself upon a

cracker box; close at hand there was a plush "springrocker" with one arm gone, but it wouldn't have been

her idea of good manners to sit there. Her eyes had a kind of sleepy contentment in them as she followed

Claude's motions. She watched him as if he were a baby playing. Her hands lay comfortably in her lap.

"Mr. Ernest ain't been over for a long time. He ain't mad about nothin', is he?"

"Oh, no! He's awful busy this summer. I saw him in town yesterday. We went to the circus together."

Mahailey smiled and nodded. "That's nice. I'm glad for you two boys to have a good time. Mr. Ernest's a nice

boy; I always liked him first rate. He's a little feller, though. He ain't big like you, is he? I guess he ain't as tall

"Not quite," said Claude between strokes. "He's strong, though, and gets through a lot of work."

"Oh, I know! I know he is. I know he works hard. All them foreigners works hard, don't they, Mr. Claude? I

reckon he liked the circus. Maybe they don't have circuses like our'n, over where he come from."

Claude began to tell her about the clown elephant and the trained dogs, and she sat listening to him with her

pleased, foolish smile; there was something wise and farseeing about her smile, too.

Mahailey had come to them long ago, when Claude was only a few months old. She had been brought West

by a shiftless Virginia family which went to pieces and scattered under the rigours of pioneer farmlife.

When the mother of the family died, there was nowhere for Mahailey to go, and Mrs. Wheeler took her in.

Mahailey had no one to take care of her, and Mrs. Wheeler had no one to help her with the work; it had

Mahailey had had a hard life in her young days, married to a savage mountaineer who often abused her and

never provided for her. She could remember times when she sat in the cabin, beside an empty mealbarrel

and a cold iron pot, waiting for "him" to bring home a squirrel he had shot or a chicken he had stolen. Too

often he brought nothing but a jug of mountain whiskey and a pair of brutal fists. She thought herself well off

now, never to have to beg for food or go off into the woods to gather firing, to be sure of a warm bed and

shoes and decent clothes. Mahailey was one of eighteen children; most of them grew up lawless or

halfwitted, and two of her brothers, like her husband, ended their lives in jail. She had never been sent to

school, and could not read or write. Claude, when he was a little boy, tried to teach her to read, but what she

learned one night she had forgotten by the next. She could count, and tell the time of day by the clock, and

she was very proud of knowing the alphabet and of being able to spell out letters on the flour sacks and coffee

Mahailey was shrewd in her estimate of people, and Claude thought her judgment sound in a good many

things. He knew she sensed all the shades of personal feeling, the accords and antipathies in the household, as

keenly as he did, and he would have hated to lose her good opinion. She consulted him in all her little

difficulties. If the leg of the kitchen table got wobbly, she knew he would put in new screws for her. When

she broke a handle off her rolling pin, he put on another, and he fitted a haft to her favourite butcherknife

after every one else said it must be thrown away. These objects, after they had been mended, acquired a new

value in her eyes, and she liked to work with them. When Claude helped her lift or carry anything, he never

avoided touching her, this she felt deeply. She suspected that Ralph was a little ashamed of her, and would

On days like this, when other people were not about, Mahailey liked to talk to Claude about the things they

did together when he was little; the Sundays when they used to wander along the creek, hunting for wild

grapes and watching the red squirrels; or trailed across the high pastures to a wildplum thicket at the north

end of the Wheeler farm. Claude could remember warm spring days when the plum bushes were all in

blossom and Mahailey used to lie down under them and sing to herself, as if the honeyheavy sweetness

made her drowsy; songs without words, for the most part, though he recalled one mountain dirge which said

The time was approaching for Claude to go back to the struggling denominational college on the outskirts of

the state capital, where he had already spent two dreary and unprofitable winters.

"Mother," he said one morning when he had an opportunity to speak to her alone, "I wish you would let me

"Well, I could learn more, for one thing. The professors at the Temple aren't much good. Most of them are

The look of pain that always disarmed Claude came instantly into his mother's face. "Son, don't say such

things. I can't believe but teachers are more interested in their students when they are concerned for their

spiritual development, as well as the mental. Brother Weldon said many of the professors at the State

"Oh, I guess most of them are good men, all right; at any rate they know their subjects. These little

pinheaded preachers like Weldon do a lot of harm, running about the country talking. He's sent around to

pull in students for his own school. If he didn't get them he'd lose his job. I wish he'd never got me. Most of

"But how can there be any serious study where they give so much time to athletics and frivolity? They pay

their football coach a larger salary than their President. And those fraternity houses are places where boys

learn all sorts of evil. I've heard that dreadful things go on in them sometimes. Besides, it would take more

Claude made no reply. He stood before her frowning and pulling at a calloused spot on the inside of his palm.

Mrs. Wheeler looked at him wistfully. "I'm sure you must be able to study better in a quiet, serious

He sighed and turned away. If his mother had been the least bit unctuous, like Brother Weldon, he could have

told her many enlightening facts. But she was so trusting and childlike, so faithful by nature and so ignorant

of life as he knew it, that it was hopeless to argue with her. He could shock her and make her fear the world

His mother was oldfashioned. She thought dancing and cardplaying dangerous pastimesonly rough

people did such things when she was a girl in Vermontand "worldliness" only another word for

wickedness. According to her conception of education, one should learn, not think; and above all, one must

not enquire. The history of the human race, as it lay behind one, was already explained; and so was its

destiny, which lay before. The mind should remain obediently within the theological concept of history.

Nat Wheeler didn't care where his son went to school, but he, too, took it for granted that the religious

institution was cheaper than the State University; and that because the students there looked shabbier they

were less likely to become too knowing, and to be offensively intelligent at home. However, he referred the

Bayliss at once assumed that wise, betterbepreparedfortheworst expression which had made him seem

shrewd and seasoned from boyhood. "I don't see any point in changing unless he's got good reasons."

"Well, he thinks that bunch of parsons at the Temple don't make firstrate teachers."

"I expect they can teach Claude quite a bit yet. If he gets in with that fast football crowd at the State, there'll

be no holding him." For some reason Bayliss detested football. "This athletic business is a good deal

That night Mr. Wheeler brought the subject up at supper, questioned Claude, and tried to get at the cause of

his discontent. His manner was jocular, as usual, and Claude hated any public discussion of his personal

Claude might have enjoyed the large and somewhat gross cartoons with which Mr. Wheeler enlivened daily

life, had they been of any other authorship. But he unreasonably wanted his father to be the most dignified, as

he was certainly the handsomest and most intelligent, man in the community. Moreover, Claude couldn't bear

ridicule very well. He squirmed before he was hit; saw it coming, invited it. Mr. Wheeler had observed this

trait in him when he was a little chap, called it false pride, and often purposely outraged his feelings to harden

him, as he had hardened Claude's mother, who was afraid of everything but schoolbooks and

prayermeetings when he first married her. She was still more or less bewildered, but she had long ago got

over any fear of him and any dread of living with him. She accepted everything about her husband as part of

Claude had never quite forgiven his father for some of his practical jokes. One warm spring day, when he was

a boisterous little boy of five, playing in and out of the house, he heard his mother entreating Mr. Wheeler to

go down to the orchard and pick the cherries from a tree that hung loaded. Claude remembered that she

persisted rather complainingly, saying that the cherries were too high for her to reach, and that even if she had

a ladder it would hurt her back. Mr. Wheeler was always annoyed if his wife referred to any physical

weakness, especially if she complained about her back. He got up and went out. After a while he returned.

"All right now, Evangeline," he called cheerily as he passed through the kitchen. "Cherries won't give you

Mrs. Wheeler trustfully put on her sunbonnet, gave Claude a little pail and took a big one herself, and they

went down the pasture hill to the orchard, fenced in on the low land by the creek. The ground had been

ploughed that spring to make it hold moisture, and Claude was running happily along in one of the furrows,

when he looked up and beheld a sight he could never forget. The beautiful, roundtopped cherry tree, full of

green leaves and red fruit,his father had sawed it through! It lay on the ground beside its bleeding stump.

With one scream Claude became a little demon. He threw away his tin pail, jumped about howling and

kicking the loose earth with his coppertoed shoes, until his mother was much more concerned for him than

"Son, son," she cried, "it's your father's tree. He has a perfect right to cut it down if he wants to. He's often

"'Tain't so! He's a damn fool, damn fool!" Claude bellowed, still hopping and kicking, almost choking with

His mother dropped on her knees beside him. "Claude, stop! I'd rather have the whole orchard cut down than

After she got him quieted they picked the cherries and went back to the house. Claude had promised her that

he would say nothing, but his father must have noticed the little boy's angry eyes fixed upon him all through

dinner, and his expression of scorn. Even then his flexible lips were only too well adapted to hold the picture

of that feeling. For days afterward Claude went down to the orchard and watched the tree grow sicker, wilt

A violent temper and physical restlessness were the most conspicuous things about Claude when he was a

little boy. Ralph was docile, and had a precocious sagacity for keeping out of trouble. Quiet in manner, he

was fertile in devising mischief, and easily persuaded his older brother, who was always looking for

something to do, to execute his plans. It was usually Claude who was caught redhanded. Sitting mild and

contemplative on his quilt on the floor, Ralph would whisper to Claude that it might be amusing to climb up

and take the clock from the shelf, or to operate the sewingmachine. When they were older, and played out of

doors, he had only to insinuate that Claude was afraid, to make him try a frosted axe with his tongue, or jump

The usual hardships of country boyhood were not enough for Claude; he imposed physical tests and penances

upon himself. Whenever he burned his finger, he followed Mahailey's advice and held his hand close to the

stove to "draw out the fire." One year he went to school all winter in his jacket, to make himself tough. His

mother would button him up in his overcoat and put his dinnerpail in his hand and start him off. As soon as

he got out of sight of the house, he pulled off his coat, rolled it under his arm, and scudded along the edge of

the frozen fields, arriving at the frame schoolhouse panting and shivering, but very well pleased with himself.

Claude waited for his elders to change their mind about where he should go to school; but no one seemed

Two years ago, the young man whom Mrs. Wheeler called "Brother Weldon" had come out from Lincoln,

preaching in little towns and country churches, and recruiting students for the institution at which he taught in

the winter. He had convinced Mrs. Wheeler that his college was the safest possible place for a boy who was

Claude's mother was not discriminating about preachers. She believed them all chosen and sanctified, and

was never happier than when she had one in the house to cook for and wait upon. She made young Mr.

Weldon so comfortable that he remained under her roof for several weeks, occupying the spare room, where

he spent the mornings in study and meditation. He appeared regularly at mealtime to ask a blessing upon the

food and to sit with devout, downcast eyes while the chicken was being dismembered. His topshaped head

hung a little to one side, the thin hair was parted precisely over his high forehead and brushed in little ripples.

He was soft spoken and apologetic in manner and took up as little room as possible. His meekness amused

Mr. Wheeler, who liked to ply him with food and never failed to ask him gravely "what part of the chicken he

would prefer," in order to hear him murmur, "A little of the white meat, if you please," while he drew his

elbows close, as if he were adroitly sliding over a dangerous place. In the afternoon Brother Weldon usually

put on a fresh lawn necktie and a hard, glistening straw hat which left a red streak across his forehead, tucked

his Bible under his arm, and went out to make calls. If he went far, Ralph took him in the automobile.

Claude disliked this young man from the moment he first met him, and could scarcely answer him civilly.

Mrs. Wheeler, always absentminded, and now absorbed in her cherishing care of the visitor, did not notice

Claude's scornful silences until Mahailey, whom such things never escaped, whispered to her over the stove

one day: "Mr. Claude, he don't like the preacher. He just ain't got no use fur him, but don't you let on."

As a result of Brother Weldon's sojourn at the farm, Claude was sent to the Temple College. Claude had

come to believe that the things and people he most disliked were the ones that were to shape his destiny.

When the second week of September came round, he threw a few clothes and books into his trunk and said

goodbye to his mother and Mahailey. Ralph took him into Frankfort to catch the train for Lincoln. After

settling himself in the dirty daycoach, Claude fell to meditating upon his prospects. There was a Pullman car

on the train, but to take a Pullman for a daylight journey was one of the things a Wheeler did not do.

Claude knew that he was going back to the wrong school, that he was wasting both time and money. He

sneered at himself for his lack of spirit. If he had to do with strangers, he told himself, he could take up his

case and fight for it. He could not assert himself against his father or mother, but he could be bold enough

with the rest of the world. Yet, if this were true, why did he continue to live with the tiresome Chapins ? The

Chapin household consisted of a brother and sister. Edward Chapin was a man of twentysix, with an old,

wasted face,and he was still going to school, studying for the ministry. His sister Annabelle kept house for

him; that is to say, she did whatever housework was done. The brother supported himself and his sister by

getting odd jobs from churches and religious societies; he "supplied" the pulpit when a minister was ill, did

secretarial work for the college and the Young Men's Christian Association. Claude's weekly payment for

Chapin had been going to the Temple College for four years, and it would probably take him two years more

to complete the course. He conned his book on trolleycars, or while he waited by the track on windy

corners, and studied far into the night. His natural stupidity must have been something quite out of the

ordinary; after years of reverential study, he could not read the Greek Testament without a lexicon and

grammar at his elbow. He gave a great deal of time to the practice of elocution and oratory. At certain hours

their frail domicileit had been thinly built for the academic poor and sat upon concrete blocks in lieu of a

foundation reechoed with his hoarse, overstrained voice, declaiming his own orations or those of Wendell

Annabelle Chapin was one of Claude's classmates. She was not as dull as her brother; she could learn a

conjugation and recognize the forms when she met with them again. But she was a gushing, silly girl, who

found almost everything in their grubby life too good to be true; and she was, unfortunately, sentimental

about Claude. Annabelle chanted her lessons over and over to herself while she cooked and scrubbed. She

was one of those people who can make the finest things seem tame and flat merely by alluding to them. Last

winter she had recited the odes of Horace about the houseit was exactly her notion of the studentlike

thing to dountil Claude feared he would always associate that poet with the heaviness of hurriedly

Mrs. Wheeler liked to feel that Claude was assisting this worthy pair in their struggle for an education; but he

had long ago decided that since neither of the Chapins got anything out of their efforts but a kind of messy

inefficiency, the struggle might better have been relinquished in the beginning. He took care of his own room;

kept it bare and habitable, free from Annabelle's attentions and decorations. But the flimsy pretences of

lighthousekeeping were very distasteful to him. He was born with a love of order, just as he was born with

The boy felt bitterly about the way in which he had been brought up, and about his hair and his freckles and

his awkwardness. When he went to the theatre in Lincoln, he took a seat in the gallery, because he knew that

he looked like a green country boy. His clothes were never right. He bought collars that were too high and

neckties that were too bright, and hid them away in his trunk. His one experiment with a tailor was

unsuccessful. The tailor saw at once that his stammering client didn't know what he wanted, so he persuaded

him that as the season was spring he needed light checked trousers and a blue serge coat and vest. When

Claude wore his new clothes to St. Paul's church on Sunday morning, the eyes of every one he met followed

his smart legs down the street. For the next week he observed the legs of old men and young, and decided

there wasn't another pair of checked pants in Lincoln. He hung his new clothes up in his closet and never put

them on again, though Annabelle Chapin watched for them wistfully. Nevertheless, Claude thought he could

recognize a welldressed man when he saw one. He even thought he could recognize a welldressed woman.

If an attractive woman got into the street car when he was on his way to or from Temple Place, he was

Claude is on his way back to Lincoln, with a fairly liberal allowance which does not contribute much to his

comfort or pleasure. He has no friends or instructors whom he can regard with admiration, though the need to

admire is just now uppermost in his nature. He is convinced that the people who might mean something to

him will always misjudge him and pass him by. He is not so much afraid of loneliness as he is of accepting

cheap substitutes; of making excuses to himself for a teacher who flatters him, of waking up some morning to

find himself admiring a girl merely because she is accessible. He has a dread of easy compromises, and he is

Three months later, on a grey December day, Claude was seated in the passenger coach of an accommodation

freight train, going home for the holidays. He had a pile of books on the seat beside him and was reading,

when the train stopped with a jerk that sent the volumes tumbling to the floor. He picked them up and looked

at his watch. It was noon. The freight would lie here for an hour or more, until the eastbound passenger

went by. Claude left the car and walked slowly up the platform toward the station. A bundle of little spruce

trees had been flung off near the freight office, and sent a smell of Christmas into the cold air. A few drays

stood about, the horses blanketed. The steam from the locomotive made a spreading, deepviolet stain as it

Claude went into a restaurant across the street and ordered an oyster stew. The proprietress, a plump little

German woman with a frizzed bang, always remembered him from trip to trip. While he was eating his

oysters she told him that she had just finished roasting a chicken with sweet potatoes, and if he liked he could

have the first brown cut off the breast before the trainmen came in for dinner. Asking her to bring it along,

he waited, sitting on a stool, his boots on the leadpipe footrest, his elbows on the shiny brown counter,

"I been lookin' for you every day," said Mrs. Voigt when she brought his plate. "I put plenty good gravy on

She giggled. "Ja, all de train men is friends mit me. Sometimes dey bring me a liddle Schweizerkase from one

of dem big saloons in Omaha what de Cherman beobles batronize. I ain't got no boys mein own self, so I got

She stood nursing her stumpy hands under her apron, watching every mouthful he ate so eagerly that she

might have been tasting it herself. The train crew trooped in, shouting to her and asking what there was for

dinner, and she ran about like an excited little hen, chuckling and cackling. Claude wondered whether

workingmen were as nice as that to old women the world over. He didn't believe so. He liked to think that

such geniality was common only in what he broadly called "the West." He bought a big cigar, and strolled up

After his freight train got under steam he did not open his books again, but sat looking out at the grey

homesteads as they unrolled before him, with their stripped, dry cornfields, and the great ploughed stretches

where the winter wheat was asleep. A starry sprinkling of snow lay like hoarfrost along the crumbly ridges

Claude believed he knew almost every farm between Frankfort and Lincoln, he had made the journey so

often, on fast trains and slow. He went home for all the holidays, and had been again and again called back on

various pretexts; when his mother was sick, when Ralph overturned the car and broke his shoulder, when his

father was kicked by a vicious stallion. It was not a Wheeler custom to employ a nurse; if any one in the

household was ill, it was understood that some member of the family would act in that capacity.

Claude was reflecting upon the fact that he had never gone home before in such good spirits. Two fortunate

As soon as he reached Lincoln in September, he had matriculated at the State University for special work in

European History. The year before he had heard the head of the department lecture for some charity, and

resolved that even if he were not allowed to change his college, he would manage to study under that man.

The course Claude selected was one upon which a student could put as much time as he chose. It was based

upon the reading of historical sources, and the Professor was notoriously greedy for full notebooks. Claude's

were of the fullest. He worked early and late at the University Library, often got his supper in town and went

back to read until closing hour. For the first time he was studying a subject which seemed to him vital, which

had to do with events and ideas, instead of with lexicons and grammars. How often he had wished for Ernest

during the lectures! He could see Ernest drinking them up, agreeing or dissenting in his independent way. The

class was very large, and the Professor spoke without notes,he talked rapidly, as if he were addressing his

equals, with none of the coaxing persuasiveness to which Temple students were accustomed. His lectures

were condensed like a legal brief, but there was a kind of dry fervour in his voice, and when he occasionally

interrupted his exposition with purely personal comment, it seemed valuable and important.

Claude usually came out from these lectures with the feeling that the world was full of stimulating things, and

that one was fortunate to be alive and to be able to find out about them. His reading that autumn actually

made the future look brighter to him; seemed to promise him something. One of his chief difficulties had

always been that he could not make himself believe in the importance of making money or spending it. If that

The second good thing that had befallen him was that he had got to know some people he liked. This came

about accidentally, after a football game between the Temple eleven and the State University teammerely a

practice game for the latter. Claude was playing halfback with the Temple. Toward the close of the first

quarter, he followed his interference safely around the right end, dodged a tackle which threatened to end the

play, and broke loose for a ninety yard run down the field for a touchdown. He brought his eleven off with a

good showing. The State men congratulated him warmly, and their coach went so far as to hint that if he ever

Claude had a proud moment, but even while Coach Ballinger was talking to him, the Temple students rushed

howling from the grandstand, and Annabelle Chapin, ridiculous in a sport suit of her own construction,

bedecked with the Temple colours and blowing a child's horn, positively threw herself upon his neck. He

disengaged himself, not very gently, and stalked grimly away to the dressing shed . . . . What was the use, if

Julius Erlich, who played quarter on the State team, took him aside and said affably: "Come home to supper

with me tonight, Wheeler, and meet my mother. Come along with us and dress in the Armory. You have your

"Oh, that doesn't matter! We're all boys at home. Mother wouldn't mind if you came in your track things."

Claude consented before he had time to frighten himself by imagining difficulties. The Erlich boy often sat

next him in the history class, and they had several times talked together. Hitherto Claude had felt that he

"couldn't make Erlich out," but this afternoon, while they dressed after their shower, they became good

friends, all in a few minutes. Claude was perhaps less tiedup in mind and body than usual. He was so

astonished at finding himself on easy, confidential terms with Erlich that he scarcely gave a thought to his

secondday shirt and his collar with a broken edge,wretched economies he had been trained to observe.

They had not walked more than two blocks from the Armory when Julius turned in at a rambling wooden

house with an unfenced, terraced lawn. He led Claude around to the wing, and through a glass door into a big

room that was all windows on three sides, above the wainscoting. The room was full of boys and young men,

seated on long divans or perched on the arms of easy chairs, and they were all talking at once. On one of the

couches a young man in a smoking jacket lay reading as composedly as if he were alone.

The company recognized Claude and included him in their talk about the game. When the visitors had gone,

Julius introduced his brothers. They were all nice boys, Claude thought, and had easy, agreeable manners.

The three older ones were in business, but they too had been to the game that afternoon. Claude had never

before seen brothers who were so outspoken and frank with one another. To him they were very cordial; the

one who was lying down came forward to shake hands, keeping the place in his book with his finger.

On a table in the middle of the room were pipes and boxes of tobacco, cigars in a glass jar, and a big Chinese

bowl full of cigarettes. This provisionment seemed the more remarkable to Claude because at home he had to

smoke in the cowshed. The number of books astonished him almost as much; the wainscoting all around the

room was built up in open bookcases, stuffed with volumes fat and thin, and they all looked interesting and

hardused. One of the brothers had been to a party the night before, and on coming home had put his

dresstie about the neck of a little plaster bust of Byron that stood on the mantel. This head, with the tie at a

rakish angle, drew Claude's attention more than anything else in the room, and for some reason instantly

Julius brought in his mother, and when they went to supper Claude was seated beside her at one end of the

long table. Mrs. Erlich seemed to him very young to be the head of such a family. Her hair was still brown,

and she wore it drawn over her ears and twisted in two little horns, like the ladies in old daguerreotypes. Her

face, too, suggested a daguerreotype; there was something oldfashioned and picturesque about it. Her skin

had the soft whiteness of white flowers that have been drenched by rain. She talked with quick gestures, and

her decided little nod was quaint and very personal. Her hazelcoloured eyes peered expectantly over her

noseglasses, always watching to see things turn out wonderfully well; always looking for some good

German fairy in the cupboard or the cakebox, or in the steaming vapor of washday.

The boys were discussing an engagement that had just been announced, and Mrs. Erlich began to tell Claude

a long story about how this brilliant young man had come to Lincoln and met this beautiful young girl, who

was already engaged to a cold and academic youth, and how after many heartburnings the beautiful girl had

broken with the wrong man and become betrothed to the right one, and now they were so happy, and every

one, she asked Claude to believe, was equally happy! In the middle of her narrative Julius reminded her

smilingly that since Claude didn't know these people, he would hardly be interested in their romance, but she

merely looked at him over her noseglasses and said, "And is that so, Herr Julius!" One could see that she

The conversation went racing from one thing to another. The brothers began to argue hotly about a new girl

who was visiting in town; whether she was pretty, how pretty she was, whether she was naive. To Claude this

was like talk in a play. He had never heard a living person discussed and analysed thus before. He had never

heard a family talk so much, or with anything like so much zest. Here there was none of the poisonous

reticence he had always associated with family gatherings, nor the awkwardness of people sitting with their

hands in their lap, facing each other, each one guarding his secret or his suspicion, while he hunted for a safe

subject to talk about. Their fertility of phrase, too, astonished him; how could people find so much to say

about one girl? To be sure, a good deal of it sounded farfetched to him, but he sadly admitted that in such

matters he was no judge. When they went back to the living room Julius began to pick out airs on his guitar,

and the bearded brother sat down to read. Otto, the youngest, seeing a group of students passing the house,

ran out on to the lawn and called them in, two boys, and a girl with red cheeks and a fur stole. Claude had

made for a corner, and was perfectly content to be an onlooker, but Mrs. Erlich soon came and seated

herself beside him. When the doors into the parlour were opened, she noticed his eyes straying to an

engraving of Napoleon which hung over the piano, and made him go and look at it. She told him it was a rare

engraving, and she showed him a portrait of her greatgrandfather, who was an officer in Napoleon's army.

As she talked to Claude, Mrs. Erlich discovered that his eyes were not really pale, but only looked so because

of his light lashes. They could say a great deal when they looked squarely into hers, and she liked what they

said. She soon found out that he was discontented; how he hated the Temple school, and why his mother

When the three who had been called in from the sidewalk took their leave, Claude rose also. They were

evidently familiars of the house, and their careless exit, with a gay "Goodnight, everybody!" gave him no

practical suggestion as to what he ought to say or how he was to get out. Julius made things more difficult by

telling him to sit down, as it wasn't time to go yet. But Mrs. Erlich said it was time; he would have a long ride

It was really very easy. She walked to the door with him and gave him his hat, patting his arm in a final way.

"You will come often to see us. We are going to be friends." Her forehead, with its neat curtains of brown

hair, came something below Claude's chin, and she peered up at him with that quaintly hopeful expression, as

ifas if even he might turn out wonderfully well! Certainly, nobody had ever looked at him like that before.

"It's been lovely," he murmured to her, quite without embarrassment, and in happy unconsciousness he turned

While the freight train was puffing slowly across the winter country, leaving a black trail suspended in the

still air, Claude went over that experience minutely in his mind, as if he feared to lose something of it on

approaching home. He could remember exactly how Mrs. Erlich and the boys had looked to him on that first

night, could repeat almost word for word the conversation which had been so novel to him. Then he had

supposed the Erlichs were rich people, but he found out afterwards that they were poor. The father was dead,

and all the boys had to work, even those who were still in school. They merely knew how to live, he

discovered, and spent their money on themselves, instead of on machines to do the work and machines to

entertain people. Machines, Claude decided, could not make pleasure, whatever else they could do. They

could not make agreeable people, either. In so far as he could see, the latter were made by judicious

Since that first visit, he had gone to the Erlichs', not as often as he wished, certainly, but as often as he dared.

Some of the University boys seemed to drop in there whenever they felt like it, were almost members of the

family; but they were better looking than he, and better company. To be sure, long Baumgartner was an

intimate of the house, and he was a gawky boy with big red hands and patched shoes; but he could at least

speak German to the mother, and he played the piano, and seemed to know a great deal about music.

Claude didn't wish to be a bore. Sometimes in the evening, when he left the Library to smoke a cigar, he

walked slowly past the Erlichs' house, looking at the lighted windows of the sittingroom and wondering

what was going on inside. Before he went there to call, he racked his brain for things to talk about. If there

had been a football game, or a good play at the theatre, that helped, of course.

Almost without realizing what be was doing, he tried to think things out and to justify his opinions to himself,

so that he would have something to say when the Erlich boys questioned him. He had grown up with the

conviction that it was beneath his dignity to explain himself, just as it was to dress carefully, or to be caught

taking pains about anything. Ernest was the only person he knew who tried to state clearly just why he

believed this or that; and people at home thought him very conceited and foreign. It wasn't American to

explain yourself; you didn't have to! On the farm you said you would or you wouldn't; that Roosevelt was all

right, or that he was crazy. You weren't supposed to say more unless you were a stump speaker, if you tried

to say more, it was because you liked to hear yourself talk. Since you never said anything, you didn't form the

habit of thinking. If you got too much bored, you went to town and bought something new.

But all the people he met at the Erlichs' talked. If they asked him about a play or a book and he said it was

"no good," they at once demanded why. The Erlichs thought him a clam, but Claude sometimes thought

himself amazing. Could it really be he, who was airing his opinions in this indelicate manner? He caught

himself using words that had never crossed his lips before, that in his mind were associated only with the

printed page. When he suddenly realized that he was using a word for the first time, and probably

mispronouncing it, he would become as much confused as i f he were trying to pass a lead dollar, would

Claude couldn't resist occasionally dropping in at the Erlichs' in the afternoon; then the boys were away, and

he could have Mrs. Erlich to himself for halfanhour. When she talked to him she taught him so much about

life. He loved to hear her sing sentimental German sons as she worked; "Spinn, spinn, du Tochter mein." He

didn't know why, but he simply adored it! Every time he went away from her lie felt happy and full of

kindness, and thought about beech woods and walled towns, or about Carl Schurz and the Romantic

He had been to see Mrs. Erlich just before starting home for the holidays, and found her making German

Christmas cakes. She took him into the kitchen and explained the almost holy traditions that governed this

complicated cookery. Her excitement and seriousness as she beat and stirred were very pretty, Claude

thought. She told off on her fingers the many ingredients, but he believed there were things she did not name:

the fragrance of old friendships, the glow of early memories, belief in wonderworking rhymes and songs.

Surely these were fine things to put into little cakes! After Claude left her, he did something a Wheeler didn't

do; he went down to O street and sent her a box of the reddest roses he could find. In his pocket was the little

It was beginning to grow dark when Claude reached the farm. While Ralph stopped to put away the car, he

walked on alone to the house. He never came back without emotion,try as he would to pass lightly over

these departures and returns which were all in the day's work. When he came up the hill like this, toward the

tall house with its lighted windows, something always clutched at his heart. He both loved and hated to come

home. He was always disappointed, and yet he always felt the rightness of returning to his own place. Even

when it broke his spirit and humbled his pride, he felt it was right that he should be thus humbled. He didn't

question that the lowest state of mind was the truest, and that the less a man thought of himself, the more

Approaching the door, Claude stopped a moment and peered in at the kitchen window. The table was set for

supper, and Mahailey was at the stove, stirring something in a big iron pot; cornmeal mush, probably,she

often made it for herself now that her teeth had begun to fail. She stood leaning over, embracing the pot with

one arm, and with the other she beat the stiff contents, nodding her head in time to this rotary movement.

Confused emotions surged up in Claude. He went in quickly and gave her a bearish hug.

Her face wrinkled up in the foolish grin he knew so well. "Lord, how you scared me, Mr. Claude! A little

more'n I'd 'a' had my mush all over the floor. You lookin' fine, you nice boy, you!"

He knew Mahailey was gladder to see him come home than any one except his mother. Hearing Mrs.

Wheeler's wandering, uncertain steps in the enclosed stairway, he opened the door and ran halfway up to

meet her, putting his arm about her with the almost painful tenderness he always felt, but seldom was at

liberty to show. She reached up both hands and stroked his hair for a moment, laughing as one does to a little

"No, Claude, we haven't. You know we're always behindhand. It's been fine, open weather for husking, too.

But at least we've got rid of that miserable Jerry; so there's something to be thankful for. He had one of his

fits of temper in town one day, when he was hitching up to come home, and Leonard Dawson saw him beat

one of our horses with the neckyoke. Leonard told your father, and spoke his mind, and your father

discharged Jerry. If you or Ralph had told him, he most likely wouldn't have done anything about it. But I

guess all fathers are the same." She chuckled confidingly, leaning on Claude's arm as they descended the

"The little black, Pompey. I believe he is rather a mean horse. The men said one of the bones over the eye

"Pompey isn't mean; he's nervous. All the horses hated Jerry, and they had good reason to." Claude jerked his

shoulders to shake off disgusting recollections of this mongrel man which flashed back into his mind. He had

seen things happen. in the barn that he positively couldn't tell his father. Mr. Wheeler came into the kitchen

and stopped on his way upstairs long enough to say, "Hello, Claude. You look pretty well."

"Not more than usual. We played half a dozen games; generally got licked. The State has a fine team,

Supper went as usual. Dan kept grinning and blinking at Claude, trying to discover whether he had already

been informed of Jerry's fate. Ralph told him the neighbourhood gossip: Gus Yoeder, their German

neighbour, was bringing suit against a farmer who had shot his dog. Leonard Dawson was going to marry

Susie Grey. She was the girl on whose account Leonard had slapped Bayliss, Claude remembered.

After supper Ralph and Mr. Wheeler went off in the car to a Christmas entertainment at the country

schoolhouse. Claude and his mother sat down for a quiet talk by the hardcoal burner in the living room

upstairs. Claude liked this room, especially when his father was not there. The old carpet, the faded chairs,

the secretary bookcase, the spotty engraving with all the scenes from Pilgrim's Progress that hung over the

sofa,these things made him feel at home. Ralph was always proposing to refurnish the room in Mission

Claude drew up his favourite chair and began to tell Mrs. Wheeler about the Erlich boys and their mother.

She listened, but he could see that she was much more interested in hearing about the Chapins, and whether

Edward's throat had improved, and where he had preached this fall. That was one of the disappointing things

about coming home; he could never interest his mother in new things or people unless they in some way had

to do with the church. He knew, too, she was always hoping to hear that he at last felt the need of coming

closer to the church. She did not harass him about these things, but she had told him once or twice that

nothing could happen in the world which would give her so much pleasure as to see him reconciled to Christ.

He realized, as he talked to her about the Erlichs, that she was wondering whether they weren't very

"worldly" people, and was apprehensive about their influence on him. The evening was rather a failure, and

Claude had gone through a painful time of doubt and fear when he thought a great deal about religion. For

several years, from fourteen to eighteen, he believed that he would be lost if he did not repent and undergo

that mysterious change called conversion. But there was something stubborn in him that would not let him

avail himself of the pardon offered. He felt condemned, but he did not want to renounce a world he as yet

knew nothing of. He would like to go into life with all his vigour, with all his faculties free. He didn't want to

be like the young men who said in prayermeeting that they leaned on their Saviour. He hated their way of

In those days Claude had a sharp physical fear of death. A funeral, the sight of a neighbour lying rigid in his

black coffin, overwhelmed him with terror. He used to lie awake in the dark, plotting against death, trying to

devise some plan of escaping it, angrily wishing he had never been born. Was there no way out of the world

but this? When he thought of the millions of lonely creatures rotting away under ground. life seemed nothing

but a trap that caught people for one horrible end. There had never been a man so strong or so good that he

had escaped. And yet he sometimes felt sure that he, Claude Wheeler, would escape; that he would actually

invent some clever shift to save himself from dissolution. When he found it, he would tell nobody; he would

be crafty and secret. Putrefaction, decay . . . . He could not give his pleasant, warm body over to that

filthiness! "What did it mean, that verse in the Bible, "He shall not suffer His holy one to see corruption"?

If anything could cure an intelligent boy of morbid religious fears, it was a denominational school like that to

which Claude had been sent. Now he dismissed all Christian theology as something too full of evasions and

sophistries to be reasoned about. The men who made it, he felt sure, were like the men who taught it. The

noblest could be damned, according to their theory, while almost any meanspirited parasite could be saved

by faith. "Faith," as he saw it exemplified in the faculty of the Temple school, was a substitute for most of the

manly qualities he admired. Young men went into the ministry because they were timid or lazy and wanted

society to take care of them; because they wanted to be pampered by kind, trusting women like his mother.

Though he wanted little to do with theology and theologians, Claude would have said that he was a Christian.

He believed in God, and in the spirit of the four Gospels, and in the Sermon on the Mount. He used to halt

and stumble at "Blessed are the meek," until one day he happened to think that this verse was meant exactly

0n the Sunday after Christmas Claude and Ernest were walking along the banks of Lovely Creek. They had

been as far as Mr. Wheeler's timber claim and back. It was like an autumn afternoon, so warm that they left

their overcoats on the limb of a crooked elm by the pasture fence. The fields and the bare treetops seemed to

be swimming in light. A few brown leaves still clung to the bushy trees along the creek. In the upper pasture,

more than a mile from the house, the boys found a bittersweet vine that wound about a little dogwood and

covered it with scarlet berries. It was like finding a Christmas tree growing wild out of doors. They had just

been talking about some of the books Claude had brought home, and his history course. He was not able to

tell Ernest as much about the lectures as he had meant to, and he felt that this was more Ernest's fault than his

own; Ernest was such a literalminded fellow. When they came upon the bittersweet, they forgot their

discussion and scrambled down the bank to admire the red clusters on the woody, smokecoloured vine, and

its pale gold leaves, ready to fall at a touch. The vine and the little tree it honoured, hidden away in the cleft

of a ravine, had escaped the stripping winds, and the eyes of schoolchildren who sometimes took a short cut

home through the pasture. At its roots, the creek trickled thinly along, black between two jagged crusts of

When they left the spot and climbed back to the level, Claude again felt an itching to prod Ernest out of his

"What are you going to do after a while, Ernest? Do you mean to farm all your life?"

"Naturally. If I were going to learn a trade, I'd be at it before now. What makes you ask that?"

"Oh, I don't know! I suppose people must think about the future sometime. And you're so practical."

"The future, eh?" Ernest shut one eye and smiled. "That's a big word. After I get a place of my own and have

a good start, I'm going home to see my old folks some winter. Maybe I'll marry a nice girl and bring her

"Perhaps. It wouldn't be for me. I don't believe I can ever settle down to anything. Don't you feel that at this

"In living at all, going on as we do. What do we get out of it? Take a day like this: you waken up in the

morning and you're glad to be alive; it's a good enough day for anything, and you feel sure something will

happen. Well, whether it's a workday or a holiday, it's all the same in the end. At night you go to bed

"But what do you expect? What can happen to you, except in your own mind? If I get through my work, and

"Is it? Well, if we've only got once to live, it seems like there ought to be somethingwell, something

Ernest was sympathetic now. He drew nearer to Claude as they walked along and looked at him sidewise with

concern. "You Americans are always looking for something outside yourselves to warm you up, and it is no

way to do. In old countries, where not very much can happen to us, we know that,and we learn to make the

"The martyrs must have found something outside themselves. Otherwise they could have made themselves

"Why, I should say they were the ones who had nothing but their idea! It would be ridiculous to get burned at

the stake for the sensation. Sometimes I think the martyrs had a good deal of vanity to help them along, too."'

Claude thought Ernest had never been so tiresome. He squinted at a bright object across the fields and said

cuttingly, "The fact is, Ernest, you think a man ought to be satisfied with his board and clothes and Sundays

Ernest laughed rather mournfully. "It doesn't matter much what I think about it; things are as they are.

Claude muttered something to himself, twisting his chin about over his collar as if he had a bridlebit in his

The sun had dropped low, and the two boys, as Mrs. Wheeler watched them from the kitchen window,

seemed to be walking beside a prairie fire. She smiled as she saw their black figures moving along on the

crest of the hill against the golden sky; even at that distance the one looked so adaptable, and the other so

unyielding. They were arguing, probably, and probably Claude was on the wrong side.

After the vacation Claude again settled down to his reading in the University Library. He worked at a table

next the alcove where the books on painting and sculpture were kept. The art students, all of whom were

girls, read and whispered together in this enclosure, and he could enjoy their company without having to talk

to them. They were lively and friendly; they often asked him to lift heavy books and portfolios from the

shelves, and greeted him gaily when he met them in the street or on the campus, and talked to him with the

easy cordiality usual between boys and girls in a coeducational school. One of these girls, Miss Peachy

Millmore, was different from the others,different from any girl Claude had ever known. She came from

Although she was short and plump, Miss Millmore moved with what might be called a "carriage," and she

had altogether more manner and more reserve than the Western girls. Her hair was yellow and curly,the

short ringlets about her ears were just the colour of a new chicken. Her vivid blue eyes were a trifle too

prominent, and a generous blush of colour mantled her cheeks. It seemed to pulsate there,one had a desire to

touch her cheeks to see if they were hot. The Erlich brothers and their friends called her "the Georgia peach."

She was considered very pretty, and the University boys had rushed her when she first came to town. Since

Miss Millmore often lingered about the campus to walk down town with Claude. However he tried to adapt

his long stride to her tripping gait, she was sure to get out of breath. She was always dropping her gloves or

her sketchbook or her purse, and he liked to pick them up for her, and to pull on her rubbers, which kept

slipping off at the heel. She was very kind to single him out and be so gracious to him, he thought. She even

coaxed him to pose in his track clothes for the life class on Saturday morning, telling him that he had "a

magnificent physique," a compliment which covered him with confusion. But he posed, of course.

Claude looked forward to seeing Peachy Millmore, missed her if she were not in the alcove, found it quite

natural that she should explain her absences to him,tell him how often she washed her hair and how long it

One Friday in February Julius Erlich overtook Claude on the campus and proposed that they should try the

"Yes, I'm going out," Claude replied. "I've promised to teach Miss Millmore to skate. Won't you come along

Julius laughed indulgently. "Oh, no! Some other time. I don't want to break in on that."

Julius made a little grimace. "She wrote some awfully slushy letters to Phil Bowen, and he read them aloud at

"Well, I would have thought I would," said Julius smiling, "but I didn't. They were too silly to make a fuss

about. I've been wary of the Georgia peach ever since. If you touched that sort of peach ever so lightly, it

"Perhaps you're right. But I'm terribly afraid of girls who are too kindhearted," Julius confessed. He had

Claude kept his engagement with Miss Millmore. He took her out to the skating pond several times, indeed,

though in the beginning he told her he feared her ankles were too weak. Their last excursion was made by

moonlight, and after that evening Claude avoided Miss Millmore when he could do so without being rude.

She was attractive to him no more. It was her way to subdue by clinging contact. One could scarcely call it

design; it was a degree less subtle than that. She had already thus subdued a pale cousin in Atlanta, and it was

on this account that she had been sent North. She had, Claude angrily admitted, no reserve,though when

one first met her she seemed to have so much. Her eager susceptibility presented not the slightest temptation

to him. He was a boy with strong impulses, and he detested the idea of trifling with them. The talk of the

disreputable men his father kept about the place at home, instead of corrupting him, had given him a sharp

The Erlich family loved anniversaries, birthdays, occasions. That spring Mrs. Erlich's first cousin,

Wilhelmina SchroederSchatz, who sang with the Chicago Opera Company, came to Lincoln as soloist for

the May Festival. As the date of her engagement approached, her relatives began planning to entertain her.

The Matinee Musical was to give a formal reception for the singer, so the Erlichs decided upon a dinner.

Each member of the family invited one guest, and they had great difficulty in deciding which of their friends

would be most appreciative of the honour. There were to be more men than women, because Mrs. Erlich

remembered that cousin Wilhelmina had never been partial to the society of her own sex.

One evening when her sons were revising their list, Mrs. Erlich reminded them that she had not as yet named

"You don't mean it, Mother," the oldest son protested. "Poor old Claude wouldn't know what it was all

Mrs. Erlich shook her finger at him with conviction. "You will see; your cousin Wilhelmina will be more

Julius thought if she were not too strongly opposed she might still yield her point. "For one thing, Mother,

Claude hasn't any dinner clothes," he murmured. She nodded to him. "That has been attended to, Herr Julius.

He is having some made. When I sounded him, he told me he could easily afford it."

The boys said if things had gone as far as that, they supposed they would have to make the best of it, and the

If the Erlich boys were apprehensive, their anxiety was nothing to Claude's. He was to take Mrs. Erlich to

Madame SchroederSchatz's recital, and on the evening of the concert, when he appeared at the door, the

boys dragged him in to look him over. Otto turned on all the lights, and Mrs. Erlich, in her new black lace

Claude pulled off his overcoat as he was bid, arid presented himself in the sooty blackness of fresh

broadcloth. Mrs. Erlich's eyes swept his long black legs, his smooth shoulders, and lastly his square red head,

"Now all the girls will turn round in their seats to look, and wonder where I got him!"

Claude began to bestow her belongings in his overcoat pockets; opera glasses in one, fan in another. She put a

lorgnette into her little bag, along with her powderbox, handkerchief and smelling salts,there was even a

little silver box of peppermint drops, in case she might begin to cough. She drew on her long gloves, arranged

a lace scarf over her hair, and at last was ready to have the evening cloak which Claude held wound about

her. When she reached up and took his arm, bowing to her sons, they laughed and liked Claude better. His

The dinner party came off the next evening. The guest of honour, Madame Wilhelmina SchroederSchatz,

was some years younger than her cousin, Augusta Erlich. She was short, stalwart, with an enormous chest, a

fine head, and a commanding presence. Her great contralto voice, which she used without much discretion,

was a really superb organ and gave people a pleasure as substantial as food and drink. At dinner she sat on

the right of the oldest son. Claude, beside Mrs. Erlich at the other end of the table, watched attentively the

After dinner, as Madame SchroederSchatz swept out of the dining room, she dropped her cousin's arm and

"If Cousin Augusta can spare you, we must have a little talk together. We have been very far separated," she

She led Claude to one of the window seats in the livingroom, at once complained of a draft, and sent him to

hunt for her green scarf. He brought it and carefully put it about her shoulders; but after a few moments, she

threw it off with a slightly annoyed air, as if she had never wanted it. Claude with solicitude reminded her

She asked Claude where he lived, how much land his father owned, what crops they raised, and about their

poultry and dairy. When she was a child she had lived on a farm in Bavaria, and she seemed to know a good

deal about farming and livestock. She was disapproving when Claude told her they rented half their land to

other farmers. "If I were a young man, I would begin to acquire land, and I would not stop until I had a whole

county," she declared. She said that when she met new people, she liked to find out the way they made their

Later in the evening Madame SchroederSchatz graciously consented to sing for her cousins. When she sat

down to the piano, she beckoned Claude and asked him to turn for her. He shook his head, smiling ruefully.

She tapped his sleeve. "Well, never mind. I may want the piano moved yet; you could do that for me, eh?"

When Madame SchroederSchatz was in Mrs. Erlich's bedroom, powdering her nose before she put on her

wraps, she remarked, "What a pity, Augusta, that you have not a daughter now, to marry to Claude Melnotte.

"Or," continued Madame SchroederSchatz, energetically pulling on her large carriage shoes, "if you were

but a few years younger, it might not yet be too late. Oh, don't be a fool, Augusta! Such things have

happened, and will happen again. However, better a widow than to be tied to a sick manlike a stone about

my neck! What a husband to go home to! and I a woman in full vigour. Jas ist ein Kreuz ich trage!" She

Having put on first a velvet coat, then a fur mantle, Madame SchroederSchatz moved like a galleon out into

0ne warm afternoon in May Claude sat in his upstairs room at the Chapins', copying his thesis, which was to

take the place of an examination in history. It was a criticism of the testimony of Jeanne d'Arc in her nine

private examinations and the trial in ordinary. The Professor had assigned him the subject with a flash of

humour. Although this evidence had been pawed over by so many hands since the fifteenth century, by the

phlegmatic and the fiery, by rhapsodists and cynics, he felt sure that Wheeler would not dismiss the case

Indeed, Claude put a great deal of time and thought upon the matter, and for the time being it seemed quite

the most important thing in his life. He worked from an English translation of the Proces, but he kept the

French text at his elbow, and some of her replies haunted him in the language in which they were spoken. It

seemed to him that they were like the speech of her saints, of whom Jeanne said, "the voice is beautiful,

sweet and low, and it speaks in the French tongue." Claude flattered himself that he had kept all personal

feeling out of the paper; that it was a cold estimate of the girl's motives and character as indicated by the

consistency and inconsistency of her replies; and of the change wrought in her by imprisonment and by "the

When he had copied the last page of his manuscript and sat contemplating the pile of written sheets, he felt

that after all his conscientious study he really knew very little more about the Maid of Orleans than when he

first heard of her from his mother, one day when he was a little boy. He had been shut up in the house with a

cold, he remembered, and he found a picture of her in armour, in an old book, and took it down to the kitchen

where his mother was making apple pies. She glanced at the picture, and while she went on rolling out the

dough and fitting it to the pans, she told him the story. He had forgotten what she said,it must have been

very fragmentary,but from that time on he knew the essential facts about Joan of Arc, and she was a living

figure in his mind. She seemed to him then as clear as now, and now as miraculous as then.

It was a curious thing, he reflected, that a character could perpetuate itself thus; by a picture, a word, a phrase,

it could renew itself in every generation and be born over and over again in the minds of children. At that

time he had never seen a map of France, and had a very poor opinion of any place farther away than Chicago;

yet he was perfectly prepared for the legend of Joan of Arc, and often thought about her when he was

bringing in his cobs in the evening, or when he was sent to the windmill for water and stood shaking in the

cold while the chilled pump brought it slowly up. He pictured her then very much as he did now; about her

figure there gathered a luminous cloud, like dust, with soldiers in it . . . the banner with lilies . . . a great

On this balmy spring afternoon, Claude felt softened and reconciled to the world. Like Gibbon, he was sorry

to have finished his labour,and he could not see anything else as interesting ahead. He must soon be going

home now. There would be a few examinations to sit through at the Temple, a few more evenings with the

Erlichs, trips to the Library to carry back the books he had been using,and then he would suddenly find

He rose with a sigh and began to fasten his history papers between covers. Glancing out of the window, he

decided that he would walk into town and carry his thesis, which was due today; the weather was too fine to

sit bumping in a street car. The truth was, he wished to prolong his relations with his manuscript as far as

He struck off by the road,it could scarcely be called a street, since it ran across raw prairie land where the

buffalopeas were in blossom. Claude walked slower than was his custom, his straw hat pushed back on his

head and the blaze of the sun full in his face. His body felt light in the scented wind, and he listened drowsily

to the larks, singing on dried weeds and sunflower stalks. At this season their song is almost painful to hear, it

is so sweet. He sometimes thought of this walk long afterward; it was memorable to him, though he could not

On reaching the University, he went directly to the Department of European History, where he was to leave

his thesis on a long table, with a pile of others. He rather dreaded this, and was glad when, just as he entered,

the Professor came out from his private office and took the bound manuscript into his own hands, nodding

"Your thesis? Oh yes, Jeanne d'Arc. The Proces. I had forgotten. Interesting material, isn't it?" He opened the

"Well, now you might read what Michelet has to say about her. There's an old translation in the Library. Did

"You've got a good deal out of your course, altogether, haven't you? I'll be interested to see what you do next

year. Your work has been very satisfactory to me." The Professor went back into his study, and Claude was

pleased to see that he carried the manuscript with him and did not leave it on the table with the others.

Between haying and harvest that summer Ralph and Mr. Wheeler drove to Denver in the big car, leaving

Claude and Dan to cultivate the corn. When they returned Mr. Wheeler announced that he had a secret. After

several days of reticence, during which he shut himself up in the sittingroom writing letters, and passed

mysterious words and winks with Ralph at table, he disclosed a project which swept away all Claude's plans

On the return trip from Denver Mr. Wheeler had made a detour down into Yucca county, Colorado, to visit

an old friend who was in difficulties. Tom Wested was a Maine man, from Wheeler's own neighbourhood.

Several years ago he had lost his wife. Now his health had broken down, and the Denver doctors said he must

retire from business and get into a low altitude. He wanted to go back to Maine and live among his own

people, but was too much discouraged and frightened about his condition even to undertake the sale of his

ranch and live stock. Mr. Wheeler had been able to help his friend, and at the same time did a good stroke of

business for himself. He owned a farm in Maine, his share of his father's estate, which for years he had rented

for little more than the upkeep. By making over this property, and assuming certain mortgages, he got

Wested's fine, wellwatered ranch in exchange. He paid him a good price for his cattle, and promised to take

the sick man back to Maine and see him comfortably settled there. All this Mr. Wheeler explained to his

family when he called them up to the living room one hot, breathless night after supper. Mrs. Wheeler, who

seldom concerned herself with her husband's business affairs, asked absently why they bought more land,

"Just like a woman, Evangeline, just like a woman!" Mr. Wheeler replied indulgently. He was sitting in the

full glare of the acetylene lamp, his neckband open, his collar and tie on the table beside him, fanning himself

with a palmleaf fan. "You might as well ask me why I want to make more money, when I haven't spent all

He intended, he said, to put Ralph on the Colorado ranch and "give the boy some responsibility." Ralph

would have the help of Wested's foreman, an old hand in the cattle business, who had agreed to stay on under

the new management. Mr. Wheeler assured his wife that he wasn't taking advantage of poor Wested; the

timber on the Maine place was really worth a good deal of money; but because his father had always been so

proud of his great pine woods, he had never, he said, just felt like turning a sawmill loose in them. Now he

was trading a pleasant old farm that didn't bring in anything for a gramagrass ranch which ought to turn over

a profit of ten or twelve thousand dollars in good cattle years, and wouldn't lose much in bad ones. He

expected to spend about half his time out there with Ralph. "When I'm away," he remarked genially, "you and

Mahailey won't have so much to do. You can devote yourselves to embroidery, so to speak."

"If Ralph is to live in Colorado, and you are to be away from home half of the time, I don't see what is to

"Not necessary for you to see, Evangeline," her husband replied, stretching his big frame until the rocking

"Claude?" Mrs. Wheeler brushed a lock of hair back from her damp forehead in vague alarm.

"Of course." He looked with twinkling eyes at his son's straight, silent figure in the corner. "You've had about

enough theology, I presume? No ambition to be a preacher? This winter I mean to turn the farm over to you

and give you a chance to straighten things out. You've been dissatisfied with the way the place is run for

some time, haven't you? Go ahead and put new blood into it. New ideas, if you want to; I've no objection.

They're expensive, but let it go. You can fire Dan if you want, and get what help you need."

Claude felt as if a trap had been sprung on him. He shaded his eyes with his hand. "I don't think I'm

"Well, you don't think I am either, Claude, so we're up against it. It's always been my notion that the land was

made for man, just as it's old Dawson's that man was created to work the land. I don't mind your siding with

Mrs. Wheeler rose and slipped quickly from the room, feeling her way down the dark staircase to the kitchen.

It was dusky and quiet there. Mahailey sat in a corner, hemming dishtowels by the light of a smoky old

brass lamp which was her own cherished luminary. Mrs. Wheeler walked up and down the long room in soft,

silent agitation, both hands pressed tightly to her breast, where there was a physical ache of sympathy for

She remembered kind Tom Wested. He had stayed over night with them several times, and had come to them

for consolation after his wife died. It seemed to her that his decline in health and loss of courage, Mr.

Wheeler's fortuitous trip to Denver, the old pinewood farm in Maine; were all things that fitted together and

made a net to envelop her unfortunate son. She knew that he had been waiting impatiently for the autumn,

and that for the first time he looked forward eagerly to going back to school. He was homesick for his friends,

the Erlichs, and his mind was all the time upon the history course he meant to take.

Yet all this would weigh nothing in the family councils probably he would not even speak of itand he had

not one substantial objection to offer to his father's wishes. His disappointment would be bitter. "Why, it will

almost break his heart," she murmured aloud. Mahailey was a little deaf and heard nothing. She sat holding

her work up to the light, driving her needle with a big brass thimble, nodding with sleepiness between

stitches. Though Mrs. Wheeler was scarcely conscious of it, the old woman's presence was a comfort to her,

She had left the sittingroom because she was afraid Claude might get angry and say something hard to his

father, and because she couldn't bear to see him hectored. Claude had always found life hard to live; he

suffered so much over little things,and she suffered with him. For herself, she never felt disappointments.

Her husband's careless decisions did not disconcert her. If he declared that he would not plant a garden at all

this year, she made no protest. It was Mahailey who grumbled. If he felt like eating roast beef and went out

and killed a steer, she did the best she could to take care of the meat, and if some of it spoiled she tried not to

worry. When she was not lost in religious meditation, she was likely to be thinking about some one of the old

books she read over and over. Her personal life was so far removed from the scene of her daily activities that

rash and violent men could not break in upon it. But where Claude was concerned, she lived on another

plane, dropped into the lower air, tainted with human breath and pulsating with poor, blind, passionate human

It had always been so. And now, as she grew older, and her flesh had almost ceased to be concerned with

pain or pleasure, like the wasted wax images in old churches, it still vibrated with his feelings and became

quick again for him. His chagrins shrivelled her. When he was hurt and suffered silently, something ached in

her. On the other hand, when he was happy, a wave of physical contentment went through her. If she

wakened in the night and happened to think that he had been happy lately, she would lie softly and gratefully

"Rest, rest, perturbed spirit," she sometimes whispered to him in her mind, when she wakened thus and

thought of him. There was a singular light in his eyes when he smiled at her on one of his good days, as if to

tell her that all was well in his inner kingdom. She had seen that same look again and again, and she could

always remember it in the dark,a quick blue flash, tender and a little wild, as if he had seen a vision or

The next few weeks were busy ones on the farm. Before the wheat harvest was over, Nat Wheeler packed his

leather trunk, put on his "store clothes," and set off to take Tom Welted back to Maine. During his absence

Ralph began to outfit for life in Yucca county. Ralph liked being a great man with the Frankfort merchants,

and he had never before had such an opportunity as this. He bought a new shot gun, saddles, bridles, boots,

long and short storm coats, a set of furniture for his own room, a fireless cooker, another music machine, and

had them shipped to Colorado. His mother, who did not like phonograph music, and detested phonograph

monologues, begged him to take the machine at home, but he assured her that she would be dull without it on

winter evenings. He wanted one of the latest make, put out under the name of a great American inventor.

Some of the ranches near Wested's were owned by New York men who brought their families out there in the

summer Ralph had heard about the dances they gave, and he way counting on being one of the guests. He

asked Claude to give him his dress suit, since Claude wouldn't be needing it any more.

"You can have it if you want it," said Claude indifferently "But it won't fit you."

"I'll take it in to Fritz and have the pants cut off a little and the shoulders taken in," his brother replied lightly.

Claude was impassive. "Go ahead. But if that old Dutch man takes a whack at it, it will look like the devil."

"I think I'll let him try. Father won't say anything about what I've ordered for the house, but he isn't much for

glad rags, you know." Without more ado he threw Claude's black clothes into the back seat of the Ford and

Mr. Wheeler, when he returned, thought Ralph had been rather free in expenditures, but Ralph told him it

wouldn't do to take over the new place too modestly. "The ranchers out there are all highfliers. If we go to

The country neighbours, who were always amused at the Wheelers' doings, got almost as much pleasure out

of Ralph's lavishness as he did himself. One said Ralph had shipped a new piano out to Yucca county,

another heard he had ordered a billiard table. August Yoeder, their prosperous German neighbour, asked

grimly whether he could, maybe, get a place as hired man with Ralph. Leonard Dawson, who was to be

"My God, Claude, there's nothing left in the furniture store for me and Susie! Ralph's bought everything but

"I don't know anything about it," Claude answered coolly. "It's not my enterprise."

"No, you've got to stay on the old place and make it pay the debts, I understand." Leonard jumped into his

Mrs. Wheeler, too, when she observed the magnitude of these preparations, began to feel that the new

arrangement was not fair to Claude, since he was the older boy and much the steadier. Claude had always

worked hard when he was at home, and made a good field hand, while Ralph had never done much but tinker

with machinery and run errands in his car. She couldn't understand why he was selected to manage an

"Why, Claude," she said dreamily one day, "if your father were an older man, I would almost think his

"Don't say anything, Mother. It's Father's money. He shan't think I want any of it."

Ralph and Mr. Wheeler took another flying trip to Colorado, and when they came back Ralph began coaxing

his mother to give him bedding and table linen. He said he wasn't going to live like a savage, even in the sand

hills. Mahailey was outraged to see the linen she had washed and ironed and taken care of for so many years

packed into boxes. She was out of temper most of the time now, and went about muttering to herself.

The only possessions Mahailey brought with her when she came to live with the Wheelers, were a feather bed

and three patchwork quilts, interlined with wool off the backs of Virginia sheep, washed and carded by hand.

The quilts had been made by her old mother, and given to her for a marriage portion. The patchwork on each

was done in a different design; one was the popular "logcabin" pattern, another the "laurelleaf," the third the

"blazing star." This quilt Mahailey thought too good for use, and she had told Mrs. Wheeler that she was

She slept on her feather bed in winter, and in summer she put it away in the attic. The attic was reached by a

ladder. which, because of her weak back, Mrs. Wheeler very seldom climbed. Up there Mahailey had things

her own way, and thither she often retired to air the bedding stored away there, or to look at the pictures in

the piles of old magazines. Ralph facetiously called the attic "Mahailey's library."

One day, while things were being packed for the western ranch, Mrs. Wheeler, going to the foot of the ladder

to call Mahailey, narrowly escaped being knocked down by a large feather bed which came plumping through

the trap door. A moment later Mahailey herself descended backwards, holding to the rungs with one hand,

"Why, Mahailey," gasped Mrs. Wheeler. "It's not winter yet; whatever are you getting your bed for?"

"I'm just agoin' to lay on my fedder bed," she broke out, "or direc'ly I won't have none. I ain't agoin' to

Mrs. Wheeler tried to reason with her, but the old woman took up her bed in her arms and staggered down the

That afternoon Ralph brought a barrel and a bundle of straw into the kitchen and told Mahailey to carry up

preserves and canned fruit, and he would pack them. She went obediently to the cellar, and Ralph took off his

coat and began to line the barrel with straw. He was some time in doing this, but still Mahailey had not

"I'm acomin', Mr. Ralph, I'm acomin' ! Don't hurry me, I don't want to break nothin'."

Ralph waited a few minutes. "What are you doing down there, Mahailey?" he fumed. "I could have emptied

"I'm acomin'. You'd git yourself all dusty down here." She came breathlessly up the stairs, carrying a

"Well, I should say it is dusty!" Ralph snorted. "You might clean your fruit closet once in awhile, you know,

Mahailey. You ought to see how Mrs. Dawson keeps hers. Now, let's see." He sorted the jars on the table.

"Take back the grape jelly. If there's anything I hate, it's grape jelly. I know you have lots of it, but you can't

work it off on me. And when you come up, don't forget the pickled peaches. I told you particularly, the

"We ain't got no pickled peaches." Mahailey stood by the cellar door, holding a corner of her apron up to her

"No pickled peaches? What nonsense, Mahailey ! I saw you making them here, only a few weeks ago."

"I know you did, Mr. Ralph, but they ain't none now. I didn't have no luck with my peaches this year. I must

Ralph was thoroughly annoyed. "I never heard of such a thing, Mahailey ! You get more careless every year.

Mahailey's low brow clouded. "I reckon she does. I don't wase your mudder's sugar. I never did wase

Ralph dashed down the cellar stairs, lit a lantern, and searched the fruit closet. Sure enough, there were no

pickled peaches. When he came back and began packing his fruit, Mahailey stood watching him with a

furtive expression, very much like the look that is in a chained coyote's eyes when a boy is showing him off

That evening Claude was sitting on the windmill platform, down by the barn, after a hard day's work

ploughing for winter wheat. He was solacing himself with his pipe. No matter how much she loved him, or

how sorry she felt for him, his mother could never bring herself to tell him he might smoke in the house.

Lights were shining from the upstairs rooms on the hill, and through the open windows sounded the singing

snarl of a phonograph. A figure came stealing down the path. He knew by her low, padding step that it was

Mahailey, with her apron thrown over her head. She came up to him and touched him on the shoulder in a

"Mr. Claude, Mr. Ralph's done packed up a barr'l of your mudder's jelly an' pickles to take out there."

"That's all right, Mahailey. Mr. Wested was a widower, and I guess there wasn't anything of that sort put up

She hesitated and bent lower. "He asked me fur them pickled peaches I made fur you, but I didn't give him

none. I hid 'em all in my old cookstove we done put down cellar when Mr. Ralph bought the new one. I

didn't give him your mudder's new preserves, nudder. I give him the old last year's stuff we had left over, and

now you an' your mudder'll have plenty." Claude laughed. "Oh, I don't care if Ralph takes all the fruit on the

She shrank back a little, saying confusedly, "No, I know you don't, Mr. Claude. I know you don't."

"I surely ought not to take it out on her," Claude thought, when he saw her disappointment. He rose and

patted her on the back. "That's all right, Mahailey. Thank you for saving the peaches, anyhow."

Ralph and his father moved to the new ranch the last of August, and Mr. Wheeler wrote back that late in the

fall he meant to ship a carload of grass steers to the home farm to be fattened during the winter. This, Claude

saw, would mean a need for fodder. There was a fiftyacre corn field west of the creek,just on the skyline

when one looked out from the west windows of the house. Claude decided to put this field into winter wheat,

and early in September he began to cut and bind the corn that stood upon it for fodder. As soon as the corn

was gathered, he would plough up the ground, and drill in the wheat when he planted the other wheat fields.

This was Claude's first innovation, and it did not meet with approval. When Bayliss came out to spend

Sunday with his mother, he asked her what Claude thought he was doing, anyhow. If he wanted to change the

crop on that field, why didn't he plant oats in the spring, and then get into wheat next fall? Cutting fodder and

preparing the ground now, would only hold him back in his work. When Mr. Wheeler came home for a short

Claude went ahead with what he had undertaken to do, but all through September he was nervous and

apprehensive about the weather. Heavy rains, if they came, would make him late with his wheatplanting,

and then there would certainly be criticism. In reality, nobody cared much whether the planting was late or

not, but Claude thought they did, and sometimes in the morning he awoke in a state of panic because he

wasn't getting ahead faster. He had Dan and one of August Yoeder's four sons to help him, and he worked

early and late. The new field he ploughed and drilled himself. He put a great deal of young energy into it, and

buried a great deal of discontent in its dark furrows. Day after day he flung himself upon the land and planted

it with what was fermenting in him, glad to be so tired at night that he could not think.

Ralph came home for Leonard Dawson's wedding, on the first of October. All the Wheelers went to the

wedding, even Mahailey, and there was a great gathering of the country folk and townsmen.

After Ralph left, Claude had the place to himself again, and the work went on as usual. The stock did well,

and there were no vexatious interruptions. The fine weather held, and every morning when Claude got up,

another gold day stretched before him like a glittering carpet, leading. . . ? When the question where the days

were leading struck him on the edge of his bed, he hurried to dress and get downstairs in time to fetch wood

and coal for Mahailey. They often reached the kitchen at the same moment, and she would shake her finger at

him and say, "You come down to help me, you nice boy, you!" At least he was of some use to Mahailey. His

father could hire one of the Yoeder boys to look after the place, but Mahailey wouldn't let any one else save

Mrs. Wheeler, as well as Mahailey, enjoyed that fall. She slept late in the morning, and read and rested in the

afternoon. She made herself some new housedresses out of a grey material Claude chose. "It's almost like

Soon Claude had the satisfaction of seeing a blush of green come up over his brown wheat fields, visible first

in the dimples and little hollows, then flickering over the knobs and levels like a fugitive smile. He watched

the green blades coming every day, when he and Dan went afield with their wagons to gather corn. Claude

sent Dan to shuck on the north quarter, and he worked on the south. He always brought in one more load a

day than Dan did,that was to be expected. Dan explained this very reasonably, Claude thought, one

"It's all right for you to jump at that corn like you was abeating carpets, Claude; it's your corn, or anyways

it's your Paw's. Them fields will always lay betwixt you and trouble. But a hired man's got no property but his

back, and he has to save it. I figure that I've only got about so many jumps left in me, and I ain't agoing to

"What's the matter? I haven't been hinting that you ought to jump any harder, have I ?"

"No, you ain't, but I just want you to know that there's reason in all things." With this Dan got into his wagon

and drove off. He had probably been meditating upon this declaration for some time.

That afternoon Claude suddenly stopped flinging white ears into the wagon beside him. It was about five

o'clock, the yellowest hour of the autumn day. He stood lost in a forest of light, dry, rustling corn leaves,

quite hidden away from the world. Taking off his huskinggloves, he wiped the sweat from his face, climbed

up to the wagon box, and lay down on the ivorycoloured corn. The horses cautiously advanced a step or

two, and munched with great content at ears they tore from the stalks with their teeth.

Claude lay still, his arms under his head, looking up at the hard, polished blue sky, watching the flocks of

crows go over from the fields where they fed on shattered grain, to their nests in the trees along Lovely

Creek. He was thinking about what Dan had said while they were hitching up. There was a great deal of truth

in it, certainly. Yet, as for him, he often felt that he would rather go out into the world and earn his bread

among strangers than sweat under this halfresponsibility for acres and crops that were not his own. He knew

that his father was sometimes called a "land hog" by the country people, and he himself had begun to feel that

it was not right they should have so much land,to farm, or to rent, or to leave idle, as they chose. It was

strange that in all the centuries the world had been going, the question of property had not been better

adjusted. The people who had it were slaves to it, and the people who didn't have it were slaves to them.

He sprang down into the gold light to finish his load. Warm silence nestled over the cornfield. Sometimes a

light breeze rose for a moment and rattled the stiff, dry leaves, and he himself made a great rustling and

Greedy crows were still cawing about before they flapped homeward. When he drove out to the highway, the

sun was going down, and from his seat on the load he could see far and near. Yonder was Dan's wagon,

coming in from the north quarter; over there was the roof of Leonard Dawson's new house, and his windmill,

standing up black in the declining day. Before him were the bluffs of the pasture, and the little trees, almost

bare, huddled in violet shadow along the creek, and the Wheeler farmhouse on the hill, its windows all

Claude dreaded the inactivity of the winter, to which the farmer usually looks forward with pleasure. He

made the Thanksgiving football game a pretext for going up to Lincoln,went intending to stay three days

and stayed ten. The first night, when he knocked at the glass door of the Erlichs' sittingroom and took them

by surprise, he thought he could never go back to the farm. Approaching the house on that clear, frosty

autumn evening, crossing the lawn strewn with crackling dry leaves, he told himself that he must not hope to

find things the same. But they were the same. The boys were lounging and smoking about the square table

with the lamp on it, and Mrs. Erlich was at the piano, playing one of Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words."

What a welcome she gave him, and how much she had to tell him! While they were all talking at once,

Henry, the oldest son, came downstairs dressed for a Colonial ball, with satin breeches and stockings and a

sword. His brothers began to point out the inaccuracies of his costume, telling him that he couldn't possibly

call himself a French emigre unless he wore a powdered wig. Henry took a book of memoirs from the shelf to

prove to them that at the time when the French emigres were coming to Philadelphia, powder was going out

During this discussion, Mrs. Erlich drew Claude aside and told him in excited whispers that her cousin

Wilhelmina, the singer, had at last been relieved of the invalid husband whom she had supported for so many

years, and now was going to marry her accompanist, a man much younger than herself.

After the French emigre had gone off to his party, two young instructors from the University dropped in, and

Mrs. Erlich introduced Claude as her "landed proprietor" who managed a big ranch out in one of the western

counties. The instructors took their leave early, but Claude stayed on. What was it that made life seem so

much more interesting and attractive here than elsewhere? There was nothing wonderful about this room; a

lot of books, a lamp . . . comfortable, hardused furniture, some people whose lives were in no way

remarkableand yet he had the sense of being in a warm and gracious atmosphere, charged with generous

enthusiasms and ennobled by romantic friendships. He was glad to see the same pictures on the wall; to find

the Swiss woodcutter on the mantel, still bending under his load of faggots; to handle again the heavy brass

paperknife that in its time had cut so many interesting pages. He picked it up from the cover of a red book

lying there,one of Trevelyan's volumes on Garibaldi, which Julius told him he must read before he was

The next afternoon Claude took Mrs. Erlich to the football game and came home with the family for dinner.

He lingered on day after day, but after the first few evenings his heart was growing a little heavier all the

time. The Erlich boys had so many new interests he couldn't keep up with them; they had been going on, and

he had been standing still. He wasn't conceited enough to mind that. The thing that hurt was the feeling of

being out of it, of being lost in another kind of life in which ideas played but little part. He was a stranger

who walked in and sat down here; but he belonged out in the big, lonely country, where people worked hard

with their backs and got tired like the horses, and were too sleepy at night to think of anything to say. If Mrs.

Erlich and her Hungarian woman made lentil soup and potato dumplings and WienerSchnitzel for him, it

When the second Friday came round, he went to bid his friends goodbye and explained that he must be

going home tomorrow. On leaving the house that night, he looked back at the ruddy windows and told

himself that it was goodbye indeed, and not, as Mrs. Erlich had fondly said, auf wiedersehen. Coming here

only made him more discontented with his lot; his frail claim on this kind of life existed no longer. He must

settle down into something that was his own, take hold of it with both hands, no matter how grim it was. The

next day, during his journey out through the bleak winter country, he felt that he was going deeper and deeper

Claude had not written when he would be home, but on Saturday there were always some of the neighbours

in town. He rode out with one of the Yoeder boys, and from their place walked on the rest of the way. He told

his mother he was glad to be back again. He sometimes felt as if it were disloyal to her for him to be so happy

with Mrs. Erlich. His mother had been shut away from the world on a farm for so many years; and even

before that, Vermont was no very stimulating place to grow up in, he guessed. She had not had a chance, any

more than he had, at those things which make the mind more supple and keep the feeling young.

The next morning it was snowing outside, and they had a long, pleasant Sunday breakfast. Mrs. Wheeler said

they wouldn't try to go to church, as Claude must be tired. He worked about the place until noon, making the

stock comfortable and looking after things that Dan had neglected in his absence. After dinner he sat down at

the secretary and wrote a long letter to his friends in Lincoln. Whenever he lifted his eyes for a moment, he

saw the pasture bluffs and the softly falling snow. There was something beautiful about the submissive way

in which the country met winter. It made one contented,sad, too. He sealed his letter and lay down on the

When he awoke the afternoon was already far gone. The clock on the shelf ticked loudly in the still room, the

coal stove sent out a warm glow. The blooming plants in the south bowwindow looked brighter and fresher

than usual in the soft white light that came up from the snow. Mrs. Wheeler was reading by the west window,

looking away from her book now and then to gaze off at the grey sky and the muffled fields. The creek made

a winding violet chasm down through the pasture, and the trees followed it in a black thicket, curiously tufted

with snow. Claude lay for some time without speaking, watching his mother's profile against the glass, and

She turned her head toward him. "Nothing very new. I was just Beginning 'Paradise Lost' again. I haven't

"Read aloud, won't you? Just wherever you happen to be. I like the sound of it."

Mrs. Wheeler always read deliberately, giving each syllable its full value. Her voice, naturally soft and rather

wistful, trailed over the long measures and the threatening Biblical names, all familiar to her and full of

"A dungeon horrible, on all sides round As one great furnace flamed; yet from the flames No light, but rather

Her voice groped as if she were trying to realize something. The room was growing greyer as she read on

through the turgid catalogue of the heathen gods, so packed with stories and pictures, so unaccountably

"That's fine," Claude commented from the couch. "But Milton couldn't have got along without the wicked,

"Oh no, not at all! It just struck me that this part is so much more interesting than the books about perfect

"And yet I suppose it shouldn't be so," Mrs. Wheeler said slowly, as if in doubt.

Her son laughed and sat up, smoothing his rumpled hair. "The fact remains that it is, dear Mother. And if you

took all the great sinners out of the Bible, you'd take out all the interesting characters, wouldn't you?"

"Yes, except Christ. But I suppose the Jews were honest when they thought him the most dangerous kind of

"Are you trying to tangle me up?" his mother inquired, with both reproach and amusement in her voice.

Claude went to the window where she was sitting, and looked out at the snowy fields, now becoming blue

and desolate as the shadows deepened. "I only mean that even in the Bible the people who were merely free

"Ah, I see!" Mrs. Wheeler chuckled softly. "You are trying to get me back to Faith and Works. There's where

you always balked when you were a little fellow. Well, Claude, I don't know as much about it as I did then.

As I get older, I leave a good deal more to God. I believe He wants to save whatever is noble in this world,

and that He knows more ways of doing it than I." She rose like a gentle shadow and rubbed her cheek against

his flannel shirtsleeve, murmuring, "I believe He is sometimes where we would least expect to find

For a moment they clung together in the pale, clear square of the west window, as the two natures in one

Ralph and his father came home to spend the holidays, and on Christmas day Bayliss drove out from town for

dinner. He arrived early, and after greeting his mother in the kitchen, went up to the sittingroom, which

shone with a holiday neatness, and, for once, was warm enough for Bayliss,having a low circulation, he

felt the cold acutely. He walked up and down, jingling the keys in his pockets and admiring his mother's

winter chrysanthemums, which were still blooming. Several times he paused before the oldfashioned

secretary, looking through the glass doors at the volumes within. The sight of some of those books awoke

disagreeable memories. When he was a boy of fourteen or fifteen, it used to make him bitterly jealous to hear

his mother coaxing Claude to read aloud to her. Bayliss had never been bookish. Even before he could read,

when his mother told him stories, he at once began to prove to her how they could not possibly be true. Later

he found arithmetic and geography more interesting than "Robinson Crusoe." If he sat down with a book, he

wanted to feel that he was learning something. His mother and Claude were always talking over his head

Though Bayliss had a sentimental feeling about coming home, he considered that he had had a lonely

boyhood. At the country school he had not been happy; he was the boy who always got the answers to the test

problems when the others didn't, and he kept his arithmetic papers buttoned up in the inside pocket of his

little jacket until he modestly handed them to the teacher, never giving a neighbour the benefit of his

cleverness. Leonard Dawson and other lusty lads of his own age made life as terrifying for him as they could.

In winter they used to throw him into a snowdrift, and then run away and leave him. In summer they made

him eat live grasshoppers behind the schoolhouse, and put big bullsnakes in his dinner pail to surprise him.

To this day, Bayliss liked to see one of those fellows get into difficulties that his big fists couldn't get him out

It was because Bayliss was quick at figures and undersized for a farmer that his father sent him to town to

learn the implement business. From the day he went to work, he managed to live on his small salary. He kept

in his vest pocket a little daybook wherein he noted down all his expenditures, like the millionaire about

whom the Baptist preachers were never tired of talking,and his offering to the contribution box stood out

In Bayliss' voice, even when he used his insinuating drawl and said disagreeable things, there was something

a little plaintive; the expression of a deepseated sense of injury. He felt that he had always been

misunderstood and underestimated. Later after he went into business for himself, the young men of Frankfort

had never urged him to take part in their pleasures. He had not been asked to join the tennis club or the whist

club. He envied Claude his fine physique and his unreckoning, impulsive vitality, as if they had been given to

Bayliss and his father were talking together before dinner when Claude came in and was so inconsiderate as

to put up a window, though he knew his brother hated a draft. In a moment Bayliss addressed him without

"I see your friends, the Erlichs, have bought out the Jenkinson company, in Lincoln; at least, they've given

Claude had promised his mother to keep his temper today, "Yes, I saw it in the paper. I hope they'll succeed."

"I doubt it." Bayliss shook his head with his wisest look. "I understand they've put a mortgage on their home.

"I don't think so. The boys have wanted to go into business together for a long while. They are all intelligent

and industrious; why shouldn't they get on?" Claude flattered himself that he spoke in an easy, confidential

Bayliss screwed up his eyes. "I expect they're too fond of good living. They'll pay their interest, and spend

whatever's left entertaining their friends. I didn't see the young fellow's name in the notice of incorporation,

At this moment the dinner bell sounded, Ralph ran down from his room where he had been dressing, and they

all descended to the kitchen to greet the turkey. The dinner progressed pleasantly. Bayliss and his father

talked politics, and Ralph told stories about his neighbours in Yucca county. Bayliss was pleased that his

mother had remembered he liked oyster stuffing, and he complimented her upon her mince pies. When he

saw her pour a second cup of coffee for herself and for Claude at the end of dinner, he said, in a gentle,

Mrs. Wheeler looked at him over the coffeepot with a droll, guilty smile. "I don't believe coffee hurts me a

"Of course it does; it's a stimulant." What worse could it be, his tone implied! When you said anything was a

Claude was in the upper hall, putting on his coat to go down to the barn and smoke a cigar, when Bayliss

"I was thinking," Bayliss affected a careless tone, as if he thought of such things every day, "that we might

"It's a hard drive home, so late at night," Claude objected. Bayliss meant, of course, that Claude should drive

the party up and back in Mr. Wheeler's big car. Bayliss never used his glistening Cadillac for long, rough

"I guess Mother would put us up overnight, and we needn't take the girls home till Sunday morning. I'll get

"You'd better arrange it with the girls, then. I'll drive you, of course, if you want to go."

Claude escaped and went out, wishing that Bayliss would do his own courting and not drag him into it.

Bayliss, who didn't know one tune from another, certainly didn't want to go to this concert, and it was

doubtful whether Enid Royce would care much about going. Gladys Farmer was the best musician in

Claude and Gladys were old friends, from their High School days, though they hadn't seen much of each

other while he was going to college. Several times this fall Bayliss had asked Claude to go somewhere with

him on a Sunday, and then stopped to "pick Gladys up," as he said. Claude didn't like it. He was disgusted,

anyhow, when he saw that Bayliss had made up his mind to marry Gladys. She and her mother were so poor

that he would probably succeed in the end, though so far Gladys didn't seem to give him much

encouragement. Marrying Bayliss, he thought, would be no joke for any woman, but Gladys was the one girl

in town whom he particularly ought not to marry. She was as extravagant as she was poor. Though she taught

in the Frankfort High School for twelve hundred a year, she had prettier clothes than any of the other girls,

except Enid Royce, whose father was a rich man. Her new hats and suede shoes were discussed and criticized

year in and year out. People said if she married Bayliss Wheeler, he would soon bring her down to hard facts.

Some hoped she would, and some hoped she wouldn't. As for Claude, he had kept away from Mrs. Farmer's

cheerful parlour ever since Bayliss had begun to drop in there. He was disappointed in Gladys. When he was

offended, he seldom stopped to reason about his state of feeling. He avoided the person and the thought of the

It had been Mr. Wheeler's intention to stay at home until spring, but Ralph wrote that he was having trouble

with his foreman, so his father went out to the ranch in February. A few days after his departure there was a

The snow began to fall about noon on St. Valentine's day, a soft, thick, wet snow that came down in billows

and stuck to everything. Later in the afternoon the wind rose, and wherever there was a shed, a tree, a hedge,

or even a clump of tall weeds, drifts began to pile up. Mrs. Wheeler, looking anxiously out from the

sittingroom windows, could see nothing but driving waves of soft white, which cut the tall house off from

Claude and Dan, down in the corral, where they were provisioning the cattle against bad weather, found the

air so thick that they could scarcely breathe; their ears and mouths and nostrils were full of snow, their faces

plastered with it. It melted constantly upon their clothing, and yet they were white from their boots to their

caps as they worked, there was no shaking it off. The air was not cold, only a little below freezing. When

they came in for supper, the drifts had piled against the house until they covered the lower sashes of the

kitchen windows, and as they opened the door, a frail wall of snow fell in behind them. Mahailey came

"Ain't it a turrible storm, Mr. Claude? I reckon poor Mr. Ernest won't git over tonight, will he? You never

mind, honey; I'll wipe up that water. Run along and git dry clothes on you, an' take a bath, or you'll ketch

cold. Th' ole tank's full of hot water for you." Exceptional weather of any kind always delighted Mahailey.

Mrs. Wheeler met Claude at the head of the stairs. "There's no danger of the steers getting snowed under

"No, I thought of that. We've driven them all into the little corral on the level, and shut the gates. It's over my

head down in the creek bottom now. I haven't a dry stitch on me. I guess I'll follow Mahailey's advice and get

"Put your clothes outside the bathroom door, and I'll see to drying them for you."

"Yes, please. I'll need them tomorrow. I don't want to spoil my new corduroys. And, Mother, see if you can

make Dan change. He's too wet and steamy to sit at the table with. Tell him if anybody has to go out after

Mrs. Wheeler hurried down stairs. Dan, she knew, would rather sit all evening in wet clothes than take the

trouble to put on dry ones. He tried to sneak past her to his own quarters behind the washroom, and looked

"Well, Claude says he'll go out if anybody has to. I guess you'll have to change for once, Dan, or go to bed

without your supper." She laughed quietly at his dejected expression as he slunk away.

"Mrs. Wheeler," Mahailey whispered, "can't I run down to the cellar an' git some of them nice strawberry

preserves? Mr. Claude, he loves 'em on his hot biscuit. He don't eat the honey no more; he's got tired of it."

"Very well. I'll make the coffee good and strong; that will please him more than anything."

Claude came down feeling clean and warm and hungry. As he opened the stair door he sniffed the coffee and

frying ham, and when Mahailey bent over the oven the warm smell of browning biscuit rushed out with the

heat. These combined odours somewhat dispersed Dan's gloom when he came back in squeaky Sunday shoes

and a bunglesome cutaway coat. The latter was not required of him, but he wore it for revenge.

During supper Mrs. Wheeler told them once again how, long ago when she was first married, there were no

roads or fences west of Frankfort. One winter night she sat on the roof of their first dugout nearly all night,

holding up a lantern tied to a pole to guide Mr. Wheeler home through a snowstorm like this.

Mahailey, moving about the stove, watched over the group at the table. She liked to see the men fill

themselves with foodthough she did not count Dan a man, by any means, and she looked out to see that

Mrs. Wheeler did not forget to eat altogether, as she was apt to do when she fell to remembering things that

had happened long ago. Mahailey was in a happy frame of mind because her weather predictions had come

true; only yesterday she had told Mrs. Wheeler there would be snow, because she had seen snowbirds. She

regarded supper as more than usually important when Claude put on his "velvet close," as she called his

After supper Claude lay on the couch in the sitting room, while his mother read aloud to him from "Bleak

House,"one of the few novels she loved. Poor Jo was drawing toward his end when Claude suddenly sat

up. "Mother, I believe I'm too sleepy. I'll have to turn in. Do you suppose it's still snowing?"

He rose and went to look out, but the west windows were so plastered with snow that they were opaque. Even

from the one on the south he could see nothing for a moment; then Mahailey must have carried her lamp to

the kitchen window beneath, for all at once a broad yellow beam shone out into the choked air, and down it

millions of snowflakes hurried like armies, an unceasing progression, moving as close as they could without

forming a solid mass. Claude struck the frozen windowframe with his fist, lifted the lower sash, and

thrusting out his head tried to look abroad into the engulfed night. There was a solemnity about a storm of

such magnitude; it gave one a feeling of infinity. The myriads of white particles that crossed the rays of

lamplight seemed to have a quiet purpose, to be hurrying toward a definite end. A faint purity, like a

fragrance almost too fine for human senses, exhaled from them as they clustered about his head and

shoulders. His mother, looking under his lifted arm, strained her eyes to see out into that swarming

"Ever thicker, thicker, thicker, Froze the ice on lake and river; Ever deeper, deeper, deeper, Fell the snow o'er

Claude's bedroom faced the east. The next morning, when he looked out of his windows, only the tops of the

cedars in the front yard were visible. Hurriedly putting on his clothes he ran to the west window at the end of

the hall; Lovely Creek, and the deep ravine in which it flowed, had disappeared as if they had never been.

The rough pasture was like a smooth field, except for humps and mounds like haycocks, where the snow had

At the kitchen stairs Mahailey met him in gleeful excitement. "Lord 'a' mercy, Mr. Claude, I can't git the

storm door open. We're snowed in fas'." She looked like a tramp woman, in a jacket patched with many

colours, her head tied up in an old black "fascinator," with ravelled yarn hanging down over her face like wild

locks of hair. She kept this costume for calamitous occasions; appeared in it when the waterpipes were

frozen and burst, or when spring storms flooded the coops and drowned her young chickens.

The storm door opened outward. Claude put his shoulder to it and pushed it a little way. Then, with

Mahailey's fireshovel he dislodged enough snow to enable him to force back the door. Dan came tramping in

his stockingfeet across the kitchen to his boots, which were still drying behind the stove. "She's sure a bad

"Yes. I guess we won't try to go out till after breakfast. We'll have to dig our way to the barn, and I never

Mrs. Wheeler came down, pinning on her little shawl, her shoulders more bent than usual. "Claude," she said

fearfully, "the cedars in the front yard are all but covered. Do you suppose our cattle could be buried?"

He laughed. "No, Mother. The cattle have been moving around all night, I expect."

When the two men started out with the wooden snow shovels, Mrs. Wheeler and Mahailey stood in the

doorway, watching them. For a short distance from the house the path they dug was like a tunnel, and the

white walls on either side were higher than their heads. On the breast of the hill the snow was not so deep,

and they made better headway. They had to fight through a second heavy drift before they reached the barn,

where they went in and warmed themselves among the horses and cows. Dan was for getting next a warm

"Not yet," said Claude. "I want to have a look at the hogs before we do anything here."

The hoghouse was built down in a draw behind the barn. When Claude reached the edge of the gully, blown

almost bare, he could look about him. The draw was full of snow, smooth . . . except in the middle, where

Dan gasped. "God a' mighty, Claude, the roof's fell in! Them hogs'll be smothered."

"They will if we don't get at them pretty quick. Run to the house and tell Mother Mahailey will have to milk

The roof was a flat thatch, and the weight of the snow had been too much for it. Claude wondered if he

should have put on a new thatch that fall; but the old one wasn't leaky, and had seemed strong enough.

When Dan got back they took turns, one going ahead and throwing out as much snow as he could, the other

handling the snow that fell back. After an hour or so of this work, Dan leaned on his shovel.

"We'll never do it, Claude. Two men couldn't throw all that snow out in a week. I'm about all in."

"Well, you can go back to the house and sit by the fire," Claude called fiercely. He had taken off his coat and

was working in his shirt and sweater. The sweat was rolling from his face, his back and arms ached, and his

hands, which he couldn't keep dry, were blistered. There were thirtyseven hogs in the hoghouse.

Dan sat down in the hole. "Maybe if I could git a drink of water, I could hold on aways," he said dejectedly.

It was past noon when they got into the shed; a cloud of steam rose, and they heard grunts. They found the

pigs all lying in a heap at one end, and pulled the top ones off alive and squealing. Twelve hogs, at the

bottom of the pile, had been suffocated. They lay there wet and black in the snow, their bodies warm and

Mrs. Wheeler, in her husband's rubber boots and an old overcoat, came down with Mahailey to view the

"You ought to git right at them hawgs an' butcher 'em today," Mahailey called down to the men. She was

standing on the edge of the draw, in her patched jacket and ravelled hood. Claude, down in the hole, brushed

the sleeve of his sweater across his streaming face. "Butcher them?" he cried indignantly. "I wouldn't butcher

"You ain't agoin' to let all that good hawgmeat go to wase, air you, Mr. Claude?" Mahailey pleaded. "They

didn't have no sickness nor nuthin'. Only you'll have to git right at 'em, or the meat won't be healthy."

"It wouldn't be healthy for me, anyhow. I don't know what I will do with them, but I'm mighty sure I won't

"Don't bother him, Mahailey," Mrs. Wheeler cautioned her. "He's tired, and he has to fix some place for the

"I know he is, mam, but I could easy cut up one of them hawgs myself. I butchered my own little pig onct, in

Virginia. I could save the hams, anyways, and the spareribs. We ain't had no spareribs for ever so long."

What with the ache in his back and his chagrin at losing the pigs, Claude was feeling desperate. "Mother," he

That evening Mrs. Wheeler asked him how much the twelve hogs would have been worth in money. He

"Would it really be as much as that? I don't see how we could have prevented it, do you?" Her face looked

Claude went to bed immediately after supper, but he had no sooner stretched his aching body between the

sheets than he began to feel wakeful. He was humiliated at losing the pigs, because they had been left in his

charge; but for the loss in money, about which even his mother was grieved, he didn't seem to care. He

wondered whether all that winter he hadn't been working himself up into a childish contempt for

When Ralph was home at Christmas time, he wore on his little finger a heavy gold ring, with a diamond as

big as a pea, surrounded by showy grooves in the metal. He admitted to Claude that he had won it in a poker

game. Ralph's hands were never free from automobile greasethey were the red, stumpy kind that couldn't

be kept clean. Claude remembered him milking in the barn by lantern light, his jewel throwing off jabbing

sparkles of colour, and his fingers looking very much like the teats of the cow. That picture rose before him

The farmer raised and took to market things with an intrinsic value; wheat and corn as good as could be

grown anywhere in the world, hogs and cattle that were the best of their kind. In return he got manufactured

articles of poor quality; showy furniture that went to pieces, carpets and draperies that faded, clothes that

made a handsome man look like a clown. Most of his money was paid out for machinery,and that, too,

went to pieces. A steam thrasher didn't last long; a horse outlived three automobiles.

Claude felt sure that when he was a little boy and all the neighbours were poor, they and their houses and

farms had more individuality. The farmers took time then to plant fine cottonwood groves on their places, and

to set osage orange hedges along the borders of their fields. Now these trees were all being cut down and

grubbed up. Just why, nobody knew; they impoverished the land . . . they made the snow drift . . . nobody had

them any more. With prosperity came a kind of callousness; everybody wanted to destroy the old things they

used to take pride in. The orchards, which had been nursed and tended so carefully twenty years ago, were

now left to die of neglect. It was less trouble to run into town in an automobile and buy fruit than it was to

The people themselves had changed. He could remember when all the farmers in this community were

friendly toward each other; now they were continually having lawsuits. Their sons were either stingy and

grasping, or extravagant and lazy, and they were always stirring up trouble. Evidently, it took more

When he pondered upon this conclusion, Claude thought of the Erlichs. Julius could go abroad and study for

his doctor's degree, and live on less than Ralph wasted every year. Ralph would never have a profession or a

Nor did Claude find his own outlook much better. He was twentyone years old, and he had no skill, no

training,no ability that would ever take him among the kind of people he admired. He was a clumsy,

awkward farmer boy, and even Mrs. Erlich seemed to think the farm the best place for him. Probably it was;

but all the same he didn't find this kind of life worth the trouble of getting up every morning. He could not

see the use of working for money, when money brought nothing one wanted. Mrs. Erlich said it brought

security. Sometimes he thought this security was what was the matter with everybody; that only perfect safety

was required to kill all the best qualities in people and develop the mean ones.

But if you went to bed defeated every night, and dreaded to wake in the morning, then clearly it was too good

a life for you. To be assured, at his age, of three meals a day and plenty of sleep, was like being assured of a

decent burial. Safety, security; if you followed that reasoning out, then the unborn, those who would never be

Claude knew, and everybody else knew, seemingly, that there was something wrong with him. He had been

unable to conceal his discontent. Mr. Wheeler was afraid he was one of those visionary fellows who make

unnecessary difficulties for themselves and other people. Mrs. Wheeler thought the trouble with her son was

that he had not yet found his Saviour. Bayliss was convinced that his brother was a moral rebel, that behind

his reticence and his guarded manner he concealed the most dangerous opinions. The neighbours liked

Claude, but they laughed at him, and said it was a good thing his father was well fixed. Claude was aware

that his energy, instead of accomplishing something, was spent in resisting unalterable conditions, and in

unavailing efforts to subdue his own nature. When he thought he had at last got himself in hand, a moment

would undo the work of days; in a flash he would be transformed from a wooden post into a living boy. He

would spring to his feet, turn over quickly in bed, or stop short in his walk, because the old belief flashed up

in him with an intense kind of hope, an intense kind of pain, the conviction that there was something

The weather, after the big storm, behaved capriciously. There was a partial thaw which threatened to flood

everything,then a hard freeze. The whole country glittered with an icy crust, and people went about on a

platform of frozen snow, quite above the level of ordinary life. Claude got out Mr. Wheeler's old double

sleigh from the mass of heterogeneous objects that had for years lain on top of it, and brought the rusty

sleighbells up to the house for Mahailey to scour with brick dust. Now that they had automobiles, most of the

farmers had let their old sleighs go to pieces. But the Wheelers always kept everything.

Claude told his mother he meant to take Enid Royce for a sleighride. Enid was the daughter of Jason Royce,

the grain merchant, one of the early settlers, who for many years had run the only grist mill in Frankfort

county. She and Claude were old playmates; he made a formal call at the millhouse, as it was called, every

summer during his vacation, and often dropped in to see Mr. Royce at his town office.

Immediately after supper, Claude put the two wiry little blacks, Pompey and Satan, to the sleigh. The moon

had been up since long before the sun went down, had been hanging pale in the sky most of the afternoon,

and now it flooded the snowterraced land with silver. It was one of those sparkling winter nights when a boy

feels that though the world is very big, he himself is bigger; that under the whole crystalline blue sky there is

no one quite so warm and sentient as himself, and that all this magnificence is for him. The sleighbells rang

out with a kind of musical lightheartedness, as if they were glad to sing again, after the many winters they

The mill road, that led off the highway and down to the river, had pleasant associations for Claude. When he

was a youngster, every time his father went to mill, he begged to go along. He liked the mill and the miller

and the miller's little girl. He had never liked the miller's house, however, and he was afraid of Enid's mother.

Even now, as he tied his horses to the long hitchbar down by the engine room, he resolved that he would not

be persuaded to enter that formal parlour, full of newlooking, expensive furniture, where his energy always

deserted him and he could never think of anything to talk about. If he moved, his shoes squeaked in the

silence, and Mrs. Royce sat and blinked her sharp little eyes at him, and the longer he stayed, the harder it

"No, I want you to go riding. I've got the old sleigh out. Come on, it's a fine night!"

"I thought I heard bells. Won't you come in and see Mother while I get my things on?"

Claude said he must stay with his horses, and ran back to the hitchbar. Enid didn't keep him waiting long;

she wasn't that kind. She came swiftly down the path and through the front gate in the Maine seal motorcoat

"Now, which way?" Claude asked as the horses sprang forward and the bells began to jingle.

"Almost any way. What a beautiful night! And I love your bells, Claude. I haven't heard sleighbells since you

used to bring me and Gladys home from school in stormy weather. Why don't we stop for her tonight? She

has furs now, you know!" Here Enid laughed. "All the old ladies are so terribly puzzled about them; they

can't find out whether your brother really gave them to her for Christmas or not. If they were sure she bought

Claude cracked his whip over his eager little blacks. "Doesn't it make you tired, the way they are always

"It would, if she minded. But she's just as serene! They must have something to fuss about, and of course

poor Mrs. Farmer's back taxes are piling up. I certainly suspect Bayliss of the furs."

Claude did not feel as eager to stop for Gladys as he had been a few moments before. They were approaching

the town now, and lighted windows shone softly across the blue whiteness of the snow. Even in progressive

Frankfort, the street lights were turned off on a night so glorious as this. Mrs. Farmer and her daughter had a

little white cottage down in the south part of the town, where only people of modest means lived. "We must

stop to see Gladys' mother, if only for a minute," Enid said as they drew up before the fence. "She is so fond

of company." Claude tied his team to a tree, and they went up to the narrow, sloping porch, hung with vines

Mrs. Farmer met them; a large, rosy woman of fifty, with a pleasant Kentucky voice. She took Enid's arm

affectionately, and Claude followed them into the long, low sittingroom, which had an uneven floor and a

lamp at either end, and was scantily furnished in rickety mahogany. There, close beside the hardcoal burner,

sat Bayliss Wheeler. He did not rise when they entered, but said, "Hello, folks," in a rather sheepish voice. On

a little table, beside Mrs. Farmer's workbasket, was the box of candy he had lately taken out of his overcoat

pocket, still tied up with its gold cord. A tall lamp stood beside the piano, where Gladys had evidently been

practising. Claude wondered whether Bayliss actually pretended to an interest in music! At this moment

Gladys was in the kitchen, Mrs. Farmer explained, looking for her mother's glasses, mislaid when she was

"Are you still getting new recipes, Mrs. Farmer?" Enid asked her. "I thought you could make every dish in

"Oh, not quite!" Mrs. Farmer laughed modestly and showed that she liked compliments. "Do sit down,

Claude," she besought of the stiff image by the door. "Daughter will be here directly."

"Why, I didn't know you had company, Mother," she said, coming in to greet them.

This meant, Claude supposed, that Bayliss was not company. He scarcely glanced at Gladys as he took the

One of Gladys' grandfathers had come from Antwerp, and she had the settled composure, the full red lips,

brown eyes, and dimpled white hands which occur so often in Flemish portraits of young women. Some

people thought her a trifle heavy, too mature and positive to be called pretty, even though they admired her

rich, tuliplike complexion. Gladys never seemed aware that her looks and her poverty and her extravagance

were the subject of perpetual argument, but went to and from school every day with the air of one whose

position is assured. Her musicianship gave her a kind of authority in Frankfort.

Enid explained the purpose of their call. "Claude has got out his old sleigh, and we've come to take you for a

Bayliss said he guessed he would, though Claude knew there was nothing he hated so much as being out in

the cold. Gladys ran upstairs to put on a warm dress, and Enid accompanied her, leaving Mrs. Farmer to make

"Bayliss was just telling us how you lost your hogs in the storm, Claude. What a pity!" she said

"I suppose there was really no way to save them," Mrs. Farmer went on in her polite way; her voice was low

and round, like her daughter's, different from the high, tight Western voice. "So I hope you don't let yourself

"No, I don't worry about anything as dead as those hogs were. What's the use?" Claude asked boldly.

"That's right," murmured Mrs. Farmer, rocking a little in her chair. "Such things will happen sometimes, and

we ought not to take them too hard. It isn't as if a person had been hurt, is it?"

Claude shook himself and tried to respond to her cordiality, and to the shabby comfort of her long parlour, so

evidently doing its best to be attractive to her friends. There weren't four steady legs on any of the stuffed

chairs or little folding tables she had brought up from the South, and the heavy gold moulding was half

broken away from the oil portrait of her father, the judge. But she carried her poverty lightly, as Southern

people did after the Civil War, and she didn't fret half so much about her back taxes as her neighbours did.

Claude tried to talk agreeably to her, but he was distracted by the sound of stifled laughter upstairs. Probably

Gladys and Enid were joking about Bayliss' being there. How shameless girls were, anyhow!

People came to their front windows to look out as the sleigh dashed jingling up and down the village streets.

When they left town, Bayliss suggested that they drive out past the Trevor place. The girls began to talk about

the two young New Englanders, Trevor and Brewster, who had lived there when Frankfort was still a tough

little frontier settlement. Every one was talking about them now, for a few days ago word had come that one

of the partners, Amos Brewster, had dropped dead in his law office in Hartford. It was thirty years since he

and his friend, Bruce Trevor, had tried to be great cattle men in Frankfort county, and had built the house on

the round hill east of the town, where they wasted a great deal of money very joyously. Claude's father

always declared that the amount they squandered in carousing was negligible compared to their losses in

commendable industrial endeavour. The country, Mr. Wheeler said, had never been the same since those boys

left it. He delighted to tell about the time when Trevor and Brewster went into sheep. They imported a

breeding ram from Scotland at a great expense, and when he arrived were so impatient to get the good of him

that they turned him in with the ewes as soon as he was out of his crate. Consequently all the lambs were born

at the wrong season; came at the beginning of March, in a blinding blizzard, and the mothers died from

exposure. The gallant Trevor took horse and spurred all over the county, from one little settlement to another,

The rich bottom land about the Trevor place had been rented out to a truck gardener for years now; the

comfortable house with its billiardroom annex a wonder for that part of the country in its dayremained

closed, its windows boarded up. It sat on the top of a round knoll, a fine cottonwood grove behind it. Tonight,

as Claude drove toward it, the hill with its tall straight trees looked like a big fur cap put down on the snow.

"Why hasn't some one bought that house long ago and fixed it up?" Enid remarked. "There is no building site

around here to compare with it. It looks like the place where the leading citizen of the town ought to live."

"I'm glad you like it, Enid," said Bayliss in a guarded voice. "I've always had a sneaking fancy for the place

myself. Those fellows back there never wanted to sell it. But now the estate's got to be settled up. I bought it

Enid turned round in her seat. "Why Bayliss, are you in earnest? Think of just buying the Trevor place

offhand, as if it were any ordinary piece of real estate! Will you make over the house, and live there some

"I don't know about living there. It's too far to walk to my business, and the road across this bottom gets

"But it's not far, less than a mile. If I once owned that spot, I'd surely never let anybody else live there. Even

Carrie remembers it. She often asks in her letters whether any one has bought the Trevor place yet."

"Well," Bayliss admitted, "I didn't buy it for an investment, exactly. I paid all it was worth."

Enid turned to Gladys, who was apparently not listening. "You'd be the one who could plan a mansion for

"Yes, people who have no houses of their own often seem to have ideas about building," said Gladys quietly.

"But I like the Trevor place as it is. I hate to think that one of them is dead. People say they did have such

Bayliss grunted. "Call it good times if you like. The kids were still grubbing whiskey bottles out of the cellar

when I first came to town. Of course, if I decide to live there, I'll pull down that old trap and put up

Enid tried to draw the driver into the conversation. "There seems to be a difference of opinion here, Claude."

"Oh," said Gladys carelessly, "it's Bayliss' property, or soon will be. He will build what he likes. I've always

"Yes. As long as no one bought it and spoiled it, it was mine as much as it was anybody's."

"Claude," said Enid banteringly, "now both your brothers have houses. Where are you going to have yours?"

"I don't know that I'll ever have one. I think I'll run about the world a little before I draw my plans," he

"Take me with you, Claude!" said Gladys in a tone of sudden weariness. From that spiritless murmur Enid

Grimness had settled down over the sleighing party. Even Enid, who was not highly sensitive to unuttered

feelings, saw that there was an uncomfortable constraint. A sharp wind had come up. Bayliss twice suggested

turning back, but his brother answered, "Pretty soon," and drove on. He meant that Bayliss should have

enough of it. Not until Enid whispered reproachfully, "I really think you ought to turn; we're all getting cold,"

did he realize that he had made his sleighing party into a punishment! There was certainly nothing to punish

Enid for; she had done her best, and had tried to make his own bad manners less conspicuous. He muttered a

blundering apology to her when he lifted her from the sleigh at the mill house. On his long drive home he had

He was so angry with Gladys that he hadn't been able to bid her goodnight. Everything she said on the ride

had nettled him. If she meant to marry Bayliss, then she ought to throw off this affectation of freedom and

independence. If she did not mean to, why did she accept favours from him and let him get into the habit of

walking into her house and putting his box of candy on the table, as all Frankfort fellows did when they were

courting? Certainly she couldn't make herself believe that she liked his society!

When they were classmates at the Frankfort High School, Gladys was Claude's aesthetic proxy. It wasn't the

proper thing for a boy to be too clean, or too careful about his dress and manners. But if he selected a girl

who was irreproachable in these respects, got his Latin and did his laboratory work with her, then all her

personal attractions redounded to his credit. Gladys had seemed to appreciate the honour Claude did her, and

it was not all on her own account that she wore such beautifully ironed muslin dresses when they went on

Driving home after that miserable sleighride, Claude told himself that in so far as Gladys was concerned he

could make up his mind to the fact that he had been "stung" all along. He had believed in her fine feelings;

believed implicitly. Now he knew she had none so fine that she couldn't pocket them when there was enough

to be gained by it. Even while he said these things over and over, his old conception of Gladys, down at the

bottom of his mind, remained persistently unchanged. But that only made his state of feeling the more

painful. He was deeply hurt,and for some reason, youth, when it is hurt, likes to feel itself betrayed.

0ne afternoon that spring Claude was sitting on the long flight of granite steps that leads up to the State

House in Denver. He had been looking at the collection of Cliff Dweller remains in the Capitol, and when he

came out into the sunlight the faint smell of freshcut grass struck his nostrils and persuaded him to linger.

The gardeners were giving the grounds their first light mowing. All the lawns on the hill were bright with

daffodils and hyacinths. A sweet, warm wind blew over the grass, drying the waterdrops. There had been

showers in the afternoon, and the sky was still a tender, rainy blue, where it showed through the masses of

Claude had been away from home for nearly a month. His father had sent him out to see Ralph and the new

ranch, and from there he went on to Colorado Springs and Trinidad. He had enjoyed travelling, but now that

he was back in Denver he had that feeling of loneliness which often overtakes country boys in a city; the

feeling of being unrelated to anything, of not mattering to anybody. He had wandered about Colorado Springs

wishing he knew some of the people who were going in and out of the houses; wishing that he could talk to

some of those pretty girls he saw driving their own cars about the streets, if only to say a few words. One

morning when he was walking out in the hills a girl passed him, then slowed her car to ask if she could give

him a lift. Claude would have said that she was just the sort who would never stop to pick him up, yet she

did, and she talked to him pleasantly all the way back to town. It was only twenty minutes or so, but it was

worth everything else that happened on his trip. When she asked him where she should put him down, he said

at the Antlers, and blushed so furiously that she must have known at once he wasn't staying there.

He wondered this afternoon how many discouraged young men had sat here on the State House steps and

watched the sun go down behind the mountains. Every one was always saying it was a fine thing to be young;

but it was a painful thing, too. He didn't believe older people were ever so wretched. Over there, in the golden

light, the mass of mountains was splitting up into four distinct ranges, and as the sun dropped lower the peaks

emerged in perspective, one behind the other. It was a lonely splendour that only made the ache in his breast

the stronger. What was the matter with him, he asked himself entreatingly. He must answer that question

The statue of Kit Carson on horseback, down in the Square, pointed Westward; but there was no West, in that

sense, any more. There was still South America; perhaps he could find something below the Isthmus. Here

the sky was like a lid shut down over the world; his mother could see saints and martyrs behind it.

Well, in time he would get over all this, he supposed. Even his father had been restless as a young man, and

had run away into a new country. It was a storm that died down at last,but what a pity not to do anything

with it! A waste of powerfor it was a kind of power; he sprang to his feet and stood frowning against the

ruddy light, so deep in his struggling thoughts that he did not notice a man, mounting from the lower terraces,

The stranger scrutinized Claude with interest. He saw a young man standing bareheaded on the long flight of

steps, his fists clenched in an attitude of arrested action,his sandy hair, his tanned face, his tense figure

coppercoloured in the oblique rays. Claude would have been astonished if he could have known how he

The next morning Claude stepped off the train at Frankfort and had his breakfast at the station before the

town was awake. His family were not expecting him, so he thought he would walk home and stop at the mill

He left town by the low road that wound along the creek. The willows were all out in new yellow leaves, and

the sticky cottonwood buds were on the point of bursting. Birds were calling everywhere, and now and then,

All over the dusty, tancoloured wheatfields there was a tender mist of green,millions of little fingers

reaching up and waving lightly in the sun. To the north and south Claude could see the cornplanters, moving

in straight lines over the brown acres where the earth had been harrowed so fine that it blew off in clouds of

dust to the roadside. When a gust of wind rose, gay little twisters came across the open fields, corkscrews of

powdered earth that whirled through the air and suddenly fell again. It seemed as if there were a lark on every

fence post, singing for everything that was dumb; for the great ploughed lands, and the heavy horses in the

Along the roadsides, from under the dead weeds and wisps of dried bluestem, the dandelions thrust up their

clean, bright faces. If Claude happened to step on one, the acrid smell made him think of Mahailey, who had

probably been out this very morning, gouging the sod with her broken butcher knife and stuffing dandelion

greens into her apron. She always went for greens with an air of secrecy, very early, and sneaked along the

roadsides stooping close to the ground, as if she might be detected and driven away, or as if the dandelions

Claude was thinking, as he walked, of how he used to like to come to mill with his father. The whole process

of milling was mysterious to him then; and the mill house and the miller's wife were mysterious; even Enid

was, a littleuntil he got her down in the bright sun among the cattails. They used to play in the bins of

clean wheat, watch the flour coming out of the hopper and get themselves covered with white dust.

Best of all he liked going in where the waterwheel hung dripping in its dark cave, and quivering streaks of

sunlight came in through the cracks to play on the green slime and the spotted jewelweed growing in the

shale. The mill was a place of sharp contrasts; bright sun and deep shade, roaring sound and heavy, dripping

silence. He remembered how astonished he was one day, when he found Mr. Royce in gloves and goggles,

cleaning the millstones, and discovered what harmless looking things they were. The miller picked away at

them with a sharp hammer until the sparks flew, and Claude still had on his hand a blue spot where a chip of

Jason Royce must have kept his mill going out of sentiment, for there was not much money in it now. But

milling had been his first business, and he had not found many things in life to be sentimental about.

Sometimes one still came upon him in dusty miller's clothes, giving his man a day off. He had long ago

ceased to depend on the risings and fallings of Lovely Creek for his power, and had put in a gasoline engine.

The old dam now lay "like a holler tooth," as one of his men said, grown up with weeds and willowbrush.

Mr. Royce's family affairs had never gone as well as his business. He had not been blessed with a son, and

out of five daughters he had succeeded in bringing up only two. People thought the mill house damp and

unwholesome. Until he built a tenant's cottage and got a married man to take charge of the mill, Mr. Royce

was never able to keep his millers long. They complained of the gloom of the house, and said they could not

get enough to eat. Mrs. Royce went every summer to a vegetarian sanatorium in Michigan, where she learned

to live on nuts and toasted cereals. She gave her family nourishment, to be sure, but there was never during

the day a meal that a man could look forward to with pleasure, or sit down to with satisfaction. Mr. Royce

usually dined at the hotel in town. Nevertheless, his wife was distinguished for certain brilliant culinary

accomplishments. Her bread was faultless. When a church supper was toward, she was always called upon

for her wonderful mayonnaise dressing, or her angelfood cake,sure to be the lightest and spongiest in any

A deep preoccupation about her health made Mrs. Royce like a woman who has a hidden grief, or is preyed

upon by a consuming regret. It wrapped her in a kind of insensibility. She lived differently from other people,

and that fact made her distrustful and reserved. Only when she was at the sanatorium, under the care of her

idolized doctors, did she feel that she was understood and surrounded by sympathy.

Her distrust had communicated itself to her daughters and in countless little ways had coloured their feelings

about life. They grew up under the shadow of being "different," and formed no close friendships. Gladys

Farmer was the only Frankfort girl who had ever gone much to the mill house. Nobody was surprised when

Caroline Royce, the older daughter, went out to China to be a missionary, or that her mother let her go

without a protest. The Royce women were strange, anyhow, people said; with Carrie gone, they hoped Enid

would grow up to be more like other folk. She dressed well, came to town often in her car, and was always

Besides, in Frankfort, Enid was thought very pretty,in itself a humanizing attribute. She was slender, with

a small, wellshaped head, a smooth, pale skin, and large, dark, opaque eyes with heavy lashes. The long line

from the lobe of her ear to the tip of her chin gave her face a certain rigidity, but to the old ladies, who are the

best critics in such matters, this meant firmness and dignity. She moved quickly and gracefully, just brushing

things rather than touching them, so that there was a suggestion of flight about her slim figure, of gliding

away from her surroundings. When the Sunday School gave tableaux vivants, Enid was chosen for Nydia, the

blind girl of Pompeii, and for the martyr in "Christ or Diana." The pallor of her skin, the submissive

inclination of her forehead, and her dark, unchanging eyes, made one think of something "early Christian."

On this May morning when Claude Wheeler came striding up the mill road, Enid was in the yard, standing by

a trellis for vines built near the fence, out from under the heavy shade of the trees. She was raking the earth

that had been spaded up the day before, and making furrows in which to drop seeds. From the turn of the

road, by the knotty old willows, Claude saw her pink starched dress and little white sunbonnet. He hurried

Enid, who was bending over at that moment, rose quickly, but without a start. "Why, Claude! I thought you

were out West somewhere. This is a surprise!" She brushed the earth from her hands and gave him her limp

white fingers. Her arms, bare below the elbow, were thin, and looked cold, as if she had put on a summer

"You always have the finest ones in the country. When I see a bunch of yours at church or anywhere, I

"Yes, I'm quite successful with my sweet peas," she admitted. "The ground is rich down here, and they get

"It isn't only your sweet peas. Nobody else has such lilacs or rambler roses, and I expect you have the only

"Mother planted that a long while ago, when she first moved here. She is very partial to wistaria. I'm afraid

"Oh, that would be a shame! Take good care of it. You must put in a lot of time looking after these things,

Enid leaned against the fence and pushed back her little bonnet. "Perhaps I take more interest in flowers than

He coloured. "I? Good gracious, I don't have many! I'm an awfully discontented sort of fellow. I didn't care

about going to school until I had to stop, and then I was sore because I couldn't go back. I guess I've been

She looked at him with quiet astonishment. "I don't see why you should be discontented; you're so free."

"Not to do what I want to. The only thing I really want to do is to go out to China and help Carrie in her

work. Mother thinks I'm not strong enough. But Carrie was never very strong here. She is better in China, and

Claude felt concern. He had not seen Enid since the sleighride, when she had been gayer than usual. Now she

seemed sunk in lassitude. "You must get over such notions, Enid. You don't want to go wandering off alone

like that. It makes people queer. Isn't there plenty of missionary work to be done right here?"

She sighed. "That's what everybody says. But we all of us have a chance, if we'll take it. Out there they

haven't. It's terrible to think of all those millions that live and die in darkness."

Claude glanced up at the sombre mill house, hidden in cedars,then off at the bright, dusty fields. He felt as

if he were a little to blame for Enid's melancholy. He hadn't been very neighbourly this last year. "People can

live in darkness here, too, unless they fight it. Look at me. I told you I've been moping all winter. We all feel

friendly enough, but we go plodding on and never get together. You and I are old friends, and yet we hardly

ever see each other. Mother says you've been promising for two years to run up and have a visit with her.

"Then I will. I've always been fond of your mother." She paused a moment, absently twisting the strings of

her bonnet, then twitched it from her head with a quick movement and looked at him squarely in the bright

"Everybody knows Ernest Havel is, and people say you and he read that kind of books together."

"Yes, it has. I couldn't feel the same confidence in you. I've worried about it a good deal."

"Oh, yes, you are! If worrying would do any good" she shook her head at him reproachfully.

Claude took hold of the fence pickets between them with both hands. "It will do good! Didn't I tell you there

was missionary work to be done right here? Is that why you've been so standoffish with me the last few

When Claude left the mill and started homeward he felt that he had found something which would help him

through the summer. How fortunate he had been to come upon Enid alone and talk to her without

interruption,without once seeing Mrs. Royce's face, always masked in powder, peering at him from behind

a drawn blind. Mrs. Royce had always looked old, even long ago when she used to come into church with her

little girls,a tiny woman in tiny highheeled shoes and a big hat with nodding plumes, her black dress

covered with bugles and jet that glittered and rattled and made her seem hard on the outside, like an insect.

Yes, he must see to it that Enid went about and saw more of other people. She was too much with her mother,

and with her own thoughts. Flowers and foreign missionsher garden and the great kingdom of China; there

was something unusual and touching about her preoccupations. Something quite charming, too. Women

ought to be religious; faith was the natural fragrance of their minds. The more incredible the things they

believed, the more lovely was the act of belief. To him the story of "Paradise Lost" was as mythical as the

"Odyssey"; yet when his mother read it aloud to him, it was not only beautiful but true. A woman who didn't

have holy thoughts about mysterious things far away would be prosaic and commonplace, like a man.

During the next few weeks Claude often ran his car down to the mill house on a pleasant evening and coaxed

Enid to go into Frankfort with him and sit through a moving picture show, or to drive to a neighbouring town.

The advantage of this form of companionship was that it did not put too great a strain upon one's

conversational powers. Enid could be admirably silent, and she was never embarrassed by either silence or

speech. She was cool and sure of herself under any circumstances, and that was one reason why she drove a

One Sunday, when they met after church, she told Claude that she wanted to go to Hastings to do some

shopping, and they arranged that he should take her on Tuesday in his father's big car. The town was about

seventy miles to the northeast and, from Frankfort, it was an inconvenient trip by rail.

On Tuesday morning Claude reached the mill house just as the sun was rising over the damp fields. Enid was

on the front porch waiting for him, wearing a blanket coat over her spring suit. She ran down to the gate and

"Good morning, Claude. Nobody else is up. It's going to be a glorious day, isn't it?"

For the first hour they found the roads empty. All the fields were grey with dew, and the early sunlight

burned over everything with the transparent brightness of a fire that has just been kindled. As the machine

noiselessly wound off the miles, the sky grew deeper and bluer, and the flowers along the roadside opened in

the wet grass. There were men and horses abroad on every hill now. Soon they began to pass children on the

way to school, who stopped and waved their bright dinner pails at the two travellers. By ten o'clock they were

While Enid was shopping, Claude bought some white shoes and duck trousers. He felt more interest than

usual in his summer clothes. They met at the hotel for lunch, both very hungry and both satisfied with their

morning's work. Seated in the dining room, with Enid opposite him, Claude thought they did not look at all

like a country boy and girl come to town, but like experienced people touring in their car.

"Will you make a call with me after dinner?" she asked while they were waiting for their dessert.

"Certainly. Brother Weldon is in town. His meetings are over, and I was afraid he might be gone, but he is

staying on a few days with Mrs. Gleason. I brought some of Carrie's letters along for him to read."

Claude made a wry face. "He won't be delighted to see me. We never got on well at school. He's a regular

Enid studied him judicially. "I'm surprised to hear that; he's such a good speaker. You'd better come along.

An hour later the Reverend Arthur Weldon received the two young people in Mrs. Gleason's halfdarkened

parlour, where he seemed quite as much at home as that lady herself. The hostess, after chatting cordially

with the visitors for a few moments, excused herself to go to a P. E. O. meeting. Every one rose at her

departure, and Mr. Weldon approached Enid, took her hand, and stood looking at her with his head inclined

and his oblique smile. "This is an unexpected pleasure, to see you again, Miss Enid. And you, too, Claude,"

turning a little toward the latter. "You've come up from Frankfort together this beautiful day?" His tone

He directed most of his remarks to Enid and, as always, avoided looking at Claude except when he definitely

"You are farming this year, Claude? I presume that is a great satisfaction to your father. And Mrs. Wheeler is

Mr. Weldon certainly bore no malice, but he always pronounced Claude's name exactly like the word "Clod,"

which annoyed him. To be sure, Enid pronounced his name in the same way, but either Claude did not notice

this, or did not mind it from her. He sank into a deep, dark sofa, and sat with his driving cap on his knee

while Brother Weldon drew a chair up to the one open window of the dusky room and began to read Carrie

Royce's letters. Without being asked to do so, he read them aloud, and stopped to comment from time to time.

Claude observed with disappointment that Enid drank in all his platitudes just as Mrs. Wheeler did. He had

never looked at Weldon so long before. The light fell full on the young man's pearshaped head and his thin,

rippled hair. What in the world could sensible women like his mother and Enid Royce find to admire in this

purring, whitenecktied fellow? Enid's dark eyes rested upon him with an expression of profound respect.

She both looked at him and spoke to him with more feeling than she ever showed toward Claude.

"You see, Brother Weldon," she said earnestly, "I am not naturally much drawn to people. I find it hard to

take the proper interest in the church work at home. It seems as if I had always been holding myself in

reserve for the foreign field, by not making personal ties, I mean. If Gladys Farmer went to China,

everybody would miss her. She could never be replaced in the High School. She has the kind of magnetism

that draws people to her. But I have always been keeping myself free to do what Carrie is doing. There I

Claude saw it was not easy for Enid to talk like this. Her face looked troubled, and her dark eyebrows came

together in a sharp angle as she tried to tell the young preacher exactly what was going on in her mind. He

listened with his habitual, smiling attention, smoothing the paper of the folded letter pages and murmuring,

When she pressed him for advice, he said it was not always easy to know in what field one could be most

useful; perhaps this very restraint was giving her some spiritual discipline that she particularly needed. He

was careful not to commit himself, not to advise anything unconditionally, except prayer.

Enid clasped her hands; her perplexity made her features look sharper. "But it is when I pray that I feel this

call the strongest. It seems as if a finger were pointing me over there. Sometimes when I ask for guidance in

little things, I get none, and only get the feeling that my work lies far away, and that for it, strength would be

Mr. Weldon answered her in a tone of relief, as if something obscure had been made clear. "If that is the case,

Miss Enid, I think we need have no anxiety. If the call recurs to you in prayer, and it is your Saviour's will,

then we can be sure that the way and the means will be revealed. A passage from one of the Prophets occurs

to me at this moment; 'And behold a way shall be opened up before thy feet; walk thou in it.' We might say

that this promise was originally meant for Enid Royce! I believe God likes us to appropriate passages of His

word personally." This last remark was made playfully, as if it were a kind of Christian Endeavour jest. He

As Enid drew on her gloves she told him that it had been a great help to talk to him, and that he always

seemed to give her what she needed. Claude wondered what it was. He hadn't seen Weldon do anything but

retreat before her eager questions. He, an "atheist," could have given her stronger reinforcement.

Claude's car stood under the maple trees in front of Mrs. Gleason's house. Before they got into it, he called

"That looks to me like a storm. It might be a wise thing to stay at the hotel tonight."

He reminded her that it wouldn't be impossible to buy whatever she might need for the night.

"I don't like to stay in a strange place without my own things," she said decidedly.

"I'm afraid we'll be going straight into it. We may be in for something pretty rough,but it's as you say." He

"I think we'd better try it," she said with quiet determination. Claude had not yet learned that Enid always

opposed the unexpected, and could not bear to have her plans changed by people or circumstances.

For an hour he drove at his best speed, watching the clouds anxiously. The tableland, from horizon to

horizon, was glowing in sunlight, and the sky itself seemed only the more brilliant for the mass of purple

vapours rolling in the west, with bright edges, like newcut lead. He had made fifty odd miles when the air

suddenly grew cold, and in ten minutes the whole shining sky was blotted out. He sprang to the ground and

began to jack up his wheels. As soon as a wheel left the earth, Enid adjusted the chain. Claude told her he had

never got the chains on so quickly before. He covered the packages in the back seat with an oilcloth and

The rain swept over them in waves, seemed to rise from the sod as well as to fall from the clouds. They made

another five miles, ploughing through puddles and sliding over liquefied roads. Suddenly the heavy car,

chains and all, bounded up a twofoot bank, shot over the sod a dozen yards before the brake caught it, then

Claude drew a long breath. "If that had happened on a culvert, we'd be in the ditch with the car on top of us. I

simply can't control the thing. The whole top soil is loose, and there's nothing to hold to. That's Tommy

"But that would be worse than the hotel," Enid objected. "They are not very clean people, and there are a lot

"Better be crowded than dead," he murmured. "From here on, it would be a matter of luck. We might land

"We are only about ten miles from your place. I can stay with your mother tonight."

"It's too dangerous, Enid. I don't like the responsibility. Your father would blame me for taking such a

"I know, it's on my account you're nervous." Enid spoke reasonably enough. "Do you mind letting me drive

for awhile? There are only three bad hills left, and I think I can slide down them sideways; I've often tried it."

Claude got out and let her slip into his seat, but after she took the wheel he put his hand on her arm. "Don't do

He was chafed by her stubbornness, but he had to admire her resourcefulness in handling the car. At the

bottom of one of the worst hills was a new cement culvert, overlaid with liquid mud, where there was nothing

for the chains to grip. The car slid to the edge of the culvert and stopped on the very brink. While they were

ploughing up the other side of the hill, Enid remarked; "It's a good thing your starter works well; a little jar

They pulled up at the Wheeler farm just before dark, and Mrs. Wheeler came running out to meet them with a

"You poor drowned children!" she cried, taking Enid in her arms. "How did you ever get home? I so hoped

"It was Enid who got us home," Claude told her. "She's a dreadfully foolhardy girl, and somebody ought to

Enid laughed as she brushed a wet lock back from her forehead. "You were right, of course; the sensible

Later in the evening Claude was glad they hadn't. It was pleasant to be at home and to see Enid at the supper

table, sitting on his father's right and wearing one of his mother's new grey housedresses. They would have

had a dismal time at the Rices', with no beds to sleep in except such as were already occupied by Rice

children. Enid had never slept in his mother's guest room before, and it pleased him to think how comfortable

At an early hour Mrs. Wheeler took a candle to light her guest to bed; Enid passed near Claude's chair as she

"What made you so pigheaded? Did you want to frighten me? or to show me how well you could drive?"

Claude settled back in his chair and shaded his eyes. She did feel that this was home, then. She had not been

afraid of his father's jokes, or disconcerted by Mahailey's knowing grin. Her ease in the household gave him

unaccountable pleasure. He picked up a book, but did not read. It was lying open on his knee when his

"Move quietly when you go upstairs, Claude. She is so tired that she may be asleep already."

Ernest Havel was cultivating his bright, glistening young cornfield one summer morning, whistling to himself

an old German song which was somehow connected with a picture that rose in his memory. It was a picture

He saw a halfcircle of green hills, with snow still lingering in the clefts of the higher ridges; behind the hills

rose a wall of sharp mountains, covered with dark pine forests. In the meadows at the foot of that sweep of

hills there was a winding creek, with polled willows in their first yellowgreen, and brown fields. He himself

was a little boy, playing by the creek and watching his father and mother plough with two great oxen, that

had rope traces fastened to their heads and their long horns. His mother walked barefoot beside the oxen and

led them; his father walked behind, guiding the plough. His father always looked down. His mother's face

was almost as brown and furrowed as the fields, and her eyes were pale blue, like the skies of early spring.

The two would go up and down thus all morning without speaking, except to the oxen. Ernest was the last of

a long family, and as he played by the creek he used to wonder why his parents looked so old.

Leonard Dawson drove his car up to the fence and shouted, waking Ernest from his revery. He told his team

"Hello, Ernest," Leonard called. "Have you heard Claude Wheeler got hurt day before yesterday?"

"Oh, it's nothing very bad, I guess, but he got his face scratched up in the wire quite a little. It was the

queerest thing I ever saw. He was out with the team of mules and a heavy plough, working the road in that

deep cut between their place and mine. The gasoline motortruck came along, making more noise than usual,

maybe. But those mules know a motor truck, and what they did was pure cussedness. They begun to rear and

plunge in that deep cut. I was working my corn over in the field and shouted to the gasoline man to stop, but

he didn't hear me. Claude jumped for the critters' heads and got 'em by the bits, but by that time he was all

tangled up in the lines. Those damned mules lifted him off his feet and started to run. Down the draw and up

the bank and across the fields they went, with that big ploughblade jumping three or four feet in the air

every clip. I was sure it would cut one of the mules open, or go clean through Claude. It would have got him,

too, if he hadn't kept his hold on the bits. They carried him right along, swinging in the air, and finally ran

"No, not very, but yesterday morning he was out cultivating corn, all stuck up with court plaster. I knew that

was a fool thing to do; a wire cut's nasty if you get overheated out in the dust. But you can't tell a Wheeler

anything. Now they say his face has swelled and is hurting him terrible, and he's gone to town to see the

doctor. You'd better go over there tonight, and see if you can make him take care of himself."

Leonard drove on, and Ernest went back to his team. "It's queer about that boy," he was thinking. "He's big

and strong, and he's got an education and all that fine land, but he don't seem to fit in right." Sometimes

Ernest thought his friend was unlucky. When that idea occurred to him, he sighed and shook it off. For Ernest

believed there was no help for that; it was something rationalism did not explain.

The next afternoon Enid Royce's coupe drove up to the Wheeler farmyard. Mrs. Wheeler saw Enid get out of

her car and came down the hill to meet her, breathless and distressed. "Oh, Enid! You've heard of Claude's

accident? He wouldn't take care of himself, and now he's got erysipelas. He's in such pain, poor boy!"

Enid took her arm, and they started up the hill toward the house. "Can I see Claude, Mrs. Wheeler? I want to

Mrs. Wheeler hesitated. "I don't know if he will let you come in, dear. I had hard work persuading him to see

Ernest for a few moments last night. He seems so lowspirited, and he's sensitive about the way he's

"No, just let me go up with you, please. If I walk in with you, he won't have time to fret about it. I won't stay

Mrs. Wheeler was alarmed at this suggestion, but Enid ignored her uncertainty. They went up to the third

A muffled, reluctant voice answered. "No. They say this is catching, Enid. And anyhow, I'd rather you didn't

Without waiting she pushed open the door. The dark blinds were down, and the room was full of a strong,

bitter odor. Claude lay flat in bed, his head and face so smothered in surgical cotton that only his eyes and the

tip of his nose were visible. The brown paste with which his features were smeared oozed out at the edges of

the gauze and made his dressings look untidy. Enid took in these details at a glance.

"Does the light hurt your eyes? Let me put up one of the blinds for a moment, because I want you to see these

Claude blinked at the bunch of bright colours she held out before him. She put them up to his face and asked

him if he could smell them through his medicines. In a moment he ceased to feel embarrassed. His mother

brought a glass bowl, and Enid arranged the flowers on the little table beside him.

"Not yet. Sit down for a minute and talk to me. I can't say much because my face is stiff."

"I should think it would be! I met Leonard Dawson on the road yesterday, and he told me how you worked in

"Do. It might make me feel better." He took her hand and kept her beside him a moment. "Are those the

"Oh, that a handful of seeds can make anything so pretty in a few weeks, and it takes a man so long to do

Enid sat prim and straight on a chair at the foot of his bed. Her flowered organdie dress was very much like

the bouquet she had brought, and her floppy straw hat had a big lilac bow. She began to tell Claude about her

father's several attacks of erysipelas. He listened but absently. He would never have believed that Enid, with

her severe notions of decorum, would come into his room and sit with him like this. He noticed that his

mother was quite as much astonished as he. She hovered about the visitor for a few moments, and then,

seeing that Enid was quite at her ease, went downstairs to her work. Claude wished that Enid would not talk

at all, but would sit there and let him look at her. The sunshine she had let into the room, and her tranquil,

fragrant presence, soothed him. Presently he realized that she was asking him something.

"What is it, Enid? The medicine they give me makes me stupid. I don't catch things."

"Father says I play passably well. When you are better you must let me bring up my ivory chessmen that

Carrie sent me from China. They are beautifully carved. And now it's time for me to go."

She rose and patted his hand, telling him he must not be foolish about seeing people. "I didn't know you were

so vain. Bandages are as becoming to you as they are to anybody. Shall I pull the dark blind again for you?"

Something in the way Enid said this made him wince a little. He felt his burning face grow a shade warmer.

His mother came to give him his medicine. She stood beside him while he swallowed it. "Enid Royce is a real

sensible girl" she said as she took the glass. Her upward inflection expressed not conviction but

Enid came every afternoon, and Claude looked forward to her visits restlessly; they were the only pleasant

things that happened to him, and made him forget the humiliation of his poisoned and disfigured face. He was

disgusting to himself; when he touched the welts on his forehead and under his hair, he felt unclean and

abject. At night, when his fever ran high, and the pain began to tighten in his head and neck, it wrought him

to a distressing pitch of excitement. He fought with it as one bulldog fights with another. His mind prowled

about among dark legends of torture,everything he had ever read about the Inquisition, the rack and the

When Enid entered his room, cool and fresh in her pretty summer clothes, his mind leaped to meet her. He

could not talk much, but he lay looking at her and breathing in a sweet contentment. After awhile he was well

One afternoon they were by the west window in the sittingroom with the chess board between them, and

"It must be dull for you, playing with me," he murmured, brushing the beads of sweat from his forehead. His

face was clean now, so white that even his freckles had disappeared, and his hands were the soft, languid

"You will play better when you are stronger and can fix your mind on it," Enid assured him. She was puzzled

because Claude, who had a good head for some things, had none at all for chess, and it was clear that he

"Yes," he sighed, dropping back into his chair, "my wits do wander. Look at my wheatfield, over there on the

skyline. Isn't it lovely? And now I won't be able to harvest it. Sometimes I wonder whether I'll ever finish

Enid put the chessmen back into their box. "Now that you are better, you must stop feeling blue. Father says

Claude shook his head slowly, as it lay against the back of the chair. "No, it's not that. It's having so much

time to think that makes me blue. You see, Enid, I've never yet done anything that gave me any satisfaction. I

must be good for something. When I lie still and think, I wonder whether my life has been happening to me

or to somebody else. It doesn't seem to have much connection with me. I haven't made much of a start."

"But you are not twentytwo yet. You have plenty of time to start. Is that what you are thinking about all the

"I think about two things all the time. That is one of them." Mrs. Wheeler came in with Claude's four o'clock

When they were children, playing by the milldam, Claude had seen the future as a luminous vagueness in

which he and Enid would always do things together. Then there came a time when he wanted to do

everything with Ernest, when girls were disturbing and a bother, and he pushed all that into the distance,

Now he told himself he had always known Enid would come back; and she had come on that afternoon when

she entered his drugsmelling room and let in the sunlight. She would have done that for nobody but him.

She was not a girl who would depart lightly from conventions that she recognized as authoritative. He

remembered her as she used to march up to the platform for Children's Day exercises with the other little girls

of the infant class; in her stiff white dress, never a curl awry or a wrinkle in her stocking, keeping her little

comrades in order by the acquiescent gravity of her face, which seemed to say, "How pleasant it is to do thus

Old Mr. Smith was the minister in those days,a good man who had been much tossed about by a stormy

and temperamental wifeand his eyes used to rest yearningly upon little Enid Royce, seeing in her the

promise of "virtuous and comely Christian womanhood," to use one of his own phrases. Claude, in the boys'

class across the aisle, used to tease her and try to distract her, but he respected her seriousness.

When they played together she was fairminded, didn't whine if she got hurt, and never claimed a girl's

exemption from anything unpleasant. She was calm, even on the day when she fell into the milldam and he

fished her out; as soon as she stopped choking and coughing up muddy water, she wiped her face with her

little drenched petticoats, and sat shivering and saying over and over, "Oh, Claude, Claude!" Incidents like

When Claude's strength began to return to him, it came overwhelmingly. His blood seemed to grow strong

while his body was still weak, so that the inrush of vitality shook him. The desire to live again sang in his

veins while his frame was unsteady. Waves of youth swept over him and left him exhausted. When Enid was

with him these feelings were never so strong; her actual presence restored his equilibriumalmost. This fact

did not perplex him; he fondly attributed it to something beautiful in the girl's nature,a quality so lovely

During the first days of his recovery he did nothing but enjoy the creeping stir of life. Respiration was a soft

physical pleasure. In the nights, so long he could not sleep them through, it was delightful to lie upon a cloud

that floated lazily down the sky. In the depths of this lassitude the thought of Enid would start up like a sweet,

burning pain, and he would drift out into the darkness upon sensations he could neither prevent nor control.

So long as he could plough, pitch hay, or break his back in the wheatfield, he had been master; but now he

was overtaken by himself. Enid was meant for him and she had come for him; he would never let her go. She

should never know how much he longed for her. She would be slow to feel even a little of what he was

feeling; he knew that. It would take a long while. But he would be infinitely patient, infinitely tender of her. It

should be he who suffered, not she. Even in his dreams he never wakened her, but loved her while she was

still and unconscious like a statue. He would shed love upon her until she warmed and changed without

Sometimes when Enid sat unsuspecting beside him, a quick blush swept across his face and he felt guilty

toward her, meek and humble, as if he must beg her forgiveness for something. Often he was glad when she

went away and left him alone to think about her. Her presence brought him sanity, and for that he ought to be

grateful. When he was with her, he thought how she was to be the one who would put him right with the

world and make him fit into the life about him. He had troubled his mother and disappointed his father, His

marriage would be the first natural, dutiful, expected thing he had ever done. It would be the beginning of

usefulness and content; as his mother's oftrepeated Psalm said, it would restore his soul. Enid's willingness

to listen to him he could scarcely doubt. Her devotion to him during his illness was probably regarded by her

Claude's first trip to Frankfort was to get his hair cut. After leaving the barbershop he presented himself,

glistening with bayrum, at Jason Royce's office. Mr. Royce, in the act of closing his safe, turned and took the

"Hello, Claude, glad to see you around again! Sickness can't do much to a husky young farmer like you. With

old fellows, it's another story. I'm just starting off to have a look at my alfalfa, south of the river. Get in and

They went out to the open car that stood by the sidewalk, and when they were spinning along between fields

of ripening grain Claude broke the silence. "I expect you know what I want to see you about, Mr. Royce?"

The older man shook his head. He had been preoccupied and grim ever since they started.

"Well," Claude went on modestly, "it oughtn't to surprise you to hear that I've set my heart on Enid. I haven't

said anything to her yet, but if you're not against me, I'm going to try to persuade her to marry me."

"Marriage is a final sort of thing, Claude," said Mr. Royce. He sat slumping in his seat, watching the road

ahead of him with intense abstraction, looking more gloomy and grizzled than usual. "Enid is a vegetarian,

The other nodded slightly. "I know. At your age you think it doesn't. Such things do make a difference,

however." His lips closed over his halfdead cigar, and for some time he did not open them.

"Enid is a good girl," he said at last. "Strictly speaking, she has more brains than a girl needs. If Mrs. Royce

had another daughter at home, I'd take Enid into my office. She has good judgment. I don't know but she'd

run a business better than a house."' Having got this out, Mr. Royce relaxed his frown, took his cigar from his

Claude was watching him with surprise. "There's no question about Enid, Mr. Royce. I didn't come to ask you

about her," he exclaimed. "I came to ask if you'd be willing to have me for a soninlaw. I know, and you

know, that Enid could do a great deal better than to marry me. I surely haven't made much of a showing, so

"Here we are," announced Mr. Royce. "I'll leave the car under this elm, and we'll go up to the north end of the

They crawled under the wire fence and started across the rough ground through a field of purple blossoms.

Clouds of yellow butterflies darted up before them. They walked jerkily, breaking through the sunbaked

crust into the soft soil beneath. Mr. Royce lit a fresh cigar, and as he threw away the match let his hand drop

on the young man's shoulder. "I always envied your father. You took my fancy when you were a little shaver,

and I used to let you in to see the waterwheel, When I gave up water power and put in an engine, I said to

myself: 'There's just one fellow in the country will be sorry to see the old wheel go, and that's Claude

"I hope you don't think I'm too young to marry," Claude said as they tramped on.

"No, it's right and proper a young man should marry. I don't say anything against marriage," Mr. Royce

protested doggedly. "You may find some opposition in Enid's missionary motives. I don't know how she feels

about that now. I don't enquire. I'd be pleased to see her get rid of such notions. They don't do a woman any

"I want to help her get rid of them. If it's all right with you, I hope I can persuade Enid to marry me this fall."

Jason Royce turned his head quickly toward his companion, studied his artless, hopeful countenance for a

The alfalfa field sloped upward at one corner, lay like a bright greenandpurple handkerchief thrown down

on the hillside. At the uppermost angle grew a slender young cottonwood, with leaves as light and agitated as

the swarms of little butterflies that hovered above the clover. Mr. Royce made for this tree, took off his black

coat, rolled it up, and sat down on it in the flickering shade. His shirt showed big blotches of moisture, and

the sweat was rolling in clear drops along the creases in his brown neck. He sat with his hands clasped over

his knees, his heels braced in the soft soil, and looked blankly off across the field. He found himself

absolutely unable to touch upon the vast body of experience he wished to communicate to Claude. It lay in

his chest like a physical misery, and the desire to speak struggled there. But he had no words, no way to make

himself understood. He had no argument to present. What he wanted to do was to hold up life as he had found

it, like a picture, to his young friend; to warn him, without explanation, against certain heartbreaking

disappointments. It could not be done, he saw. The dead might as well try to speak to the living as the old to

the young. The only way that Claude could ever come to share his secret, was to live. His strong yellow teeth

closed tighter and tighter on the cigar, which had gone out like the first. He did not look at Claude, but while

he watched the wind plough soft, flowery roads in the field, the boy's face was clearly before him, with its

expression of reticent pride melting into the desire to please, and the slight stiffness of his shoulders, set in a

kind of stubborn loyalty. Claude lay on the sod beside him, rather tired after his walk in the sun, a little

After a long while Mr. Royce unclasped his broad, thickfingered miller's hands, and for a moment took out

the macerated cigar. "Well, Claude," he said with determined cheerfulness, "we'll always be better friends

than is common between father and soninlaw. You'll find out that pretty nearly everything you believe

about lifeabout marriage, especiallyis lies. I don't know why people prefer to live in that sort of a world,

After his interview with Mr. Royce, Claude drove directly to the mill house. As he came up the shady road,

he saw with disappointment the flash of two white dresses instead of one, moving about in the sunny flower

garden. The visitor was Gladys Farmer. This was her vacation time. She had walked out to the mill in the

cool of the morning to spend the day with Enid. Now they were starting off to gather watercresses, and had

stopped in the garden to smell the heliotrope. On this scorching afternoon the purple sprays gave out a

fragrance that hung over the flowerbed and brushed their cheeks like a warm breath. The girls looked up at

the same moment and recognized Claude. They waved to him and hurried down to the gate to congratulate

him on his recovery. He took their little tin pails and followed them around the old damhead and up a sandy

gorge, along a clear thread of water that trickled into Lovely Creek just above the mill. They came to the

gravelly hill where the stream took its source from a spring hollowed out under the exposed roots of two elm

trees. All about the spring, and in the sandy bed of the shallow creek, the cresses grew cool and green.

Gladys had strong feelings about places. She looked around her with satisfaction. "Of all the places where we

"You girls sit up there on the elm roots," Claude suggested. "Wherever you put your foot in this soft gravel,

"Stuff my pail as full as you can, then," Gladys called as they sat down. "I wonder why the Spanish dagger

grows so thick on this hill, Enid? These plants were old and tough when we were little. I love it here."

She leaned back upon the hot, glistening hillside. The sun came down in red rays through the elmtops, and

all the pebbles and bits of quartz glittered dazzlingly. Down in the stream bed the water, where it caught the

light, twinkled like tarnished gold. Claude's sandy head and stooping shoulders were mottled with sunshine as

they moved about over the green patches, and his duck trousers looked much whiter than they were. Gladys

was too poor to travel, but she had the good fortune to be able to see a great deal within a few miles of

Frankfort, and a warm imagination helped her to find life interesting. She did, as she confided to Enid, want

Presently Claude came up the bank with two shining, dripping pails. "Now may I sit down with you for a few

Moving to make room for him beside her, Enid noticed that his thin face was heavily beaded with

perspiration. His pocket handkerchief was wet and sandy, so she gave him her own, with a proprietary air.

"Why, Claude, you look quite tired! Have you been overdoing? Where were you before you came here?"

"Well, I'll scold him tonight. You stay here and rest. I am going to drive Gladys home."

Gladys protested, but at last consented that they should both drive her home in Claude's car. They lingered

awhile, however, listening to the soft, amiable bubbling of the spring; a wise, unobtrusive voice, murmuring

night and day, continually telling the truth to people who could not understand it.

When they went back to the house Enid stopped long enough to cut a bunch of heliotrope for Mrs.

Farmer,though with the sinking of the sun its rich perfume had already vanished. They left Gladys and her

flowers and cresses at the gate of the white cottage, now half hidden by gaudy trumpet vines.

Claude turned his car and went back along the dim, twilight road with Enid. "I usually like to see Gladys, but

when I found her with you this afternoon, I was terribly disappointed for a minute. I'd just been talking with

your father, and I wanted to come straight to you. Do you think you could marry me, Enid?"

Enid had taken off her hat. In the low evening light Claude studied her pale face under her brown hair. There

was something graceful and charming about the way she held her head, something that suggested both

submissiveness and great firmness. "I've had those faraway dreams, too, Enid; but now my thoughts don't

get any further than you. If you could care ever so little for me to start on, I'd be willing to risk the rest." She

sighed. "You know I care for you. I've never made any secret of it. But we're happy as we are, aren't we?"

"No, I'm not. I've got to have some life of my own, or I'll go to pieces. If you won't have me, I'll try South

The mill house was black except for a light in one upstairs window. Claude sprang out of his car and lifted

Enid gently to the ground. She let him kiss her soft cool mouth, and her long lashes. In the pale, dusty dusk,

lit only by a few white stars, and with the chill of the creek already in the air, she seemed to Claude like a

shivering little ghost come up from the rushes where the old milldam used to be. A terrible melancholy

clutched at the boy's heart. He hadn't thought it would be like this. He drove home feeling weak and broken.

Was there nothing in the world outside to answer to his own feelings, and was every turn to be fresh

disappointment? Why was life so mysteriously hard? This country itself was sad, he thought, looking about

him,and you could no more change that than you could change the story in an unhappy human face. He

wished to God he were sick again; the world was too rough a place to get about in.

There was one person in the world who felt sorry for Claude that night. Gladys Farmer sat at her bedroom

window for a long while, watching the stars and thinking about what she had seen plainly enough that

afternoon. She had liked Enid ever since they were little girls,and knew all there was to know about her.

Claude would become one of those dead people that moved about the streets of Frankfort; everything that

was Claude would perish, and the shell of him would come and go and eat and sleep for fifty years. Gladys

had taught the children of many such dead men. She had worked out a misty philosophy for herself, full of

strong convictions and confused figures. She believed that all things which might make the world

beautifullove and kindness, leisure and artwere shut up in prison, and that successful men like Bayliss

Wheeler held the keys. The generous ones, who would let these things out to make people happy, were

somehow weak, and could not break the bars. Even her own little life was squeezed into an unnatural shape

by the domination of people like Bayliss. She had not dared, for instance, to go to Ornaha that spring for the

three performances of the Chicago Opera Company. Such an extravagance would have aroused a corrective

spirit in all her friends, and in the schoolboard as well; they would probably have decided not to give her the

There were people, even in Frankfort, who had imagination and generous impulses, but they were all, she had

to admit, inefficientfailures. There was Miss Livingstone, the fiery, emotional old maid who couldn't tell

the truth; old Mr. Smith, a lawyer without clients, who read Shakespeare and Dryden all day long in his dusty

office; Bobbie Jones, the effeminate drug clerk, who wrote free verse and "movie" scenarios, and tended the

Claude was her one hope. Ever since they graduated from High School, all through the four years she had

been teaching, she had waited to see him emerge and prove himself. She wanted him to be more successful

than Bayliss AND STILL BE CLAUDE. She would have made any sacrifice to help him on. If a strong boy

like Claude, so well endowed and so fearless, must fail, simply because he had that finer strain in his

nature,then life was not worth the chagrin it held for a passionate heart like hers.

At last Gladys threw herself upon the bed. If he married Enid, that would be the end. He would go about

Claude was well enough to go into the fields before the harvest was over. The middle of July came, and the

farmers were still cutting grain. The yield of wheat and oats was so heavy that there were not machines

enough to thrash it within the usual time. Men had to await their turn, letting their grain stand in shock until a

belching black engine lumbered into the field. Rains would have been disastrous; but this was one of those

"good years" which farmers tell about, when everything goes well. At the time they needed rain, there was

Every morning the sun came up a red ball, quickly drank the dew, and started a quivering excitement in all

living things. In great harvest seasons like that one, the heat, the intense light. and the important work in hand

draw people together and make them friendly. Neighbours helped each other to cope with the burdensome

abundance of mannourishing grain; women and children and old men fell to and did what they could to save

and house it. Even the horses had a more varied and sociable existence than usual, going about from one farm

to another to help neighbour horses drag wagons and binders and headers. They nosed the colts of old friends,

ate out of strange mangers, and drank, or refused to drink, out of strange watertroughs. Decrepit horses that

lived on a pension, like the Wheelers' stifflegged Molly and Leonard Dawson's Billy with the heaveshis

asthmatic cough could be heard for a quarter of a milewere pressed into service now. It was wonderful,

too, how well these invalided beasts managed to keep up with the strong young mares and geldings; they bent

their willing heads and pulled as if the chafing of the collar on their necks was sweet to them.

The sun was like a great visiting presence that stimulated and took its due from all animal energy. When it

flung wide its cloak and stepped down over the edge of the fields at evening, it left behind it a spent and

exhausted world. Horses and men and women grew thin, seethed all day in their own sweat. After supper they

dropped over and slept anywhere at all, until the red dawn broke clear in the east again, like the fanfare of

For several weeks Claude did not have time to read the newspapers; they lay about the house in bundles,

unopened, for Nat Wheeler was in the field now, working like a giant. Almost every evening Claude ran

down to the mill to see Enid for a few minutes; he did not get out of his car, and she sat on the old stile, left

over from horseback days, while she chatted with him. She said frankly that she didn't like men who had

just come out of the harvest field, and Claude did not blame her. He didn't like himself very well after his

clothes began to dry on him. But the hour or two between supper and bed was the only time he had to see

anybody. He slept like the heroes of old; sank upon his bed as the thing he desired most on earth, and for a

blissful moment felt the sweetness of sleep before it overpowered him. In the morning, he seemed to hear the

shriek of his alarm clock for hours before he could come up from the deep places into which he had plunged.

All sorts of incongruous adventures happened to him between the first buzz of the alarm and the moment

when he was enough awake to put out his hand and stop it. He dreamed, for instance, that it was evening, and

he had gone to see Enid as usual. While she was coming down the path from the house, he discovered that he

had no clothes on at all! Then, with wonderful agility, he jumped over the picket fence into a clump of castor

beans, and stood in the dusk, trying to cover himself with the leaves, like Adam in the garden, talking

commonplaces to Enid through chattering teeth, afraid lest at any moment she might discover his plight.

Mrs. Wheeler and Mahailey always lost weight in thrashing time, just as the horses did; this year Nat

Wheeler had six hundred acres of winter wheat that would run close upon thirty bushels to the acre. Such a

harvest was as hard on the women as it was on the men. Leonard Dawson's wife, Susie, came over to help

Mrs. Wheeler, but she was expecting a baby in the fall, and the heat proved too much for her. Then one of the

Yoeder daughters came; but the methodical German girl was so distracted by Mahailey's queer ways that

Mrs. Wheeler said it was easier to do the work herself than to keep explaining Mahailey's psychology. Day

after day ten ravenous men sat down at the long dinner table in the kitchen. Mrs. Wheeler baked pies and

cakes and bread loaves as fast as the oven would hold them, and from morning till night the range was stoked

like the firebox of a locomotive. Mahailey wrung the necks of chickens until her wrist swelled up, as she

By the end of July the excitement quieted down. The extra leaves were taken out of the dining table, the

Wheeler horses had their barn to themselves again, and the reign of terror in the henhouse was over.

One evening Mr. Wheeler came down to supper with a bundle of newspapers under his arm. "Claude, I see

this war scare in Europe has hit the market. Wheat's taken a jump. They're paying eightyeight cents in

Chicago. We might as well get rid of a few hundred bushel before it drops again. We'd better begin hauling

tomorrow. You and I can make two trips a day over to Vicount, by changing teams,there's no grade to

Mrs. Wheeler, arrested in the act of pouring coffee, sat holding the coffeepot in the air, forgetting she had it.

"If this is only a newspaper scare, as we think, I don't see why it should affect the market," she murmured

mildly. "Surely those big bankers in New York and Boston have some way of knowing rumour from fact."

"Give me some coffee, please," said her husband testily. "I don't have to explain the market, I've only got to

"But unless there's some reason, why are we dragging our wheat over to Vicount? Do you suppose it's some

scheme the grain men are hiding under a war rumour? Have the financiers and the press ever deceived the

"I don't know a thing in the world about it, Evangeline, and I don't suppose. I telephoned the elevator at

Vicount an hour ago, and they said they'd pay me seventy cents, subject to change in the morning quotations.

Claude," with a twinkle in his eye, "you'd better not go to mill tonight. Turn in early. If we are on the road by

"All right, sir. I want to look at the papers after supper. I haven't read anything but the headlines since before

thrashing. Ernest was stirred up about the murder of that Grand Duke and said the Austrians would make

"There's seventy cents a bushel in it, anyway," said his father, reaching for a hot biscuit.

"If there's that much, I'm somehow afraid there will be more," said Mrs. Wheeler thoughtfully. She had

picked up the paper flybrush and sat waving it irregularly, as if she were trying to brush away a swarm of

"You might call up Ernest, and ask him what the Bohemian papers say about it," Mr. Wheeler suggested.

Claude went to the telephone, but was unable to get any answer from the Havels. They had probably gone to

a barn dance down in the Bohemian township. He event upstairs and sat down before an armchair full of

newspapers; he could make nothing reasonable out of the smeary telegrams in big type on the front page of

the Omaha World Herald. The German army was entering Luxembourg; he didn't know where Luxembourg

was, whether it was a city or a country; he seemed to have some vague idea that it was a palace! His mother

had gone up to "Mahailey's library," the attic, to hunt for a map of Europe,a thing for which Nebraska

farmers had never had much need. But that night, on many prairie homesteads, the women, American and

Claude was so sleepy that he did not wait for his mother's return. He stumbled upstairs and undressed in the

dark. The night was sultry, with thunder clouds in the sky and an unceasing play of sheetlightning all along

the western horizon. Mosquitoes had got into his room during the day, and after he threw himself upon the

bed they began sailing over him with their high, excruciating note. He turned from side to side and tried to

muffle his ears with the pillow. The disquieting sound became merged, in his sleepy brain, with the big type

on the front page of the paper; those black letters seemed to be flying about his head with a soft, high,

Late in the afternoon of the sixth of August, Claude and his empty wagon were bumping along the level road

over the flat country between Vicount and the Lovely Creek valley. He had made two trips to town that day.

Though he had kept his heaviest team for the hot afternoon pull, his horses were too tired to be urged off a

walk. Their necks were marbled with sweat stains, and their flanks were plastered with the white dust that

rose at every step. Their heads hung down, and their breathing was deep and slow. The wood of the

greenpainted wagon seat was blistering hot to the touch. Claude sat at one end of it, his head bared to catch

the faint stir of air that sometimes dried his neck and chin and saved him the trouble of pulling out a

handkerchief. On every side the wheat stubble stretched for miles and miles. Lonely straw stacks stood up

yellow in the sun and cast long shadows. Claude peered anxiously along the distant locust hedges which told

where the road ran. Ernest Havel had promised to meet him somewhere on the way home. He had not seen

At last he recognized the Havels' team along way off, and he stopped and waited for Ernest beside a thorny

hedge, looking thoughtfully about him. The sun was already low. It hung above the stubble, all milky and

rosy with the heat, like the image of a sun reflected in grey water. In the east the full moon had just risen, and

its thin silver surface was flushed with pink until it looked exactly like the setting sun. Except for the place

each occupied in the heavens, Claude could not have told which was which. They rested upon opposite rims

of the world, two bright shields, and regarded each other, as if they, too, had met by appointment.

Claude and Ernest sprang to the ground at the same instant and shook hands, feeling that they had not seen

The young man shook his head cautiously, but replied no further. He patted his horses and eased the collars

"I waited in town for the Hastings paper," Claude went on impatiently. "England declared war last night."

"The Germans," said Ernest, "are at Liege. I know where that is. I sailed from Antwerp when I came over

"Nothing." Ernest leaned against the wagon wheel and drawing his pipe from his pocket slowly filled it.

"I don't know. It's fine, but it will come to nothing in the end. Let me tell you something about the German

Pacing up and down beside the locust hedge, Ernest rehearsed the great argument; preparation, organization,

concentration, inexhaustible resources, inexhaustible men. While he talked the sun disappeared, the moon

contracted, solidified, and slowly climbed the pale sky. The fields were still glimmering with the bland

reflection left over from daylight, and the distance grew shadowy,not dark, but seemingly full of sleep.

"If I were at home," Ernest concluded, "I would be in the Austrian army this minute. I guess all my cousins

and nephews are fighting the Russians or the Belgians already. How would you like it yourself, to be

marched into a peaceful country like this, in the middle of harvest, and begin to destroy it?"

"Then your family would be persecuted. Your brothers, maybe even your father, would be made orderlies to

"I wouldn't bother about that. I'd let my male relatives decide for themselves how often they would be

Ernest shrugged his shoulders. "You Americans brag like little boys; you would and you wouldn't! I tell you,

nobody's will has anything to do with this. It is the harvest of all that has been planted. I never thought it

The boys lingered a little while, looking up at the soft radiance of the sky. There was not a cloud anywhere,

and the low glimmer in the fields had imperceptibly changed to full, pure moonlight. Presently the two

wagons began to creep along the white road, and on the backless seat of each the driver sat drooping forward,

lost in thought. When they reached the corner where Ernest turned south, they said goodnight without raising

their voices. Claude's horses went on as if they were walking in their sleep. They did not even sneeze at the

low cloud of dust beaten up by their heavy footfalls,the only sounds in the vast quiet of the night.

Why was Ernest so impatient with him, Claude wondered. He could not pretend to feel as Ernest did. He had

nothing behind him to shape his opinions or colour his feelings about what was going on in Europe; he could

only sense it day by day. He had always been taught that the German people were preeminent in the virtues

Americans most admire; a month ago he would have said they had all the ideals a decent American boy

would fight for. The invasion of Belgium was contradictory to the German character as he knew it in his

friends and neighbours. He still cherished the hope that there had been some great mistake; that this splendid

Mr. Wheeler came down the hill, bareheaded and coatless, as Claude drove into the barnyard. "I expect you're

Mr. Wheeler stood still a moment and scratched his head. "I guess you needn't get up early tomorrow. If this

is to be a sure enough war, wheat will go higher. I've thought it was a bluff until now. You take the papers up

Enid and Mrs. Royce had gone away to the Michigan sanatorium where they spent part of every summer, and

would not be back until October. Claude and his mother gave all their attention to the war despatches. Day

after day, through the first two weeks of August, the bewildering news trickled from the little towns out into

About the middle of the month came the story of the fall of the f orts at Liege, battered at for nine days and

finally reduced in a few hours by siege guns brought up from the rear,guns which evidently could destroy

any fortifications that ever had been, or ever could be constructed. Even to these quiet wheatgrowing

people, the siege guns before Liege were a menace; not to their safety or their goods, but to their comfortable,

established way of thinking. They introduced the greaterthanman force which afterward repeatedly

brought into this war the effect of unforeseeable natural disaster, like tidal waves, earthquakes, or the eruption

On the twentythird came the news of the fall of the forts at Namur; again giving warning that an

unprecedented power of destruction had broken loose in the world. A few days later the story of the wiping

out of the ancient and peaceful seat of learning at Louvain made it clear that this force was being directed

toward incredible ends. By this time, too, the papers were full of accounts of the destruction of civilian

populations. Something new, and certainly evil, was at work among mankind. Nobody was ready with a

name for it. None of the wellworn words descriptive of human behaviour seemed adequate. The epithets

grouped about the name of "Attila" were too personal, too dramatic, too full of old, familiar human passion.

One afternoon in the first week of September Mrs. Wheeler was in the kitchen making cucumber pickles,

when she heard Claude's car coming back from Frankfort. In a moment he entered, letting the screen door

"What do you, think, Mother? The French have moved the seat of government to Bordeaux! Evidently, they

Mrs. Wheeler wiped her pale, perspiring face with the hem of her apron and sat down in the nearest chair.

"That's what it looks like. Though the papers say it's only a precautionary measure."

She rose. "Let's go up to the map. I don't remember exactly where Bordeaux is. Mahailey, you won't let my

Claude followed her to the sittingroom, where her new map hung on the wall above the carpet lounge.

Leaning against the back of a willow rockingchair, she began to move her hand about over the brightly

coloured, shiny surface, murmuring, "Yes, there is Bordeaux, so far to the south; and there is Paris."

Claude, behind her, looked over her shoulder. "Do you suppose they are going to hand their city over to the

Germans, like a Christmas present? I should think they'd burn it first, the way the Russians did Moscow.

"Don't say such things." Mrs. Wheeler dropped into the deep willow chair, realizing that she was very tired,

now that she had left the stove and the heat of the kitchen. She began weakly to wave the palm leaf fan before

her face. "It's said to be such a beautiful city. Perhaps the Germans will spare it, as they did Brussels. They

must be sick of destruction by now. Get the encyclopaedia and see what it says. I've left my glasses

Claude brought a volume from the bookcase and sat down on the lounge. He began: "Paris, the capital city o f

He cleared his throat and began again: "At its first appearance in history, there was nothing to foreshadow the

Mrs. Wheeler rocked and fanned, forgetting the kitchen and the cucumbers as if they had never been. Her

tired body was resting, and her mind, which was never tired, was occupied with the account of early religious

foundations under the Merovingian kings. Her eyes were always agreeably employed when they rested upon

"Mother, there are pages of kings! We'll read that some other time. I want to find out what it's like now, and

whether it's going to have any more history." He ran his finger up and down the columns. "Here, this looks

Defences: Paris, in a recent German account of the greatest fortresses of the world, possesses three distinct

rings of defences"here he broke off. "Now what do you think of that? A German account, and this is an

English book! The world simply made a mistake about the Germans all along. It's as if we invited a

neighbour over here and showed him our cattle and barns, and all the time he was planning how he would

Mrs. Wheeler passed her hand over her brow. "Yet we have had so many German neighbours, and never one

"I know it. Everything Mrs. Erlich ever told me about Germany made me want to go there. And the people

that sing all those beautiful songs about women and children went into Belgian villages and"

"Don't, Claude!" his mother put out her lands as if to push his words back. "Read about the defences of Paris;

that's what we must think about now. I can't but believe there is one fort the Germans didn't put down in their

book, and that it will stand. We know Paris is a wicked city, but there must be many Godfearing people

there, and God has preserved it all these years. You saw in the paper how the churches are full all day of

women praying." She leaned forward and smiled at him indulgently. "And you believe those prayers will

Claude squirmed, as he always did when his mother touched upon certain subjects. "Well, you see, I can't

forget that the Germans are praying, too. And I guess they are just naturally more pious than the French."

Taking up the book he began once more: "In the low ground again, at the narrowest part of the great loop of

Claude and his mother had grown familiar with the name of that river, and with the idea of its strategic

The fall ploughing had begun as usual. Mr. Wheeler had decided to put in six hundred acres of wheat again.

Whatever happened on the other side of the world, they would need bread. He took a third team himself and

went into the field every morning to help Dan and Claude. The neighbours said that nobody but the Kaiser

Since the men were all afield, Mrs. Wheeler now went every morning to the mailbox at the crossroads, a

quarter of a mile away, to get yesterday's Omaha and Kansas City papers which the carrier left. In her

eagerness she opened and began to read them as she turned homeward, and her feet, never too sure, took a

wandering way among sunflowers and buffaloburrs. One morning, indeed, she sat down on a red grass bank

beside the road and read all the war news through before she stirred, while the grasshoppers played leapfrog

over her skirts, and the gophers came out of their holes and blinked at her. That noon, when she saw Claude

leading his team to the water tank, she hurried down to him without stopping to find her bonnet, and reached

"The French have stopped falling back, Claude. They are standing at the Marne. There is a great battle going

on. The papers say it may decide the war. It is so near Paris that some of the army went out in taxicabs."

Claude drew himself up. "Well, it will decide about Paris, anyway, won't it? How many divisions?"

"I can't make out. The accounts are so confusing. But only a few of the English are there, and the French are

terribly outnumbered. Your father got in before you, and he has the papers upstairs."

"They are twentyfour hours old. I'll go to Vicount tonight after I'm done work, and get the Hastings paper."

In the evening, when he came back from town, he found his father and mother waiting up for him. He

stopped a moment in the sittingroom. "There is not much news, except that the battle is on, and practically

the whole French army is engaged. The Germans outnumber them five to three in men, and nobody knows

how much in artillery. General Joffre says the French will fall back no farther." He did not sit down, but went

Mrs. Wheeler put out the lamp, undressed, and lay down, but not to sleep. Long afterward, Claude heard her

gently closing a window, and he smiled to himself in the dark. His mother, he knew, had always thought of

Paris as the wickedest of cities, the capital of a frivolous, winedrinking, Catholic people, who were

responsible for the massacre of St. Bartholomew and for the grinning atheist, Voltaire. For the last two

weeks, ever since the French began to fall back in Lorraine, he had noticed with amusement her growing

It was curious, he reflected, lying wide awake in the dark: four days ago the seat of government had been

moved to Bordeaux,with the effect that Paris seemed suddenly to have become the capital, not of France,

but of the world! He knew he was not the only farmer boy who wished himself tonight beside the Marne. The

fact that the river had a pronounceable name, with a hard Western "r" standing like a keystone in the middle

of it, somehow gave one's imagination a firmer hold on the situation. Lying still and thinking fast, Claude felt

that even he could clear the bar of French "politeness"so much more terrifying than German bulletsand

slip unnoticed into that outnumbered army. One's manners wouldn't matter on the Marne tonight, the night of

the eighth of September, 1914. There was nothing on earth he would so gladly be as an atom in that wall of

flesh and blood that rose and melted and rose again before the city which had meant so much through all the

centuriesbut had never meant so much before. Its name had come to have the purity of an abstract idea. In

great sleepy continents, in landlocked harvest towns, in the little islands of the sea, for four days men

watched that name as they might stand out at night to watch a comet, or to see a star fall.

It was Sunday afternoon and Claude had gone down to the mill house, as Enid and her mother had returned

from Michigan the day before. Mrs. Wheeler, propped back in a rocking chair, was reading, and Mr.

Wheeler, in his shirt sleeves, his Sunday collar unbuttoned, was sitting at his walnut secretary, amusing

himself with columns of figures. Presently he rose and yawned, stretching his arms above his head.

"Claude thinks he wants to begin building right away, up on the quarter next the timber claim. I've been

figuring on the lumber. Building materials are cheap just now, so I suppose I'd better let him go ahead."

Her husband sat down astride a chair, and leaning his arms on the back of it, looked at her. "What do you

"Enid is a good, Christian girl. . ." Mrs. Wheeler began resolutely, but her sentence hung in the air like a

He moved impatiently. "Yes, I know. But what does a husky boy like Claude want to pick out a girl like that

Apparently these misgivings were not new to Mrs. Wheeler,* for she put out her hand to stop him and

"Oh, I won't interfere! I never do. I'd rather have her for a daughterinlaw than a wife, by a long shot.

Claude's more of a fool than I thought him." He picked up his hat and strolled down to the barn, but his wife

did not recover her composure so easily. She left the chair where she had hopefully settled herself for

comfort, took up a feather duster and began moving distractedly about the room, brushing the surface of the

furniture. When the war news was bad, or when she felt troubled about Claude, she set to cleaning house or

overhauling the closets, thankful to be able to put some little thing to rights in such a disordered world.

As soon as the fall planting was done, Claude got the well borers out from town to drill his new well, and

while they were at work he began digging his cellar. He was building his house on the level stretch beside his

father's timber claim because, when he was a little boy, he had thought that grove of trees the most beautiful

spot in the world. It was a square of about thirty acres, set out in ash and boxelder and cottonwoods, with a

thick mulberry hedge on the south side. The trees had been neglected of late years, but if he lived up there he

Every morning now he ran up in the Ford and worked at his cellar. He had heard that the deeper a cellar was,

the better it was; and he meant that this one should be deep enough. One day Leonard Dawson stopped to see

what progress he was making. Standing on the edge of the hole, he shouted to the lad who was sweating

"My God, Claude, what do you want of a cellar as deep as that? When your wife takes a notion to go to

Claude flung down his pick and ran up the ladder. "Enid's not going to have notions of that sort," he said

"Well, you needn't get mad. I'm glad to hear it. I was sorry when the other girl went. It always looked to me

like Enid had her face set for China, but I haven't seen her for a good while,not since before she went off to

After Leonard was gone, Claude returned to his work, still out of humour. He was not altogether happy in his

mind about Enid. When he went down to the mill it was usually Mr. Royce, not Enid, who sought to detain

him, followed him down the path to the gate and seemed sorry to see him go. He could not blame Enid with

any lack of interest in what he was doing. She talked and thought of nothing but the new house, and most of

her suggestions were good. He often wished she would ask for something unreasonable and extravagant. But

she had no selfish whims, and even insisted that the comfortable upstairs sleeping room he had planned with

As the house began to take shape, Enid came up often in her car, to watch its growth, to show Claude samples

of wallpapers and draperies, or a design for a windowseat she had cut from some magazine. There could be

no question of her pride in every detail. The disappointing thing was that she seemed more interested in the

house than in him. These months when they could be together as much as they pleased, she treated merely as

Everything would be all right when they were married, Claude told himself. He believed in the transforming

power of marriage, as his mother believed in the miraculous effects of conversion. Marriage reduced all

women to a common denominator ; changed a cool, selfsatisfied girl into a loving and generous one. It was

quite right that Enid should be unconscious now of everything that she was to be when she was his wife. He

But he was lonely, all the same. He lavished upon the little house the solicitude and cherishing care that Enid

seemed not to need. He stood over the carpenters urging the greatest nicety in the finish of closets and

cupboards, the convenient placing of shelves, the exact joining of sills and casings. Often he stayed late in the

evening, after the workmen with their noisy boots had gone home to supper. He sat down on a rafter or on the

skeleton of the upper porch and quite lost himself in brooding, in anticipation of things that seemed as far

away as ever. The dying light, the quiet stars coming out, were friendly and sympathetic. One night a bird

flew in and fluttered wildly about among the partitions, shrieking with fright before it darted out into the dusk

When the carpenters were ready to put in the staircase, Claude telephoned Enid and asked her to come and

show them just what height she wanted the steps made. His mother had always had to climb stairs that were

too steep. Enid stopped her car at the Frankfort High School at four o'clock and persuaded Gladys Farmer to

When they arrived they found Claude working on the lattice enclosure of the back porch. "Claude is like

Jonah," Enid laughed. "He wants to plant gourd vines here, so they will run over the lattice and make shade. I

Claude put down his hammer and said coaxingly: "Have you ever seen a gourd vine when it had something to

climb on, Enid? You wouldn't believe how pretty they are; big green leaves, and gourds and yellow blossoms

hanging all over them at the same time. An old German woman who keeps a lunch counter at one of those

stations on the road to Lincoln has them running up her back porch, and I've wanted to plant some ever since

Enid smiled indulgently. "Well, I suppose you'll let me have clematis for the front porch, anyway? The men

After the workmen had gone, Claude took the girls upstairs by the ladder. They emerged from a little entry

into a large room which extended over both the front and back parlours. The carpenters called it "the pool

hall". There were two long windows, like doors, opening upon the porch roof, and in the sloping ceiling were

two dormer windows, one looking north to the timber claim and the other south toward Lovely Creek. Gladys

at once felt a singular pleasantness about this chamber, empty and unplastered as it was. "What a lovely

Claude took her up eagerly. "Don't you think so? You see it's my idea to have the second floor for ourselves,

instead of cutting it up into little boxes as people usually do. We can come up here and forget the farm and

the kitchen and all our troubles. I've made a big closet for each of us, and got everything just right. And now

Enid laughed. "Not only for preachers, Claude. For Gladys, when she comes to visit usyou see she likes

itand for your mother when she comes to spend a week and rest. I don't think we ought to take the best

"Why not?" Claude argued hotly. "I'm building the whole house for ourselves. Come out on the porch roof,

Gladys. Isn't this fine for hot nights? I want to put a railing round and make this into a balcony, where we can

Gladys sat down on the low windowsill. "Enid, you'd be foolish to keep this for a guest room. Nobody

would ever enjoy it as much as you would. You can see the whole country from here."

Enid smiled, but showed no sign of relenting. "Let's wait and watch the sun go down. Be careful, Claude. It

He was stretched out on the edge of the roof, one leg hanging over, and his head pillowed on his arm. The flat

fields turned red, the distant windmills flashed white, and little rosy clouds appeared in the sky above them.

"If I make this into a balcony," Claude murmured, "the peak of the roof will always throw a shadow over it in

the afternoon, and at night the stars will be right overhead. It will be a fine place to sleep in harvest time."

They sat watching the light die out of the sky, and Enid and Gladys drew close together as the coolness of the

autumn evening came on. The three friends were thinking about the same thing; and yet, if by some sorcery

each had begun to speak his thoughts aloud, amazement and bitterness would have fallen upon all. Enid's

reflections were the most blameless. The discussion about the guest room had reminded her of Brother

Weldon. In September, on her way to Michigan with Mrs. Royce, she had stopped for a day in Lincoln to

take counsel with Arthur Weldon as to whether she ought to marry one whom she described to him as "an

unsaved man." Young Mr. Weldon approached this subject with a cautious tread, but when he learned that the

man in question was Claude Wheeler, he became more partisan than was his wont. He seemed to think that

her marrying Claude was the one way to reclaim him, and did not hesitate to say that the most important

service devout girls could perform for the church was to bring promising young men to its support. Enid had

been almost certain that Mr. Weldon would approve her course before she consulted him, but his concurrence

always gratified her pride. She told him that when she had a home of her own she would expect him to spend

a part of his summer vacation there, and he blushingly expressed his willingness to do so.

Gladys, too, was lost in her own thoughts, sitting with that ease which made her seem rather indolent, her

head resting against the empty window frame, facing the setting sun. The rosy light made her brown eyes

gleam like old copper, and there was a moody look in them, as if in her mind she were defying something.

When he happened to glance at her, it occurred to Claude that it was a hard destiny to be the exceptional

person. in a community, to be more gifted or more intelligent than the rest. For a girl it must be doubly hard.

"I forgot, Enid, I have a secret to tell you. Over in the timber claim the other day I started up a flock of quail.

They must be the only ones left in all this neighbourhood, and I doubt if they ever come out of the timber.

The bluegrass hasn't been mowed in there for years,not since I first went away to school, and maybe they

Enid wondered whether the birds could have learned enough about the world to stay hidden in the timber lot.

"Nobody ever goes near the place except Father; he stops there sometimes. Maybe he has seen them and

never said a word. It would be just like him." He told them he had scattered shelled corn in the grass, so that

the birds would not be tempted to fly over into Leonard Dawson's cornfield. "If Leonard saw them, he'd

Claude laughed. "That would be asking a good deal. When a bunch of quail rise out of a cornfield they're a

mighty tempting sight, if a man likes hunting. We'll have a picnic for you when you come out next summer,

Gladys started up. "Why, it's night already! It's lovely here, but you must get me home, Enid."

They found it dark inside. Claude took Enid down the ladder and out to her car, and then went back for

Gladys. She was sitting on the floor at the top of the ladder. Giving her his hand he helped her to rise.

"Yes. Oh, yes!" Her voice was full of feeling, but she did not exert herself to say more. Claude descended in

front of her to keep her from slipping. She hung back while he led her through confusing doorways and

helped her over the piles of laths that littered the floors. At the edge of the gaping cellar entrance she stopped

and leaned wearily on his arm for a moment. She did not speak, but he understood that his new house made

her sad; that she, too, had come to the place where she must turn out of the old path. He longed to whisper to

her and beg her not to marry his brother. He lingered and hesitated, fumbling in the dark. She had his own

cursed kind of sensibility; she would expect too much from life and be disappointed. He was reluctant to lead

her out into the chilly evening without some word of entreaty. He would willingly have prolonged their

passage, through many rooms and corridors. Perhaps, had that been possible, the strength in him would

have found what it was seeking; even in this short interval it had stirred and made itself felt, had uttered a

Enid decided that she would be married in the first week of June. Early in May the plasterers and painters

began to be busy in the new house. The walls began to shine, and Claude went about all day, oiling and

polishing the hardpine floors and wainscoting. He hated to have anybody step on his floors. He planted

gourd vines about the back porch, set out clematis and lilac bushes, and put in a kitchen garden. He and Enid

were going to Denver and Colorado Springs for their wedding trip, but Ralph would be at home then, and he

had promised to come over and water the flowers and shrubs if the weather was dry.

Enid often brought her work and sat sewing on the front porch while Claude was rubbing the woodwork

inside the house, or digging and planting outside. This was the best part of his courtship. It seemed to him

that he had never spent such happy days before. If Enid did not come, he kept looking down the road and

listening, went from one thing to another and made no progress. He felt full of energy, so long as she sat there

on the porch, with lace and ribbons and muslin in her lap. When he passed by, going in or out, and stopped to

be near her for a moment, she seemed glad to have him tarry. She liked him to admire her needlework, and

did not hesitate to show him the featherstitching and embroidery she was putting on her new underclothes. He

could see, from the glances they exchanged, that the painters thought this very bold behaviour in one so soon

to be a bride. He thought it very charming behaviour himself, though he would never have expected it of

Enid. His heart beat hard when he realized how far she confided in him, how little she was afraid of him! She

would let him linger there, standing over her and looking down at her quick fingers, or sitting on the ground

at her feet, gazing at the muslin pinned to her knee, until his own sense of propriety told him to get about his

"When are you going over to the timber claim with me?" he asked, dropping on the ground beside her one

warm, windy afternoon. Enid was sitting on the porch floor, her back against a pillar, and her feet on one of

those round mats of pursley that grow over hardbeaten earth. "I've found my flock of quail again. They live

in the deep grass, over by a ditch that holds water most of the year. I'm going to plant a few rows of peas in

there, so they'll have a feeding ground at home. I consider Leonard's cornfield a great danger. I don't know

"Oh, yes!" Claude replied, trying not to be aware of the little note of acrimony in her voice. "He's perfectly

safe. That place is a paradise for birds. The trees are full of nests. You can stand over there in the morning

and hear the young robins squawking for their breakfast. Come up early tomorrow morning and go over with

While they were talking a sudden whirlwind swept round the corner of the house, caught up the little mound

of folded lace corsetcovers and strewed them over the dusty yard. Claude ran after them with Enid's

flowered workbag and thrust them into it as he came upon one after another, fluttering in the weeds. When he

returned, Enid had folded her needlecase and was putting on her hat. "Thank you," she said with a smile.

"I think so." He hurried toward the car to hide his guilty face. One little lace thing he had not put into the bag,

0n the night before his wedding Claude went to bed early. He had been dashing about with Ralph all day in

the car, making final preparations, and was worn out. He fell asleep almost at once. The women of the

household could not so easily forget the great event of tomorrow. After the supper dishes were washed,

Mahailey clambered up to the attic to get the quilt she had so long been saving for a wedding present for

Claude. She took it out of the chest, unfolded it, and counted the stars in the patterncounting was an

accomplishment she was proud ofbefore she wrapped it up. It was to go down to the mill house with the

other presents tomorrow. Mrs. Wheeler went to bed many times that night. She kept thinking of things that

ought to be looked after; getting up and going to make sure that Claude's heavy underwear had been put into

his trunk, against the chance of cold in the mountains; or creeping downstairs to see that the six roasted

chickens which were to help out at the wedding supper were securely covered from the cats. As she went

about these tasks, she prayed constantly. She had not prayed so long and fervently since the battle of the

Early the next morning Ralph loaded the big car with the presents and baskets of food and ran down to the

Royces'. Two motors from town were already standing in the mill yard; they had brought a company of girls

who came with all the June roses in Frankfort to trim the house for the wedding. When Ralph tooted his horn,

halfadozen of them ran out to greet him, reproaching him because he had not brought his brother along.

Ralph was immediately pressed into service. He carried the stepladder wherever he was told, drove nails,

and wound thorny sprays of rambler roses around the pillars between the front and back parlours, making the

Gladys Farmer had not been able to leave her classes at the High School to help in this friendly work, but at

eleven o'clock a livery automobile drove up, laden with white and pink peonies from her front yard, and

bringing a box of hothouse flowers she had ordered for Enid from Hastings. The girls admired them, but

declared that Gladys was extravagant, as usual; the flowers from her own yard would really have been

enough. The car was driven by a lank, ragged boy who worked about the town garage, and who was called

"Silent Irv," because nobody could ever get a word out of him. He had almost no voice at all,a thin little

squeak in the top of his throat, like the gasping whisper of a medium in her trance state. When he came to the

The girls went back to his car with him, and he took out a square box, tied up with white ribbons and little

"How did you happen to get these?" Ralph asked the thin boy. "I was to go to town for them."

The messenger swallowed. "Miss Farmer told me if there were any other flowers at the station marked for

"That was nice of her." Ralph thrust his hand into his trousers pocket. "How much? I'll settle with you before

A pink flush swept over the boy's pale face,a delicate face under ragged hair, contracted by a kind of

shrinking unhappiness. His eyes were always halfclosed, as if he did not want to see the world around him,

or to be seen by it. He went about like somebody in a dream. "Miss Farmer," he whispered, "has paid me."

"Well, she thinks of everything!" exclaimed one of the girls. "You used to go to school to Gladys, didn't you,

"Yes, mam." He got into his car without opening the door, slipping like an eel round the steeringrod, and

The girls followed Ralph up the gravel walk toward the house. One whispered to the others: "Do you suppose

Gladys will come out tonight with Bayliss Wheeler? I always thought she had a pretty warm spot in her heart

Some one changed the subject. "I can't get over hearing Irv talk so much. Gladys must have put a spell on

"She was always kind to him in school," said the girl who had questioned the silent boy. "She said he was

good in his studies, but he was so frightened he could never recite. She let him write out the answers at his

Ralph stayed for lunch, playing about with the girls until his mother telephoned for him. "Now I'll have to go

As he drove toward the farm, Ralph met Dan, taking Claude's trunk into town. He slowed his car. "Any

Mrs. Wheeler met Ralph on the stairs. "He's up in his room. He complains his new shoes are too tight. I think

it's nervousness. Perhaps he'll let you shave him; I'm sure he'll cut himself. And I wish the barber hadn't cut

his hair so short, Ralph. I hate this new fashion of shearing men behind the ears. The back of his neck is the

ugliest part of a man." She spoke with such resentment that Ralph broke into a laugh.

"Why, Mother, I thought all men looked alike to you! Anyhow, Claude's no beauty."

"When will you want your bath? I'll have to manage so that everybody won't be calling for hot water at

once." She turned to Mr. Wheeler who sat writing a check at the secretary. "Father, could you take your bath

"Bath?" Mr. Wheeler shouted, "I don't want any bath! I'm not going to be married tonight. I guess we don't

Ralph snickered and shot upstairs. He found Claude sitting on the bed, with one shoe off and one shoe on. A

pile of socks lay scattered on the rug. A suitcase stood open on one chair and a black travelling bag on

"I did. That shark in Hastings worked off another pair on me when I wasn't looking. That's all right,"

snatching away the shoe his brother had picked up to examine. "I don't care, so long as I can stand in them.

"Then telephone later. But find out, somehow. I don't want to stand around that station, waiting for the train."

Ralph whistled. Clearly, his young man was going to be hard to manage. He proposed a bath as a soothing

"You'll put on one shirt and one pair of socks. I'm going to get some of this stuff out of the way for you."

Ralph caught up a handful of socks and fell to sorting them. Several had bright red spots on the toe. He began

Claude sprang up as if a hornet had stung him. "Will you get out of here," he shouted, "and let me alone?"

Ralph vanished. He told his mother he would dress at once, as they might have to use force with Claude at the

last moment. The wedding ceremony was to be at eight, supper was to follow, and Claude and Enid were to

leave Frankfort at 10:25, on the Denver express. At six o'clock, when Ralph knocked at his brother's door, he

found him shaved and brushed, and dressed, except for his coat. His tucked shirt was not rumpled, and his tie

was properly knotted. Whatever pain they concealed, his patent leather shoes were smooth and glistening and

"Nearly. I wish you'd go over things and make them look a little neater, if you can. I'd hate to have a girl see

the inside of that suitcase, the way it is. Where shall I put my cigars? They'll make everything smell,

wherever I put them. All my clothes seem to smell of cooking, or starch, or something. I don't know what

Ralph looked outraged. "Well, of all ingratitude! Mahailey's been ironing your damned old shirts for a week!"

"Yes, yes, I know. Don't rattle me. I forgot to put any handkerchiefs in my trunk, so you'll have to get the

Mr. Wheeler appeared in the doorway, his Sunday black trousers gallowsed up high over a white shirt,

wafting a rich odor of bayrum from his tumbled hair. He held a thin folded paper delicately between his thick

Claude caught up his discarded trousers and extracted a square of leather from the pocket. His father took it

and placed the bit of paper inside with the bank notes. "You may want to pick up some trifle your wife

fancies," he said. "Have you got your railroad tickets in here? Here is your trunk check Dan brought back.

Don't forget, I've put it in with your tickets and marked it C. W., so you'll know which is your check and

Claude had already drawn from the bank all the money he would need. This additional bank check was Mr.

Wheeler's admission that he was sorry for some sarcastic remarks he had made a few days ago, when he

discovered that Claude had reserved a stateroom on the Denver express. Claude had answered curtly that

when Enid and her mother went to Michigan they always had a stateroom, and he wasn't going to ask her to

At seven o'clock the Wheeler family set out in the two cars that stood waiting by the windmill. Mr. Wheeler

drove the big Cadillac, and Ralph took Mahailey and Dan in the Ford. When they reached the mill house the

outer yard was already black with motors, and the porch and parlours were full of people talking and moving

Claude went directly upstairs. Ralph began to seat the guests, arranging the folding chairs in such a way as to

leave a passage from the foot of the stairs to the floral arch he had constructed that morning. The preacher

had his Bible in his hand and was standing under the light, hunting for his chapter. Enid would have preferred

to have Mr. Weldon come down from Lincoln to marry her, but that would have wounded Mr. Snowberry

deeply. After all, he was her minister, though he was not eloquent and persuasive like Arthur Weldon. He had

fewer English words at his command than most human beings, and even those did not come to him readily. In

his pulpit he sought for them and struggled with them until drops of perspiration rolled from his forehead and

fell upon his coarse, matted brown beard. But he believed what he said, and language was so little an

accomplishment with him that he was not tempted to say more than he believed. He had been a drummer boy

Ralph was to be both usher and best man. Gladys Farmer could not be one of the bridesmaids because she

was to play the wedding march. At eight o'clock Enid and Claude came downstairs together, conducted by

Ralph and followed by four girls dressed in white, like the bride. They took their places under the arch before

the preacher. He began with the chapter from Genesis about the creation of man, and Adam's rib, reading in a

laboured manner, as if he did not quite know why he had selected that passage and was looking for something

he did not find. His noseglasses kept falling off and dropping upon the open book. Throughout this

prolonged fumbling Enid stood calm, looking at him respectfully, very pretty in her short veil. Claude was so

pale that he looked unnatural,nobody had ever seen him like that before. His face, between his very black

clothes and his smooth, sandy hair, was white and severe, and he uttered his responses in a hollow voice.

Mahailey, at the back of the room, in a black hat with green gooseberries on it, was standing, in order to miss

nothing. She watched Mr. Snowberry as if she hoped to catch some visible sign of the miracle he was

performing. She always wondered just what it was the preacher did to make the wrongest thing in the world

When it was over, Enid went upstairs to put on her travelling dress, and Ralph and Gladys began seating the

guests for supper. Just twenty minutes later Enid came down and took her place beside Claude at the head of

the long table. The company rose and drank the bride's health in grapejuice punch. Mr. Royce, however,

while the guests were being seated, had taken Mr. Wheeler down to the fruit cellar, where the two old friends

drank off a glass of wellseasoned Kentucky whiskey, and shook hands. When they came back to the table,

looking younger than when they withdrew, the preacher smelled the tang of spirits and felt slighted. He

looked disconsolately into his ruddy goblet and thought about the marriage at Cana. He tried to apply his

Bible literally to life and, though he didn't dare breathe it aloud in these days, he could never see why he was

Ralph, as master of ceremonies, kept his head and forgot nothing. When it was time to start, he tapped Claude

on the shoulder, cutting his father short in one of his best stories. Contrary to custom, the bridal couple were

to go to the station unaccompanied, and they vanished from the head of the table with only a nod and a smile

to the guests. Ralph hurried them into the light car, where he had already stowed Enid's hand luggage. Only

That evening some bad boys had come out from town and strewn the road near the mill with dozens of

broken glass bottles, after which they hid in the wild plum bushes to wait for the fun. Ralph's was the first car

out, and though his lights glittered on this bed of jagged glass, there was no time to stop; the road was ditched

on either side, so he had to drive straight ahead, and got into Frankfort on flat tires. The express whistled just

as he pulled up at the station. He and Claude caught up the four pieces of hand luggage and put them in the

stateroom. Leaving Enid there with the bags, the two boys went to the rear platform of the observation car to

talk until the last moment. Ralph checked off on his fingers the list of things he had promised Claude to

attend to. Claude thanked him feelingly. He felt that without Ralph he could never have got married at all.

The wheels began to turn. Ralph gripped Claude's hand, ran to the front of the car and stepped off. As Claude

passed him, he stood waving his handkerchief,a rather funny figure under the station lights, in his black

clothes and his stiff straw hat, his short legs well apart, wearing his incurably jaunty air.

The train glided quietly out through the summer darkness, along the timbered river valley. Claude was alone

on the back platform, smoking a nervous cigar. As they passed the deep cut where Lovely Creek flowed into

the river, he saw the lights of the mill house flash for a moment in the distance. The night air was still; heavy

with the smell of sweet clover that grew high along the tracks, and of wild grapevines wet with dew. The

conductor came to ask for the tickets, saying with a wise smile that he had been hunting for him, as he didn't

After he was gone, Claude looked at his watch, threw away the end of his cigar, and went back through the

Pullman cars. The passengers had gone to bed; the overhead lights were always turned low when the train left

Frankfort. He made his way through the aisles of swaying green curtains, and tapped at the door of his state

room. It opened a little way, and Enid stood there in a white silk dressinggown with many ruffles, her hair

"Claude," she said in a low voice, "would you mind getting a berth somewhere out in the car tonight? The

porter says they are not all taken. I'm not feeling very well. I think the dressing on the chicken salad must

She closed the door, and he heard the lock slip. He stood looking at the highly polished wood of the panel for

a moment, then turned irresolutely and went back along the slightly swaying aisle of green curtains. In the

observation car he stretched himself out upon two wicker chairs and lit another cigar. At twelve o'clock the

"This car is closed for the night, sah. Is you the gen'leman from the stateroom in fourteen? Do you want a

"They is the daycoach smokah, but it ain't likely very clean at this time o' night."

"That's all right. It's forward?" Claude absently handed him a coin, and the porter conducted him to a very

dirty car where the floor was littered with newspapers and cigar stumps, and the leather cushions were grey

with dust. A few desperate looking men lay about with their shoes off and their suspenders hanging down

their backs. The sight of them reminded Claude that his left foot was very sore, and that his shoes must have

been hurting him for some time. He pulled them off, and thrust his feet, in their silk socks, on the opposite

On that long, dirty, uncomfortable ride Claude felt many things, but the paramount feeling was

homesickness. His hurt was of a kind that made him turn with a sort of aching cowardice to the old, familiar

things that were as sure as the sunrise. If only the sagebrush plain, over which the stars were shining, could

suddenly break up and resolve itself into the windings of Lovely Creek, with his father's house on the hill,

dark and silent in the summer night! When he closed his eyes he could see the light in his mother's window;

and, lower down, the glow of Mahailey's lamp, where she sat nodding and mending his old shirts. Human

love was a wonderful thing, he told himself, and it was most wonderful where it had least to gain.

By morning the storm of anger, disappointment, and humiliation that was boiling in him when he first sat

down in the observation car, had died out. One thing lingered; the peculiarly casual, indifferent, uninterested

tone of his wife's voice when she sent him away. It was the flat tone in which people make commonplace

Day broke with silvery brightness on the summer sage. The sky grew pink, the sand grew gold. The

dawnwind brought through the windows the acrid smell of the sagebrush: an odour that is peculiarly

stimulating in the early morning, when it always seems to promise freedom . . . large spaces. new beginnings,

The train was due in Denver at eight o'clock. Exactly at seven thirty Claude knocked at Enid's door,this

time firmly. She was dressed, and greeted him with a fresh, smiling face, holding her hat in her hand.

"Oh, yes! I am perfectly all right this morning. I've put out all your things for you, there on the seat."

"Oh, won't you? I'm so sorry I forgot to give you your bag last night. But you must put on another necktie, at

Everything he needed was neatly arranged on the plush seat; shirt, collar, tie, brushes, even a handkerchief.

Those in his pockets were black from dusting off the cinders that blew in all night, and he threw them down

and took up the clean one. There was a damp spot on it, and as he unfolded it he recognized the scent of a

cologne Enid often used. For some reason this attention unmanned him. He felt the smart of tears in his eyes,

and to hide them bent over the metal basin and began to scrub his face. Enid stood behind him, adjusting her

"You are covered with dust and cinders, too!" She took the clothes broom from the rack and began to brush

Claude caught her hand. "Don't, please!" he said sharply. "The porter can do that for me."

Enid watched him furtively as he closed and strapped his suitcase. She had often heard that men were cross

Claude was to continue farming with his father, and after he returned from his wedding journey, he fell at

once to work. The harvest was almost as abundant as that of the summer before, and he was busy in the fields

One afternoon in August he came home with his team, watered and fed the horses in a leisurely way, and then

entered his house by the back door. Enid, he knew, would not be there. She had gone to Frankfort to a

meeting of the AntiSaloon League. The Prohibition party was bestirring itself in Nebraska that summer,

confident of voting the State dry the following year, which purpose it triumphantly accomplished.

Enid's kitchen, full of the afternoon sun, glittered with new paint, spotless linoleum, and blueandwhite

cooking vessels. In the diningroom the cloth was laid, and the table was neatly set for one. Claude opened

the icebox, where his supper was arranged for him; a dish of canned salmon with a white sauce; hardboiled

eggs, peeled and lying in a nest of lettuce leaves; a bowl of ripe tomatoes, a bit of cold rice pudding; cream

and butter. He placed these things on the table, cut some bread, and after carelessly washing his face and

hands, sat down to eat in his working shirt. He propped the newspaper against a red glass water pitcher and

read the war news while he had his supper. He was annoyed when he heard heavy footsteps coming around

the house. Leonard Dawson stuck his head in at the kitchen door, and Claude rose quickly and reached for his

hat; but Leonard came in, uninvited, and sat down. His brown shirt was wet where his suspenders gripped his

shoulders, and his face, under a wide straw hat which he did not remove, was unshaven and streaked with

"Go ahead and finish your supper," he cried. "Having a wife with a car of her own is next thing to having no

wife at all. How they do like to roll around! I've been mighty blamed careful to see that Susie never learned to

drive a car. See here, Claude, how soon do you figure you'll be able to let me have the thrasher? My wheat

will begin to sprout in the shock pretty soon. Do you reckon your father would be willing to work on Sunday,

"I'm afraid not. Mother wouldn't like it. We never have done that, even when we were crowded."

"Well, I think I'll go over and have a talk with your mother. If she could look inside my wheat shocks, maybe

I could convince her it's pretty near a case of your neighbour's ox falling into a pit on the Sabbath day."

"The Germans have torpedoed an English passenger ship, the Arabic; coming this way, too."

"That's all right," Leonard declared. "Maybe Americans will stay at home now, and mind their own business.

I don't care how they chew each other up over there, not a bit! I'd as soon one got wiped off the map as

"That's a long while ago. Yes, my grandmother wore a cap and little white curls, and I tell Susie I wouldn't

mind if the baby turned out to have my grandmother's skin. She had the finest complexion I ever saw."

As they stepped out of the back door, a troop of white chickens with red combs ran squawking toward them.

It was the hour at which the poultry was usually fed. Leonard stopped to admire them. "You've got a fine lot

"We've only got one. He's shut up in the coop. The brood hens are setting. Enid is going to try raising winter

Claude laughed. "They lay eggs, just the same,better. it's the fertile eggs that spoil in warm weather."

This information seemed to make Leonard angry. "I never heard of such damned nonsense," he blustered. "I

raise chickens on a natural basis, or I don't raise 'em at all." He jumped into his car for fear he would say

When he got home his wife was lifting supper, and the baby sat near her in its buggy, playing with a rattle.

Dirty and sweaty as he was, Leonard picked up the clean baby and began to kiss it and smell it, rubbing his

stubbly chin in the soft creases of its neck. The little girl was beside herself with delight.

"Go and wash up for supper, Len," Susie called from the stove. He put down the baby and began splashing in

She was spearing roasting ears out of a big iron pot and looked up through the steam. "Why, have you seen

her? I was listening on the telephone this morning and heard her tell Bayliss she would be in town until late."

"Oh, yes! She went to town all right, and he's over there eating a cold supper by himself. That woman's a

fanatic. She ain't content with practising prohibition on humankind; she's begun now on the hens." While he

placed the chairs and wheeled the baby up to the table, he explained Enid's method of raising poultry to his

"Now be honest, Susie; did you ever know hens would keep on laying without a rooster?"

"No, I didn't, but I was brought up the oldfashioned way. Enid has poultry books and garden books, and all

such things. I don't doubt she gets good ideas from them. But anyhow, you be careful. She's our nearest

"I'll have to keep out of her way, then. If she tries to do any missionary work among my chickens, I'll tell her

a few home truths her husband's too bashful to tell her. It's my opinion she's got that boy cowed already."

"Now, Len, you know she won't bother your chickens. You keep quiet. But Claude does seem to sort of avoid

people," Susie admitted, filling her husband's plate again. "Mrs. Joe Havel says Ernest don't go to Claude's

any more. It seems Enid went over there and wanted Ernest to paste some Prohibition posters about fifteen

million drunkards on their barn, for an example to the Bohemians. Ernest wouldn't do it, and told her he was

going to vote for saloons, and Enid was quite spiteful, Mrs. Havel said. It's too bad, when those boys were

such chums. I used to like to see them together." Susie spoke so kindly that her husband shot her a quick

"Do you suppose Claude relished having that preacher visiting them, when they hadn't been married two

months? Sitting on the front porch in a white necktie every day, while Claude was out cutting wheat?"

"Well, anyhow, I guess Claude had more to eat when Brother Weldon was staying there. Preachers won't be

fed on calories, or whatever it is Enid calls 'em," said Susie, who was given to looking on the bright side of

things. "Claude's wife keeps a wonderful kitchen; but so could I, if I never cooked any more than she does."

Leonard gave her a meaning look. "I don't believe you would live with the sort of man you could feed out of

"No, I don't believe I would." She pushed the buggy toward him. "Take her up, Daddy. She wants to play

Leonard set the baby on his shoulder and carried her off to show her the pigs. Susie kept laughing to herself

as she cleared the table and washed the dishes; she was much amused by what her husband had told her.

Late that evening, when Leonard was starting for the barn to see that all was well before he went to bed, he

observed a discreet black object rolling along the highroad in the moonlight, a red spark winking in the rear.

"See, there she goes; going home to report the success of the meeting to Claude. Wouldn't that be a nice way

"Likes it?" Big Leonard drew himself up. "What can he do, poor kid? He's stung!"

After Leonard left him, Claude cleared away the remains of his supper and watered the gourd vine before he

went to milk. It was not really a gourd vine at all, but a summersquash, of the crooknecked, warty,

orangecoloured variety, and it was now full of ripe squashes, hanging by strong stems among the rough

green leaves and prickly tendrils. Claude had watched its rapid growth and the opening of its splotchy yellow

blossoms, feeling grateful to a thing that did so lustily what it was put there to do. He had the same feeling for

his little Jersey cow, which came home every night with full udders and gave down her milk willingly,

His milking done, he sat down on the front porch and lit a cigar. While he smoked, he did not think about

anything but the quiet and the slow cooling of the atmosphere, and how good it was to sit still. The moon

swam up over the bare wheat fields, big and magical, like a great flower. Presently he got some bath towels,

went across the yard to the windmill, took off his clothes, and stepped into the tin horse tank. The water had

been warmed by the sun all afternoon, and was not much cooler than his body. He stretched himself out in it,

and resting his head on the metal rim, lay on his back, looking up at the moon. The sky was a midnightblue,

like warm, deep, blue water, and the moon seemed to lie on it like a waterlily, floating forward with an

For some reason, Claude began to think about the faroff times and countries it had shone upon. He never

thought of the sun as coming from distant lands, or as having taken part in human life in other ages. To him,

the sun rotated about the wheatfields. But the moon, somehow, came out of the historic past, and made him

think of Egypt and the Pharaohs, Babylon and the hanging gardens. She seemed particularly to have looked

down upon the follies and disappointments of men; into the slaves' quarters of old times, into prison

Inside of living people, too, captives languished. Yes, inside of people who walked and worked in the broad

sun, there were captives dwelling in darkness, never seen from birth to death. Into those prisons the moon

shone, and the prisoners crept to the windows and looked out with mournful eyes at the white globe which

betrayed no secrets and comprehended all. Perhaps even in people like Mrs. Royce and his brother Bayliss

there was something of this sortbut that was a shuddery thought. He dismissed it with a quick movement

of his hand through the water, which, disturbed, caught the light and played black and gold, like something

alive, over his chest. In his own mother the imprisoned spirit was almost more present to people than her

corporeal self. He had so often felt it when he sat with her on summer nights like this. Mahailey, too, had one,

though the walls of her prison were so thickand Gladys Farmer. Oh, yes, how much Gladys must have to

tell this perfect confidant! The people whose hearts were set high needed such intercoursewhose wish was

so beautiful that there were no experiences in this world to satisfy it. And these children of the moon, with

their unappeased longings and futile dreams, were a finer race than the children of the sun. This conception

flooded the boy's heart like a second moonrise, flowed through him indefinite and strong, while he lay

At last the black cubical object which had caught Leonard Dawson's wrathful eye, came rolling along the

highroad. Claude snatched up his clothes and towels, and without waiting to make use of either, he ran, a

white man across a bare white yard. Gaining the shelter of the house, he found his bathrobe, and fled to the

upper porch, where he lay down in the hammock. Presently he heard his name called, pronounced as if it

were spelled "Clod." His wife came up the stairs and looked out at him. He lay motionless, with his eyes

closed. She went away. When all was quiet again he looked off at the still country, and the moon in the dark

indigo sky. His revelation still possessed him, making his whole body sensitive, like a tightly strung bow. In

the morning he had forgotten, or was ashamed of what had seemed so true and so entirely his own the night

before. He agreed, for the most part, that it was better not to think about such things, and when he could he

After the heavy work of harvest was over, Mrs. Wheeler often persuaded her husband, when he was starting

off in his buckboard, to take her as far as Claude's new house. She was glad Enid didn't keep her parlour dark,

as Mrs. Royce kept hers. The doors and windows were always open, the vines and the long petunias in the

windowboxes waved in the breeze, and the rooms were full of sunlight and in perfect order. Enid wore

white dresses about her work, and white shoes and stockings. She managed a house easily and systematically.

On Monday morning Claude turned the washing machine before he went to work, and by nine o'clock the

clothes were on the line. Enid liked to iron, and Claude had never before in his life worn so many clean shirts,

or worn them with such satisfaction. She told him he need not economize in working shirts; it was as easy to

Although within a few months Enid's car travelled more than two thousand miles for the Prohibition cause, it

could not be said that she neglected her house for reform. Whether she neglected her husband depended upon

one's conception of what was his due. When Mrs. Wheeler saw how well their little establishment was

conducted, how cheerful and attractive Enid looked when one happened to drop in there, she wondered that

Claude was not happy. And Claude himself wondered. If his marriage disappointed him in some respects, he

ought to be a man, he told himself, and make the best of what was good in it. If his wife didn't love him, it

was because love meant one thing to him and quite another thing to her. She was proud of him, was glad to

see him when he came in from the fields, and was solicitous for his comfort. Everything about a man's

embrace was distasteful to Enid; something inflicted upon women, like the pain of childbirth, for Eve's

This repugnance was more than physical; she disliked ardour of any kind, even religious ardour. She had

been fonder of Claude before she married him than she was now; but she hoped for a readjustment. Perhaps

sometime she could like him again in exactly the same way. Even Brother Weldon had hinted to her that for

the sake of their future tranquillity she must be lenient with the boy. And she thought she had been lenient.

She could not understand his moods of desperate silence, the bitter, biting remarks he sometimes dropped, his

evident annoyance if she went over to join him in the timber claim when he lay there idle in the deep grass on

Claude used to lie there and watch the clouds, saying to himself, "It's the end of everything for me." Other

men than he must have been disappointed, and he wondered how they bore it through a lifetime. Claude had

been a well behaved boy because he was an idealist; he had looked forward to being wonderfully happy in

love, and to deserving his happiness. He had never dreamed that it might be otherwise.

Sometimes now, when he went out into the fields on a bright summer morning, it seemed to him that Nature

not only smiled, but broadly laughed at him. He suffered in his pride, but even more in his ideals, in his

vague sense of what was beautiful. Enid could make his life hideous to him without ever knowing it. At such

times he hated himself for accepting at all her grudging hospitality. He was wronging something in himself.

In her person Enid was still attractive to him. He wondered why she had no shades of feeling to correspond to

her natural grace and lightness of movement, to the gentle, almost wistful attitudes of body in which he

sometimes surprised her. When he came in from work and found her sitting on the porch, leaning against a

pillar, her hands clasped about her knees, her head drooping a little, he could scarcely believe in the rigidity

which met him at every turn. Was there something repellent in him? Was it, after all, his fault?

Enid was rather more indulgent with his father than with any one else, he noticed. Mr. Wheeler stopped to see

her almost every day, and even took her driving in his old buckboard. Bayliss came out from town to spend

the evening occasionally. Enid's vegetarian suppers suited him, and as she worked with him in the Prohibition

campaign, they always had business to discuss. Bayliss had a social as well as a hygienic prejudice against

alcohol, and he hated it less for the harm it did than for the pleasure it gave. Claude consistently refused to

take any part in the activities of the AntiSaloon League, or to distribute what Bayliss and Enid called "our

In the farming towns the term "literature" was applied only to a special kind of printed matter; there was

Prohibition literature, SexHygiene literature, and, during a scourge of cattle disease, there was

HoofandMouth literature. This special application of the word didn't bother Claude, but his mother, being

Enid did not understand her husband's indifference to a burning question, and could only attribute it to the

influence of Ernest Havel. She sometimes asked Claude to go with her to one of her committee meetings. If it

was a Sunday, he said he was tired and wanted to read the paper. If it was a weekday, he had something to

do at the barn, or meant to clear out the timber claim. He did, indeed, saw off a few dead limbs, and cut down

a tree the lightning had blasted. Further than that he wouldn't have let anybody clear the timber lot; he would

The timber claim was his refuge. In the open, grassy spots, shut in by the bushy walls of yellowing ash trees,

he felt unmarried and free; free to smoke as much as he liked, and to read and dream. Some of his dreams

would have frozen his young wife's blood with horrorand some would have melted his mother's heart with

pity. To lie in the hot sun and look up at the stainless blue of the autumn sky, to hear the dry rustle of the

leaves as they fell, and the sound of the bold squirrels leaping from branch to branch; to lie thus and let his

imagination play with lifethat was the best he could do. His thoughts, he told himself, were his own. He

was no longer a boy. He went off into the timber claim to meet a young man more experienced and

>From her upstairs window Mrs. Wheeler could see Claude moving back and forth in the west field, drilling

wheat. She felt lonely for him. He didn't come home as often as he might. She had begun to wonder whether

he was one of those people who are always discontented; but whatever his disappointments were, he kept

them locked in his own breast. One had to learn the lessons of life. Nevertheless, it made her a little sad to see

After watching from the window for a few moments, she turned to the telephone and called up Claude's

house, asking Enid whether she would mind if he came there for dinner. "Mahailey and I get lonesome with

"Why, no, Mother Wheeler, of course not." Enid spoke cheerfully, as she always did. "Have you any one

Mrs. Wheeler left the house a little before noon and stopped at the creek to rest before she climbed the long

hill. At the edge of the field she sat down against a grassy bank and waited until the horses came tramping up

"Oh, no! I'm going to take you home for dinner with me, that's all. I telephoned Enid." He unhooked his team,

and he and his mother started down the hill together, walking behind the horses. Though they had not been

alone like this for a long while, she felt it best to talk about impersonal things.

"Don't let me forget to give you an article about the execution of that English nurse."

"Edith Cavell? I've read about it," he answered listlessly. "It's nothing to be surprised at. If they could sink the

"Someway I feel as if this were different," his mother murmured. "It's like the hanging of John Brown. I

Mrs. Wheeler looked up at him. "I don't see how we can stay out of it much longer, do you? I suppose our

army wouldn't be a drop in the bucket, even if we could get it over. They tell us we can be more useful in our

agriculture and manufactories than we could by going into the war. I only hope it isn't campaign talk. I do

She shook her head. "I've never yet found a public question in which there wasn't party politics. Well, we can

only do our duty as it comes to us, and have faith. This field finishes your fall work?"

"Yes. I'll have time to do some things about the place, now. I'm going to make a good icehouse and put up

Mrs. Wheeler sighed. His tone meant that he had turned his back on old pleasures and old friends.

"I think so, Mother," he answered a little impatiently. "I told her she could attend to it when she was in town

"Of course," his mother persevered, "some of the programs are not very good, but we ought to patronize them

He knew, and his mother knew, that he was not very good at that. His horses stopped at the water tank. "Don't

wait for me. I'll be along in a minute." Seeing her crestfallen face, he smiled. "Never mind, Mother, I can

always catch you when you try to give me a pill in a raisin. One of us has to be pretty smart to fool the other."

She blinked up at him with that smile in which her eyes almost disappeared. "I thought I was smart that

It was a comfort, she reflected, as she hurried up the hill, to get hold of him again, to get his attention, even.

While Claude was washing for dinner, Mahailey came to him with a page of newspaper cartoons, illustrating

German brutality. To her they were all photographs,she knew no other way of making a picture.

"Mr. Claude," she asked, "how comes it all them Germans is such ugly lookin' people? The Yoeders and the

Claude put her off indulgently. "Maybe it's the ugly ones that are doing the fighting, and the ones at home are

"Then why don't they make their soldiers stay home, an' not go breakin' other people's things, an' turnin' 'em

out of their houses," she muttered indignantly. "They say little babies was born out in the snow last winter,

an' no fires for their mudders nor nothin'. 'Deed, Mr. Claude, it wasn't like that in our war; the soldiers didn't

do nothin' to the women an' chillun. Many a time our house was full of Northern soldiers, an' they never so

"You'll have to tell me about it again sometime, Mahailey. I must have my dinner and get back to work. If we

don't get our wheat in, those people over there won't have anything to eat, you know."

The picture papers meant a great deal to Mahailey, because she could faintly remember the Civil War. While

she pored over photographs of camps and battlefields and devastated villages, things came back to her; the

companies of dusty Union infantry that used to stop to drink at her mother's cold mountain spring. She had

seen them take off their boots and wash their bleeding feet in the run. Her mother had given one lousebitten

boy a clean shirt, and she had never forgotten the sight of his back, "as raw as beef where he'd scratched it."

Five of her brothers were in the Confederate army. When one was wounded in the second battle of Bull Run,

her mother had borrowed a wagon and horses, gone a three days' journey to the field hospital, and brought the

boy home to the mountain. Mahailey could remember how her older sisters took turns pouring cold spring

water on his gangrenous leg all day and all night. There were no doctors left in the neighbourhood, and as

nobody could amputate the boy's leg, he died by inches. Mahailey was the only person in the Wheeler

household who had ever seen war with her own eyes, and she felt that this fact gave her a definite superiority.

Claude had been married a year and a half. One December morning he got a telephone message from his

fatherinlaw, asking him to come in to Frankfort at once. He found Mr. Royce sunk in his deskchair,

smoking as usual, with several foreignlooking letters on the table before him. As he took these out of their

envelopes and sorted the pages, Claude noticed how unsteady his hands had become.

One letter, from the chief of the medical staff in the mission school where Caroline Royce taught, informed

Mr. Royce that his daughter was seriously ill in the mission hospital. She would have to be sent to a more

salubrious part of the country for rest and treatment, and would not be strong enough to return to her duties

for a year or more. If some member of her family could come out to take care of her, it would relieve the

school authorities of great anxiety. There was also a letter from a fellow teacher, and a rather incoherent one

from Caroline herself. After Claude finished reading them, Mr. Royce pushed a box of cigars toward him and

"I could go to her," he complained, "but what good would that do? I'm not in sympathy with her ideas, and it

would only fret her. You can see she's made her mind up not to come home. I don't believe in one people

trying to force their ways or their religion on another. I'm not that kind of man." He sat looking at his cigar.

After a long pause he broke out suddenly, "China has been drummed into my ears . It seems like a long way

to go to hunt for trouble, don't it? A man hasn't got much control over his own life, Claude. If it ain't poverty

or disease that torments him, it's a name on the map. I could have made out pretty well, if it hadn't been for

China, and some other things . . . . If Carrie'd had to teach for her clothes and help pay off my notes, like old

man Harrison's daughters, like enough she'd have stayed at home. There's always something. I don't know

"Oh, she will have to know about it, Mr. Royce. If she feels that she ought to go to Carrie, it wouldn't be right

Mr. Royce shook his head. "I don't know. It don't seem fair that China should hang over you, too."

When Claude got home he remarked as he handed Enid the letters, "Your father has been a good deal upset

Enid studied their contents, sitting at her orderly little desk, while Claude pretended to read the paper.

"Oh, if that's all!" Claude smiled perversely and took up his paper again. "I wonder how it will look to people

"What a mean thing to say, Claude!" She rose sharply, then hesitated, perplexed. "People here know me

better than that. It isn't as if you couldn't be perfectly comfortable at your mother's." As he did not glance up

Claude sat still, listening to Enid's quick movements as she opened up the range to get supper. The light in the

room grew greyer. Outside the fields melted into one another as evening came on. The young trees in the yard

bent and whipped about under a bitter north wind. He had often thought with pride that winter died at his

front doorstep; within, no draughty halls, no chilly corners. This was their second year here. When he was

driving home, the thought that he might be free of this house for a long while had stirred a pleasant

excitement in him; but now, he didn't want to leave it. Something grew soft in him. He wondered whether

they couldn't try again, and make things go better. Enid was singing in the kitchen in a subdued, rather lonely

voice. He rose and went out for his milking coat and pail. As he passed his wife by the window, he stopped

She looked up. "That's right. You're feeling better about it, aren't you? I thought you would. Gracious, what a

Claude knew that tone. Enid never questioned the rightness of her own decisions. When she made up her

mind, there was no turning her. He went down the path to the barn with his hands stuffed in his trousers

pockets, his bright pail hanging on his arm. Try againwhat was there to try? Platitudes, littleness, falseness

. . . . His life was choking him, and he hadn't the courage to break with it. Let her go! Let her go when she

would! . . . What a hideous world to be born into! Or was it hideous only for him? Everything he touched

When they sat down at the supper table in the back parlour an hour later, Enid looked worn, as if this time her

decision had cost her something. "I should think you might have a restful winter at your mother's," she began

cheerfully. "You won't have nearly so much to look after as you do here. We needn't disturb things in this

house. I will take the silver down to Mother, and we can leave everything else just as it is. Would there be

"Oh, no! I won't need it. I'll put it up at the mill house," he answered with an effort at carelessness.

All the familiar objects that stood about them in the lamplight seemed stiller and more solemn than usual, as

"I suppose you had better take the chickens over to your mother's," Enid continued evenly. "But I shouldn't

like them to get mixed with her Plymouth Rocks; there's not a dark feather among them now. Do ask Mother

"Of course, Claude. I could hardly get back before next fall, if I'm to be of any help to poor Carrie. I might try

to be home for harvest, if that would make it more convenient for you." She rose to bring in the dessert.

"Oh, don't hurry on my account!" he muttered, staring after her disappearing figure.

Enid came back with the hot pudding and the afterdinner coffee things. "This has come on us so suddenly

that we must make our plans at once," she explained. "I should think your mother would be glad to keep Rose

He took the little goldrimmed cup she held out to him. "If you are going to be gone until next fall, I shall

"I shall sell her, anyhow. The horses, of course, are Father's; he paid for them. If you clear out, he may want

to rent this place. You may find a tenant in here when you get back from China." Claude swallowed his

coffee, put down the cup, and went into the front parlour, where he lit a cigar. He walked up and down,

keeping his eyes fixed upon his wife, who still sat at the table in the circle of light from the hanging lamp.

Her head, bent forward a little, showed the neat part of her brown hair. When she was perplexed, her face

"If you've no feeling for the place," said Claude from the other room, "you can hardly expect me to hang

around and take care of it. All the time you were campaigning, I played housekeeper here."

Enid's eyes narrowed, but she did not flush. Claude had never seen a wave of colour come over his wife's

"Don't be childish. You know I care for this place; it's our home. But no feeling would be right that kept me

from doing my duty. You are well, and you have your mother's house to go to. Carrie is ill and among

She began to gather up the dishes. Claude stepped quickly out into the light and confronted her. "It's not only

your going. You know what's the matter with me. It's because you want to go. You are glad of a chance to get

Enid took up the tray. "If I am glad, it's because you are not willing to govern our lives by Christian ideals.

There is something in you that rebels all the time. So many important questions have come up since our

marriage, and you have been indifferent or sarcastic about every one of them. You want to lead a purely

She walked resolutely out of the room and shut the door behind her. Later, when she came back, Claude was

not there. His hat and coat were gone from the hat rack; he must have let himself out quietly by the front

In the morning, on coming out from her bedroom, she found Claude asleep on the lounge, dressed, with his

overcoat on. She had a moment of terror and bent over him, but she could not detect any smell of spirits. She

Having once made up her mind to go out to her sister, Enid lost no time. She engaged passage and cabled the

mission school. She left Frankfort the week before Christmas. Claude and Ralph took her as far as Denver

and put her on a transcontinental express. When Claude came home, he moved over to his mother's, and

sold his cow and chickens to Leonard Dawson. Except when he went to see Mr. Royce, he seldom left the

farm now, and he avoided the neighbours. He felt that they were discussing his domestic affairs,as, of

course, they were. The Royces and the Wheelers, they said, couldn't behave like anybody else, and it was no

use their trying. If Claude built the best house in the neighbourhood, he just naturally wouldn't live in it. And

One snowy day, when nobody was about, Claude took the big car and went over to his own place to close the

house for the winter and bring away the canned fruit and vegetables left in the cellar. Enid had packed her

best linen in her cedar chest and had put the kitchen and china closets in scrupulous order before she went

away. He began covering the upholstered chairs and the mattresses with sheets, rolled up the rugs, and

fastened the windows securely. As he worked, his hands grew more and more numb and listless, and his heart

was like a lump of ice. All these things that he had selected with care and in which he had taken such pride,

were no more to him now than the lumber piled in the shop of any secondhand dealer.

How inherently mournful and ugly such objects were, when the feeling that had made them precious no

longer existed! The debris of human life was more worthless and ugly than the dead and decaying things in

nature. Rubbish . . . junk . . . his mind could not picture anything that so exposed and condemned all the

dreary, weary, everrepeated actions by which life is continued from day to day. Actions without meaning . .

. . As he looked out and saw the grey landscape through the gently falling snow, he could not help thinking

how much better it would be if people could go to sleep like the fields; could be blanketed down under the

snow, to wake with their hurts healed and their defeats forgotten. He wondered how he was to go on through

the years ahead of him, unless he could get rid of this sick feeling in his soul.

At last he locked the door, put the key in his pocket, and went over to the timber claim to smoke a cigar and

say goodbye to the place. There he soberly walked about for more than an hour, under the crooked trees with

empty birds' nests in their forks. Every time he came to a break in the hedge, he could see the little house,

giving itself up so meekly to solitude. He did not believe that he would ever live there again. Well, at any

rate, the money his father had put into the place would not be lost; he could always get a better tenant for

having a comfortable house there. Several of the boys in the neighbourhood were planning to be married

within the year. The future of the house was safe. And he? He stopped short in his walk; his feet had made an

uncertain, purposeless trail all over the white ground. It vexed him to see his own footsteps. What was

itwhat WAS the matter with him? Why, at least, could he not stop feeling things, and hoping? What was

He heard a sound of distress, and looking back, saw the barn cat, that had been left behind to pick up her

living. She was standing inside the hedge, her jet black fur ruffled against the wet flakes, one paw lifted,

"What's the matter, Blackie? Mice getting scarce in the barn? Mahailey will say you are bad luck. Maybe you

are, but you can't help it, can you?" He slipped her into his overcoat pocket. Later, when he was getting into

his car, he tried to dislodge her and put her in a basket, but she clung to her nest in his pocket and dug her

claws into the lining. He laughed. "Well, if you are bad luck, I guess you are going to stay right with me!"

Mrs. Wheeler was afraid that Claude might not find the old place comfortable, after having had a house of his

own. She put her best rocking chair and a reading lamp in his bedroom. He often sat there all evening,

shading his eyes with his hand, pretending to read. When he stayed downstairs after supper, his mother and

Mahailey were grateful. Besides collecting war pictures, Mahailey now hunted through the old magazines in

the attic for pictures of China. She had marked on her big kitchen calendar the day when Enid would arrive in

"Mr. Claude," she would say as she stood at the sink washing the supper dishes, "it's broad daylight over

where Miss Enid is, ain't it? Cause the world's round, an' the old sun, he's ashinin' over there for the yaller

>From time to time, when they were working together, Mrs. Wheeler told Mahailey what she knew about the

customs of the Chinese. The old woman had never had two impersonal interests at the same time before, and

she scarcely knew what to do with them. She would murmur on, half to Claude and half to herself: "They

ain't fightin' over there where Miss Enid is, is they? An' she won't have to wear their kind of clothes, cause

she's a white woman. She won't let 'em kill their girl babies nor do such awful things like they always have,

an' she won't let 'em pray to them stone iboles, cause they can't help 'em none. I 'spect Miss Enid'll do a heap

Behind her diplomatic monologues, however, Mahailey had her own ideas, and she was greatly scandalized

at Enid's departure. She was afraid people would say that Claude's wife had "run off an' lef' him," and in the

Virginia mountains, where her social standards had been formed, a husband or wife thus deserted was the

object of boisterous ridicule. She once stopped Mrs. Wheeler in a dark corner of the cellar to whisper, "Mr.

If one of the Yoeder boys or Susie Dawson happened to be at the Wheelers' for dinner, Mahailey never failed

to refer to Enid in a loud voice. "Mr. Claude's wife, she cuts her potatoes up raw in the pan an' fries 'em. She

don't boil 'em first like I do. I know she's an awful good cook, I know she is." She felt that easy references to

Ernest Havel came to see Claude now, but not often. They both felt it would be indelicate to renew their

former intimacy. Ernest still felt aggrieved about his beer, as if Enid had snatched the tankard from his lips

with her own corrective hand. Like Leonard, he believed that Claude had made a bad bargain in matrimony;

but instead of feeling sorry for him, Ernest wanted to see him convinced and punished. When he married

Enid, Claude had been false to liberal principles, and it was only right that he should pay for his apostasy.

The very first time he came to spend an evening at the Wheelers' after Claude came home to live, Ernest

undertook to explain his objections to Prohibition. Claude shrugged his shoulders.

"Why not drop it? It's a matter that doesn't interest me, one way or the other."

Ernest was offended and did not come back for nearly a monthnot, indeed, until the announcement that

Germany would resume unrestricted submarine warfare made every one look questioningly at his neighbour.

He walked into the Wheelers' kitchen the night after this news reached the farming country, and found Claude

and his mother sitting at the table, reading the papers aloud to each other in snatches. Ernest had scarcely

"It's the telegraph operator at Frankfort," he said, as he hung up the receiver. "He repeated a message from

Father, sent from Wray: 'Will be home day after tomorrow. Read the papers.' What does he mean? What does

"It means he considers our situation very serious. It's not like him to telegraph except in case of illness." Mrs.

Wheeler rose and walked distractedly to the telephone box, as if it might further disclose her husband's state

"He would know how I feel about it. Some of your father's people were seagoing men, out of Portsmouth. He

knows what it means when our shipping is told where it can go on the ocean, and where it cannot. It isn't

possible that Washington can take such an affront for us. To think that at this time, of all times, we should

"The war will be over before Washington can do anything, Mrs. Wheeler," Ernest declared gloomily,

"England will be starved out, and France will be beaten to a standstill. The whole German army will be on the

Western front now. What could this country do? How long do you suppose it takes to make an army?"

Mrs. Wheeler stopped short in her restless pacing and met his moody glance. "I don't know anything, Ernest,

but I believe the Bible. I believe that in the twinkling of an eye we shall be changed!"

Ernest looked at the floor. He respected faith. As he said, you must respect it or despise it, for there was

Claude sat leaning his elbows on the table. "It always comes back to the same thing, Mother. Even if a raw

army could do anything, how would we get it over there? Here's one naval authority who says the Germans

are turning out submarines at the rate of three a day. They probably didn't spring this on us until they had

"I don't pretend to say what we could accomplish, son. But we must stand somewhere, morally. They have

told us all along that we could be more helpful to the Allies out of the war than in it, because we could send

munitions and supplies. If we agree to withdraw that aid, where are we? Helping Germany, all the time we

are pretending to mind our own business! If our only alternative is to be at the bottom of the sea, we had

"Mother, do sit down! We can't settle it tonight. I never saw you so worked up."

"Your father is worked up, too, or he would never have sent that telegram." Mrs. Wheeler reluctantly took up

When Ernest left, Claude walked as far as the Yoeders' place with him, and came back across the

snowdrifted fields, under the frosty brilliance of the winter stars. As he looked up at them, he felt more than

ever that they must have something to do with the fate of nations, and with the incomprehensible things that

were happening in the world. In the ordered universe there must be some mind that read the riddle of this one

unhappy planet, that knew what was forming in the dark eclipse of this hour. A question hung in the air; over

all this quiet land about him, over him, over his mother, even. He was afraid for his country, as he had been

that night on the State House steps in Denver, when this war was undreamed of, hidden in the womb of time.

Claude and his mother had not long to wait. Three days later they knew that the German ambassador had

been dismissed, and the American ambassador recalled from Berlin. To older men these events were subjects

to think and converse about; but to boys like Claude they were life and death, predestination.

One stormy morning Claude was driving the big wagon to town to get a load of lumber. The roads were

beginning to thaw out, and the country was black and dirty looking. Here and there on the dark mud, grey

snow crusts lingered, perforated like honeycomb, with wet weedstalks sticking up through them. As the

wagon creaked over the high ground just above Frankfort, Claude noticed a brilliant new flag flying from the

schoolhouse cupola. He had never seen the flag before when it meant anything but the Fourth of July, or a

political rally. Today it was as if he saw it for the first time; no bands, no noise, no orators; a spot of restless

He turned out of his way in order to pass the High School, drew up his team, and waited a few minutes until

the noon bell rang. The older boys and girls came out first, with a flurry of raincoats and umbrellas. Presently

he saw Gladys Farmer, in a yellow "slicker" and an oilskin hat, and waved to her. She came up to the wagon.

"It's a silk one the Senior boys bought with their athletic money. I advised them not to run it up in this rain,

She took his extended hand, put her foot on the hub of the wheel, and climbed to the seat beside him. He

"Nothing else seems very real, either. I'm going to haul out a load of lumber, but I never expect to drive a nail

in it. These things don't matter now. There is only one thing we ought to do, and only one thing that matters;

Gladys made no reply. She only looked at him gravely with her calm, generous brown eyes. They stopped

before the low house where the windows were full of flowers. She took his hand and swung herself to the

ground, holding it for a moment while she said goodbye. Claude drove back to the lumber yard. In a place

like Frankfort, a boy whose wife was in China could hardly go to see Gladys without causing gossip.

During the bleak month of March Mr. Wheeler went to town in his buckboard almost every day. For the first

time in his life he had a secret anxiety. The one member of his family who had never given him the slightest

Bayliss was a Pacifist, and kept telling people that if only the United States would stay out of this war, and

gather up what Europe was wasting, she would soon be in actual possession of the capital of the world. There

was a kind of logic in Bayliss' utterances that shook Nat Wheeler's imperturbable assumption that one point

of view was as good as another. When Bayliss fought the dram and the cigarette, Wheeler only laughed. That

a son of his should turn out a Prohibitionist, was a joke he could appreciate. But Bayliss' attitude in the

present crisis disturbed him. Day after day he sat about his son's place of business, interrupting his arguments

with funny stories. Bayliss did not go home at all that month. He said to his father, "No, Mother's too violent.

Claude and his mother read the papers in the evening, but they talked so little about what they read that

Mahailey inquired anxiously whether they weren't still fighting over yonder. When she could get Claude

alone for a moment, she pulled out Sunday supplement pictures of the devastated countries and asked him to

tell her what was to become of this family, photographed among the ruins of their home; of this old woman,

who sat by the roadside with her bundles. "Where's she goin' to, anyways? See, Mr. Claude, she's got her iron

Pictures of soldiers in gasmasks puzzled her; gas was something she hadn't learned about in the Civil War,

so she worked it out for herself that these masks were worn by the army cooks, to protect their eyes when

they were cutting up onions! "All them onions they have to cut up, it would put their eyes out if they didn't

On the morning of the eighth of April Claude came downstairs early and began to clean his boots, which

were caked with dry mud. Mahailey was squatting down beside her stove, blowing and puffing into it. The

fire was always slow to start in heavy weather. Claude got an old knife and a brush, and putting his foot on a

chair over by the west window, began to scrape his shoe. He had said goodmorning to Mahailey, nothing

"Mr. Claude," Mahailey grumbled, "this stove ain't never drawed good like my old one Mr. Ralph took away

from me. I can't do nothin' with it. Maybe you'll clean it out for me next Sunday."

"I'll clean it today, if you say so. I won't be here next Sunday. I'm going away."

Something in his tone made Mahailey get up, her eyes still blinking with the smoke, and look at him sharply.

"No, Mahailey." He had dropped the shoebrush and stood with one foot on the chair, his elbow on his knee,

looking out of the window as if he had forgotten himself. "No, I'm not going to China. I'm going over to help

He was still staring out at the wet fields. Before he could stop her, before he knew what she was doing, she

"I knowed you would," she sobbed. "I always knowed you would, you nice boy, you! Old Mahail' knowed!"

Her upturned face was working all over; her mouth, her eyebrows, even the wrinkles on her low forehead

were working and twitching. Claude felt a tightening in his throat as he tenderly regarded that face; behind

the pale eyes, under the low brow where there was not room for many thoughts, an idea was struggling and

"You're all right, Mahailey," he muttered, patting her back and turning away. "Now hurry breakfast."

"No, not yet. But she'll be all right, too." He caught up his cap and went down to the barn to look after the

When Claude returned, the family were already at the breakfast table. He slipped into his seat and watched

his mother while she drank her first cup of coffee. Then he addressed his father.

"Father, I don't see any use of waiting for the draft. If you can spare me, I'd like to get into a training camp

"I shouldn't wonder." Mr. Wheeler poured maple syrup on his pancakes with a liberal hand. "How do you feel

Mrs. Wheeler had quietly put down her knife and fork. She looked at her husband in vague alarm, while her

"I thought," Claude went on hastily, "that maybe I would go up to Omaha tomorrow and find out where the

training camps are to be located, and have a talk with the men in charge of the enlistment station. Of course,"

he added lightly, "they may not want me. I haven't an idea what the requirements are."

"No, I don't understand much about it either." Mr. Wheeler rolled his top pancake and conveyed it to his

"I'd like to. I won't bother with baggagesome shirts and underclothes in my suitcase. If the Government

Mr. Wheeler pushed back his plate. "Well, now I guess you'd better come out with me and look at the wheat.

I don't know but I'd best plough up that south quarter and put it in corn. I don't believe it will make anything

When Claude and his father went out of the door, Dan sprang up with more alacrity than usual and plunged

after them. He did not want to be left alone with Mrs. Wheeler. She remained sitting at the foot of the

deserted breakfast table. She was not crying. Her eyes were utterly sightless. Her back was so stooped that

she seemed to be bending under a burden. Mahailey cleared the dishes away quietly.

Out in the muddy fields Claude finished his talk with his father. He explained that he wanted to slip away

without saying goodbye to any one. "I have a way, you know," he said, flushing, "of beginning things and

not getting very far with them. I don't want anything said about this until I'm sure. I may be rejected for one

Mr. Wheeler smiled. "I guess not. However, I'll tell Dan to keep his mouth shut. Will you just go over to

Leonard Dawson's and get that wrench he borrowed? It's about noon, and he'll likely be at home." Claude

found big Leonard watering his team at the windmill. When Leonard asked him what he thought of the

President's message, he blurted out at once that he was going to Omaha to enlist. Leonard reached up and

"Better wait a few weeks and I'll go with you. I'm going to try for the Marines. They take my eye."

Claude, standing on the edge of the tank, almost fell backward. "Why, whatwhat for?"

Leonard looked him over. "Good Lord, Claude, you ain't the only fellow around here that wears pants! What

for? Well, I'll tell you what for," he held up three large red fingers threateningly; "Belgium., the Lusitania,

Edith Cavell. That dirt's got under my skin. I'll get my corn planted, and then Father'll look after Susie till I

Claude took a long breath. "Well, Leonard, you fooled me. I believed all this chaff you've been giving me

"And no more do I care," Leonard protested, "not a damn! But there's a limit. I've been ready to go since the

Lusitania. I don't get any satisfaction out of my place any more. Susie feels the same way."

Claude looked at his big neighbour. "Well, I'm off tomorrow, Leonard. Don't mention it to my folks, but if I

can't get into the army, I'm going to enlist in the navy. They'll always take an ablebodied man. I'm not

"Good luck, Claude. Maybe we'll meet in foreign parts. Wouldn't that be a joke! Give my love to Enid when

you write. I always did think she was a fine girl, though I disagreed with her on Prohibition." Claude crossed

the fields mechanically, without looking where he went. His power of vision was turned inward upon scenes

One bright June day Mr. Wheeler parked his car in a line of motors before the new pressedbrick Court

house in Frankfort. The Court house stood in an open square, surrounded by a grove of cottonwoods. The

lawn was freshly cut, and the flower beds were blooming. When Mr. Wheeler entered the courtroom upstairs,

it was already halffull of farmers and townspeople, talking in low tones while the summer flies buzzed in

and out of the open windows. The judge, a onearmed man, with white hair and sidewhiskers, sat at his

desk, writing with his left hand. He was an old settler in Frankfort county, but from his frockcoat and courtly

manners you might have thought he had come from Kentucky yesterday instead of thirty years ago. He was to

hear this morning a charge of disloyalty brought against two German farmers. One of the accused was August

Yoeder, the Wheelers' nearest neighbour, and the other was Troilus Oberlies, a rich German from the

Oberlies owned a beautiful farm and lived in a big white house set on a hill, with a fine orchard, rows of

beehives, barns, granaries, and poultry yards. He raised turkeys and tumblerpigeons, and many geese and

ducks swam about on his cattleponds. He used to boast that he had six sons, "like our German Emperor." His

neighbours were proud of his place, and pointed it out to strangers. They told how Oberlies had come to

Frankfort county a poor man, and had made his fortune by his industry and intelligence. He had twice crossed

the ocean to revisit his fatherland, and when he returned to his home on the prairies he brought presents for

every one; his lawyer, his banker, and the merchants with whom he dealt in Frankfort and Vicount. Each of

his neighbours had in his parlour some piece of woodcarving or weaving, or some ingenious mechanical toy

that Oberlies had picked up in Germany. He was an older man than Yoeder, wore a short beard that was

white and curly, like his hair, and though he was low in stature, his puffy red face and full blue eyes, and a

certain swagger about his carriage, gave him a look of importance. He was boastful and quicktempered, but

until the war broke out in Europe nobody had ever had any trouble with him. Since then he had constantly

Mr. Wheeler had come to town prepared to lend Yoeder a hand if he needed one. They had worked adjoining

fields for thirty years now. He was surprised that his neighbour had got into trouble. He was not a blusterer,

like Oberlies, but a big, quiet man, with a serious, largefeatured face, and a stern mouth that seldom opened.

His countenance might have been cut out of red sandstone, it was so heavy and fixed. He and Oberlies sat on

Presently the judge stopped writing and said he would hear the charges against Troilus Oberlies. Several

neighbours took the stand in succession; their complaints were confused and almost humorous. Oberlies had

said the United States would be licked, and that would be a good thing; America was a great country, but it

was run by fools, and to be governed by Germany was the best thing that could happen to it. The witness

Here the judge interrupted him. "Please confine yourself to statements which you consider disloyal, made in

your presence by the defendant." While the witness proceeded, the judge took off his glasses and laid them on

the desk and began to polish the lenses with a silk handkerchief, trying them, and rubbing them again, as if he

A second witness had heard Oberlies say he hoped the German submarines would sink a few troopships; that

would frighten the Americans and teach them to stay at home and mind their own business. A third

complained that on Sunday afternoons the old man sat on his front porch and played Die Wacht am Rhein on

a slidetrombone, to the great annoyance of his neighbours. Here Nat Wheeler slapped his knee with a loud

guffaw, and a titter ran through the courtroom. The defendant's puffy red cheeks seemed fashioned by his

When asked if he had anything to say to these charges, the old man rose, threw back his shoulders, and cast a

defiant glance at the courtroom. "You may take my property and imprison me, but I explain nothing, and I

The judge regarded his inkwell with a smile. "You mistake the nature of this occasion, Mr. Oberlies. You are

not asked to recant. You are merely asked to desist from further disloyal utterances, as much for your own

protection and comfort as from consideration for the feelings of your neighbours. I will now hear the charges

Mr. Yoeder, a witness declared, had said he hoped the United States would go to Hell, now that it had been

bought over by England. When the witness had remarked to him that if the Kaiser were shot it would end the

war, Yoeder replied that charity begins at home, and he wished somebody would put a bullet in the President.

When he was called upon, Yoeder rose and stood like a rock before the judge. "I have nothing to say. The

charges are true. I thought this was a country where a man could speak his mind."

"Yes, a man can speak his mind, but even here he must take the consequences. Sit down, please." The judge

leaned back in his chair, and looking at the two men in front of him, began with deliberation: "Mr. Oberlies,

and Mr. Yoeder, you both know, and your friends and neighbours know, why you are here. You have not

recognized the element of appropriateness, which must be regarded in nearly all the transactions of life; many

of our civil laws are founded upon it. You have allowed a sentiment, noble in itself, to carry you away and

lead you to make extravagant statements which I am confident neither of you mean. No man can demand that

you cease from loving the country of your birth; but while you enjoy the benefits of this country, you should

not defame its government to extol another. You both admit to utterances which I can only adjudge disloyal. I

shall fine you each three hundred dollars; a very light fine under the circumstances. If I should have occasion

After the case was concluded, Mr. Wheeler joined his neighbour at the door and they went downstairs

"He's still at Fort R. He expects to get home on leave before he sails. Gus, you'll have to lend me one of

"Yes, you can have any of my boys, till the draft gets 'em," said Yoeder sourly.

"I wouldn't worry about it. A little military training is good for a boy. You fellows know that." Mr. Wheeler

That evening at supper Mr. Wheeler gave his wife a full account of the court hearing, so that she could write

it to Claude. Mrs. Wheeler, always more a schoolteacher than a housekeeper, wrote a rapid, easy hand, and

her long letters to Claude reported all the neighbourhood doings. Mr. Wheeler furnished much of the material

for them. Like many longmarried men he had fallen into the way of withholding neighbourhood news from

his wife. But since Claude went away he reported to her everything in which he thought the boy would be

"Your father talks a great deal more at home than formerly, and sometimes I think he is trying to take your

On the first day of July Claude Wheeler found himself in the fast train from Omaha, going home for a week's

leave. The uniform was still an unfamiliar sight in July, 1917. The first draft was not yet called, and the boys

who had rushed off and enlisted were in training camps far away. Therefore a redheaded young man with

long straight legs in puttees, and broad, energetic, responsiblelooking shoulders in closefitting khaki, made

a conspicuous figure among the passengers. Little boys and young girls peered at him over the tops of seats,

men stopped in the aisle to talk to him, old ladies put on their glasses and studied his clothes, his bulky

The country that rushed by him on each side of the track was more interesting to his trained eye than the

pages of any book. He was glad to be going through it at harvest,the season when it is most itself. He noted

that there was more corn than usual,much of the winter wheat had been weather killed, and the fields were

ploughed up in the spring and replanted in maize. The pastures were already burned brown, the alfalfa was

coming green again after its first cutting. Binders and harvesters were abroad in the wheat and oats, gathering

the softbreathing billows of grain into wide, subduing arms. When the train slowed down for a trestle in a

wheat field, harvesters in blue shirts and overalls and wide straw hats stopped working to wave at the

passengers. Claude turned to the old man in the opposite seat. "When I see those fellows, I feel as if I'd

His neighbour looked pleased and smiled. "That the kind of uniform you're accustomed to?"

"I surely never wore anything else in the month of July," Claude admitted. "When I find myself riding along

in a train, in the middle of harvest, trying to learn French verbs, then I know the world is turned upside down,

The old man pressed a cigar upon him and began to question him. Like the hero of the Odyssey upon his

homeward journey, Claude had often to tell what his country was, and who were the parents that begot him.

He was constantly interrupted in his perusal of a French phrasebook (made up of sentences chosen for their

usefulness to soldiers,such as; "Non, jamais je ne regarde les femmes") by the questions of curious

strangers. Presently he gathered up his luggage, shook hands with his neighbour, and put on his hatthe same

old Stetson, with a gold cord and two hard tassels added to its conical severity. "I get off at this station and

The old man wished him a pleasant visit home, and the best of luck in days to come. Every one in the car

smiled at him as he stepped down to the platform with his suitcase in one hand and his canvas bag in the

other. His old friend, Mrs. Voigt, the German woman, stood out in front of her restaurant, ringing her bell to

announce that dinner was ready for travellers. A crowd of young boys stood about her on the sidewalk,

laughing and shouting in disagreeable, jeering tones. As Claude approached, one of them snatched the bell

from her hand, ran off across the tracks with it, and plunged into a cornfield. The other boys followed, and

one of them shouted, "Don't go in there to eat, soldier. She's a German spy, and she'll put ground glass in

Claude swept into the lunch room and threw his bags on the floor. "What's the matter, Mrs. Voigt? Can I do

She was sitting on one of her own stools, crying piteously, her false frizzes awry. Looking up, she gave a

little screech of recognition. "Oh, I tank Gott it was you, and no more trouble coming! You know I ain't no

spy nor nodding, like what dem boys say. Dem young fellers is dreadful rough mit me. I sell dem candy since

dey was babies, an' now dey turn on me like dis. Hindenburg, dey calls me, and Kaiser Bill!" She began to

"Give me some dinner, ma'am, and then I'll go and settle with that gang. I've been away for a long time, and it

seemed like getting home when I got off the train and saw your squaw vines running over the porch like they

"Ya? You remember dat?" she wiped her eyes. "I got a potpie today, and green peas, chust a few, out of my

Some railroad men came in for lunch. Mrs. Voigt beckoned Claude off to the end of the counter, where, after

"My, you look good in dem clothes," she said patting his sleeve. "I can remember some wars, too; when we

got back dem provinces what Napoleon took away from us, Alsace and Lorraine. Dem boys is passed de

word to come and put tar on me some night, and I am skeered to go in my bet. I chust wrap in a quilt and sit

"Don't pay any attention to them. You don't have trouble with the business people here, do you?"

"Noo, not troubles, exactly." She hesitated, then leaned impulsively across the counter and spoke in his ear.

"But it ain't all so bad in de Old Country like what dey say. De poor people ain't slaves, and dey ain't ground

down like what dey say here. Always de forester let de poor folks come into de wood and carry off de limbs

dat fall, and de dead trees. Und if de rich farmer have maybe a liddle more manure dan he need, he let de

poor man come and take some for his land. De poor folks don't git such wages like here, but dey lives chust

as comfortable. Und dem wooden shoes, what dey makes such fun of, is cleaner dan what leather is, to go

Claude could see that her heart was bursting with homesickness, full of tender memories of the faraway

time and land of her youth. She had never talked to him of these things before, but now she poured out a

flood of confidences about the big dairy farm on which she had worked as a girl; how she took care of nine

cows, and how the cows, though small, were very strong,drew a plough all day and yet gave as much milk

at night as if they had been browsing in a pasture! The country people never had to spend money for doctors,

but cured all diseases with roots and herbs, and when the old folks had the rheumatism they took "one of dem

Claude would have liked to listen longer, but he wanted to find the old woman's tormentors before his train

came in. Leaving his bags with her, he crossed the railroad tracks, guided by an occasional teasing tinkle of

the bell in the cornfield. Presently he came upon the gang, a dozen or more, lying in a shallow draw that ran

from the edge of the field out into an open pasture. He stood on the edge of the bank and looked down at

them, while he slowly cut off the end of a cigar and lit it. The boys grinned at him, trying to appear

"Yes, I am. I'm looking for that bell. You'll have to take it back where it belongs. You every one of you know

"I don't think you'll ever fight any. You'd last about ten minutes in the American army. You're not our kind.

There's only one army in the world that wants men who'll bully old women. You might get a job with them."

The boys giggled. Claude beckoned impatiently. "Come along with that bell, kid."

The boy rose slowly and climbed the bank out of the gully. As they tramped back through the cornfield,

"Oh, I don't know about that!" the boy replied airily, tossing the bell up like a ball and catching it.

"Well, you ought to be. I didn't expect to see anything of this kind until I got to the front. I'll be back here in a

week, and I'll make it hot for anybody that's been bothering her." Claude's train was pulling in, and he ran for

his baggage. Once seated in the "cottontail," he began going down into his own country, where he knew

every farm he passed,knew the land even when he did not know the owner, what sort of crops it yielded,

and about how much it was worth. He did not recognize these farms with the pleasure he had anticipated,

because he was so angry about the indignities Mrs. Voigt had suffered. He was still burning with the first

ardour of the enlisted man. He believed that he was going abroad with an expeditionary force that would

Most of his friends at camp shared his Quixotic ideas. They had come together from farms and shops and

mills and mines, boys from college and boys from tough joints in big cities; sheepherders, street car drivers,

plumbers' assistants, billiard markers. Claude had seen hundreds of them when they first came in; "show

men" in cheap, loud sport suits, ranch boys in knitted waistcoats, machinists with the grease still on their

fingers, farmhands like Dan, in their one Sunday coat. Some of them carried paper suitcases tied up with

rope, some brought all they had in a blue handkerchief. But they all came to give and not to ask, and what

they offered was just themselves; their big red hands, their strong backs, the steady, honest, modest look in

their eyes. Sometimes, when he had helped the medical examiner, Claude had noticed the anxious expression

in the faces of the long lines of waiting men. They seemed to say, "If I'm good enough, take me. I'll stay by."

He found them like that to work with; serviceable, goodnatured, and eager to learn. If they talked about the

war, or the enemy they were getting ready to fight, it was usually in a facetious tone; they were going to "can

the Kaiser," or to make the Crown Prince work for a living. Claude, loved the men he trained

The freight train swung into the river valley that meant home,the place the mind always came back to,

after its farthest quest. Rapidly the farms passed; the haystacks, the cornfields, the familiar red barnsthen

On the platform he saw Ralph and Mr. Royce, waiting to welcome him. Over there, in the automobile, were

his father and mother, Mr. Wheeler in the driver's seat. A line of motors stood along the siding. He was the

first soldier who had come home, and some of the townspeople had driven down to see him arrive in his

uniform. From one car Susie Dawson waved to him, and from another Gladys Farmer. While he stopped and

"Come along, boys," Mr. Wheeler called, tooting his horn, and he hurried the soldier away, leaving only a

Mr. Royce went over to old man Dawson's car and said rather childishly, "It can't be that Claude's grown

taller? I suppose it's the way they learn to carry themselves. He always was a manly looking boy."

"I expect his mother's a proud woman," said Susie, very much excited. "It's too bad Enid can't be here to see

Susie did not mean this as a thrust, but it took effect. Mr. Royce turned away and lit a cigar with some

difficulty. His hands had grown very unsteady this last year, though he insisted that his general health was as

good as ever. As he grew older, he was more depressed by the conviction that his womenfolk had added

little to the warmth and comfort of the world. Women ought to do that, whatever else they did. He felt

apologetic toward the Wheelers and toward his old friends. It seemed as if his daughters had no heart.

Camp habits persisted. On his first morning at home Claude came downstairs before even Mahailey was

stirring, and went out to have a look at the stock. The red sun came up just as he was going down the hill

toward the cattle corral, and he had the pleasant feeling of being at home, on his father's land. Why was it so

gratifying to be able to say "our hill," and "our creek down yonder"? to feel the crunch of this particular dried

When he went into the barn to see the horses, the first creatures to meet his eye were the two big mules that

had run away with him, standing in the stalls next the door. It flashed upon Claude that these muscular

quadrupeds were the actual authors of his fate. If they had not bolted with him and thrown him into the wire

fence that morning, Enid would not have felt sorry for him and come to see him every day, and his life might

have turned out differently. Perhaps if older people were a little more honest, and a boy were not taught to

idealize in women the very qualities which can make him utterly unhappyBut there, he had got away from

those regrets. But wasn't it just like him to be dragged into matrimony by a pair of mules!

He laughed as he looked at them. "You old devils, you're strong enough to play such tricks on green fellows

One of the animals wagged an ear and cleared his throat threateningly. Mules are capable of strong affections,

but they hate snobs, are the enemies of caste, and this pair had always seemed to detect in Claude what his

father used to call his "false pride." When he was a young lad they had been a source of humiliation to him,

braying and balking in public places, trying to show off at the lumber yard or in front of the post office.

At the end manger Claude found old Molly, the grey mare with the stiff leg, who had grown a second hoof on

her off forefoot, an achievement not many horses could boast of. He was sure she recognized him; she nosed

"Mustn't do that, Molly," he said as he stroked her. "A dog can laugh, but it makes a horse look foolish.

Seems to me Dan might curry you about once a week!" He took a comb from its niche behind a joist and gave

her old coat a rubbing. Her white hair was flecked all over with little rustcoloured dashes, like India ink put

on with a fine brush, and her mane and tail had turned a greenish yellow. She must be eighteen years old,

Claude reckoned, as he polished off her round, heavy haunches. He and Ralph used to ride her over to the

Yoeders' when they were barefoot youngsters, guiding her with a rope halter, and kicking at the leggy colt

When he entered the kitchen and asked Mahailey for warm water to wash his hands, she sniffed him

"Why, Mr. Claude, you've been curryin' that old mare, and you've got white hairs all over your

If his uniform stirred feeling in people of sober judgment, over Mahailey it cast a spell. She was so dazzled

by it that all the time Claude was at home she never once managed to examine it in detail. Before she got past

his puttees, her powers of observation were befogged by excitement, and her wits began to jump about like

monkeys in a cage. She had expected his uniform to be blue, like those she remembered, and when he walked

into the kitchen last night she scarcely knew what to make of him. After Mrs. Wheeler explained to her that

American soldiers didn't wear blue now, Mahailey repeated to herself that these brown clothes didn't show

the dust, and that Claude would never look like the bedraggled men who used to stop to drink at her mother's

"Them leather leggins is to keep the briars from scratchin' you, ain't they? I 'spect there's an awful lot of

briars over there, like them long blackberry vines in the fields in Virginia. Your madder says the soldiers git

lice now, like they done in our war. You jist carry a little bottle of coaloil in your pocket an' rub it on your

Over the flour barrel in the corner Mahailey had tacked a Red Cross poster; a charcoal drawing of an old

woman poking with a stick in a pile of plaster and twisted timbers that had once been her home. Claude went

"She's over there where you're goin', Mr. Claude. There she is, huntin' for somethin' to cook with; no stove

nor no dishes nor nothin'everything all broke up. I reckon she'll be mighty glad to see you comin'."

Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs, and Mahailey whispered hastily, "Don't forgit about the coaloil, and

don't you be lousy if you can help it, honey." She considered lice in the same class with smutty

After breakfast Mr. Wheeler took Claude out to the fields, where Ralph was directing the harvesters. They

watched the binder for a while, then went over to look at the haystacks and alfalfa, and walked along the edge

of the cornfield, where they examined the young ears. Mr. Wheeler explained and exhibited the farm to

Claude as if he were a stranger; the boy had a curious feeling of being now formally introduced to these acres

on which he had worked every summer since he was big enough to carry water to the harvesters. His father

told him how much land they owned, and how much it was worth, and that it was unencumbered except for a

trifling mortgage he had given on one quarter when he took over the Colorado ranch.

"When you come back," he said, "you and Ralph won't have to hunt around to get into business. You'll both

be well fixed. Now you'd better go home by old man Dawson's and drop in to see Susie. Everybody about

here was astonished when Leonard went." He walked with Claude to the corner where the Dawson land met

his own. "By the way," he said as he turned back, "don't forget to go in to see the Yoeders sometime. Gus is

pretty sore since they had him up in court. Ask for the old grandmother. You remember she never learned any

English. And now they've told her it's dangerous to talk German, she don't talk at all and hides away from

everybody. If I go by early in the morning, when she's out weeding the garden, she runs and squats down in

Claude decided he would go to the Yoeders' today, and to the Dawsons' tomorrow. He didn't like to think

there might be hard feeling toward him in a house where he had had so many good times, and where he had

often found a refuge when things were dull at home. The Yoeder boys had a musicbox long before the days

of Victrolas, and a magic lantern, and the old grandmother made wonderful shadowpictures on a sheet, and

told stories about them. She used to turn the map of Europe upside down on the kitchen table and showed the

children how, in this position, it looked like a jungfrau; and recited a long German rhyme which told how

Spain was the maiden's head, the Pyrenees her lace ruff, Germany her heart and bosom, England and Italy

were two arms, and Russia, though it looked so big, was only a hoopskirt. This rhyme would probably be

As he walked on alone, Claude was thinking how this country that had once seemed little and dull to him,

now seemed large and rich in variety. During the months in camp he had been wholly absorbed in new work

and new friendships, and now his own neighbourhood came to him with the freshness of things that have

been forgotten for a long while,came together before his eyes as a harmonious whole. He was going away,

and he would carry the whole countryside in his mind, meaning more to him than it ever had before. There

was Lovely Creek, gurgling on down there, where he and Ernest used to sit and lament that the book of

History was finished; that the world had come to avaricious old age and noble enterprise was dead for ever.

That afternoon Claude spent with his mother. It was the first time she had had him to herself. Ralph wanted

terribly to stay and hear his brother talk, but understanding how his mother felt, he went back to the wheat

field. There was no detail of Claude's life in camp so trivial that Mrs. Wheeler did not want to hear about it.

She asked about the mess, the cooks, the laundry, as well as about his own duties. She made him describe the

"I hardly see how we can bear the anxiety when our transports begin to sail," she said thoughtfully. "If they

can once get you all over there, I am not afraid; I believe our boys are as good as any in the world. But with

submarines reported off our own coast, I wonder how the Government can get our men across safely. The

thought of transports going down with thousands of young men on board is something so terrible" she put

Claude, sitting opposite his mother, wondered what it was about her hands that made them so different from

any others he had ever seen. He had always known they were different, but now he must look closely and see

why. They were slender, and always white, even when the nails were stained at preserving time. Her fingers

arched back at the joints, as if they were shrinking from contacts. They were restless, and when she talked

often brushed her hair or her dress lightly. When she was excited she sometimes put her hand to her throat, or

felt about the neck of her gown, as if she were searching for a forgotten brooch. They were sensitive hands,

and yet they seemed to have nothing to do with sense, to be almost like the groping fingers of a spirit.

Claude started. "About what, Mother? Oh, the transportation! We don't worry about that. It's the

Government's job to get us across. A soldier mustn't worry about anything except what he's directly

responsible for. If the Germans should sink a few troop ships, it would be unfortunate, certainly, but it

wouldn't cut any figure in the long run. The British are perfecting an enormous dirigible, built to carry

passengers. If our transports are sunk, it will only mean delay. In another year the Yankees will be flying

Mrs. Wheeler bent forward. "That must be boys' talk, Claude. Surely you don't believe such a thing could be

"Absolutely. The British are depending on their aircraft designers to do just that, if everything else fails. Of

Mrs. Wheeler again shaded her eyes with her hand. "When I was young, back in Vermont, I used to wish that

I had lived in the old times when the world went ahead by leaps and bounds. And now, I feel as if my sight

couldn't bear the glory that beats upon it. It seems as if we would have to be born with new faculties, to

The afternoon sun was pouring in at the back windows of Mrs. Farmer's long, uneven parlour, making the

dusky room look like a cavern with a fire at one end of it. The furniture was all in its cool, figured summer

cretonnes. The glass flower vases that stood about on little tables caught the sunlight and twinkled like tiny

lamps. Claude had been sitting there for a long while, and he knew he ought to go. Through the window at his

elbow he could see rows of double hollyhocks, the flat leaves of the sprawling catalpa, and the spires of the

tangled mint bed, all transparent in the goldpowdered light. They had talked about everything but the thing

he had come to say. As he looked out into the garden he felt that he would never get it out. There was

something in the way the mint bed burned and floated that made one a fatalist,afraid to meddle. But after

he was far away, he would regret; uncertainty would tease him like a splinter in his thumb.

He rose suddenly and said without apology: "Gladys, I wish I could feel sure you'd never marry my brother."

She did not reply, but sat in her easy chair, looking up at him with a strange kind of calmness.

"I know all the advantages," he went on hastily, "but they wouldn't make it up to you. That sort of

"I don't think I shall ever marry Bayliss," Gladys spoke in her usual low, round voice, but her quick breathing

showed he had touched something that hurt. "I suppose I have used him. It gives a schoolteacher a certain

prestige if people think she can marry the rich bachelor of the town whenever she wants to. But I am afraid I

won't marry him,because you are the member of the family I have always admired."

Claude turned away to the window. "A fine lot I've been to admire," he muttered.

"Well, it's true, anyway. It was like that when we went to High School, and it's kept up. Everything you do

Claude felt a cold perspiration on his forehead. He wished now that he had never come. "But that's it, Gladys.

She came over to the window and stood beside him. "I don't know; perhaps it's by their blunders that one gets

to know people,by what they can't do. If you'd been like all the rest, you could have got on in their way.

Claude was frowning out into the flaming garden. He had not heard a word of her reply. "Why didn't you

"I think I triedonce. Anyhow, it's all turning out better than I thought. You didn't get stuck here. You've

Claude took her hands and they stood looking searchingly at each other in the swimming golden light that

made everything transparent. He never knew exactly how he found his hat and made his way out of the

house. He was only sure that Gladys did not accompany him to the door. He glanced back once, and saw her

She stood there, exactly where he left her, and watched the evening come on, not moving, scarcely breathing.

She was thinking how often, when she came downstairs, she would see him standing here by the window, or

moving about in the dusky room, looking at last as he ought to look,like his convictions and the choice he

had made. She would never let this house be sold for taxes now. She would save her salary and pay them off.

She could never like any other room so well as this. It had always been a refuge from Frankfort; and now

there would be this vivid, confident figure, an image as distinct to her as the portrait of her grandfather upon

Sunday was Claude's last day at home, and he took a long walk with Ernest and Ralph. Ernest would have

preferred to lose Ralph, but when the boy was out of the harvest field he stuck to his brother like a burr.

There was something about Claude's new clothes and new manner that fascinated him, and he went through

one of those sudden changes of feeling that often occur in families. Although they had been better friends

ever since Claude's wedding, until now Ralph had always felt a little ashamed of him. Why, he used to ask

himself, wouldn't Claude "spruce up and be somebody"? Now, he was struck by the fact that he was

On Monday morning Mrs. Wheeler wakened early, with a faintness in her chest. This was the day on which

she must acquit herself well. Breakfast would be Claude's last meal at home. At eleven o'clock his father and

Ralph would take him to Frankfort to catch the train. She was longer than usual in dressing. When she got

downstairs Claude and Mahailey were already talking. He was shaving in the washroom, and Mahailey stood

"You tell 'em over there I'm awful sorry about them old women, with their dishes an' their stove all broke up."

She lingered. "Maybe you can help 'em mend their things, like you do mine fur me," she suggested hopefully.

"Maybe," he murmured absently. Mrs. Wheeler opened the stair door, and Mahailey dodged back to the

After breakfast Dan went out to the fields with the harvesters. Ralph and Claude and Mr. Wheeler were busy

Mrs. Wheeler kept throwing her apron over her head and going down the hill to see what they were doing.

Whether there was really something the matter with the engine, or whether the men merely made it a pretext

for being together and keeping away from the house, she did not know. She felt that her presence was not

much desired, and at last she went upstairs and resignedly watched them from the sittingroom window.

Presently she heard Ralph run up to the third storey. When he came down with Claude's bags in his hands, he

Mrs. Wheeler ran after him, calling faintly, "Wait, Ralph! Are you sure he's got everything in? I didn't hear

"Everything ready. He says he won't have to go upstairs again. He'll be along pretty soon. There's lots of

Mrs. Wheeler sat down in her reading chair. They wanted to keep her away, and it was a little selfish of them.

Why couldn't they spend these last hours quietly in the house, instead of dashing in and out to frighten her?

Now she could hear the hot water running in the kitchen; probably Mr. Wheeler had come in to wash his

hands. She felt really too weak to get up and go to the west window to see if he were still down at the garage.

Waiting was now a matter of seconds, and her breath came short enough as it was.

She recognized a heavy, hobnailed boot on the stairs, mounting quickly. When Claude entered, carrying his

hat in his hand, she saw by his walk, his shoulders, and the way he held his head, that the moment had come,

and that he meant to make it short. She rose, reaching toward him as he came up to her and caught her in his

"Well, is it goodbye?" she murmured. She passed her hands over his shoulders, down his strong back and

the closefitting sides of his coat, as if she were taking the mould and measure of his mortal frame. Her chin

came just to his breast pocket, and she rubbed it against the heavy cloth. Claude stood looking down at her

"Mother!" he whispered as he kissed her. He ran downstairs and out of the house without looking back.

She struggled up from the chair where she had sunk and crept to the window; he was vaulting down the hill

as fast as he could go. He jumped into the car beside his father. Ralph was already at the wheel, and Claude

had scarcely touched the cushions when they were off. They ran down the creek and over the bridge, then up

the long hill on the other side. As they neared the crest of the hill, Claude stood up in the car and looked back

at the house, waving his coneshaped hat. She leaned out and strained her sight, but her tears blurred

everything. The brown, upright figure seemed to float out of the car and across the fields, and before he was

actually gone, she lost him. She fell back against the windowsill, clutching her temples with both hands, and

broke into choking, passionate speech. "Old eyes," she cried, "why do you betray me? Why do you cheat me

A long train of crowded cars, the passengers all of the same sex, almost of the same age, all dressed and

hatted alike, was slowly steaming through the green seameadows late on a summer afternoon. In the cars,

incessant stretching of cramped legs, shifting of shoulders, striking of matches, passing of cigarettes, groans

of boredom; occasionally concerted laughter about nothing. Suddenly the train stops short. Clipped heads and

tanned faces pop out at every window. The boys begin to moan and shout; what is the matter now?

The conductor goes through the cars, saying something about a freight wreck on ahead; he has orders to wait

here for half an hour. Nobody pays any attention to him. A murmur of astonishment rises from one side of the

train. The boys crowd over to the south windows. At last there is something to look at,though what they

Their train is lying beside an arm of the sea that reaches far into the green shore. At the edge of the still water

stand the hulls of four wooden ships, in the process of building. There is no town, there are no

smokestacksvery few workmen. Piles of lumber lie about on the grass. A gasoline engine under a

temporary shelter is operating a long crane that reaches down among the piles of boards and beams, lifts a

load, silently and deliberately swings it over to one of the skeleton vessels, and lowers it somewhere into the

body of the motionless thing. Along the sides of the clean hulls a few riveters are at work; they sit on

suspended planks, lowering and raising themselves with pulleys, like house painters. Only by listening very

closely can one hear the tap of their hammers. No orders are shouted, no thud of heavy machinery or scream

of iron drills tears the air. These strange boats seem to be building themselves.

Some of the men got out of the cars and ran along the tracks, asking each other how boats could be built off

in the grass like this. Lieutenant Claude Wheeler stretched his legs upon the opposite seat and sat still at his

window, looking down on this strange scene. Shipbuilding, he had supposed, meant noise and forges and

engines and hosts of men. This was like a dream. Nothing but green meadows, soft grey water, a floating

haze of mist a little rosy from the sinking sun, spectrelike seagulls, flying slowly, with the red glow tinging

their wingsand those four hulls lying in their braces, facing the sea, deliberating by the sea.

Claude knew nothing of ships or shipbuilding, but these craft did not seem to be nailed together,they

seemed all of a piece, like sculpture. They reminded him of the houses not made with hands; they were like

simple and great thoughts, like purposes forming slowly here in the silence beside an unruffled arm of the

Atlantic. He knew nothing about ships, but he didn't have to; the shape of those hullstheir strong,

inevitable linestold their story, WAS their story; told the whole adventure of man with the sea.

Wooden ships! When great passions and great aspirations stirred a country, shapes like these formed along its

shores to be the sheath of its valour. Nothing Claude had ever seen or heard or read or thought had made it all

so clear as these untried wooden bottoms. They were the very impulse, they were the potential act, they were

the "going over," the drawn arrow, the great unuttered cry, they were Fate, they were tomorrow! . . .

The locomotive screeched to her scattered passengers, like an old turkeyhen calling her brood. The soldier

boys came running back along the embankment and leaped aboard the train. The conductor shouted they

It was midnight when the men had got their supper and began unrolling their blankets to sleep on the floor of

the long dock waitingrooms,which in other days had been thronged by people who came to welcome

homecoming friends, or to bid them Godspeed to foreign shores. Claude and some of his men had tried to

look about them; but there was little to be seen. The bow of a boat, painted in distracting patterns of black and

white, rose at one end of the shed, but the water itself was not visible. Down in the cobblepaved street

below they watched for awhile the long line of drays and motor trucks that bumped all night into a vast

cavern lit by electricity, where crates and barrels and merchandise of all kinds were piled, marked American

Expeditionary Forces; cases of electrical machinery from some factory in Ohio, parts of automobiles,

guncarriages, bathtubs, hospital supplies, bales of cotton, cases of canned food, grey metal tanks full of

chemical fluids. Claude went back to the waiting room, lay down and fell asleep with the glare of an

He was called at four in the morning and told where to report to headquarters. Captain Maxey, stationed at a

desk on one of the landings, explained to his lieutenants that their company was to sail at eight o'clock on the

Anchises. It was an English boat, an old liner pulled off the Australian trade, that could carry only

twentyfive hundred men. The crew was English, but part of the stores,the meat and fresh fruit and

vegetables,were furnished by the United States Government. The Captain had been over the boat during

the night, and didn't like it very well. He had expected to be scheduled for one of the fine big

HamburgAmerican liners, with diningrooms finished in rosewood, and ventilation plants and cooling

plants, and elevators running from top to bottom like a New York office building. "However," he said, "we'll

The company formed for rollcall at one end of the shed, with their packs and rifles. Breakfast was served to

them while they waited. After an hour's standing on the concrete, they saw encouraging signs. Two

gangplanks were lowered from the vessel at the end of the slip, and up each of them began to stream a close

brown line of men in smart service caps. They recognized a company of Kansas Infantry, and began to

grumble because their own service caps hadn't yet been given to them; they would have to sail in their old

Stetsons. Soon they were drawn into one of the brown lines that went continuously up the gangways, like

belting running over machinery. On the deck one steward directed the men down to the hold, and another

conducted the officers to their cabins. Claude was shown to a fourberth stateroom. One of his cabin mates,

Lieutenant Fanning, of his own company, was already there, putting his slender luggage in order. The

By seven o'clock all the troops were aboard, and the men were allowed on deck. For the first time Claude saw

the profile of New York City, rising thin and gray against an opalcoloured morning sky. The day had come

on hot and misty. The sun, though it was now high, was a red ball, streaked across with purple clouds. The

tall buildings, of which he had heard so much, looked unsubstantial and illusionary,mere shadows of grey

and pink and blue that might dissolve with the mist and fade away in it. The boys were disappointed. They

were Western men, accustomed to the hard light of high altitudes, and they wanted to see the city clearly;

they couldn't make anything of these uneven towers that rose dimly through the vapour. Everybody was

asking questions. Which of those pale giants was the Singer Building? Which the Woolworth? What was the

gold dome, dully glinting through the fog? Nobody knew. They agreed it was a shame they could not have

had a day in New York before they sailed away from it, and that they would feel foolish in Paris when they

had to admit they had never so much as walked up Broadway. Tugs and ferry boats and coal barges were

moving up and down the oily river, all novel sights to the men. Over in the Canard and French docks they

saw the first examples of the "camouflage" they had heard so much about; big vessels daubed over in crazy

patterns that made the eyes ache, some in black and white, some in soft rainbow colours.

A tug steamed up alongside and fastened. A few moments later a man appeared on the bridge and began to

talk to the captain. Young Fanning, who had stuck to Claude's side, told him this was the pilot, and that his

arrival meant they were going to start. They could see the shiny instruments of a band assembling in the bow.

"Let's get on the other side, near the rail if we can," said Fanning. "The fellows are bunching up over here

because they want to look at the Goddess of Liberty as we go out. They don't even know this boat turns

around the minute she gets into the river. They think she's going over stern first!"

It was not easy to cross the deck; every inch was covered by a boot. The whole superstructure was coated

with brown uniforms; they clung to the boat davits, the winches, the railings and ventilators, like bees in a

swarm. Just as the vessel was backing out, a breeze sprang up and cleared the air. Blue sky broke overhead,

and the pale silhouette of buildings on the long island grew sharp and hard. Windows flashed flamecoloured

in their grey sides, the gold and bronze tops of towers began to gleam where the sunlight struggled through.

The transport was sliding down toward the point, and to the left the eye caught the silver cobweb of bridges,

The swarm surged to starboard. They shouted and gesticulated to the image they were all looking for,so

much nearer than they had expected to see her, clad in green folds, with the mist streaming up like smoke

behind. For nearly every one of those twentyfive hundred boys, as for Claude, it was their first glimpse of

the Bartholdi statue. Though she was such a definite image in their minds, they had not imagined her in her

setting of sea and sky, with the shipping of the world coming and going at her feet, and the moving cloud

masses behind her. Postcard pictures had given them no idea of the energy of her large gesture, or how her

heaviness becomes light among the vapourish elements. "France gave her to us," they kept saying, as they

saluted her. Before Claude had got over his first thrill, the Kansas band in the bow began playing "Over

There." Two thousand voices took it up, booming out over the water the gay, indomitable resolution of that

A Staten Island ferryboat passed close under the bow of the transport. The passengers were officegoing

people, on their way to work, and when they looked up and saw these hundreds of faces, all young, all

bronzed and grinning, they began to shout and wave their handkerchiefs. One of the passengers was an old

clergyman, a famous speaker in his day, now retired, who went over to the City every morning to write

editorials for a church paper. He closed the book he was reading, stood by the rail, and taking off his hat

began solemnly to quote from a poet who in his time was still popular. "Sail on," he quavered,

"Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State, Humanity, with all its fears, With all its hopes of future years, Is hanging

As the troop ship glided down the sea lane, the old man still watched it from the turtleback. That howling

swarm of brown arms and hats and faces looked like nothing, but a crowd of American boys going to a

football game somewhere. But the scene was ageless; youths were sailing away to die for an idea, a

sentiment, for the mere sound of a phrase . . . and on their departure they were making vows to a bronze

All the first morning Tod Fanning showed Claude over the boat,not that Fanning had ever been on

anything bigger than a Lake Michigan steamer, but he knew a good deal about machinery, and did not

hesitate to ask the deck stewards to explain anything he didn't know. The stewards, indeed all the crew, struck

The fourth occupant of number 96, Claude's cabin, had not turned up by noon, nor had any of his belongings,

so the three who had settled their few effects there began to hope they would have the place to themselves. It

would be crowded enough, at that. The third bunk was assigned to an officer from the Kansas regiment,

Lieutenant Bird, a Virginian, who had been working in his uncle's bank in Topeka when he enlisted. He and

Claude sat together at mess. When they were at lunch, the Virginian said in his very gentle voice:

"Lieutenant, I wish you'd explain Lieutenant Fanning to me. He seems very immature. He's been telling me

about a submarine destroyer he's invented, but it looks to me like foolishness."

Claude laughed. "Don't try to understand Fanning. Just let him sink in, and you'll come to like him. I used to

wonder how he ever got a commission. You never can tell what crazy thing he'll do."

Fanning had, for instance, brought on board a pair of white flannel pants, his first and only tailormade

trousers, because he had a premonition that the boat would make a port and that he would be asked to a

garden party! He had a way of using big words in the wrong place, not because he tried to show off, but

because all words sounded alike to him. In the first days of their acquaintance in camp he told Claude that

this was a failing he couldn't help, and that it was called "anaesthesia." Sometimes this failing was confusing;

when Fanning sententiously declared that he would like to be on hand when the Crown Prince settled his little

account with Plato, Claude was perplexed until subsequent witticisms revealed that the boy meant Pluto.

At three o'clock there was a band concert on deck. Claude fell into talk with the bandmaster, and was

delighted to find that he came from Hillport, Kansas, a town where Claude had once been with his father to

buy cattle, and that all his fourteen men came from Hillport. They were the town band, had enlisted in a body,

had gone into training together, and had never been separated. One was a printer who helped to get out the

Hillport Argus every week, another clerked in a grocery store, another was the son of a German watch

repairer, one was still in High School, one worked in an automobile livery. After supper Claude found them

all together, very much interested in their first evening at sea, and arguing as to whether the sunset on the

water was as fine as those they saw every night in Hillport. They hung together in a quiet, determined way,

When Claude and Fanning and Lieutenant Bird were undressing in their narrow quarters that night, the fourth

berth was still unclaimed. They were in their bunks and almost asleep, when the missing man came in and

unceremoniously turned on the light. They were astonished to see that he wore the uniform of the Royal

Flying Corps and carried a cane. He seemed very young, but the three who peeped out at him felt that he must

be a person of consequence. He took off his coat with the spread wings on the collar, wound his watch, and

brushed his teeth with an air of special personal importance. Soon after he had turned out the light and

climbed into the berth over Lieutenant Bird, a heavy smell of rum spread in the close air.

Fanning, who slept under Claude, kicked the sagging mattress above him and stuck his head out. "Hullo,

No response from any quarter. Bird, the Virginian, murmured, "Don't make a row," and they went to sleep.

In the morning, when the bath steward came, he edged his way into the narrow cabin and poked his head into

the berth over Bird's. "I'm sorry, sir, I've made careful search for your luggage, and it's not to be found, sir."

"I tell you it must be found," fumed a petulant voice overhead. "I brought it over from the St. Regis myself in

a taxi. I saw it standing on the pier with the officers' luggage,a black cabin trunk with V.M. lettered on

The steward smiled discreetly. He probably knew that the aviator had come on board in a state which

precluded any very accurate observation on his part. "Very well, sir. Is there anything I can get you for the

"You can take this shirt out and have it laundered and bring it back to me tonight. I've no linen in my bag."

Claude and Fanning got on deck as quickly as possible and found scores of their comrades already there,

pointing to dark smudges of smoke along the clear horizon. They knew that these vessels had come from

unknown ports, some of then: far away, steaming thither under orders known only to their commanders. They

would all arrive within a few hours of each other at a given spot on the surface of the ocean. There they

would fall into place, flanked by their destroyers, and would proceed in orderly formation, without changing

their relative positions. Their escort would not leave them until they were joined by gunboats and destroyers

off whatever coast they were bound for,what that coast was, not even their own officers knew as yet.

Later in the morning this meeting was actually accomplished. There were ten troop ships, some of them very

large boats, and six destroyers. The men stood about the whole morning, gazing spellbound at their sister

transports, trying to find out their names, guessing at their capacity. Tanned as they already were, their lips

and noses began to blister under the fiery sunlight. After long months of intensive training, the sudden drop

into an idle, soothing existence was grateful to them. Though their pasts were neither long or varied, most of

them, like Claude Wheeler, felt a sense of relief at being rid of all they had ever been before and facing

something absolutely new. Said Tod Fanning, as he lounged against the rail, "Whoever likes it can run for a

train every morning, and grind his days out in a Westinghouse works; but not for me any more!"

The Virginian joined them. "That Englishman ain't got out of bed yet. I reckon he's been liquouring up pretty

steady. The place smells like a bar. The room steward was just coming out, and he winked at me. He was

Claude was curious, and went down to the cabin. As he entered, the airman, lying halfdressed in his upper

berth, raised himself on one elbow and looked down at him. His blue eyes were contracted and hard, his curly

hair disordered, but his cheeks were as pink as a girl's, and the little yellow hummingbird moustache on his

"Oh, there'll be a great deal of weather before we get over, and damned little of anything else!" He drew a

The other laughed and sank back on his pillow, drawling lazily, "Brave boy! Go ahead; drink to the Kaiser."

"It's not particular. Drink to Hindenburg, or the High Command, or anything else that got you out of the

"Crystal Lake, Iowa. I think that was the place." He yawned and folded his hands over his stomach.

"Yes. I've been back and forth all the time, England and France. Now I've wasted two months at Fort Worth.

Instructor. That's not my line. I may have been sent over as a reprimand. You can't tell about my Colonel,

The young man in the berth smiled with listless compassion. "Oh, I don't mean Bosch planes! There are

dangers and dangers. You'll find you got bloody little information about this war, where they trained you.

"One moment," called the aviator. "Can't you keep that longlegged ass who bunks under you quiet?"

"His general ignorance and his insufferably familiar tone," snapped the other as he turned over.

Claude found Fanning and the Virginian playing checkers, and told them that the mysterious airman was a

"He can't put on airs with me, after that," Fanning declared. "Crystal Lake! Why it's no town at all!"

All the same, Claude wanted to find out how a youth from Crystal Lake ever became a member of the Royal

Flying Corps. Already, from among the hundreds of strangers, halfadozen stood out as men he was

determined to know better. Taking them altogether the men were a fine sight as they lounged about the decks

in the sunlight, the petty rivalries and jealousies of camp days forgotten. Their youth seemed to flow together,

like their brown uniforms. Seen in the mass like this, Claude thought, they were rather noble looking fellows.

In so many of the faces there was a look of fine candour, an expression of cheerful expectancy and confident

There was on board a solitary Marine, with the stripes of Border service on his coat. He had been sick in the

Navy Hospital in Brooklyn when his regiment sailed, and was now going over to join it. He was a young

fellow, rather pale from his recent illness, but he was exactly Claude's idea of what a soldier ought to look

The young man's name was Albert Usher, and he came from a little town up in the Wind River mountains, in

Wyoming, where he had worked in a logging camp. He told Claude these facts when they found themselves

standing side by side that evening, watching the broad purple sun go down into a violet coloured sea.

It was the hour when the farmers at home drive their teams in after the day's work. Claude was thinking how

his mother would be standing at the west window every evening now, watching the sun go down and

following him in her mind. When the young Marine came up and joined him, he confessed to a pang of

"That's a kind of sickness I don't have to wrastle with," said Albert Usher. "I was left an orphan on a

Claude glanced sidewise at the boy's handsome head, that came up from his neck with clean, strong lines, and

thought he had done a pretty good job for himself. He could not have said exactly what it was he liked about

young Usher's face, but it seemed to him a face that had gone through things,that had been trained down

like his body, and had developed a definite character. What Claude thought due to a manly, adventurous life,

was really due to wellshaped bones; Usher's face was more "modelled" than most of the healthy

When questioned, the Marine went on to say that though he had no home of his own, he had always happened

to fall on his feet, among kind people. He could go back to any house in Pinedale or Du Bois and be

"I suppose there are kind women everywhere," he said, "but in that respect Wyoming's got the rest of the

world beat. I never felt the lack of a home. Now the U. S. Marines are my family. Wherever they are, I'm at

"I guess! We thought that was quite a little party at the time, but I suppose it will seem small potatoes when

we get over there. I'm figuring on seeing some firstrate scrapping. How long have you been in the army?"

"Year ago last April. I've had hard luck about getting over. They kept me jumping about to train men."

Usher frowned at the gilded path on the water where the sun lay half submerged, like a big, watchful eye,

closing. "I always wanted to go to college, but I never managed it. A man in Laramie offered to stake me to a

course in the University there, but I was too restless. I guess I was ashamed of my handwriting." He paused

as if he had run against some old regret. A moment later he said suddenly, "Can you parlezvous?"

"Same here. I expect to pick up some. I pinched quite a little Spanish down on the Border."

By this time the sun had disappeared, and all over the west the yellow sky came down evenly, like a gold

curtain, on the still sea that seemed to have solidified into a slab of dark blue stone,not a twinkle on its

immobile surface. Across its dusky smoothness were two long smears of pale green, like a robin's egg.

"Do you like the water?" Usher asked, in the tone of a polite host. "When I first shipped on a cruiser I was

crazy about it. I still am. But, you know, I like them old bald mountains back in Wyoming, too. There's

waterfalls you can see twenty miles off from the plains; they look like white sheets or something, hanging up

there on the cliffs. And down in the pine woods, in the cold streams, there's trout as long as my forearm."

That evening Claude was on deck, almost alone; there was a concert down in the ward room. To the west

heavy clouds had come up, moving so low that they flapped over the water like a black washing hanging on

The music sounded well from below. Four Swedish boys from the Scandinavian settlement at Lindsborg,

Kansas, were singing "Long, Long Ago." Claude listened from a sheltered spot in the stern. What were they,

and what was he, doing here on the Atlantic? Two years ago he had seemed a fellow for whom life was over;

driven into the ground like a post, or like those Chinese criminals who are planted upright in the earth, with

only their heads left out for birds to peck at and insects to sting. All his comrades had been tucked away in

prairie towns, with their little jobs and their little plans. Yet here they were, attended by unknown ships called

in from the four quarters of the earth. How had they come to be worth the watchfulness and devotion of so

many men and machines, this extravagant consumption of fuel and energy? Taken one by one, they were

ordinary fellows like himself. Yet here they were. And in this massing and movement of men there was

nothing mean or common; he was sure of that. It was, from first to last, unforeseen, almost incredible. Four

years ago, when the French were holding the Marne, the wisest men in the world had not conceived of this as

possible; they had reckoned with every fortuity but this. "Out of these stones can my Father raise up seed

Downstairs the men began singing "Annie Laurie." Where were those summer evenings when he used to sit

The morning of the third day; Claude and the Virginian and the Marine were up very early, standing in the

bow, watching the Anchises mount the fresh blowing hills of water, her prow, as it rose and fell, always a

dull triangle against the glitter. Their escorts looked like dream ships, soft and iridescent as shell in the

pearlcoloured tints of the morning. Only the dark smudges of smoke told that they were mechanical realities

While the three stood there, a sergeant brought Claude word that two of his men would have to report at

sickcall. Corporal Tannhauser had had such an attack of nosebleed during the night that the sergeant

thought he might die before they got it stopped. Tannhauser was up now, and in the breakfast line, but the

sergeant was sure he ought not to be. This Fritz Tannhauser was the tallest man in the company, a

GermanAmerican boy who, when asked his name, usually said that his name was Dennis and that he was of

Irish descent. Even this morning he tried to joke, and pointing to his big red face told Claude he thought he

Medical inspection took a long while that morning. There seemed to be an outbreak of sickness on board.

When Claude brought his two men up to the Doctor, he told them to go below and get into bed. As they left

"Give them hot tea, and pile army blankets on them. Make them sweat if you can." Claude remarked that the

"I know that, Lieutenant, but there are a number of sick men this morning, and the only other physician on

board is the sickest of the lot. There's the ship's doctor, of course, but he's only responsible for the crew, and

so far he doesn't seem interested. I've got to overhaul the hospital and the medical stores this morning."

"Well, I hope not. But I'll have plenty to do today, so I count on you to look after those two." The doctor was

a New Englander who had joined them at Hoboken. He was a brisk, trim man, with piercing eyes, cleancut

features, and grey hair just the colour of his pale face. Claude felt at once that he knew his business, and he

When he came up from the hold, he saw the aviatorwhose name, he had learned, was Victor

The aviator was looking at the distant smoke plumes over the quivering, bright water. "Time enough. I wish I

knew where we are heading for. It will be awfully awkward for me if we make a French port."

"I am. But I want to report in London first." He continued to gaze off at the painted ships. Claude noticed that

in standing he held his chin very high. His eyes, now that he was quite sober, were brilliantly young and

daring; they seemed scornful of things about him. He held himself conspicuously apart, as if he were not

Claude had seen a captured crane, tied by its leg to a hencoop, behave exactly like that among Mahailey's

chickens; hold its wings to its sides, and move its head about quickly and glare.

"I shouldn't imagine anything was much better than London. I've not been in Paris; always went home when I

was on leave. They work us pretty hard. In the infantry and artillery our men get only a fortnight off in twelve

months. I understand the Americans have leased the Riviera,recuperate at Nice and Monte Carlo. The only

Victor had gone a good way toward acquiring an English accent, the boys thought. At least he said 'necess'ry'

and 'dysent'ry' and called his suspenders 'braces'. He offered Claude a cigarette, remarking that his cigars

"Take one of mine. My brother sent me two boxes just before we sailed. I'll put a box in your bunk next time

The young man turned and looked him over with surprise. "I say, that's very decent of you! Yes, thank you, I

Claude had tried yesterday, when he lent Victor some shirts, to make him talk about his aerial adventures, but

upon that subject he was as close as a clam. He admitted that the long red scar on his upper arm had been

drilled by a sharpshooter from a German Fokker, but added hurriedly that it was of no consequence, as he had

made a good landing. Now, on the strength of the cigars, Claude thought he would probe a little further. He

asked whether there was anything in the lost trunk that couldn't be replaced, anything "valuable."

"There's one thing that's positively invaluable; a Zeiss lens, in perfect condition. I've got several good

photographic outfits from time to time, but the lenses are always cracked by heat,the things usually come

down on fire. This one I got out of a plane I brought down up at BarleDuc, and there's not a scratch on it;

"You get all the loot when you bring down a machine, do you?" Claude asked encouragingly.

"Of course. I've a good collection; alimeters and compasses and glasses. This lens I always carry with me,

"I suppose it makes a fellow feel pretty fine to bring down one of those German planes."

"Sometimes. I brought down one too many, though; it was very unpleasant." Victor paused, frowning. But

Claude's open, credulous face was too much for his reserve. "I brought down a woman once. She was a

plucky devil, flew a scouting machine and had bothered us a bit, going over our lines. Naturally, we didn't

know it was a woman until she came down. She was crushed underneath things. She lived a few hours and

dictated a letter to her people. I went out and dropped it inside their lines. It was nasty business. I was quite

knocked out. I got a fortnight's leave in London, though. Wheeler," he broke out suddenly, "I wish I knew we

Victor shrugged. "I should hope so!" He turned his chin in Claude's direction. "See here, if you like, I'll show

you London! It's a promise. Americans never see it, you know. They sit in a Y . hut and write to their

Pollyannas, or they go round hunting for the Tower. I'll show you a city that's alive; that is, unless you've a

"Umph ! I'd like to set you down in some places I can think of. Very well, I invite you to dine with me at the

Savoy, the first night we're in London. The curtain will rise on this world for you. Nobody admitted who isn't

in evening dress. The jewels will dazzle you. Actresses, duchesses, all the handsomest women in Europe."

Victor smiled and teased his small strawcoloured moustache with his thumb and middle finger. "There are a

few bright spots left, thank you!" He began to explain to a novice what life at the front was really like.

Nobody who had seen service talked about the war, or thought about it; it was merely a condition under

which they lived. Men talked about the particular regiment they were jealous of, or the favoured division that

was put in for all the show fighting. Everybody thought about his own game, his personal life that he

managed to keep going in spite of discipline; his next leave, how to get champagne without paying for it,

dodging the guard, getting into scrapes with women and getting out again. "Are you quick with your

"You'd better brush up on it if you want to do anything with French girls. I hear your M.P.'s are very strict.

You must be able to toss the word the minute you see a skirt, and make your date before the guard gets onto

Victor shrugged his narrow shoulders. "I haven't found that girls have many, anywhere. When we Canadians

were training in England, we all had our weekend wives. I believe the girls in Crystal Lake used to be more

When Victor was in the middle of a tale of amorous adventure, a little different from any Claude had ever

heard, Tod Fanning joined them. The aviator did not acknowledge the presence of a new listener, but when he

had finished his story, walked away with his special swagger, his eyes fixed upon the distance.

Fanning looked after him with disgust. "Do you believe him? I don't think he's any such heartsmasher. I like

his nerve, calling you `Leftenant' ! When he speaks to me he'll have to say Lootenant, or I'll spoil his beauty."

That day the men remembered long afterward, for it was the end of the fine weather, and of those first long,

carefree days at sea. In the afternoon Claude and the young Marine, the Virginian and Fanning, sat together in

the sun watching the water scoop itself out in hollows and pile itself up in blue, rolling hills. Usher was

telling his companions a long story about the landing of the Marines at Vera Cruz.

"It's a great old town," he concluded. "One thing there I'll never forget. Some of the natives took a few of us

out to the old prison that stands on a rock in the sea. We put in the whole day there, and it wasn't any tourist

show, believe me! We went down into dungeons underneath the water. where they used to keep State

prisoners, kept them buried alive for years. We saw all the old instruments of torture; rusty iron cages where a

man couldn't lie down or stand up, but had to sit bent over till he grew crooked. It made you feel queer when

you came up, to think how people had been left to rot away down there, when there was so much sun and

water outside. Seems like something used to be the matter with the world." He said no more, but Claude

thought from his serious look that he believed he and his countrymen who were pouring overseas would help

That night the Virginian, who berthed under Victor Morse, had an alarming attack of nosebleed, and by

morning he was so weak that he had to be carried to the hospital. The Doctor said they might as well face the

facts; a scourge of influenza had broken out on board, of a peculiarly bloody and malignant type.* Everybody

was a little frightened. Some of the officers shut themselves up in the smokingroom, and drank whiskey and

* The actual outbreak of influenza on transports carrying United States troops is here anticipated by several

Lieutenant Bird died late in the afternoon and was buried at sunrise the next day, sewed up in a tarpaulin,

with an eighteen pound shell at his feet. The morning broke brilliantly clear and bitter cold. The sea was

rolling blue walls of water, and the boat was raked by a wind as sharp as ice. Excepting those who were sick,

the boys turned out to a man. It was the first burial at sea they had ever witnessed, and they couldn't help

finding it interesting. The Chaplain read the burial service while they stood with uncovered heads. The

Kansas band played a solemn march, the Swedish quartette sang a hymn. Many a man turned his face away

when that brown sack was lowered into the cold, leaping indigo ridges that seemed so destitute of anything

friendly to human kind. In a moment it was done, and they steamed on without him.

The glittering walls of water kept rolling in, indigo, purple, more brilliant than on the days of mild weather.

The blinding sunlight did not temper the cold, which cut the face and made the lungs ache. Landsmen began

to have that miserable sense of being where they were never meant to be. The boys lay in heaps on the deck,

trying to keep warm by hugging each other close. Everybody was seasick. Fanning went to bed with his

clothes on, so sick he couldn't take off his boots. Claude lay in the crowded stern, too cold, too faint to move.

The sun poured over them like flame, without any comfort in it. The strong, curling, foamcrested waves

threw off the light like millions of mirrors, and their colour was almost more than the eye could bear. The

water seemed denser than before, heavy like melted glass, and the foam on the edges of each blue ridge

looked sharp as crystals. If a man should fall into them, he would be cut to pieces.

The whole ocean seemed suddenly to have come to life, the waves had a malignant, graceful, muscular

energy, were animated by a kind of mocking cruelty. Only a few hours ago a gentle boy had been thrown into

that freezing water and forgotten. Yes, already forgotten; every one had his own miseries to think about.

Late in the afternoon the wind fell, and there was a sinister sunset. Across the red west a small, ragged black

cloud hurried,then another, and another. They came up out of the sea,wild, witchlike shapes that

travelled fast and met in the west as if summoned for an evil conclave. They hung there against the afterglow,

distinct black shapes, drawing together, devising something. The few men who were left on deck felt that no

good could come out of a sky like that. They wished they were at home, in France, anywhere but here.

The next morning Doctor Trueman asked Claude to help him at sick call. "I've got a bunch of sergeants

taking temperatures, but it's too much for one man to oversee. I don't want to ask anything of those dude

officers who sit in there playing poker all the time. Either they've got no conscience, or they're not awake to

The Doctor stood on deck in his raincoat, his foot on the rail to keep his equilibrium, writing on his knee as

the long string of men came up to him. There were more than seventy in the line that morning, and some of

them looked as if they ought to be in a drier place. Rain beat down on the sea like lead bullets. The old

Anchises floundered from one grey ridge to another, quite alone. Fog cut off the cheering sight of the sister

ships. The doctor had to leave his post from time to time, when seasickness got the better of his will. Claude,

at his elbow, was noting down names and temperatures. In the middle of his work he told the sergeants to

manage without him for a few minutes. Down near the end of the line he had seen one of his own men

misconducting himself, snivelling and crying like a baby,a fine husky boy of eighteen who had never

"If you can't stop that, Bert Fuller, get where you won't be seen. I don't want all these English stewards

standing around to watch an American soldier cry. I never heard of such a thing!"

"I can't help it, Lieutenant," the boy blubbered. "I've kept it back just as long as I can. I can't hold in any

"What's the matter with you? Come over here and sit down on this box and tell me."

Private Fuller willingly let himself be led, and dropped on the box. "I'm so sick, Lieutenant!"

"I'll see how sick you are." Claude stuck a thermometer into his mouth, and while he waited, sent the deck

steward to bring a cup of tea. "Just as I thought, Fuller. You've not half a degree of fever. You're scared, and

"I'm from PPPleasantville, up on the PPPlatte," the boy gulped, and his tears began to flow afresh.

"Well, now, what would they think of you, back there? I suppose they got the band out and made a fuss over

you when you went away, and thought they were sending off a fine soldier. And I've always thought you'd be

a first rate soldier. I guess we'll forget about this. You feel better already, don't you?"

"Yes, sir. This tastes awful good. I've been so sick to my stomach, and last night I got pains in my chest. All

my crowd is sick, and you took big Tannhauser, I mean Corporal, away to the hospital. It looks like we're all

"I know it's a little gloomy. But don't you shame me before these English stewards."

When the medical inspection was over, Claude took the Doctor down to see Fanning, who had been coughing

and wheezing all night and hadn't got out of his berth. The examination was short. The Doctor knew what

was the matter before he put the stethoscope on him. "It's pneumonia, both lungs," he said when they came

out into the corridor. "I have one case in the hospital that will die before morning."

"You see how I'm fixed; close onto two hundred men sick, and one doctor. The medical supplies are wholly

inadequate. There's not castor oil enough on this boat to keep the men clean inside. I'm using my own drugs,

but they won't last through an epidemic like this. I can't do much for Lieutenant Fanning. You can, though, if

you'll give him the time. You can take better care of him right here than he could get in the hospital. We

Claude found Victor Morse and told him he had better get a berth in one of the other staterooms. When

"Glad of it. His stories are too raw for me. I'm no sissy, but that fellow's a regular Don Quixote."

"Who, Bird?" Claude asked in astonishment,Fanning had stood beside him at Bird's funeral. "Oh, he's

After dinner Doctor Trueman came in and showed Claude how to give his patient an alcohol bath. "It's

simply a question of whether you can keep up his strength. Don't try any of this greasy food they serve here.

Give him a raw egg beaten up in the juice of an orange every two hours, night and day. Waken him out of his

sleep when it's time, don't miss a single twohour period. I'll write an order to your table steward, and you

can beat the eggs up here in your cabin. Now I must go to the hospital. It's wonderful what those band boys

are doing there. I begin to take some pride in the place. That big German has been asking for you. He's in a

As there were no nurses on board, the Kansas band had taken over the hospital. They had been trained for

stretcher and first aid work, and when they realized what was happening on the Anchises, the bandmaster

came to the Doctor and offered the services of his men. He chose nurses and orderlies, divided them into

When Claude went to see his Corporal, big Tannhauser did not recognize him. He was quite out of his head

and was conversing with his own family in the language of his early childhood. The Kansas boys had singled

him out for special attention. The mere fact that he kept talking in a tongue forbidden on the surface of the

>From the hospital Claude went down into the hold where halfadozen of his company were lying ill. The

hold was damp and musty as an old cellar, so steeped in the smells and leakage of innumerable dirty cargoes

that it could not be made or kept clean. There was almost no ventilation, and the air was fetid with sickness

and sweat and vomit. Two of the band boys were working in the stench and dirt, helping the stewards. Claude

stayed to lend a hand until it was time to give Fanning his nourishment. He began to see that the wrist watch,

which he had hitherto despised as effeminate and had carried in his pocket, might be a very useful article.

After he had made Fanning swallow his egg, he piled all the available blankets on him and opened the port to

give the cabin an airing. While the fresh wind blew in, he sat down on the edge of his berth and tried to

collect his wits. What had become of those first days of golden weather, leisure and goodcomradeship? The

band concerts, the Lindsborg Quartette, the first excitement and novelty of being at sea: all that had gone by

That night when the Doctor came in to see Fanning, he threw his stethoscope on the bed and said wearily,

"It's a wonder that instrument doesn't take root in my ears and grow there." He sat down and sucked his

thermometer for a few minutes, then held it out for inspection. Claude looked at it and told him he ought to

"Then who's to be up and around? No bed for me, tonight. But I will have a hot bath by and by."

Claude asked why the ship's doctor didn't do anything and added that he must be as little as he looked.

"Chessup? No, he's not half bad when you get to know him. He's given me a lot of help about preparing

medicines, and it's a great assistance to talk the cases over with him. He'll do anything for me except directly

handle the patients. He doesn't want to exceed his authority. It seems the English marine is very particular

about such things. He's a Canadian, and he graduated first in his class at Edinburgh. I gather he was frozen

out in private practice. You see, his appearance is against him. It's an awful handicap to look like a kid and be

The Doctor rose, shored up his shoulders and took his bag. "You're looking fine yourself, Lieutenant," he

"Parents both living? Were they quite young when you were born? Well, then their parents were, probably.

I'm a crank about that. Yes, I'll get my bath pretty soon, and I will lie down for an hour or two. With those

Claude wondered how the Doctor kept going. He knew he hadn't had more than four hours sleep out of the

last fortyeight, and he was not a man of rugged constitution. His bath steward was, as he said, his comfort.

Hawkins was an old fellow who had held better positions on better boats,yes, in better times, too. He had

first gone to sea as a bath steward, and now, through the fortunes of war, he had come hack where he

began,not a good place for an old man. His back was bent meekly, and he shuffled along with broken

arches. He looked after the comfort of all the officers, and attended the doctor like a valet; got out his clean

linen, persuaded him to lie down and have a hot drink after his bath, stood on guard at his door to take

messages for him in the short hours when he was resting. Hawkins had lost two sons in the war and he

seemed to find a solemn consolation in being of service to soldiers. "Take it a bit easy now, sir. You'll 'ave it

At eleven o'clock one of the Kansas men came to tell Claude that his Corporal was going fast. Big

Tannhauser's fever had left him, but so had everything else. He lay in a stupor. His congested eyeballs were

rolled back in his head and only the yellowish whites were visible. His mouth was open and his tongue hung

out at one side. From the end of the corridor Claude had heard the frightful sounds that came from his throat,

sounds like violent vomiting, or the choking rattle of a man in strangulation,and, indeed, he was being

strangled. One of the band boys brought Claude a camp chair, and said kindly, "He doesn't suffer. It's

mechanical now. He'd go easier if he hadn't so much vitality. The Doctor says he may have a few moments of

"I'll go down and give my private patient his egg, and then I'll come back." Claude went away and returned,

and sat dozing by the bed. After three o'clock the noise of struggle ceased; instantly the huge figure on the

bed became again his goodnatured corporal. The mouth closed, the glassy jellies were once more seeing,

intelligent human eyes. The face lost its swollen, brutish look and was again the face of a friend. It was

almost unbelievable that anything so far gone could come back. He looked up wistfully at his Lieutenant as if

to ask him something. His eyes filled with tears, and he turned his head away a little.

A few moments later he died in perfect dignity, not struggling under torture, but consciously, it seemed to

Claude returned to his cabin, roused Fanning once more, and then threw himself upon his tipping bunk. The

boat seemed to wallow and sprawl in the waves, as he had seen animals do on the farm when they gave birth

to young. How helpless the old vessel was out here in the pounding seas, and how much misery she carried!

He lay looking up at the rusty water pipes and unpainted joinings. This liner was in truth the "Old Anchises";

even the carpenters who made her over for the service had not thought her worth the trouble, and had done

Big Tannhauser had been one of those who were most anxious to sail. He used to grin and say, "France is the

only climate that's healthy for a man with a name like mine." He had waved his goodbye to the image in the

New York harbour with the rest, believed in her like the rest. He only wanted to serve. It seemed hard.

When Tannhauser first came to camp he was confused all the time, and couldn't remember instructions.

Claude had once stepped him out in front of the line and reprimanded him for not knowing his right side from

his left. When he looked into the case, he found that the fellow was not eating anything, that he was ill from

homesickness. He was one of those farmer boys who are afraid of town. The giant baby of a long family, he

Corporal Tannhauser, along with four others, was buried at sunrise. No band this time; the chaplain was ill,

so one of the young captains read the service. Claude stood by watching until the sailors shot one sack, longer

by half a foot than the other four, into a leadcoloured chasm in the sea. There was not even a splash. After

breakfast one of the Kansas orderlies called him into a little cabin where they had prepared the dead men for

burial. The Army regulations minutely defined what was to be done with a deceased soldier's effects. His

uniform, shoes, blankets, arms, personal baggage, were all disposed of according to instructions. But in each

case there was a residue; the dead man's toothbrushes, his razors, and the photographs he carried upon his

person. There they were in five pathetic little heaps; what should be done with them?

Claude took up the photographs that had belonged to his corporal; one was a fat, foolishlooking girl in a

white dress that was too tight for her, and a floppy hat, a little flag pinned on her plump bosom. The other

was an old woman, seated, her hands crossed in her lap. Her thin hair was drawn back tight from a hard,

angular faceunmistakably an OldWorld faceand her eyes squinted at the camera. She looked honest

and stubborn and unconvinced, he thought, as if she did not in the least understand.

"I'll take these," he said. "And the othersjust pitch them over, don't you think?"

B Company's first officer, Captain Maxey, was so seasick throughout the voyage that he was of no help to his

men in the epidemic. It must have been a frightful blow to his pride, for nobody was ever more anxious to do

Claude had known Harris Maxey slightly in Lincoln; had met him at the Erlichs' and afterward kept up a

campus acquaintance with him. He hadn't liked Maxey then, and he didn't like him now, but he thought him a

good officer. Maxey's family were poor folk from Mississippi, who had settled in Nemaha county, and he

was very ambitious, not only to get on in the world, but, as he said, to "be somebody." His life at the

University was a feverish pursuit of social advantages and useful acquaintances. His feeling for the "right

people" amounted to veneration. After his graduation, Maxey served on the Mexican Border. He was a

tireless drill master, and threw himself into his duties with all the energy of which his frail physique was

capable. He was slight and fairskinned; a rigid jaw threw his lower teeth out beyond the upper ones and

made his face look stiff. His whole manner, tense and nervous, was the expression of a passionate desire to

Claude seemed to himself to be leading a double life these days. When he was working over Fanning, or was

down in the hold helping to take care of the sick soldiers, he had no time to think,did mechanically the

next thing that came to hand. But when he had an hour to himself on deck, the tingling sense of

everwidening freedom flashed up in him again. The weather was a continual adventure; he had never known

any like it before. The fog, and rain, the grey sky and the lonely grey stretches of the ocean were like

something he had imagined long agomemories of old sea stories read in childhood, perhapsand they

kindled a warm spot in his heart. Here on the Anchises he seemed to begin where childhood had left off. The

ugly hiatus between had closed up. Years of his life were blotted out in the fog. This fog which had been at

first depressing had become a shelter; a tent moving through space, hiding one from all that had been before,

giving one a chance to correct one's ideas about life and to plan the future. The past was physically shut off;

that was his illusion. He had already travelled a great many more miles than were told off by the ship's log.

When Bandmaster Fred Max asked him to play chess, he had to stop a moment and think why it was that

game had such disagreeable associations for him. Enid's pale, deceptive face seldom rose before him unless

some such accident brought it up. If he happened to come upon a group of boys talking about their

sweethearts and warbrides, he listened a moment and then moved away with the happy feeling that he was

There was plenty of deck room, now that so many men were ill either from seasickness or the epidemic, and

sometimes he and Albert Usher had the stormy side of the boat almost to themselves. The Marine was the

best sort of companion for these gloomy days; steady, quiet, selfreliant. And he, too, was always looking

forward. As for Victor Morse, Claude was growing positively fond of him. Victor had tea in a special corner

of the officers' smokingroom every afternoonhe would have perished without itand the steward always

produced some special garnishes of toast and jam or sweet biscuit for him. Claude usually managed to join

On the day of Tannhauser's funeral he went into the smokingroom at four. Victor beckoned the steward and

told him to bring a couple of hot whiskeys with the tea. "You're very wet, you know, Wheeler, and you really

should. There," he said as he put down his glass, "don't you feel better with a drink?"

"Two more, steward, and bring me some fresh lemon." The occupants of the room were either reading or

talking in low tones. One of the Swedish boys was playing softly on the old piano. Victor began to pour the

tea. He had a neat way of doing it, and today he was especially solicitous. "This Scotch mist gets into one's

bones, doesn't it? I thought you were looking rather seedy when I passed you on deck."

"I was up with Tannhauser last night. Didn't get more than an hour's sleep," Claude murmured, yawning.

"Yes, I heard you lost your big corporal. I'm sorry. I've had bad news, too. It's out now that we're to make a

French port. That dashes all my plans. However, c'est la guerre!" He pushed back his cup with a shrug. "Take

Claude had often wondered why Victor liked him, since he was so little Victor's kind. "If it isn't a secret," he

As they walked up and down in the rain, Victor told his story briefly. When he had finished High School, he

had gone into his father's bank at Crystal Lake as bookkeeper. After banking hours he skated, played tennis,

or worked in the strawberrybed, according to the season. He bought two pairs of white pants every summer

and ordered his shirts from Chicago and thought he was a swell, he said. He got himself engaged to the

preacher's daughter. Two years ado, the summer he was twenty, his father wanted him to see Niagara Falls;

so he wrote a modest check, warned his son against saloonsVictor had never been inside oneagainst

expensive hotels and women who came up to ask the time without an introduction, and sent him off, telling

him it wasn't necessary to fee porters or waiters. At Niagara Falls, Victor fell in with some young Canadian

officers who opened his eyes to a great many things. He went over to Toronto with them. Enlistment was

going strong, and he saw an avenue of escape from the bank and the strawberry bed. The air force seemed the

most brilliant and attractive branch of the service. They accepted him, and here he was.

"You'll never go home again," Claude said with conviction. "I don't see you settling down in any little Iowa

"In the air service," said Victor carelessly, "we don't concern ourselves about the future. It's not worth while."

"Let me see that a minute, will you? I've often admired it. A present from somebody you like, isn't it?"

A twitch of feeling, something quite genuine, passed over the airman's boyish face, and his rather small red

mouth compressed sharply. "Yes, a woman I want you to meet. Here," twitching his chin over his high collar,

"I'll write Maisie's address on my card: `Introducing Lieutenant Wheeler, A.E.F.' That's all you'll need. If you

should get to London before I do, don't hesitate. Call on her at once. Present this card, and she'll receive you."

Claude thanked him and put the card in his pocketbook, while Victor lit a cigarette. "I haven't forgotten that

you're dining with us at the Savoy, if we happen in London together. If I'm there, you can always find me.

Her address is mine. It will really be a great thing for you to meet a woman like Maisie. She'll be nice to you,

because you're my friend." He went on to say that she had done everything in the world for him; had left her

husband and given up her friends on his account. She now had a studio flat in Chelsea, where she simply

waited his coming and dreaded his going. It was an awful life for her. She entertained other officers, of

Victor went so far as to produce her picture, and Claude gazed without knowing what to say at a large

moonshaped face with heavylidded, weary eyes,the neck clasped by a pearl collar, the shoulders bare to

the matronly swell of the bosom. There was not a line or wrinkle in that smooth expanse of flesh, but from

the heavy mouth and chin, from the very shape of the face, it was easy to see that she was quite old enough to

be Victor's mother. Across the photograph was written in a large splashy hand, 'A mon aigle!' Had Victor

been delicate enough to leave him in any doubt, Claude would have preferred to believe that his relations

"Women like her simply don't exist in your part of the world," the aviator murmured, as he snapped the

photograph case. "She's a linguist and musician and all that. With her. everyday living is a fine art. Life, as

she says, is what one makes it. In itself, it's nothing. Where you came from it's nothinga sleeping

Claude laughed. "I don't know that I agree with you, but I like to hear you talk."

"Well; in that part of France that's all shot to pieces, you'll find more life going on in the cellars than in your

home town, wherever that is. I'd rather be a stevedore in the London docks than a bankerking in one of your

prairie States. In London, if you're lucky enough to have a shilling, you can get something for it."

"Tame? My God, it's death in life! What's left of men if you take all the fire out of them? They're afraid of

everything. I know them; Sundayschool sneaks, prowling around those little towns after dark!" Victor

abruptly dismissed the subject. "By the way, you're pals with the doctor, aren't you? I'm needing some

medicine that is somewhere in my lost trunk. Would you mind asking him if he can put up this prescription? I

don't want to go to him myself. All these medicos blab, and he might report me. I've been lucky dodging

medical inspections. You see, I don't want to get held up anywhere. Tell him it's not for you, of course."

When Claude presented the piece of blue paper to Doctor Trueman, he smiled contemptuously. "I see; this

has been filled by a London chemist. No, we have nothing of this sort." He handed it back. "Those things are

only palliatives. If your friend wants that, he needs treatment,and he knows where he can get it."

Claude returned the slip of paper to Victor as they left the diningroom after supper, telling him he hadn't

Tod Fanning held out better than many of the stronger men; his vitality surprised the doctor. The death list

was steadily growing; and the worst of it was that patients died who were not very sick. Vigorous,

cleanblooded young fellows of nineteen and twenty turned over and died because they had lost their

courage, because other people were dying,because death was in the air. The corridors of the vessel had the

smell of death about them. Doctor Trueman said it was always so in an epidemic; patients died who, had they

"Do you know, Wheeler," the doctor remarked one day when they came up from the hospital together to get a

breath of air, "I sometimes wonder whether all these inoculations they've been having, against typhoid and

smallpox and whatnot, haven't lowered their vitality. I'll go off my head if I keep losing men! What would

you give to be out of it all, and safe back on the farm?" Hearing no reply, he turned his head, peered over his

raincoat collar, and saw a startled, resisting look in the young man's blue eyes, followed by a quick flush.

"You don't want to be back on the farm, do you! Not a little bit! Well, well; that's what it is to be young!" He

shook his head with a smile which might have been commiseration, might have been envy, and went back to

Claude stayed where he was, drawing the wet grey air into his lungs and feeling vexed and reprimanded. It

was quite true, he realized; the doctor had caught him. He was enjoying himself all the while and didn't want

to be safe anywhere. He was sorry about Tannhauser and the others, but he was not sorry for himself. The

discomforts and misfortunes of this voyage had not spoiled it for him. He grumbled, of course, because others

did. But life had never seemed so tempting as it did here and now. He could come up from heavy work in the

hospital, or from poor Fanning and his everlasting eggs, and forget all that in ten minutes. Something inside

him, as elastic as the grey ridges over which they were tipping, kept bounding up and saying: "I am all here.

Only on that one day, the cold day of the Virginian's funeral, when he was seasick, had he been really

miserable. He must be heartless, certainly, not to be overwhelmed by the sufferings of his own men, his own

friendsbut he wasn't. He had them on his mind and did all he could for them, but it seemed to him just now

that he took a sort of satisfaction in that, too, and was somewhat vain of his usefulness to Doctor Trueman. A

nice attitude! He awoke every morning with that sense of freedom and going forward, as if the world were

growing bigger each day and he were growing with it. Other fellows were sick and dying, and that was

Something was released that had been struggling for a long while, he told himself. He had been due in France

since the first battle of the Marne; he had followed false leads and lost precious time and seen misery enough,

but he was on the right road at last, and nothing could stop him. If he hadn't been so green, so bashful, so

afraid of showing what he felt, and so stupid at finding his way about, he would have enlisted in Canada, like

Victor, or run away to France and joined the Foreign Legion. All that seemed perfectly possible now. Why

Well, that was not "the Wheelers' way." The Wheelers were terribly afraid of poking themselves in where

they weren't wanted, of pushing their way into a crowd where they didn't belong. And they were even more

afraid of doing anything that might look affected or "romantic." They couldn't let themselves adopt a

conspicuous, much less a picturesque course of action, unless it was all in the day's work. Well, History had

condescended to such as he; this whole brilliant adventure had become the day's work. He had got into it after

all, along with Victor and the Marine and other fellows who had more imagination and selfconfidence in the

first place. Three years ago he used to sit moping by the windmill because he didn't see how a Nebraska

farmer boy had any "call," or, indeed, any way, to throw himself into the struggle in France. He used

enviously to read about Alan Seeger and those fortunate American boys who had a right to fight for a

But the miracle had happened; a miracle so wide in its amplitude that the Wheelers,all the Wheelers and

the roughnecks and the lowbrows were caught up in it. Yes, it was the roughnecks' own miracle, all this; it

was their golden chance. He was in on it, and nothing could hinder or discourage him unless he were put over

the side himselfwhich was only a way of joking, for that was a possibility he never seriously considered.

"Look at this, Doctor!" Claude caught Dr. Trueman on his way from breakfast and handed him a written

notice, signed D. T. Micks, Chief Steward. It stated that no more eggs or oranges could be furnished to

The doctor squinted at the paper. "I'm afraid that's your patient's death warrant. You'll never be able to keep

him going on anything else. Why don't you go and talk it over with Chessup? He's a resourceful fellow. I'll

Claude had often been to Dr. Chessup's cabin since the epidemic broke out,rather liked to wait there when

he went for medicines or advice. It was a comfortable, personal sort of place with cheerful chintz hangings.

The walls were lined with books, held in place by sliding wooden slats, padlocked at the ends. There were a

great many scientific works in German and English; the rest were French novels in paper covers. This

morning he found Chessup weighing out white powders at his desk. In the rack over his bunk was the book

with which he had read himself to sleep last night; the title, "Un Crime d'Amour," lettered in black on yellow,

caught Claude's eye. The doctor put on his coat and pointed his visitor to the jointed chair in which patients

The ship's doctor was a strange fellow to come from Canada, the land of big men and rough. He looked like a

schoolboy, with small hands and feet and a pink complexion. On his left cheekbone was a large brown mole,

covered with silky hair, and for some reason that seemed to make his face effeminate. It was easy to see why

he had not been successful in private practice. He was like somebody trying to protect a raw surface from

heat and cold; so cursed with diffidence, and so sensitive about his boyish appearance that he chose to shut

himself up in an oscillating wooden coop on the sea. The long run to Australia had exactly suited him. A

rough life and the pounding of bad weather had fewer terrors for him than an office in town, with constant

"Have you tried him on malted milk?" he asked, when Claude had told him how Farming's nourishment was

"Then Lieutenant Wheeler will lose his pal," said Dr. Trueman, who had just come in.

Chessup stood for a moment frowning and pulling nervously at the brass buttons on his coat. He slid the bolt

on his door and turning to his colleague said resolutely: "I can give you some information, if you won't

implicate me. You can do as you like, but keep my name out of it. For several hours last night cases of eggs

and boxes of oranges were being carried into the Chief Steward's cabin by a flunky of his from the galley.

Whatever port we make, he can get a shilling each for the fresh eggs, and perhaps sixpence for the oranges.

They are your property, of course, furnished by your government; but this is his customary perquisite. I've

been on this boat six years, and it's always been so. About a week before we make port, the choicest of the

remaining stores are taken to his cabin, and he disposes of them after we dock. I can't say just how he

manages it, but he does. The skipper may know of this custom, and there may be some reason why he permits

it. It's not my business to see anything. The Chief Steward is a powerful man on an English vessel. If he has

anything against me, sooner or later he can lose my berth for me. There you have the facts."

"Certainly not. But you can go without my knowledge. He's an ugly man to cross, and he can make it

"Well, we'll say no more about it. I appreciate your telling me, and I will see that you don't get mixed up in

Claude waited impatiently in his stateroom for the doctor's return. He didn't see why the Chief Steward

shouldn't be exposed and dealt with like any other grafter. He had hated the man ever since he heard him

berating the old bath steward one morning. Hawkins had made no attempt to defend himself, but stood like a

dog that has been terribly beaten, trembling all over, saying "Yes, sir. Yes, sir," while his chief gave him a

cold cursing in a low, snarling voice. Claude had never heard a man or even an animal addressed with such

contempt. The Steward had a cruel face,white as cheese, with limp, moist hair combed back from a high

forehead,the peculiarly oily hair that seems to grow only on the heads of stewards and waiters. His eyes

were exactly the shape of almonds, but the lids were so swollen that the dull pupil was visible only through a

When Dr. Trueman came back from the hospital, he declared he was now ready to call on Mr. Micks. "He's a

The doctor made a grimace to his companion and walked in. The Steward was sitting at a big desk, covered

with account books. He turned in his chair. "I beg your pardon," he said coldly, "I do not see any one here. I

The doctor held up his hand quickly. "That's all right, Steward. I'm sorry to intrude, but I've something I must

say to you in private. I'll not detain you long." If he had hesitated for a moment, Claude believed the Steward

would have thrown him out, but he went on rapidly. "This is Lieutenant Wheeler, Mr. Micks. His fellow

officer lies very ill with pneumonia in stateroom 96. Lieutenant Wheeler has kept him alive by special

nursing. He is not able to retain anything in his stomach but eggs and orange juice. If he has these, we may be

able to keep up his strength till the fever breaks, and carry him to a hospital in France. If we can't get them for

The steward rose and turned out the droplight on his desk. "Have you received notice that there are no more

eggs and oranges on board? Then I am afraid there is nothing I can do for you. I did not provision this ship."

"No. I understand that. I believe the United States Government provided the fruit and eggs and meat. And I

positively know that the articles I need for my patient are not exhausted. Without going into the matter

further, I warn you that I'm not going to let a United States officer die when the means of saving him are

procurable. I'll go to the skipper, I'll call a meeting of the army officers on board. I'll go any length to save

"That is your own affair, but you will not interfere with me in the discharge of my duties. Will you leave my

"In a moment, Steward. I know that last night a number of cases of eggs and oranges were carried into this

room. They are here now, and they belong to the A.E.F. If you will agree to provision my man, what I know

won't go any further. But if you refuse, I'll get this matter investigated. I won't stop till I do."

The Steward sat down, and took up a pen. His large, soft hand looked cheesy, like his face. "What is the

"One dozen eggs and one dozen oranges every twentyfour hours, to be delivered at any time convenient to

The Steward did not look up from his writing pad, and his visitors left as abruptly as they had come.

At about four o'clock every morning, before even the bath stewards were on duty, there was a scratching at

Claude's door, and a covered basket was left there by a messenger who was unwashed, halfnaked, with a

sacking apron tied round his middle and his hairy chest splashed with flour. He never spoke, had only one eye

and an inflamed socket. Claude learned that he was a halfwitted brother of the Chief Steward, a potato

Four day after their interview with Mr. Micks, when they were at last nearing the end of the voyage, Doctor

Trueman detained Claude after medical inspection to tell him that the Chief Steward had come down with the

epidemic. "He sent for me last night and asked me to take his case,won't have anything to do with

Chessup. I had to get Chessup's permission. He seemed very glad to hand the case over to me."

"He hasn't a lookin, and he knows it. Complications; chronic Bright's disease. It seems he has nine children.

I'll try to get him into a hospital when we make port, but he'll only live a few days at most. I wonder who'll

get the shillings for all the eggs and oranges he hoarded away. Claude, my boy," the doctor spoke with

sudden energy, "if I ever set foot on land again, I'm going to forget this voyage like a bad dream. When I'm in

normal health, I'm a Presbyterian, but just now I feel that even the wicked get worse than they deserve."

A day came at last when Claude was wakened from sleep by a sense of stillness. He sprang up with a dazed

Something caught his eye through the porthole,a great grey shoulder of land standing up in the pink light

of dawn, powerful and strangely still after the distressing instability of the sea. Pale trees and long, low

fortifications . . . close grey buildings with red roofs . . . little sailboats bounding seaward . . . up on the cliff a

He had always thought of his destination as a country shattered and desolated,"bleeding France"; but he

had never seen anything that looked so strong, so selfsufficient, so fixed from the first foundation, as the

coast that rose before him. It was like a pillar of eternity. The ocean lay submissive at its feet, and over it was

This grey wall, unshaken, mighty, was the end of the long preparation, as it was the end of the sea. It was the

reason for everything that had happened in his life for the last fifteen months. It was the reason why

Tannhauser and the gentle Virginian, and so many others who had set out with him, were never to have any

life at all, or even a soldier's death. They were merely waste in a great enterprise, thrown overboard like

rotten ropes. For them this kind release, trees and a still shore and quiet water, was never, never to be.

How long would their bodies toss, he wondered, in that inhuman kingdom of darkness and unrest?

At noon that day Claude found himself in a street of little shops, hot and perspiring, utterly confused and

turned about. Truck drivers and boys on bell less bicycles shouted at him indignantly, furiously. He got under

the shade of a young plane tree and stood close to the trunk, as if it might protect him. His greatest care, at

any rate, was off his hands. With the help of Victor Morse he had hired a taxi for forty francs, taken Fanning

to the base hospital, and seen him into the arms of a big orderly from Texas. He came away from the hospital

with no idea where he was goingexcept that he wanted to get to the heart of the city. It seemed, however,

to have no heart; only long, stony arteries, full of heat and noise. He was still standing there, under his plane

tree, when a group of uncertain, lostlooking brown figures, headed by Sergeant Hicks, came weaving up the

street; nine men in nine different attitudes of dejection, each with a long loaf of bread under his arm. They

hailed Claude with joy, straightened up, and looked as if now they had found their way! He saw that he must

Sergeant Hicks explained that they had been trudging about the town, looking for cheese. After sixteen days

of heavy, tasteless food, cheese was what they all wanted. There was a grocery store up the street, where

there seemed to be everything else. He had tried to make the old woman understand by signs.

"Don't these French people eat cheese, anyhow? What's their word for it, Lieutenant? I'm damned if I know,

Crowding close together, the ten men entered the shop. The proprietress ran forward with an exclamation of

despair. Evidently she had thought she was done with them, and was not pleased to see them coming back.

When she paused to take breath, Claude took off his hat respectfully, and performed the bravest act of his

life; uttered the first phrasebook sentence he had ever spoken to a French person. His men were at his back;

he had to say something or run, there was no other course. Looking the old woman in the eye, he steadily

"Avezvous du fromage, Madame?" It was almost inspiration to add the last word, he thought; and when it

"Du fromage?" the shop woman screamed. Calling something to her daughter, who was at the desk, she

caught Claude by the sleeve, pulled him out of the shop, and ran down the street with him. She dragged him

into a doorway darkened by a long curtain, greeted the proprietress, and then pushed the men after their

They stood blinking in the gloom, inhaling a sour, damp, buttery, smearkase smell, until their eyes

penetrated the shadows and they saw that there was nothing but cheese and butter in the place. The

shopkeeper was a fat woman, with black eyebrows that met above her nose; her sleeves were rolled up, her

cotton dress was open over her white throat and bosom. She began at once to tell them that there was a

restriction on milk products; every one must have cards; she could not sell them so much. But soon there was

nothing left to dispute about. The boys fell upon her stock like wolves. The little white cheeses that lay on

green leaves disappeared into big mouths. Before she could save it, Hicks had split a big round cheese

through the middle and was carving it up like a melon. She told them they were dirty pigs and worse than the

"What's the matter with Mother, Lieutenant? What's she fussing about? Ain't she here to sell goods?"

Claude tried to look wiser than he was. "From what I can make out, there's some sort of restriction; you aren't

allowed to buy all you want. We ought to have thought about that; this is a war country. I guess we've about

"Oh, that's all right," said Hicks wiping his claspknife. "We'll bring her some sugar tomorrow. One of the

fellows who helped us unload at the docks told me you can always quiet 'em if you give 'em sugar."

They surrounded her and held out their money for her to take her pay. "Come on, ma'm, don't be bashful.

She was distracted by the noise they made, by their bronzed faces with white teeth and pale eyes, crowding so

close to her. Ten large, wellshaped hands with straight fingers, the open palms full of crumpled notes . . . .

Holding the men off under the pretence of looking for a pencil, she made rapid calculations. The money that

lay in their palms had no relation to these big, coaxing, boisterous fellows; it was a joke to them; they didn't

know what it meant in the world. Behind them were shiploads of money, and behind the ships . . . .

The situation was unfair. Whether she took much or little out of their hands, couldn't possibly matter to the

Americans, couldn't even dash their good humour. But there was a strain on the cheesewoman, and the

standards of a lifetime were in jeopardy. Her mind mechanically fixed upon twoandahalf ; she would

charge them twoandahalf times the market price of the cheese. With this moral plank to cling to, she

made change with conscientious accuracy and did not keep a penny too much from anybody. Telling them

what big stupids they were, and that it was necessary to learn to count in this world, she urged them out of her

shop. She liked them well enough, but she did not like to do business with them. If she didn't take their

money, the next one would. All the same, fictitious values were distasteful to her, and made everything seem

Standing in her doorway, she watched the brown band go ambling down the street; as they passed in front of

the old church of St. Jacques, the two foremost stumbled on a sunken step that was scarcely above the level

of the pavement. She laughed aloud. They looked back and waved to her. She replied with a smile that was

both friendly and angry. She liked them, but not the legend of waste and prodigality that ran before

themand followed after. It was superfluous and disintegrating in a world of hard facts. An army in which

the men had meat for breakfast, and ate more every day than the French soldiers at the front got in a week!

Their moving kitchens and supply trains were the wonder of France. Down below Arles, where her husband's

sister had married, on the desolate plain of the Crau, their tinned provisions were piled like mountain ranges,

under sheds and canvas. Nobody had ever seen so much food before; coffee, milk, sugar, bacon, hams;

everything the world was famished for. They brought shiploads of useless things, too. And useless people.

Shiploads of women who were not nurses; some said they came to dance with the officers, so they would not

All this was not war,any more than having money thrust at you by grown men who could not count, was

business. It was an invasion, like the other. The first destroyed material possessions, and this threatened

everybody's integrity. Distaste of such methods, deep, recoiling distrust of them, clouded the cheesewoman's

As for the doughboys, having once stubbed their toes on the sunken step, they examined it with interest, and

went in to explore the church. It was in their minds that they must not let a church escape, any more than they

would let a Boche escape. Within they came upon a bunch of their shipmates, including the Kansas band, to

The Lieutenant himself thought he was getting on pretty well, but a few hours later his pride was humbled.

He was sitting alone in a little triangular park beside another church,, admiring the cropped locust trees and

watching some old women who were doing their mending in the shade. A little boy in a black apron, with a

closeshaved, bare head, came along, skipping rope. He hopped lightly up to Claude and said in a most

Claude looked down into his admiring eyes with a feeling of panic. He wouldn't mind being dumb to a man,

or even to a pretty girl, but this was terrible. His tongue went dry, and his face grew scarlet. The child's

expectant gaze changed to a look of doubt, and then of fear. He had spoken before to Americans who didn't

understand, but they had not turned red and looked angry like this one; this soldier must be ill, or wrong in

Many a serious mishap had distressed Claude less. He was disappointed, too. There was something friendly

in the boy's face that he wanted . . . that he needed. As he rose he ground his heel into the gravel. "Unless I

can learn to talk to the CHILDREN of this country," he muttered, "I'll go home!"

Claude set off to find the Grand Hotel, where he had promised to dine with Victor Morse. The porter there

spoke English. He called a redheaded boy in a dirty uniform and told him to take the American to

vingtquatre. The boy also spoke English. "Plenty money in New York, I guess! In France, no money." He

made their way, through musty corridors and up slippery staircases, as long as possible, shrewdly eyeing the

"Vingtquatre, twen'yfour," he announced, rapping at a door with one hand and suggestively opening the

Victor was standing before the fireplace. "Hello, Wheeler, come in. Our dinner will be served up here. It's big

enough, isn't it? I could get nothing between a coop, and this at fifteen dollars a day."

The room was spacious enough for a banquet; with two huge beds, and great windows that swung in on

hinges, like doors, and that had certainly not been washed since before the war. The heavy red

cottonbrocade hangings and lace curtains were stiff with dust, the thick carpet was strewn with

cigaretteends and matches. Razor blades and "Khaki Comfort" boxes lay about on the dresser, and former

occupants had left their autographs in the dust on the table. Officers slept there, and went away, and other

officers arrived,and the room remained the same, like a wood in which travellers camp for the night. The

valet de chambre carried away only what he could use; discarded shirts and socks and old shoes. It seemed a

When the waiter came, he dusted off the table with his apron and put on a clean cloth, napkins, and glasses.

Victor and his guest sat down under an electric light bulb with a broken shade, around which a silent halo of

flies moved unceasingly. They did not buzz, or dart aloft, or descend to try the soup, but hung there in the

center of the room as if they were a part of the lighting system. The constant attendance of the waiter

"By the way," said Victor while the soup plates were being removed, "what do you think of this wine? It cost

"It tastes very good to me," Claude replied. "But then, it's the first champagne I've ever drunk."

"Really?" Victor drank off another glass and sighed. "I envy you. I wish I had it all to do over. Life's too

"I should say you had made a good beginning. We're a long way from Crystal Lake."

"Not far enough." His host reached across the table and filled Claude's empty glass. "I sometimes waken up

with the feeling I'm back there. Or I have bad dreams, and find myself sitting on that damned stool in the

glass cage and can't make my books balance; I hear the old man coughing in his private room, the way he

coughs when he's going to refuse a loan to some poor devil who needs it. I've had a narrow escape, Wheeler;

The bright red spots on Victor's cheeks, his pale forehead and brilliant eyes and saucy little moustaches

seemed to give his quotation a peculiar vividness. Claude envied him. It must be great fun to take up a part

and play it to a finish; to believe you were making yourself over, and to admire the kind of fellow you made.

"Take it from me, there are thousands who will never go back! I'm not speaking of the casualties. Some of

you Americans are likely to discover the world this trip . . . and it'll make the hell of a lot of difference! You

boys never had a fair chance. There's a conspiracy of Church and State to keep you down. I'm going off to

"I guess not." Claude spoke apologetically. "I'm going out to see Fanning after dinner."

Victor shrugged. "That ass!" He beckoned the waiter to open another bottle and bring the coffee. "Well, it's

your last chance to go nutting with me." He looked intently at Claude and lifted his glass. "To the future, and

our next meeting!" When he put down his empty goblet he remarked, "I got a wire through today; I'm leaving

Claude took a quick breath. Verdun . . . the very sound of the name was grim, like the hollow roll of drums.

Victor was going there tomorrow. Here one could take a train for Verdun, or thereabouts, as at home one took

a train for Omaha. He felt more "over" than he had done before, and a little crackle of excitement went all

"God knows," Victor answered gloomily. He looked up at the ceiling and began to whistle softly an engaging

air. "Do you know that? It's something Maisie often plays; 'Roses of Picardy.' You won't know what a woman

"I hope I'll have that pleasure. I was wondering if you'd forgotten her for the moment. She doesn't object to

Victor lifted his eyebrows in the old haughty way. "Women don't require that sort of fidelity of the air

Half an hour later Victor had gone in quest of amorous adventure, and Claude was wandering alone in a

brightly lighted street full of soldiers and sailors of all nations. There were black Senegalese, and Highlanders

in kilts, and little lorrydrivers from Siam,all moving slowly along between rows of cabarets and cinema

theatres. The widespreading branches of the plane trees met overhead, shutting out the sky and roofing in

the orange glare. The sidewalks were crowded with chairs and little tables, at which marines and soldiers sat

drinking shops and cognac and coffee. From every doorway musicmachines poured out jazz tunes and

strident Sousa marches. The noise was stupefying. Out in the middle of the street a band of bareheaded girls,

hardy and tough looking; were following a string of awkward Americans, running into them, elbowing them,

Claude stationed himself before a movie theatre, where the sign in electric lights read, "Amour, quand tu nous

tiens!" and stood watching the people. In the stream that passed him, his eye lit upon two walking

arminarm, their hands clasped, talking eagerly and unconscious of the crowd,different, he saw at once,

The man wore the American uniform; his left arm had been amputated at the elbow, and he carried his head

awry, as if he had a stiff neck. His dark, lean face wore an expression of intense anxiety, his eyebrows

twitched as if he were in constant pain. The girl, too, looked troubled. As they passed him, under the red light

of the Amour sign, Claude could see that her eyes were full of tears. They were wide, blue eyes, innocent

looking, and she had the prettiest face he had seen since he landed. From her silk shawl, and little bonnet with

blue strings and a white frill, he thought she must be a country girl. As she listened to the soldier, with her

mouth halfopen, he saw a space between her two front teeth, as with children whose second teeth have just

come. While they pushed along in the crowd she looked up intently at the man beside her, or off into the blur

of light, where she evidently saw nothing. Her face, young and soft, seemed new to emotion, and her

Without realizing what he did, Claude followed them out of the crowd into a quiet street, and on into another,

even more deserted, where the louses looked as if they had been asleep a long while. Here there were no

street lamps, not even a light in the windows, but natural darkness; with the moon high overhead throwing

sharp shadows across the white cobble paving. The narrow street made a bend, and he came out upon the

church he and his comrades had entered that afternoon. It looked larger by night, and but for the sunken step,

he might not have been sure it was the same. The dark neighbouring houses seemed to lean toward it, the

The two walking before him ascended the steps and withdrew into the deep doorway, where they clung

together in an embrace so long and still that it was like death. At last they drew shuddering apart. The girl sat

down on the stone bench beside the door. The soldier threw himself upon the pavement at her feet, and rested

In the shadow of the houses opposite, Claude kept watch like a sentinel, ready to take their part if any alarm

should startle them. The girl bent over her soldier, stroking his head so softly that she might have been

putting him to sleep; took his one hand and held it against her bosom as if to stop the pain there. Just behind

her, on the sculptured portal, some old bishop, with a pointed cap and a broken crozier, stood, holding up two

The next morning when Claude arrived at the hospital to see Fanning, he found every one too busy to take

account of him. The courtyard was full of ambulances, and a long line of camions waited outside the gate. A

trainload of wounded Americans had come in, sent back from evacuation hospitals to await transportation

As the men were carried past him, he thought they looked as if they had been sick a long whilelooked,

indeed, as if they could never get well. The boys who died on board the Anchises had never seemed as sick as

these did. Their skin was yellow or purple, their eyes were sunken, their lips sore. Everything that belonged

to health had left them, every attribute of youth was gone. One poor fellow, whose face and trunk were

wrapped in cotton, never stopped moaning, and as he was carried up the corridor he smelled horribly. The

Texas orderly remarked to Claude, "In the beginning that one only had a finger blown off; would you believe

These were the first wounded men Claude had seen. To shed bright blood, to wear the red badge of

courage,that was one thing; but to be reduced to this was quite another,. Surely, the sooner these boys died,

The Texan, passing with his next load, asked Claude why he didn't go into the office and wait until the rush

was over. Looking in through the glass door, Claude noticed a young man writing at a desk enclosed by a

railing. Something about his figure, about the way he held his head, was familiar. When he lifted his left arm

to prop open the page of his ledger, it was a stump below the elbow. Yes, there could be no doubt about it;

the pale, sharp face, the beak nose, the frowning, uneasy brow. Presently, as if he felt a curious eye upon him,

the young man paused in his rapid writing, wriggled his shoulders, put an iron paperweight on the page of his

book, took a case from his pocket and shook a cigarette out on the table. Going up to the railing, Claude

offered him a cigar. "No, thank you. I don't use them any more. They seem too heavy for me." He struck a

match, moved his shoulders again as if they were cramped, and sat down on the edge of his desk.

"Where do these wounded men come from?" Claude asked. "I just got in on the Anchises yesterday."

"They come from various evacuation hospitals. I believe most of them are the Belleau Wood lot."

"Cantigny. I was in the First Division. I'd been over since last September, waiting for something to happen,

"Yes, I could. But I don't want to. I've got used to things over here. I was attached to Headquarters in Paris

Claude leaned across the rail. "We read about Cantigny at home, of course. We were a good deal excited; I

"Yes, we were nervous. We hadn't been under fire, and we'd been fed up on all that stuff about it's taking fifty

years to build a fighting machine. The Hun had a strong position; we looked up that long hill and wondered

how we were going to behave." As he talked the boy's eyes seemed to be moving all the time, probably

because he could not move his head at all. After blowing out deep clouds of smoke until his cigarette was

gone, he sat down to his ledger and frowned at the page in a way which said he was too busy to talk.

Claude saw Dr. Trueman standing in the doorway, waiting for him. They made their morning call on

Fanning, and left the hospital together. The Doctor turned to him as if he had something on his mind.

"Oh, yes! He's a star patient here, a psychopathic case. I had just been talking to one of the doctors about him,

when I came out and saw you with him. He was shot in the neck at Cantigny, where he lost his arm. The

wound healed, but his memory is affected; some nerve cut, I suppose, that connects with that part of his brain.

This psychopath, Phillips, takes a great interest in him and keeps him here to observe him. He's writing a

book about him. He says the fellow has forgotten almost everything about his life before he came to France.

The queer thing is, it's his recollection of women that is most affected. He can remember his father, but not

his mother; doesn't know if he has sisters or not,can remember seeing girls about the house, but thinks they

may have been cousins. His photographs and belongings were lost when he was hurt, all except a bunch of

letters he had in his pocket. They are from a girl he's engaged to, and he declares he can't remember her at all;

doesn't know what she looks like or anything about her, and can't remember getting engaged. The doctor has

the letters. They seem to be from a nice girl in his own town who is very ambitious for him to make the most

of himself. He deserted soon after he was sent to this hospital, ran away. He was found on a farm out in the

country here, where the sons had been killed and the people had sort of adopted him. He'd quit his uniform

and was wearing the clothes of one of the dead sons. He'd probably have got away with it, if he hadn't had

that wry neck. Some one saw him in the fields and recognized him and reported him. I guess nobody cared

much but this psychopathic doctor; he wanted to get his pet patient back. They call him 'the lost American'

"Yes, they say he's very well educated. He remembers the books he has read better than his own life. He can't

recall what his home town looks like, or his home. And the women are clear wiped out, even the girl he was

The Doctor turned to him affectionately, "Now Claude, don't begin to talk like that the minute you land in

Claude walked on past the church of St. Jacques. Last night already seemed like a dream, but it haunted him.

He wished he could do something to help that boy; help him get away from the doctor who was writing a

book about him, and the girl who wanted him to make the most of himself; get away and be lost altogether in

what he had been lucky enough to find. All day, as Claude came and went, he looked among the crowds for

Deeper and deeper into flowery France! That was the sentence Claude kept saying over to himself to the jolt

of the wheels, as the long troop train went southward, on the second day after he and his company had left the

port of debarkation. Fields of wheat, fields of oats, fields of rye; all the low hills and rolling uplands clad with

harvest. And everywhere, in the grass, in the yellowing grain, along the roadbed, the poppies spilling and

streaming. On the second day the boys were still calling to each other about the poppies; nothing else had so

entirely surpassed their expectations. They had supposed that poppies grew only on battle fields, or in the

brains of war correspondents. Nobody knew what the cornflowers were, except Willy Katz, an Austrian boy

from the Omaha packinghouses, and he knew only an objectionable name for them, so he offered no

information. For a long time they thought the red clover blossoms were wild flowers,they were as big as

wild roses. When they passed the first alfalfa field, the whole train rang with laughter; alfalfa was one thing,

All the way down, Company B had been finding the old things instead of the new,or, to their way of

thinking, the new things instead of the old. The thatched roofs they had so counted upon seeing were few and

far between. But American binders, of wellknown makes, stood where the fields were beginning to

ripen,and they were being oiled and put in order, not by "peasants," but by wiselooking old farmers who

seemed to know their business. Pear trees, trained like vines against the wall, did not astonish them half so

much as the sight of the familiar cottonwood, growing everywhere. Claude thought he had never before

realized how beautiful this tree could be. In verdant little valleys, along the clear rivers, the cottonwoods

waved and rustled; and on the little islands, of which there were so many in these rivers, they stood in pointed

masses, seemed to grip deep into the soil and to rest easy, as if they had been there for ever and would be

there for ever more. At home, all about Frankfort, the farmers were cutting down their cottonwoods because

they were "common," planting maples and ash trees to struggle along in their stead. Never mind; the

cottonwoods were good enough for France, and they were good enough for him! He felt they were a real

When B Company had first got their orders to go into a training camp in north central France, all the men

were disappointed. Troops much rawer than they were being rushed to the front, so why fool around any

longer? But now they were reconciled to the delay. There seemed to be a good deal of France that wasn't the

war, and they wouldn't mind travelling about a little in a country like this. Was the harvest always a month

later than at home, as it seemed to be this year? Why did the farmers have rows of trees growing along the

edges of every fielddidn't they take the strength out of the soil? What did the farmers mean by raising

patches of mustard right along beside other crops? Didn't they know that mustard got into wheat fields and

The second night the boys were to spend in Rouen, and they would have the following day to look about.

Everybody knew what had happened at Rouenif any one didn't, his neighbours were only too eager to

inform him! It had happened in the marketplace, and the marketplace was what they were going to find.

Tomorrow, when it came, proved to be black and cold, a day of pouring rain. As they filed through the

narrow, crowded streets, that harsh Norman city presented no very cheering aspect. They were glad, at last, to

find the waterside, to go out on the bridge and breathe the air in the great open space over the river, away

from the clatter of cartwheels and the hard voices and crafty faces of these townspeople, who seemed rough

and unfriendly. From the bridge they looked up at the white chalk hills, the tops a blur of intense green under

the low, leadcoloured sky. They watched the fleets of broad, deepset river barges, coming and going under

their feet, with tilted smokestacks. Only a little way up that river was Paris, the place where every doughboy

meant to go; and as they leaned on the rail and looked down at the slowflowing water, each one had in his

mind a confused picture of what it would be like. The Seine, they felt sure, must be very much wider there,

and it was spanned by many bridges, all longer than the bridge over the Missouri at Omaha. There would be

spires and golden domes past counting, all the buildings higher than anything in Chicago, and

brilliantdazzlingly brilliant, nothing grey and shabby about it like this old Rouen. They attributed to the

city of their desire incalculable immensity, bewildering vastness, Babylonian hugeness and heavinessthe

Late in the morning Claude found himself alone before the Church of St. Ouen. He was hunting for the

Cathedral, and this looked as if it might be the right place. He shook the water from his raincoat and entered,

removing his hat at the door. The day, so dark without, was darker still within; . . . far away, a few scattered

candles, still little points of light . . . just before him, in the grey twilight, slender white columns in long rows,

The entrance to the nave was closed by a cord, so he walked up the aisle on the right, treading softly, passing

chapels where solitary women knelt in the light of a few tapers. Except for them, the church was empty . . .

empty. His own breathing was audible in this silence. He moved with caution lest he should wake an echo.

When he reached the choir he turned, and saw, far behind him, the rose window, with its purple heart. As he

stood staring, hat in hand, as still as the stone figures in the chapels, a great bell, up aloft, began to strike the

hour in its deep, melodious throat; eleven beats, measured and far apart, as rich as the colours in the window,

then silence . . . only in his memory the throbbing of an undreamedof quality of sound. The revelations of

the glass and the bell had come almost simultaneously, as if one produced the other; and both were

superlatives toward which his mind had always been groping,or so it seemed to him then.

In front of the choir the nave was open, with no rope to shut it off. Several .straw chairs were huddled on a

flag of the stone floor. After some hesitation he took one, turned it round, and sat down facing the window. If

some one should come up to him and say anything, anything at all, he would rise and say, "Pardon, Monsieur;

je ne sais pas c'est defendu." He repeated this to himself to be quite sure he had it ready.

On the train, coming down, he had talked to the boys about the bad reputation Americans had acquired for

slouching all over the place and butting in on things, and had urged them to tread lightly, "But Lieutenant,"

the kid from Pleasantville had piped up, "isn't this whole Expedition a buttin? After all, it ain't our war."

Claude laughed, but he told him he meant to make an example of the fellow who went to roughhousing.

He was well satisfied that he hadn't his restless companions on his mind now. He could sit here quietly until

noon, and hear the bell strike again. In the meantime, he must try to think: This was, of course, Gothic

architecture; he had read more or less about that, and ought to be able to remember something. Gothic . . .

that was a mere word; to him it suggested something very peaked and pointed,sharp arches, steep roofs. It

had nothing to do with these slim white columns that rose so straight and far,or with the window, burning

While he was vainly trying to think about architecture, some recollection of old astronomy lessons brushed

across his brain,something about stars whose light travels through space for hundreds of years before it

reaches the earth and the human eye. The purple and crimson and peacockgreen of this window had been

shining quite as long as that before it got to him . . . . He felt distinctly that it went through him and farther

still . . . as if his mother were looking over his shoulder. He sat solemnly through the hour until twelve, his

elbows on his knees, his conical hat swinging between them in his hand, looking up through the twilight with

When Claude joined his company at the station, they had the laugh on him. They had found the

Cathedral,and a statue of Richard the Lionhearted, over the spot where the lionheart itself was buried;

"the identical organ," fat Sergeant Hicks assured him. But they were all glad to leave Rouen.

B Company reached the training camp at S thirtysix men short: twentyfive they had buried on the

voyage over, and eleven sick were left at the base hospital. The company was to be attached to a battalion

which had already seen service, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Scott. Arriving early in the morning, the

officers reported at once to Headquarters. Captain Maxey must have suffered a shock when the Colonel rose

from his desk to acknowledge his salute, then shook hands with them all around and asked them about their

journey. The Colonel was not a very martial figure; short, fat, with slouching shoulders, and a lumpy back

like a sack of potatoes. Though he wasn't much over forty, he was bald, and his collar would easily slip over

his head without being unbuttoned. His little twinkling eyes and goodhumoured face were without a particle

Years ago, when General Pershing, then a handsome young Lieutenant with a slender waist and yellow

moustaches, was stationed as Commandant at the University of Nebraska, Walter Scott was an officer in a

company of cadets the Lieutenant tools about to military tournaments. The Pershing Rifles, they were called,

and they won prizes wherever they went. After his graduation, Scott settled down to running a hardware

business in a thriving Nebraska town, and sold gas ranges and garden hose for twenty years. About the time

Pershing was sent to the Mexican border, Scott began to think there might eventually be something in the

wind, and that he would better get into training. He went down to Texas with the National Guard. He had

come to France with the First Division, and had won his promotions by solid, soldierly qualities.

"I see you're an officer short, Captain _Maxey," the Colonel remarked at their conference. "I think I've got a

man here to take his place. Lieutenant Gerhardt is a New York man, came over in the band and got

transferred to infantry. He has lately been given a commission for good service. He's had some experience

and is a capable fellow." The Colonel sent his orderly out to bring in a young man whom he introduced to the

Claude had been ashamed of Tod Fanning, who was always showing himself a saphead, and who would

never have got a commission if his uncle hadn't been a Congressman. But the moment he met Lieutenant

Gerhardt's eye, something like jealousy flamed up in him. He felt in a flash that he suffered by comparison

with the new officer; that he must be on his guard and must not let himself be patronized.

As they were leaving the Colonel's office together, Gerhardt asked him whether he had got his billet. Claude

replied that after the men were in their quarters, he would look out for something for himself.

The young man smiled. "I'm afraid you may have difficulty. The people about here have been overworked,

keeping soldiers, and they are not willing as they once were. I'm with a nice old couple over in the village.

I'm almost sure I can get you in there. If you'll come along, we'll speak to them, before some one else is put

Claude didn't want to go, didn't want to accept favours,nevertheless he went. They walked together along a

dusty road that ran between halfripe wheat fields, bordered with poplar trees. The wild morningglories and

Queen Anne's lace that grew by the roadside were still shining with dew. A fresh breeze stirred the bearded

grain, parting it in furrows and fanning out streaks of crimson poppies. The new officer was not intrusive,

certainly. He walked along, whistling softly to himself, seeming quite lost in the freshness of the morning, or

in his own thoughts. There had been nothing patronizing in his manner so far, and Claude began to wonder

why he felt ill at ease with him. Perhaps it was because he did not look like the rest of them. Though he was

young, he did not look boyish. He seemed experienced; a finished product, rather than something on the way.

He was handsome, and his face, like his manner and his walk, had something distinguished about it. A broad

white forehead under reddish brown hair, hazel eyes with no uncertainty in their look, an aquiline nose, finely

cut,a sensitive, scornful mouth, which somehow did not detract from the kindly, though slightly reserved,

Lieutenant Gerhardt must have been in this neighbourhood for some time; he seemed to know the people. On

the road they passed several villagers; a rough looking girl taking a cow out to graze, an old man with a

basket on his arm, the postman on his bicycle; they all spoke to Claude's companion as if they knew him well.

"What are these blue flowers that grow about everywhere?" Claude asked suddenly, pointing to a clump with

They were approaching the village, which lay on the edge of a wood,a wood so large one could not see the

end of it; it met the horizon with a ridge of pines. The village was but a single street. On either side ran

claycoloured walls, with painted wooden doors here and there, and green shutters. Claude's guide opened

one of these gates, and they walked into a little sanded garden; the house was built round it on three sides.

Under a cherry tree sat a woman in a black dress, sewing, a work table beside her.

She was fifty, perhaps, but though her hair was grey she had a look of youthfulness; thin cheeks, delicately

flushed with pink, and quiet, smiling, intelligent eyes. Claude thought she looked like a New England

woman,like the photographs of his mother's cousins and schoolmates. Lieutenant Gerhardt introduced him

to Madame Joubert. He was quite disheartened by the colloquy that followed. Clearly his new fellow officer

spoke Madame Joubert's perplexing language as readily as she herself did, and he felt irritated and grudging

as he listened. He had been hoping that, wherever he stayed, he could learn to talk to the people a little; but

with this accomplished young man about, he would never have the courage to try. He could see that Mme.

Joubert liked Gerhardt, liked him very much; and all this, for some reason, discouraged him.

Gerhardt turned to Claude, speaking in a way which included Madame Joubert in the conversation, though

she could not understand it: "Madame Joubert will let you come, although she has done her part and really

doesn't have to take any one else in. But you will be so well off here that I'm glad she consents. You will have

Gerhardt went out of the gate and left him alone with his hostess. Her mind seemed to read his thoughts.

When he uttered a word, or any sound that resembled one, she quickly and smoothly made a sentence of it, as

if she were quite accustomed to talking in this way and expected only monosyllables from strangers. She was

kind, even a little playful with him; but he felt it was all good manners, and that underneath she was not

thinking of him at all. When he was alone in the tilefloored sleeping room upstairs, unrolling his blankets

and arranging his shaving things, he looked out of the window and watched her where she sat sewing under

the cherry tree. She had a very sad face, he thought; it wasn't grief, nothing sharp and definite like sorrow. It

was an old, quiet, impersonal sadness,sweet in its expression, like the sadness of music.

As he came out of the house to start back to the barracks, he bowed to her and tried to say, "Au revoir,

Madame. Jusq' au ce soir." He stopped near the kitchen door to look at a manybranched rose vine that ran

all over the wall, full of creamcoloured, pinktipped roses, just a shade stronger in colour than the clay wall

behind them. Madame Joubert came over and stood beside him, looking at him and at the rosier, "Oui, c'est

joli, n'estce pas?" She took the scissors that hung by a ribbon from her belt, cut one of the flowers and stuck

Stepping into the street, he turned to shut the wooden door after him, and heard a soft stir in the dark

toolhouse at his elbow. >From among the rakes and spades a child's frightened face was staring out at him.

She was sitting on the ground with her lap full of baby kittens. He caught but a glimpse of her dull, pale face.

The next morning Claude awoke with such a sense of physical wellbeing as he had not had for a long time.

The sun was shining brightly on the white plaster walls and on the red tiles of the floor. Green jalousies,

halfdrawn, shaded the upper part of the two windows. Through their slats, he could see the forking branches

of an old locust tree that grew by the gate. A flock of pigeons flew over it, dipping and mounting with a sharp

twinkle of silver wings. It was good to lie again in a house that was cared for by women. He must have felt

that even in his sleep, for when he opened his eyes he was thinking about Mahailey and breakfast and

summer mornings on the farm. The early stillness was sweet, and the feeling of dry, clean linen against his

body. There was a smell of lavender about his warm pillow. He lay still for fear of waking Lieutenant

Gerhardt. This was the sort of peace one wanted to enjoy alone. When he rose cautiously on his elbow and

looked at the other bed, it was empty. His companion must have dressed and slipped out when day first

broke. Somebody else who liked to enjoy things alone; that looked hopeful. But now that he had the place to

himself, he decided to get up. While he was dressing he could see old M. Joubert down in the garden,

watering the plants and vines, raking the sand fresh and smooth, clipping off dead leaves and withered

flowers and throwing them into a wheelbarrow. These people had lost both their sons in the war, he had been

told, and now they were taking care of the property for their grandchildren,two daughters of the elder son.

Claude saw Gerhardt come into the garden, and sit down at the table under the trees, where they had their

dinner last night. He hurried down to join him. Gerhardt made room for him on the bench.

"Do you always sleep like that? It's an accomplishment. I made enough noise when I dressed,kept

Madame Joubert came out of the kitchen in a purple flowered morning gown, her hair in curlpapers under a

lace cap. She brought the coffee herself, and they sat down at the unpainted table without a cloth, and drank it

out of big crockery bowls. They had fresh milk with it,the first Claude had tasted in a long while, and

sugar which Gerhardt produced from his pocket. The old cook had her coffee sitting in the kitchen door, and

Madame Joubert amiably addressed herself to Claude; she knew that Americans were accustomed to a

different sort of morning repast, and if he wished to bring bacon from the camp, she would gladly cook it for

him. She had even made pancakes for officers who stayed there before. She seemed pleased, however, to

learn that Claude had had enough of these things for awhile. She called David by his first name, pronouncing

it the French way, and when Claude said he hoped she would do as much for him, she said, Oh, yes, that his

was a very good French name, "mais un peu, un peu. . .romanesque," at which he blushed, not quite knowing

"Yes, it is, a little," David admitted candidly. The day's work on the parade ground was hard, and Captain

Maxey's men were soft, felt the heat,didn't size up well with the Kansas boys who had been hardened by

service. The Colonel wasn't pleased with B Company and detailed them to build new barracks and extend the

sanitation system. Claude got out and worked with the men. Gerhardt followed his example, but it was easy

to see that he had never handled lumber or tinroofing before. A kind of rivalry seemed to have sprung up

Claude could see that the sergeants and corporals were a little uncertain about Gerhardt. His laconic speech,

never embroidered by the picturesque slang they relished, his gravity, and his rare, incredulous smile, alike

puzzled them. Was the new officer a dude? Sergeant Hicks asked of his chum, Dell Able. No, he wasn't a

dude. Was he a swellhead? No, not at all; but he wasn't a good mixer. He was "an Easterner"; what more he

was would develop later. Claude sensed something unusual about him. He suspected that Gerhardt knew a

good many things as well as he knew French, and that he tried to conceal it, as people sometimes do when

they feel they are not among their equals; this idea nettled him. It was Claude who seized the opportunity to

be patronizing, when Gerhardt betrayed that he was utterly unable to select lumber by given measurements.

The next afternoon, work on the new barracks was called off because of rain. Sergeant Hicks set about

getting up a boxing match, but when he went to invite the lieutenants, they had both disappeared. Claude was

tramping toward the village, determined to get into the big wood that had tempted him ever since his arrival.

The highroad became the village street, and then, at the edge of the wood, became a country road again. A

little farther on, where the shade grew denser, it split up into three wagon trails, two of them faint and little

used. One of these Claude followed. The rain had dwindled to a steady patter, but the tall brakes growing up

in the path splashed him to the middle, and his feet sank in spongy, mossy earth. The light about him, the

very air, was green. The trunks of the trees were overgrown with a soft green moss, like mould. He was

wondering whether this forest was not always a damp, gloomy place, when suddenly the sun broke through

and shattered the whole wood with gold. He had never seen anything like the quivering emerald of the moss,

the silky green of the dripping beech tops. Everything woke up; rabbits ran across the path, birds began to

The winding path turned again, and came out abruptly on a hillside, above an open glade piled with grey

boulders. On the opposite rise of ground stood a grove of pines, with bare, red stems. The light, around and

under them, was red like a rosy sunset. Nearly all the stems divided about halfway up into two great arms,

Down in the grassy glade, among the piles of flint boulders, little white birches shook out their shining leaves

in the lightly moving air. All about the rocks were patches of purple heath; it ran up into the crevices between

them like fire. On one of these bald rocks sat Lieutenant Gerhardt, hatless, in an attitude of fatigue or of deep

dejection, his hands clasped about his knees, his bronze hair ruddy in the sun. After watching him for a few

Claude sat down on a boulder. "Is this heather?" he asked. "I thought I recognized it, from 'Kidnapped.' This

"I was," replied the other with a disdainful smile, languidly stretching out his legs in the heather.

"Why, to take fellows with a special talent. There are enough of us who haven't any."

Gerhardt rolled over on his back and put his hands under his head. "Oh, this affair is too big for exceptions;

it's universal. If you happened to be born twentysix years ago, you couldn't escape. If this war didn't kill you

in one way, it would in another." He told Claude he had trained at Camp Dix, and had come over eight

months ago in a regimental band, but he hated the work he had to do and got transferred to the infantry.

When they retraced their steps, the wood was full of green twilight. Their relations had changed somewhat

during the last half hour, and they strolled in confidential silence up the homelike street to the door of their

Since the rain was over, Madame Joubert had laid the cloth on the plank table under the cherry tree, as on the

previous evenings. Monsieur was bringing the chairs, and the little girl was carrying out a pile of heavy

plates. She rested them against her stomach and leaned back as she walked, to balance them. She wore shoes,

but no stockings, and her faded cotton dress switched about her brown legs. She was a little Belgian refugee

who had been sent there with her mother. The mother was dead now, and the child would not even go to visit

her grave. She could not be coaxed from the courtyard into the quiet street. If the neighbour children came

into the garden on an errand, she hid herself. She would have no playmates but the cat; and now she had the

Dinner was very cheerful that evening. M. Joubert was pleased that the storm had not lasted long enough to

hurt the wheat. The garden was fresh and bright after the rain. The cherry tree shook down bright drops on

the tablecloth when the breeze stirred. The mother cat dozed on the red cushion in Madame Joubert's sewing

chair, and the pigeons fluttered down to snap up earthworms that wriggled in the wet sand. The shadow of the

house fell over the dinnertable, but the treetops stood up in full sunlight, and the yellow sun poured on the

earth wall and the creamcoloured roses. Their petals, ruffled by the rain, gave out a wet, spicy smell.

M. Joubert must have been ten years older than his wife. There was a great contentment in his manner and a

pleasant sparkle in his eye. He liked the young officers. Gerhardt had been there more than two weeks, and

somewhat relieved the stillness that had settled over the house since the second son died in hospital. The

Jouberts had dropped out of things. They had done all they could do, given all they had, and now they had

nothing to look forward to,except the event to which all France looked forward. The father was talking to

Gerhardt about the great seaport the Americans were making of Bordeaux; he said he meant to go there after

Madame Joubert was pleased to hear that they had been walking in the wood. And was the heather in bloom?

She wished they had brought her some. Next time they went, perhaps. She used to walk there often. Her eyes

seemed to come nearer to them, Claude thought, when she spoke of it, and she evidently cared a great deal

more about what was blooming in the wood than about what the Americans were doing on the Garonne. He

wished he could talk to her as Gerhardt did. He admired the way she roused herself and tried to interest them,

speaking her difficult language with such spirit and precision. It was a language that couldn't be mumbled;

that had to be spoken with energy and fire, or not spoken at all. Merely speaking that exacting tongue would

The little maid who served them moved about noiselessly. Her dull eyes never seemed to look; yet she saw

when it was time to bring the heavy soup tureen, and when it was time to take it away. Madame Joubert lad

found that Claude liked his potatoes with his meatwhen there was meatand not in a course by

themselves. She had each time to tell the little girl to go and fetch them. This the child did with manifest

reluctance,sullenly, as if she were being forced to do something wrong. She was a very strange little

creature, altogether. As the two soldiers left the table and started for the camp, Claude reached down into the

tool house and took up one of the kittens, holding it out in the light to see it blink its eyes. The little girl, just

coming out of the kitchen, uttered a shrill scream, a really terrible scream, and squatted down, covering her

"What is the matter with that child?" Claude asked as they hurried out of the gate. "Do you suppose she was

"Terrorized. She often screams like that at night. Haven't you heard her? They have to go and wake her, to

stop it. She doesn't speak any French; only Walloon. And she can't or won't learn, so they can't tell what goes

In the two weeks of intensive training that followed, Claude marvelled at Gerhardt's spirit and endurance. The

muscular strain of mimic trench operations was more of a tax on him than on any of the other officers. He

was as tall as Claude, but he weighed only a hundred and fortysix pounds, and he had not been roughly bred

like most of the others. When his fellow officers learned that he was a violinist by profession, that he could

have had a soft job as interpreter or as an organizer of camp entertainments, they no longer resented his

reserve or his occasional superciliousness. They respected a man who could have wriggled out and didn't.

On the march at last; through a brilliant August day Colonel Scott's battalion was streaming along one of the

dusty, wellworn roads east of the Somme, their railway base well behind them. The way led through rolling

country; fields, hills, woods, little villages shattered but still habitable, where the people came out to watch

The Americans went through every village m march step, colours flying, the band playing, "to show that the

morale was high," as the officers said. Claude trudged on the outside of the column,now at the front of his

company, now at the rear,wearing a stoical countenance, afraid of betraying his satisfaction in the men, the

They were bound for the big show, and on every hand were reassuring signs: long lines of gaunt, dead trees,

charred and torn; big holes gashed out in fields and hillsides, already half concealed by new undergrowth;

winding depressions in the earth, bodies of wrecked motortrucks and automobiles lying along the road, and

everywhere endless straggling lines of rusty barbedwire, that seemed to have been put there by

"Begins to look like we're getting in, Lieutenant," said Sergeant Hicks, smiling behind his salute.

"Well, we can't arrive any too soon for us, boys?" The Sergeant looked over his shoulder, and they grinned,

their teeth flashing white in their red, perspiring faces. Claude didn't wonder that everybody along the route,

even the babies, came out to see them; he thought they were the finest sight in the world. This was the first

day they had worn their tin hats; Gerhardt had shown them how to stuff grass and leaves inside to keep their

heads cool. When they fell into fours, and the band struck up as they approached a town, Bert Fuller, the boy

from Pleasantville on the Platte, who had blubbered on the voyage over, was guide right, and whenever

Claude passed him his face seemed to say, "You won't get anything on me in a hurry, Lieutenant!"

They made camp early in the afternoon, on a hill covered with halfburned pines. Claude took Bert and Dell

Behind the hill, under the burned edge of the wood, they found an abandoned farmhouse and what seemed to

It had a solid stone curb about it, and a wooden bucket hanging by a rusty wire. When the boys splashed the

bucket about, the water sent up a pure, cool breath. But they were wise boys, and knew where dead Prussians

most loved to hide. Even the straw in the stable they regarded with suspicion, and thought it would be just as

Swinging on to the right to make their circuit, they got into mud; a low field where the drain ditches had been

neglected and had overflowed. There they came upon a pitiful group of humanity, bemired. A woman, ill and

wretched looking, sat on a fallen log at the end of the marsh, a baby in her lap and three children hanging

about her. She was far gone in consumption; one had only to listen to her breathing and to look at her white,

perspiring face to feel how weak she was. Draggled, mud to the knees, she was trying to nurse her baby, half

hidden under an old black shawl. She didn't look like a tramp woman, but like one who had once been able to

take proper care of herself, and she was still young. The children were tired and discouraged. One little boy

wore a clumsy blue jacket, made from a French army coat. The other wore a battered American Stetson that

came down over his ears. He carried, in his two arms, a pink celluloid clock. They all looked up and waited

Claude approached the woman, and touching the rim of his helmet, began: "Bonjour, Madame. Qu'est que

She tried to speak, but went off into a spasm of coughing, only able to gasp, "'Toinette, 'Toinette!"

'Toinette stepped quickly forward. She was about eleven, and seemed to be the captain of the party. A bold,

hard little face with a long chin, straight black hair tied with rags, uneasy, crafty eyes; she looked much less

gentle and more experienced than her mother. She began to explain, and she was very clever at making

herself understood. She was used to talking to foreign soldiers,spoke slowly, with emphasis and ingenious

She, too, had been reconnoitering. She had discovered the empty farmhouse and was trying to get her party

there for the night. How did they come here? Oh, they were refugees. They had been staying with people

thirty kilometers from here. They were trying to get back to their own village. Her mother was very sick,

presque morte and she wanted to go home to die. They had heard people were still living there; an old aunt

was living in their own cellar,and so could they if they once got there. The point was, and she made it over

and over, that her mother wished to die chez elle, comprenezvous? They had no papers, and the French

soldiers would never let them pass, but now that the Americans were here they hoped to get through; the

While she talked in her shrill, clicking voice, the baby began to howl, dissatisfied with its nourishment. The

little girl shrugged. ''Il est toujours en colere," she muttered. The woman turned it around with difficultyit

seemed a big, heavy baby, but white and sicklyand gave it the other breast. It began sucking her noisily,

rooting and sputtering as if it were famished. It was too painful, it was almost indecent, to see this exhausted

woman trying to feed her baby. Claude beckoned his men away to one side, and taking the little girl by the

"Il faut que votre merese reposer," he told her, with the grave caesural pause which he always made in the

middle of a French sentence. She understood him. No distortion of her native tongue surprised or perplexed

her. She was accustomed to being addressed in all persons, numbers, genders, tenses; by Germans, English,

Americans. She only listened to hear whether the voice was kind, and with men in this uniform it usually was

"At the Marne?" Claude repeated, glancing in perplexity at the nursing baby. Her sharp eyes followed his,

and she instantly divined his doubt. "The baby?" she said quickly. "Oh, the baby is not my brother, he is a

For a moment Claude did not understand. She repeated her explanation impatiently, something disdainful and

"I guess we'll have to get them over to that farmhouse," he told the men. He repeated what he had got of the

child's story. When he came to her laconic statement about the baby, they looked at each other. Bert Fuller

was afraid he might cry again, so he kept muttering, "By God, if we'd agot here sooner, by God if we had!"

Dell and Oscar made a chair of their crossed hands and carried the woman, she was no great weight. Bert

picked up the little boy with the pink clock; "Come along, little frog, your legs ain't long enough."

Claude walked behind, holding the screaming baby stiffly in his arms. How was it possible for a baby to have

such definite personality, he asked himself, and how was it possible to dislike a baby so much? He hated it

for its square, towthatched head and bloodless ears, and carried it with loathing . . . no wonder it cried!

When it got nothing by screaming and stiffening, however, it suddenly grew quiet; regarded him with pale

blue eyes, and tried to make itself comfortable against his khaki coat. It put out a grimy little fist and took

hold of one of his buttons. "Kamerad, eh?" he muttered, glaring at the infant. "Cut it out!"

Before they had their own supper that night, the boys carried hot food and blankets down to their family.

Claude had just been along the line to see that the gun teams were in position. This hour, when the light was

changing, was a favourite time for attack. He had come in late last night, and had everything to learn.

Mounting the firestep, he peeped over the parapet between the sandbags, into the low, twisting mist. Just then

he could see nothing but the wire entanglement, with birds hopping along the top wire, singing and chirping

as they did on the wire fences at home. Clear and flutelike they sounded in the heavy air,and they were

the only sounds. A little breeze came up, slowly clearing the mist away. Streaks of green showed through the

moving banks of vapour. The birds became more agitated. That dull stretch of grey and green was No Man's

Land. Those low, zigzag mounds, like giant molehills protected by wire hurdles, were the Hun trenches; five

or six lines of them. He could easily follow the communication trenches without a glass. At one point their

front line could not be more than eighty yards away, at another it must be all of three hundred. Here and there

thin columns of smoke began to rise; the Hun was getting breakfast; everything was comfortable and natural.

Behind the enemy's position the country rose gradually for several miles, with ravines and little woods,

where, according to his map, they had masked artillery. Back on the hills were ruined farmhouses and broken

trees, but nowhere a living creature in sight. It was a dead, nerveless countryside, sunk in quiet and dejection.

Yet everywhere the ground was full of men. Their own trenches, from the other side, must look quite as dead.

It was amazing how simply things could be done. His battalion had marched in quietly at midnight, and the

line they came to relieve had set out as silently for the rear. It all took place in utter darkness. Just as B

Company slid down an incline into the shallow rear trenches, the country was lit for a moment by two star

shells, there was a rattling of machine guns, German Maxims,a sporadic crackle that was not followed up.

Filing along the communication trenches, they listened anxiously; artillery fire would have made it bad for

the other men who were marching to the rear. But nothing happened. They had a quiet night, and this

The sky flamed up saffron and silver. Claude looked at his watch, but he could not bear to go just yet. How

long it took a Wheeler to get round to anything! Four years on the way; now that he was here, he would enjoy

the scenery a bit, he guessed. He wished his mother could know how he felt this morning. But perhaps she

did know. At any rate, she would not have him anywhere else. Five years ago, when he was sitting on the

steps of the Denver State House and knew that nothing unexpected could ever happen to him . . suppose he

could have seen, in a flash, where he would be today? He cast a long look at the reddening, lengthening

Claude made his way back to the dugout into which he and Gerhardt had thrown their effects last night. The

former occupants had left it clean. There were two bunks nailed against the side walls,wooden frames with

wire netting over them, covered with dry sandbags. Between the two bunks was a soapbox table, with a

candle stuck in a green bottle, an alcohol stove, a bainmarie, and two tin cups. On the wall were coloured

"A little. I wasn't very tired. I suppose we could heat shaving water on this stove; they've left us half a bottle

"It will doubtless serve its purpose," David remarked dryly. "So sensitive to any criticism of this war! Why,

"I know," Claude replied meekly, as he began to fold his blankets. "But it's likely the only one I'll ever be in,

The next afternoon four young men, all more or less naked, were busy about a shellhole full of opaque brown

water. Sergeant Hicks and his chum, Dell Able, had hunted through half the blazing hot morning to find a

hole not too scummy, conveniently, and even picturesquely situated, and had reported it to the Lieutenants.

Captain Maxey, Hicks said, could send his own orderly to find his own shellhole, and could take his bath in

private. "He'd never wash himself with anybody else," the Sergeant added. "Afraid of exposing his dignity!"

Bruger and Hammond, the two second Lieutenants, were already out of their bath, and reclined on what

might almost be termed a grassy slope, examining various portions of their body with interest. They hadn't

had all their clothes off for some time, and four days of marching in hot weather made a man anxious to look

"You wait till winter," Gerhardt told them. He was still splashing in the hole, up to his armpits in muddy

water. "You won't get a wash once in three months then. Some of the Tommies told me that when they got

their first bath after Vimy, their skins peeled off like a snake's. What are you doing with my trousers,

"Hunting for your knife. I dropped mine yesterday, when that shell exploded in the cutoff. I darned near

"Shucks, that wasn't anything. Don't keep blowing about itshows you're a greenhorn."

Claude stripped off his shirt and slid into the pool beside Gerhardt. "Gee, I hit something sharp down there!

He shut his eyes, disappeared for a moment, and came up sputtering, throwing on the ground a round metal

object, coated with rust and full of slime. "German helmet, isn't it? Phew!" He wiped his face and looked

"Phew is right!" Bruger turned the object over with a stick. "Why in hell didn't you bring up the rest of him?

Gerhardt scrambled up the side. "Get out, Wheeler! Look at that," he pointed to big sleepy bubbles, bursting

up through the thick water. "You've stirred up trouble, all right! Something's going very bad down there."

Claude got out after him, looking back at the activity in the water. "I don't see how pulling out one helmet

could stir the bottom up so. I should think the water would keep the smell down."

"Ever study chemistry?" Bruger asked scornfully. "You just opened up a graveyard, and now we get the

Lieutenant Hammond, still barelegged, with his shirt tied over his shoulders, was scratching in his notebook.

The first letters from home! The supply wagons brought them up, and every man in the Company got

something except Ed Drier, a farmhand from the Nebraska sand hills, and Willy Katz, the towheaded

Austrian boy from the South Omaha packinghouses. Their comrades were sorry for them. Ed didn't have

any "folks" of his own, but he had expected letters all the same. Willy was sure his mother must have written.

When the last ragged envelope was given out and he turned away emptyhanded, he murmured, "She's

Bohunk, and she don't write so good. I guess the address wasn't plain, and some fellow in another comp'ny

No second class matter was sent up,the boys had hoped for newspapers from home to give them a little

war news, since they never got any here. Dell Able's sister, however, had enclosed a clipping from the Kansas

City Star; a long account by one of the British war correspondents in Mesopotamia, describing the hardships

the soldiers suffered there; dysentery, flies, mosquitoes, unimaginable heat. He read this article aloud to a

group of his friends as they sat about a shellhole pool where they had been washing their socks. He had just

finished the story of how the Tommies had found a few mud huts at the place where the original Garden of

Eden was said to have been,a desolate spot full of stinging insectswhen Oscar Petersen, a very religious

Swedish boy who was often silent for days together, opened his mouth and said scornfully,

"Because; the Lord put four cherubims with swords to guard the Garden, and there ain't no man going to find

Hicks began to laugh. "Why, that was about six thousand years ago, you cheese! Do you suppose your

Oscar wouldn't listen further to a "pack of lies" and walked off with his washing.

Battalion Headquarters was nearly half a mile behind the front line, part dugout, part shed, with a plank roof

sodded over. The Colonel's office was partitioned off at one end; the rest of the place he gave over to the

officers for a kind of club room. One night Claude went back to make a report on the new placing of the gun

teams. The young officers were sitting about on soap boxes, smoking and eating sweet crackers out of tin

cases. Gerhardt was working at a plank table with paper and crayons, making a clean copy of a rough map

they had drawn up together that morning, showing the limits of fire. Noise didn't fluster him; he could sit

There was one officer who could talk all the others down, wherever he was; Captain Barclay Owens, attached

from the Engineers. He was a little stumpy thumb of a man, only five feet four, and very broad,a dynamo

of energy. Before the war he was building a dam in Spain, "the largest dam in the world," and in his

excavations he had discovered the ruins of one of Julius Caesar's fortified camps. This had been too much for

his easilyinflamed imagination. He photographed and measured and brooded upon these ancient remains.

He was an engineer by day and an archaeologist by night. He had crates of books sent down from

Paris,everything that had been written on Caesar, in French and German; he engaged a young priest to

translate them aloud to him in the evening. The priest believed the American was mad.

When Owens was in college he had never shown the least interest in classical studies, but now it was as if he

were giving birth to Caesar. The war came along, and stopped the work on his dam. It also drove other ideas

into his exclusively engineering brains. He rushed home to Kansas to explain the war to his countrymen.. He

travelled about the West, demonstrating exactly what had happened at the first battle of the Marne, until he

In the Battalion, Owens was called "Julius Caesar," and the men never knew whether he was explaining the

Roman general's operations in Spain, or Joffre's at the Marne, he jumped so from one to the other. Everything

was in the foreground with him; centuries made no difference. Nothing existed until Barclay Owens found

out about it. The men liked to hear him talk. Tonight he was walking up and down, his yellow eyes rolling, a

big black cigar in his hand, lecturing the young officers upon French characteristics, coaching and preparing

them. It was his legs that made him so funny; his trunk was that of a big man, set on two short stumps.

"Now you fellows don't want to forget that the nightlife of Paris is not a typical thing at all; that's a show got

up for foreigners . . . . The French peasant, he's a thrifty fellow . . . . This red wine's all right if you don't

abuse it; take it twothirds water and it keeps off dysentery . . . . You don't have to be rough with them,

simply firm. Whenever one of them accosts me, I follow a regular plan; first, I give her twentyfive francs;

then I look her in the eye and say, 'My girl, I've got three children, three boys.' She gets the point at once;

"But that's so expensive! It must keep you poor, Captain Owens," said young Lieutenant Hammond

Claude knew that David particularly detested Captain Owens of the Engineers, and wondered that he could

go on working with such concentration, when snatches of the Captain's lecture kept breaking through the

confusion of casual talk and the noise of the phonograph. Owens, as he walked up and down, cast furtive

glances at Gerhardt. He had got wind of the fact that there was something out of the ordinary about him.

The men kept the phonograph going; as soon as one record buzzed out, somebody put in another. Once, when

a new tune began, Claude saw David look up from his paper with a curious expression. He listened for a

moment with a halfcontemptuous smile, then frowned and began sketching in his map again. Something

about his momentary glance of recognition made Claude wonder whether he had particular associations with

the air,melancholy, but beautiful, Claude thought. He got up and went over to change the record himself

this time. He took out the disk, and holding it up to the light, read the inscription

When they were going back along the communication trench in the rain, wading single file, Claude broke the

silence abruptly. "That was one of your records they played tonight, that violin solo, wasn't it?"

"I'd like to write my mother. She's fond of good music. She'll get your records, and it will sort of bring the

"All right, Claude," said David goodnaturedly. "She will find them in the catalogue, with my picture in

uniform alongside. I had a lot made before I went out to Camp Dix. My own mother gets a little income from

them. Here we are, at home." As he struck a match two black shadows jumped from the table and disappeared

behind the blankets. "Plenty of them around, these wet nights. Get one? Don't squash him in there. Here's the

Gerhardt held open the mouth of a gunny sack, and Claude thrust the squirming corner of his blanket into it

and vigorously trampled whatever fell to the bottom. "Where do you suppose the other is?" "He'll join us

later. I don't mind the rats half so much as I do Barclay Owens. What a sight he would be with his clothes off!

Turn in; I'll go the rounds." Gerhardt splashed out along the submerged duckboard. Claude took off his shoes

and cooled his feet in the muddy water. He wished he could ever get David to talk about his profession, and

The following night, Claude was sent back to Division Headquarters at Q with information the Colonel

did not care to commit to paper. He set off at ten o'clock, with Sergeant Hicks for escort. There had been two

days of rain, and the communication trenches were almost kneedeep in water. About half a mile back of the

front line, the two men crawled out of the ditch and went on above ground. There was very little shelling

along the front that night. When a flare went up, they dropped and lay on their faces, trying, at the same time,

The ground was rough, and the darkness thick; it was past midnight when they reached the eastandwest

roadusually full of traffic, and not entirely deserted even on a night like this. Trains of horses were

splashing through the mud, with shells on their backs, empty supply wagons were coming back from the

front. Claude and Hicks paused by the ditch, hoping to get a ride. The rain began to fall with such violence

that they looked about for shelter. Stumbling this way and that, they ran into a big artillery piece, the wheels

"American infantrymen, two of us. Can we get onto one of your trucks till this lets up?"

"Oh, certainly! We can make room for you in here, if you're not too big. Speak quietly, or you'll waken the

Major." Giggles and smothered laughter; a flashlight winked for a moment and showed a line of five trucks,

the front and rear ones covered with tarpaulin tents. The voices came from the shelter next the gun. The men

inside drew up their legs and made room for the strangers; said they were sorry they hadn't anything dry to

The Britishers were a giggly lot, and Claude thought, from their voices, they must all be very young. They

joked about their Major as if he were their schoolmaster. There wasn't room enough on the truck for anybody

to lie down, so they sat with their knees under their chins and exchanged gossip. The gun team belonged to an

independent battery that was sent about over the country, "wherever needed." The rest of the battery had got

through, gone on to the east, but this big gun was always getting into trouble; now something had gone wrong

with her tractor and they couldn't pull her out. They called her "Jenny," and said she was taken with fainting

fits now and then, and had to be humoured. It was like going about with your grandmother, one of the

invisible Tommies said, "she is such a pompous old thing!" The Major was asleep on the rear truck; he was

No, they hadn't any idea where they were going; of course, the officers knew, but artillery officers never told

anything. What was this country like, anyhow? They were new to this part, had just come down from

Claude said he had a friend in the air service up there; did they happen to know anything about Victor Morse?

Morse, the American ace? Hadn't he heard? Why, that got into the London papers. Morse was shot down

inside the Hun line three weeks ago. It was a brilliant affair. He was chased by eight Boche planes, brought

down three of them, put the rest to flight, and was making for base, when they turned and got him. His

The men settled down to wait for the weather to improve or the night to pass. Some of them fell into a doze,

but Claude felt wide awake. He was wondering about the flat in Chelsea; whether the heavyeyed beauty had

been very sorry, or whether she was playing "Roses of Picardy" for other young officers. He thought

mournfully that he would never go to London now. He had quite counted on meeting Victor there some day,

after the Kaiser had been properly disposed of. He had really liked Victor. There was something about that

fellow . . . a sort of debauched baby, he was, who went seeking his enemy in the clouds. What other age

could have produced such a figure? That was one of the things about this war; it took a little fellow from a

little town, gave him an air and a swagger, a life like a moviefilm,and then a death like the rebel angels.

A man like Gerhardt, for instance, had always lived in a more or less rosecolored world; he belonged over

here, really. How could he know what hard moulds and crusts the big guns had broken open on the other side

of the sea? Who could ever make him understand how far it was from the strawberry bed and the glass cage

By three o'clock the rain had stopped. Claude and Hicks set off again, accompanied by one of the gun team

who was going back to get help for their tractor. As it began to grow light, the two Americans wondered

more and more at the extremely youthful appearance of their companion. When they stopped at a shellhole

and washed the mud from their faces, the English boy, with his helmet off and the weather stains removed,

showed a countenance of adolescent freshness, almost girlish; cheeks like pink apples, yellow curls above his

"You haven't been over very long, have you?" Claude asked in a fatherly tone, as they took the road again.

The Americans liked to hear him talk; he spoke very quickly, in a high, piping voice.

"Oh, I belonged to one of the Pal Battalions, and we got cut to pieces. When I came out of hospital, I thought

"Now, just what is a Pal Battalion?" drawled Hicks. He hated all English words he didn't understand, though

Hicks glanced at Claude. They both thought this boy ought to be in school for some time yet, and wondered

"Yes, on the Somme. We had rotten luck. We were sent over to take a trench and couldn't. We didn't even get

to the wire. The Hun was so well prepared that time, we couldn't manage it. We went over a thousand, and

Hicks whistled and again exchanged looks with Claude. They could neither of them doubt him. There was

something very unpleasant about the idea of a thousand freshfaced schoolboys being sent out against the

guns. "It must have been a fool order," he commented. "Suppose there was some mistake at Headquarters?"

"Oh, no, Headquarters knew what it was about! We'd have taken it, if we'd had any sort of luck. But the Hun

"In the leg. He was popping away at me all the while, but I wriggled back on my tummy. When I came out of

"Oh, a fellow can't stay out after all his chums have been killed! He'd think about it all the time, you know,"

Claude and Hicks got into Headquarters just as the cooks were turning out to build their fires. One of the

Corporals took them to the officers' bath,a shed with big tin tubs, and carried away their uniforms to dry

them in the kitchen. It would be an hour before the officers would be about, he said, and in the meantime he

"Say, Lieutenant," Hicks brought out as he was rubbing himself down with a real bath towel, "I don't want to

hear any more about those Pal Battalions, do you? It gets my goat. So long as we were going to get into this,

we might have been a little more previous. I hate to feel small." "Guess we'll have to take our medicine,"

Claude said dryly, "There wasn't anywhere to duck, was there? I felt like it. Nice little kid. I don't believe

"Why, if you met him anywhere else, you'd be afraid of using bad words before him, he's so pretty! What's

the use of sending an orphan asylum out to be slaughtered? I can't see it," grumbled the fat sergeant. "Well,

it's their business. I'm not going to let it spoil my breakfast. Suppose we'll draw ham and eggs, Lieutenant?"

After breakfast Claude reported to Headquarters and talked with one of the staff Majors. He was told he

would have to wait until tomorrow to see Colonel James, who had been called to Paris for a general

conference. He had left in his car at four that morning, in response to a telephone message.

"There's not much to do here, by way of amusement," said the Major. "A movie show tonight, and you can

get anything you want at the estaminet,the one on the square, opposite the English tank, is the best. There

are a couple of nice Frenchwomen in the Red Cross barrack, up on the hill, in the old convent garden. They

try to look out for the civilian population, and we're on good terms with them. We get their supplies through

with our own, and the quartermaster has orders to help them when they run short. You might go up and call

"Oh, yes, they're used to us! I'll give you a card to Mlle. Olive, though. She's a particular friend of mine.

There you are: 'Mlle. Olive de Courcy, introducing, etc.' And, you understand," here he glanced up and

Even with an introduction, Claude felt some hesitancy about presenting himself to these ladies. Perhaps they

didn't like Americans; he was always afraid of meeting French people who didn't. It was the same way with

most of the fellows in his battalion, he had found; they were terribly afraid of being disliked. And the

moment they felt they were disliked, they hastened to behave as badly as possible, in order to deserve it; then

they didn't feel that they had been taken inthe worst feeling a doughboy could possibly have!

Claude thought he would stroll about to look at the town a little. It had been taken by the Germans in the

autumn of 1914, after their retreat from the Marne, and they had held it until about a year ago, when it was

retaken by the English and the Chasseurs d'Alpins. They had been able to reduce it and to drive the Germans

out, only by battering it down with artillery; not one building remained standing.

Ruin was ugly, and it was nothing more, Claude was thinking, as he followed the paths that ran over piles of

brick and plaster. There was nothing picturesque about this, as there was in the war pictures one saw at home.

A cyclone or a fire might have done just as good a job. The place was simply a great dumpheap; an

exaggeration of those which disgrace the outskirts of American towns. It was the same thing over and over;

mounds of burned brick and broken stone, heaps of rusty, twisted iron, splintered beams and rafters, stagnant

pools, cellar holes full of muddy water. An American soldier had stepped into one of those holes a few nights

This had been a rich town of eighteen thousand inhabitants; now the civilian population was about four

hundred. There were people there who had hung on all through the years of German occupation; others who,

as soon as they heard that the enemy was driven out, came back from wherever they had found shelter. They

were living in cellars, or in little wooden barracks made from old timbers and American goods boxes. As he

walked along, Claude read familiar names and addresses, painted on boards built into the sides of these frail

shelters: "From Emery Bird, Thayer Co. Kansas City, Mo." "Daniels and Fisher, Denver, Colo." These

inscriptions cheered him so much that he began to feel like going up and calling on the French ladies.

The sun had come out hot after three days of rain. The stagnant pools and the weeds that grew in the ditches

gave out a rank, heavy smell. Wild flowers grew triumphantly over the piles of rotting wood and rusty iron;

cornflowers and Queen Anne's lace and poppies; blue and white and red, as if the French colours came up

Claude paused before a little shanty built against a halfdemolished brick wall. A gilt cage hung in the

doorway, with a canary, singing beautifully. An old woman was working in the garden patch, picking out bits

of brick and plaster the rain had washed up, digging with her fingers around the pale carrottops and neat

lettuce heads. Claude approached her, touched his helmet, and asked her how one could find the way to the

She wiped her hands on her apron and took him by the elbow. "Vous savez le tank Anglais? Non? Marie,

(He learned afterward that every one was directed to go this way or that from a disabled British tank that had

A little girl ran out of the barrack, and her grandmother told her to go at once and take the American to the

Red Cross. Marie put her hand in Claude's and led him off along one of the paths that wound among the

rubbish. She took him out of the way to show him a church,evidently one of the ruins of which they were

proudest,where the blue sky was shining through the white arches. The Virgin stood with empty arms over

the central door; a little foot sticking to her robe showed where the infant Jesus had been shot away.

"Le bebe est casse, mais il a protege sa mere," Marie explained with satisfaction. As they went on, she told

Claude that she had a soldier among the Americans who was her friend. "Il est bon, il est gai, mon soldat,"

but he sometimes drank too much alcohol, and that was a bad habit. Perhaps now, since his comrade had

stepped into a cellar hole Monday night while he was drunk, and had been drowned, her "Sharlie" would be

warned and would do better. Marie was evidently a well brought up child. Her father, she said, had been a

schoolmaster. At the foot of the convent hill, she turned to go home. Claude called her back and awkwardly

tried to give her some money, but she thrust her hands behind her and said resolutely, "Non, merci. Je n'ai

As he climbed toward the top of the hill he noticed that the ground had been cleaned up a bit. The path was

clear, the bricks and hewn stones had been piled in neat heaps, the broken hedges had been trimmed and the

dead parts cut away. Emerging at last into the garden, he stood still for wonder; even though it was in ruins, it

The gravel walks were clean and shining. A wall of very old boxwoods stood green against a row of dead

Lombardy poplars. Along the shattered side of the main building, a pear tree, trained on wires like a vine, still

flourished,full of little red pears. Around the stone well was a shaven grass plot, and everywhere there

were little trees and shrubs, which had been too low for the shells to hit,or for the fire, which had seared

the poplars, to catch. The hill must have been wrapped in flames at one time, and all the tall trees had been

The barrack was built against the walls of the cloister,three arches of which remained, like a stone wing to

the shed of planks. On a ladder stood a onearmed young man, driving nails very skillfully with his single

hand. He seemed to be making a frame projection from the sloping roof, to support an awning. He carried his

nails in his mouth. When he wanted one, he hung his hammer to the belt of his trousers, took a nail from

between his teeth, stuck it into the wood, and then deftly rapped it on the head. Claude watched him for a

moment, then went to the foot of the ladder and held out his two hands. "Laissezmoi," he exclaimed.

The one aloft spat his nails out into his palm, looked down, and laughed. He was about Claude's age, with

"Willingly," he said. "This is no great affair, but I do it to amuse myself, and it will be pleasant for the

ladies." He descended and gave his hammer to the visitor. Claude set to work on the frame, while the other

went under the stone arches and brought back a roll of canvas,part of an old tent, by the look of it.

"Un heritage des Boches," he explained unrolling it upon the grass. "I found it among their filth in the cellar,

and had the idea to make a pavilion for the ladies, as our trees are destroyed." He stood up suddenly. "Perhaps

Very well, the boy said, they would get the pavilion done for a surprise for Mlle. Olive when she returned.

She was down in the town now, visiting the sick people. He bent over his canvas again, measuring and

cutting with a pair of garden shears, moving round the green plot on his knees, and all the time singing.

While they were working together, tying the cloth up to the frame, Claude, from his elevation, saw a tall girl

coming slowly up the path by which he had ascended. She paused at the top, by the boxwood hedge, as if she

were very tired, and stood looking at them. Presently she approached the ladder and said in slow, careful

"Are you Mlle. de Courcy? I am Claude Wheeler. I have a note of introduction to you, if I can find it."

She took the card, but did not look at it. "That is not necessary. Your uniform is enough. Why have you

He looked at her in some confusion. "Well, really, I don't know! I am just in from the front to see Colonel

James, and he is in Paris, so I must wait over a day. One of the staff suggested my coming up hereI

"Then you are a guest from the front, and you will have lunch with Louis and me. Madame Barre is also gone

for the day. Will you see our house?" She led him through the low door into a living room, unpainted,

uncarpeted, light and airy. There were coloured war posters on the clean board walls, brass shell cases full of

wild flowers and garden flowers, canvas campchairs, a shelf of books, a table covered by a white silk shawl

embroidered with big butterflies. The sunlight on the floor, the bunches of fresh flowers, the white window

curtains stirring in the breeze, reminded Claude of something, but he could not remember what.

"We have no guest room," said Mlle. de Courcy. "But you will come to mine, and Louis will bring you hot

In a wooden chamber at the end of the passage, Claude took off his coat, and set to work to make himself as

tidy as possible. Hot water and scented soap were in themselves pleasant things. The dresser was an old

goods box, stood on end and covered with white lawn. On it there was a row of ivory toilet things, with

combs and brushes, powder and cologne, and a pile of white handkerchiefs fresh from the iron. He felt that he

ought not to look about him much, but the odor of cleanness, and the indefinable air of personality, tempted

him. In one corner, a curtain on a rod made a clothescloset; in another was a low iron bed, like a soldier's,

with a pale blue coverlid and white pillows. He moved carefully and splashed discreetly. There was nothing

he could have damaged or broken, not even a rug on the plank floor, and the pitcher and handbasin were of

When he came out, the table in the living room was set for three. The stout old dame who was placing the

plates paid no attention to him,seemed, from her expression, to scorn him and all his kind. He withdrew as

far as possible out of her path and picked up a book from the table, a volume of Heine's Reisebilder in

Before lunch Mlle. de Courcy showed him the store room in the rear, where the shelves were stocked with

rows of coffee tins, condensed milk, canned vegetables and meat, all with American trade names he knew so

well; names which seemed doubly familiar and "reliable" here, so far from home. She told him the people in

the town could not have got through the winter without these things. She had to deal them out sparingly,

where the need was greatest, but they made the difference between life and death. Now that it was summer,

the people lived by their gardens; but old women still came to beg for a few ounces of coffee, and mothers to

Claude's face glowed with pleasure. Yes, his country had a long arm. People forgot that; but here, he felt, was

some one who did not forget. When they sat down to lunch he learned that Mlle. de Courcy and Madame

Barre had been here almost a year now; they came soon after the town was retaken, when the old inhabitants

began to drift back. The people brought with them only what they could carry in their arms.

"They must love their country so much, don't you think, when they endure such poverty to come back to it?"

she said. "Even the old ones do not often complain about their dear thingstheir linen, and their china, and

their beds. If they have the ground, and hope, all that they can make again. This war has taught us all how

Exactly so; hadn't he been trying to say this ever since he was born? Hadn't he always known it, and hadn't it

made life both bitter and sweet for him? What a beautiful voice she had, this Mlle. Olive, and how nobly it

dealt with the English tongue. He would like to say something, but out of so much . . . what? He remained

silent, therefore, sat nervously breaking up the black war bread that lay beside his plate.

He saw her looking at his hand, felt in a flash that she regarded it with favour, and instantly put it on his knee,

"It is our trees that are worst," she went on sadly. "You have seen our poor trees? It makes one ashamed for

this beautiful part of France. Our people are more sorry for them than to lose their cattle and horses."

Mlle. de Courcy looked overtaxed by care and responsibility, Claude thought, as he watched her. She

seemed far from strong. Slender, greyeyed, darkhaired, with white transparent skin and a too ardent colour

in her lips and cheeks,like the flame of a feverish activity within. Her shoulders drooped, as if she were

always tired. She must be young, too, though there were threads of grey in her hair,brushed flat and

After the coffee, Mlle. de Courcy went to work at her desk, and Louis took Claude to show him the garden.

The clearing and trimming and planting were his own work, and he had done it all with one arm. This autumn

he would accomplish much more, for he was stronger now, and he had the habitude of working

singlehanded. He must manage to get the dead trees down; they distressed Mademoiselle Olive. In front of

the barrack stood four old locusts; the tops were naked forks, burned coalblack, but the lower branches had

put out thick tufts of yellowgreen foliage, so vigorous that the life in the trunks must still be sound. This

fall, Louis said, he meant to get some strong American boys to help him, and they would saw off the dead

limbs and trim the tops flat over the thick boles. How much it must mean to a man to love his country like

this, Claude thought; to love its trees and flowers; to nurse it when it was sick, and tend its hurts with one

arm. Among the flowers, which had come back selfsown or from old roots, Claude found a group of tall,

straggly plants with reddish stems and tiny white blossoms, one of the evening primrose family, the Gaura,

that grew along the clay banks of Lovely Creek, at home. He had never thought it very pretty, but he was

pleased to find it here. He had supposed it was one of those nameless prairie flowers that grew on the prairie

When they went back to the barrack, Mlle. Olive was sitting in one of the canvas chairs Louis had placed

"Louis? Yes. He was my brother's orderly. When Emile came home on leave he always brought Louis with

him, and Louis became like one of the family. The shell that killed my brother tore off his arm. My mother

and I went to visit him in the hospital, and he seemed ashamed to be alive, poor boy, when my brother was

dead. He put his hand over his face and began to cry, and said, 'Oh, Madame, il etait toujours plus chic que

Although Mlle. Olive spoke English well, Claude saw that she did so only by keeping her mind intently upon

it. The stiff sentences she uttered were foreign to her nature; her face and eyes ran ahead of her tongue and

made one wait eagerly for what was coming. He sat down in a sagging canvas chair, absently twisting a sprig

She dropped the faded shirt she was darning. "Oh, tell me about your country! I have talked to so many, but it

NebraskaWhat was it? How many days from the sea, what did it look like? As he tried to describe it, she

listened with halfclosed eyes. "Flatcovered with grainmuddy rivers. I think it must be like Russia. But

your father's farm; describe that to me, minutely, and perhaps I can see the rest."

Claude took a stick and drew a square in the sand: there, to begin with, was the house and farmyard; there

was the big pasture, with Lovely Creek flowing through it; there were the wheatfields and cornfields, the

timber claim; more wheat and corn, more pastures. There it all was, diagrammed on the yellow sand, with

shadows gliding over it from the halfcharred locust trees. He would not have believed that he could tell a

stranger about it in such detail. It was partly due to his listener, no doubt; she gave him unusual sympathy,

and the glow of an unusual mind. While she bent over his map, questioning him, a light dew of perspiration

gathered on her upper lip, and she breathed faster from her effort to see and understand everything. He told

her about his mother and his father and Mahailey; what life was like there in summer and winter and

autumnwhat it had been like in that fateful summer when the Hun was moving always toward Paris, and

on those three days when the French were standing at the Marne; how his mother and father waited for him to

bring the news at night, and how the very cornfields seemed to hold their breath.

Mlle. Olive sank back wearily in her chair. Claude looked up and saw tears sparkling in her brilliant eyes.

"And I myself," she murmured, "did not know of the Marne until days afterward, though my father and

brother were both there! I was far off in Brittany, and the trains did not run. That is what is wonderful, that

you are here, telling me this! We, we were taught from childhood that some day the Germans would come;

we grew up under that threat. But you were so safe, with all your wheat and corn. Nothing could touch you,

Claude dropped his eyes. "Yes," he muttered, blushing, "shame could. It pretty nearly did. We are pretty

late." He rose from his chair as if he were going to fetch something . . . . But where was he to get it from? He

shook his head. "I am afraid," he said mournfully, "there is nothing I can say to make you understand how far

away it all seemed, how almost visionary. It didn't only seem miles away, it seemed centuries away."

"But you do come,so many, and from so far! It is the last miracle of this war. I was in Paris on the fourth

day of July, when your Marines, just from Belleau Wood, marched for your national fete, and I said to myself

as they came on, 'That is a new man!' Such heads they had, so fine there, behind the ears. Such discipline and

purpose. Our people laughed and called to them and threw them flowers, but they never turned to look . . .

eyes straight before. They passed like men of destiny." She threw out her hands with a swift movement and

dropped them in her lap. The emotion of that day came back in her face. As Claude looked at her burning

cheeks, her burning eyes, he understood that the strain of this war had given her a perception that was almost

A woman came up the hill carrying a baby. Mlle. de Courcy went to meet her and took her into the house.

Clause sat down again, almost lost to himself in the feeling of being completely understood, of being no

longer a stranger. In the far distance the big guns were booming at intervals. Down in the garden Louis was

singing. Again he wished he knew the words of Louis' songs. The airs were rather melancholy, but they were

sung very cheerfully. There was something open and warm about the boy's voice, as there was about his

facesomething blond, too. It was distinctly a bland voice, like summer wheatfields, ripe and waving. Claude

sat alone for half an hour or more, tasting a new kind of happiness, a new kind of sadness. Ruin and new

birth; the shudder of ugly things in the past, the trembling image of beautiful ones on the horizon; finding and

When his hostess came back, he moved her chair for her out of the creeping sunlight. "I didn't know there

She smiled. "I do not think there are any French girls left. There are children and women. I was twentyone

when the war came, and I had never been anywhere without my mother or my brother or sister. Within a year

I went all over France alone; with soldiers, with Senegalese, with anybody. Everything is different with us."

She lived at Versailles, she told him, where her father had been an instructor in the Military School. He had

died since the beginning of the war. Her grandfather was killed in the war of 1870. Hers was a family of

She looked so tired that Clause knew he had no right to stay. Long shadows were falling in the garden. It was

hard to leave; but an hour more or less wouldn't matter. Two people could hardly give each other more if they

"Will you tell me where I can come and see you, if we both get through this war?" he asked as he rose.

There was nothing to do but to take his helmet and go. At the edge of the hill, just before he plunged down

the path, he stopped and glanced back at the garden lying flattened in the sun; the three stone arches, the

dahlias and marigolds, the glistening boxwood wall. He had left something on the hilltop which he would

The next afternoon Claude and his sergeant set off for the front. They had been told at Headquarters that they

could shorten their route by following the big road to the military cemetery, and then turning to the left. It

was not advisable to go the latter half of the way before nightfall, so they took their time through the belt of

When they struck the road they came upon a big Highlander sitting in the end of an empty supply wagon,

smoking a pipe and rubbing the dried mud out of his kilts. The horses were munching in their nosebags, and

the driver had disappeared. The Americans hadn't happened to meet with any Highlanders before, and were

curious. This one must be a good fighter, they thought; a brawny giant with a bulldog jaw, and a face as red

and knobby as his knees. More because he admired the looks of the man than because he needed information,

Hicks went up and asked him if he had noticed a military cemetery on the road back. The Kilt nodded.

"I wouldn't say at all. I take no account of their kilometers," he replied dryly, rubbing away at his skirt as if he

"I guess a Yankee can do it as quick as a Scotchman, can't be?" Hicks asked jovially.

"That I couldn't say. You've been four years gettin' this far, I know verra well."

Claude put out a warning hand. "Come on, Hicks. You'll get nothing by it." They went up the road very much

disconcerted. Hicks kept thinking of things he might have said. When he was angry, the Sergeant's forehead

puffed up and became dark red, like a young baby's. "What did you call me off for?" he sputtered.

"I don't see where you'd have come out in an argument, and you certainly couldn't have licked him."

They turned aside at the cemetery to wait until the sun went down. It was unfenced, unsodded, and a wagon

trail ran through the middle, bisecting the square. On one side were the French graves, with white crosses; on

the other side the German graves, with black crosses. Poppies and cornflower ran over them. The Americans

strolled about, reading the names. Here and there the soldier's photograph was nailed upon his cross, left by

The birds, that always came to life at dusk and dawn, began to sing, flying home from somewhere. Claude

and Hicks sat down between the mounds and began to smoke while the sun dropped. Lines of dead trees

marked the red west. This was a dreary stretch of country, even to boys brought up on the flat prairie. They

smoked in silence, meditating and waiting for night. On a cross at their feet the inscription read merely:

A very good epitaph, Claude was thinking. Most of the boys who fell in this war were unknown, even to

themselves. They were too young. They died and took their secret with them,what they were and what they

might have been. The name that stood was La France. How much that name had come to mean to him, since

he first saw a shoulder of land bulk up in the dawn from the deck of the Anchises. It was a pleasant name to

say over in one's mind, where one could make it as passionately nasal as one pleased and never blush.

Hicks, too, had been lost in his reflections. Now he broke the silence. "Somehow, Lieutenant, 'mort' seems

deader than 'dead.' It has a coffinish sound. And over there they're all 'tod,' and it's all the same damned silly

thing. Look at them set out here, black and white, like a checkerboard. The next question is, who put 'em

Hicks rolled another cigarette and sat smoking it, his plump face wrinkled with the gravity and labour of his

cerebration. "Well," he brought out at last, "we'd better hike. This afterglow will hang on for an

"I suppose we had." They rose to go. The white crosses were now violet, and the black ones had altogether

melted in the shadow. Behind the dead trees in the west, a long smear of red still burned. To the north, the

guns were tuning up with a deep thunder. "Somebody's getting peppered up there. Do owls always hoot in

"Just what I was wondering, Lieutenant. It's a peaceful spot, otherwise. Goodnight, boys," said Hicks

They were soon finding their way among shell holes, and jumping trenchtops in the dark,beginning to feel

cheerful at getting back to their chums and their own little group. Hicks broke out and told Claude how he

and Dell Able meant to go into business together when they got home; were going to open a garage and

automobilerepair shop. Under their talk, in the minds of both, that lonely spot lingered, and the legend:

After four days' rest in the rear, the Battalion went to the front again in new country, about ten kilometers east

of the trench they had relieved before. One morning Colonel Scott sent for Claude and Gerhardt and spread

"We are going to clean them out there in F 6 tonight, and straighten our line. The thing that bothers us is that

little village stuck up on the hill, where the enemy machine guns have a strong position. I want to get them

out of there before the Battalion goes over. We can't spare too many men, and I don't like to send out more

officers than I can help; it won't do to reduce the Battalion for the major operation. Do you think you two

boys could manage it with a hundred men? The point is, you will have to be out and back before our artillery

Under the hill where the village stood, ran a deep ravine, and from this ravine a twisting water course wound

up the hillside. By climbing this gully, the raiders should be able to fall on the machine gunners from the rear

and surprise them. But first they must get across the open stretch, nearly one and a half kilometers wide,

between the American line and the ravine, without attracting attention. It was raining now, and they could

The night came on black enough. The Company crossed the open stretch without provoking fire, and slipped

into the ravine to wait for the hour of attack, A young doctor, a Pennsylvanian, lately attached to the staff,

had volunteered to come with them, and he arranged a dressing station at the bottom of the ravine, where the

stretchers were left. They were to pick up their wounded on the way back. Anything left in that area would be

At ten o'clock the men began to ascend the watercourse, creeping through pools and little waterfalls, making

a continuous spludgy sound, like pigs rubbing against the sty. Claude, with the head of the column, was just

pulling out of the gully on the hillside above the village, when a flare went up, and a volley of fire broke from

the brush on the uphill side of the watercourse; machine guns, opening on the exposed line crawling

below. The Hun had been warned that the Americans were crossing the plain and had anticipated their way of

approach. The men in the gully were trapped; they could not retaliate with effect, and the bullets from the

Maxims bounded on the rocks about them like hail. Gerhardt ran along the edge of the line, urging the men

not to fall back and double on themselves, but to break out of the gully on the downhill side and scatter.

Claude, with his group, started back. "Go into the brush and get 'em! Our fellows have got no chance down

there. Grenades while they last, then bayonets. Pull your plugs and don't hold on too long."

They were already on the run, charging the brush. The Hun gunners knew the hill like a book, and when the

bombs began bursting among them, they took to trails and burrows. "Don't follow them off into the rocks,"

As the German gunners made for cover, the firing into the gully stopped, and the arrested column poured up

Claude and his party found themselves back at the foot of the hill, at the edge of the ravine from which they

had started. Heavy firing on the hill above told them the rest of the men had got through. The quickest way

back to the scene of action was by the same watercourse they had climbed before. They dropped into it and

started up. Claude, at the rear, felt the ground rise under him, and he was swept with a mountain of earth and

He never knew whether he lost consciousness or not. It seemed to him that he went on having continuous

sensations. The first, was that of being blown to pieces; of swelling to an enormous size under intolerable

pressure, and then bursting. Next he felt himself shrink and tingle, like a frostbitten body thawing out. Then

he swelled again, and burst. This was repeated, he didn't know how often. He soon realized that he was lying

under a great weight of earth; his body, not his head. He felt rain falling on his face. His left hand was free,

and still attached to his arm. He moved it cautiously to his face. He seemed to be bleeding from the nose and

ears. Now he began to wonder where he was hurt; he felt as if he were full of shell splinters. Everything was

buried but his head and left shoulder. A voice was calling from somewhere below.

Claude closed his eyes against the rain beating in his face. The same voice came again, with a note of patient

"If there's anybody left alive in this hole, won't he speak up? I'm badly hurt myself."

That must be the new doctor; wasn't his dressing station somewhere down here? Hurt, he said. Claude tried to

move his legs a little. Perhaps, if he could get out from under the dirt, he might hold together long enough to

reach the doctor. He began to wriggle and pull. The wet earth sucked at him; it was painful business. He

At last Claude worked himself out of his burrow, but he was unable to stand. Every time he tried to stand, he

got faint and seemed to burst again. Something was the matter with his right ankle, toohe couldn't bear his

weight on it. Perhaps he had been too near the shell to be hit; he had heard the boys tell of such cases. It had

exploded under his feet and swept him down into the ravine, but hadn't left any metal in his body. If it had put

anything into him, it would have put so much that he wouldn't be sitting here speculating. He began to crawl

"Here, on a stretcher. They shelled us. Who are you? Our fellows got up, didn't they?"

"I'm afraid it's my fault," the voice said sadly. "I used my flash light, and that must have given them the

range. They put three or four shells right on top of us. The fellows that got hurt in the gully kept stringing

back here, and I couldn't do anything in the dark. I had to have a light to do anything. I just finished putting

on a Johnson splint when the first shell came. I guess they're all done for now."

"Fourteen, I think. Some of them weren't much hurt. They'd all be alive, if I hadn't come out with you." "Who

were they? But you don't know our names yet, do you? You didn't see Lieutenant Gerhardt among them?"

"Abdominal. I can't tell anything without a light. I lost my flash light. It never occurred to me that it could

make trouble; it's one I use at home, when the babies are sick," the doctor murmured.

Claude tried to strike a match, with no success. "Wait a minute, where's your helmet?" He took off his metal

hat, held it over the doctor, and managed to strike a light underneath it. The wounded man had already

loosened his trousers, and now he pulled up his bloody shirt. His groin and abdomen were torn on the left

side. The wound, and the stretcher on which he lay, supported a mass of dark, coagulated blood that looked

Claude struck another. "Oh, that can't be! Our fellows will be back pretty soon, and we can do something for

"No use, Lieutenant. Do you suppose you could strip a coat off one of those poor fellows? I feel the cold

terribly in my intestines. I had a bottle of French brandy, but I suppose it's buried."

Claude stripped off his own coat, which was warm on the inside, and began feeling about in the mud for the

brandy. He wondered why the poor man wasn't screaming with pain. The firing on the hill had ceased, except

for the occasional click of a Maxim, off in the rocks somewhere. His watch said 12:10; could anything have

Suddenly, voices above, a clatter of boots on the shale. He began shouting to them.

"Coming, coming!" He knew the voice. Gerhardt and his rifles ran down into the ravine with a bunch of

prisoners. Claude called to them to be careful. "Don't strike a light! They've been shelling down here."

"There aren't any but the Doctor and me. Get us out of here quick. I'm all right, but I can't walk."

They put Claude on a stretcher and sent him ahead. Four big Germans carried him, and they were prodded to

a lope by Hicks and Dell Able. Four of their own men took up the doctor, and Gerhardt walked beside him. In

spite of their care, the motion started the blood again and tore away the clots that had formed over his

wounds. He began to vomit blood and to strangle. The men put the stretcher down. Gerhardt lifted the

Doctor's head. "It's over," he said presently. "Better make the best time you can."

They picked up their load again. "Them that are carrying him now won't jolt him," said Oscar, the pious

B Company lost nineteen men in the raid. Two days later the Company went off on a tenday leave. Claude's

sprained ankle was twice its natural size, but to avoid being sent to the hospital he had to march to the

railhead. Sergeant Hicks got him a giant shoe he found stuck on the barbed wire entanglement. Claude and

A rainy autumn night; Papa Joubert sat reading his paper. He heard a heavy pounding on his garden gate.

Kicking off his slippers, he put on the wooden sabots he kept for mud, shuffled across the dripping garden,

and opened the door into the dark street. Two tall figures with rifles and kits confronted him. In a moment he

Sorrylooking soldiers they appeared when they stood in the candlelight, plastered with clay, their metal hats

shining like copper bowls, their clothes dripping pools of water upon the flags of the kitchen floor. Mme.

Joubert kissed their wet cheeks, and Monsieur, now that he could see them, embraced them again. Whence

had they come, and how had it fared with them, up there? Very well, as anybody could see. What did they

want first,supper, perhaps? Their room was always ready for them; and the clothes they had left were in

David explained that their shirts had not once been dry for four days; and what they most desired was to be

dry and to be clean. Old Martha, already in bed, was routed out to heat water. M. Joubert carried the big

washtub upstairs. Tomorrow for conversation, he said; tonight for repose. The boys followed him and began

to peel off their wet uniforms, leaving them in two sodden piles on the floor. There was one bath for both,

and they threw up a coin to decide which should get into the warm water first. M. Joubert, seeing Claude's fat

ankle strapped up in adhesive bandages, began to chuckle. "Oh, I see the Boche made you dance up there!"

When they were clad in clean pyjamas out of the chest, Papa Joubert carried their shirts and socks down for

Martha to wash. He returned with the big meat platter, on which was an omelette made of twelve eggs and

stuffed with bacon and fried potatoes. Mme. Joubert brought the threestory earthen coffeepot to the door

and called, "Bon appetit!" The host poured the coffee and cut up the loaf with his clasp knife. He sat down to

watch them eat. How had they found things up there, anyway? The Boches polite and agreeable as usual?

Finally, when there was not a crumb of anything left, he poured for each a little glass of brandy, "pour cider

Perfect bliss, Claude reflected, as the chill of the sheets grew warm around his body, and he sniffed in the

pillow the old smell of lavender. To be so warm, so dry, so clean, so beloved! The journey down, reviewed

from here, seemed beautiful. As soon as they had got out of the region of martyred trees, they found the land

of France turning gold. All along the river valleys the poplars and cottonwoods had changed from green to

yellow,evenly coloured, looking like candle flames in the mist and rain. Across the fields, along the

horizon they ran, like torches passed from hand to hand, and all the willows by the little streams had become

silver. The vineyards were green still, thickly spotted with curly, bloodred branches. It all flashed back

beside his pillow in the dark: this beautiful land, this beautiful people, this beautiful omelette; gold poplars,

bluegreen vineyards, wet, scarlet vine leaves, rain dripping into the court, fragrant darkness . . . sleep,

The woodland path was deep in leaves. Claude and David were lying on the dry, springy heather among the

flint boulders. Gerhardt, with his Stetson over his eyes, was presumably asleep. They were having fine

weather for their holiday. The forest rose about this open glade like an amphitheatre, in golden terraces of

horse chestnut and beech. The big nuts dropped velvety and brown, as if they had been soaked in oil, and

disappeared in the dry leaves below. Little black yew trees, that had not been visible in the green of summer,

stood out among the curly yellow brakes. Through the grey netting of the beech twigs, stiff holly bushes

It was the Wheeler way to dread false happiness, to feel cowardly about being fooled. Since he had come

back, Claude had more than once wondered whether he took too much for granted and felt more at home here

than he had any right to feel. The Americans were prone, he had observed, to make themselves very much at

home, to mistake good manners for goodwill. He had no right to doubt the affection of the Jouberts,

however; that was genuine and personal,not a smooth surface under which almost any shade of scorn

might lie and laugh . . . was not, in short, the treacherous "French politeness" by which one must not let

oneself be taken in. Merely having seen the season change in a country gave one the sense of having been

there for a long time. And, anyway, he wasn't a tourist. He was here on legitimate business.

Claude's sprained ankle was still badly swollen. Madame Joubert was sure he ought not to move about on it at

all, begged him to sit in the garden all day and nurse it. But the surgeon at the front had told him that if he

once stopped walking, he would have to go to the hospital. So, with the help of his host's best hollywood

cane, he limped out into the forest every day. This afternoon he was tempted to go still farther. Madame

Joubert had told him about some caves at the other end of the wood, underground chambers where the

country people had gone to live in times of great misery, long ago, in the English wars. The English wars; he

could not remember just how far back they were,but long enough to make one feel comfortable. As for

him, perhaps he would never go home at all. Perhaps, when this great affair was over, he would buy a little

farm and stay here for the rest of his life. That was a project he liked to play with. There was no chance for

the kind of life he wanted at home, where people were always buying and selling, building and pulling down.

He had begun to believe that the Americans were a people of shallow emotions. That was the way Gerhardt

had put it once; and if it was true, there was no cure for it. Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless

it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came

and went against a background that held together. While he was absorbed in his day dream of farming in

"You know we are to join the Battalion at A. They'll be living like kings there. Hicks will get so fat he'll

drop over on the march. Headquarters must have something particularly nasty in mind; the infantry is always

fed up before a slaughter. But I've been thinking; I have some old friends at A. Suppose we go on there a

day early, and get them to take us in? It's a fine old place, and I ought to go to see them. The son was a fellow

student of mine at the Conservatoire. He was killed the second winter of the war. I used to go up there for the

holidays with him; I would like to see his mother and sister again. You've no objection?"

Claude did not answer at once. He lay squinting off at the beech trees, without moving. "You always avoid

Gerhardt settled his back against a rock and got out his pipe. "That would be difficult; but other things would

"I might have. My friends wanted to take it up and make a test case of me. But I couldn't stand for it. I didn't

feel I was a good enough violinist to admit that I wasn't a man. I often wish I had been in Paris that summer

when the war broke out; then I would have gone into the French army on the first impulse, with the other

David paused and sat puffing at his pipe. Just then a soft movement stirred the brakes on the hillside. A little

barefoot girl stood there, looking about. She had heard voices, but at first did not see the uniforms that

blended with the yellow and brown of the wood. Then she saw the sun shining on two heads; one square, and

amber in colour,the other reddish bronze, long and narrow. She took their friendliness for granted and

came down the hill, stopping now and again to pick up shiny horse chestnuts and pop them into a sack she

was dragging. David called to her and asked her whether the nuts were good to eat.

"Oh, non!" she exclaimed, her face expressing the liveliest terror, "pour les cochons!" These inexperienced

Americans might eat almost anything. The boys laughed and gave her some pennies, "pour les cochons

aussi." She stole about the edge of the wood, stirring among the leaves for nuts, and watching the two

Gerhardt knocked out his pipe and began to fill it again. "I went home to see my mother in May, of 1914. I

wasn't here when the war broke out. The Conservatoire closed at once, so I arranged a concert tour in the

States that winter, and did very well. That was before all the little Russians went over, and the field wasn't so

crowded. I had a second season, and that went well. But I was getting more nervous all the time; I was only

half there." He smoked thoughtfully, sitting with folded arms, as if he were going over a succession of events

or states of feeling. "When my number was drawn, I reported to see what I could do about getting out; I took

a look at the other fellows who were trying to squirm, and chucked it. I've never been sorry. Not long

"While I was at Camp Dix, I had to play at one of the entertainments. My violin, a Stradivarius, was in a vault

in New York. I didn't need it for that concert, any more than I need it at this minute; yet I went to town and

brought it out. I was taking it up from the station in a military car, and a drunken taxi driver ran into us. I

wasn't hurt, but the violin, lying across my knees, was smashed into a thousand pieces. I didn't know what it

meant then; but since, I've seen so many beautiful old things smashed . . . I've become a fatalist."

David's head went back against the boulder, and he threw one of the, chestnuts lightly into the air. "Oh, one

violinist more or less doesn't matter! But who is ever going back to anything? That's what I want to know!"

Claude felt guilty; as if David must have guessed what apostasy had been going on in his own mind this

afternoon. "You don't believe we are going to get out of this war what we went in for, do you?" he asked

"Because in 1917 I was twentyfour years old, and able to bear arms. The war was put up to our generation. I

don't know what for; the sins of our fathers, probably. Certainly not to make the world safe for Democracy, or

any rhetoric of that sort. When I was doing stretcher work, I had to tell myself over and over that nothing

would come of it, but that it had to be. Sometimes, though, I think something must . . . . Nothing we expect,

but something unforeseen." He paused and shut his eyes. "You remember in the old mythology tales how,

when the sons of the gods were born, the mothers always died in agony? Maybe it's only Semele I'm thinking

of. At any rate, I've sometimes wondered whether the young men of our time had to die to bring a new idea

into the world . . . something Olympian. I'd like to know. I think I shall know. Since I've been over here this

Claude was confused by this quiet question. "I hardly know. I've never been able to make up my mind."

"Oh, don't bother about it! If it comes to you, it comes. You don't have to go after it. I arrived at it in quite the

same way I used to get things in art,knowing them and living on them before I understood them. Such

ideas used to seem childish to me." Gerhardt sprang up. "Now, have I told you what you want to know about

my case?" He looked down at Claude with a curious glimmer of amusement and affection. "I'm going to

He disappeared among the red pine stems, where the sunlight made a rosecolored lake, as it used to do in

the summer . . . as it would do in all the years to come, when they were not there to see it, Claude was

The little girl on the edge of the beech wood left her sack and stole quietly down the hill. Sitting in the

heather and drawing her feet up under her, she stayed still for a long time, and regarded with curiosity the

The next day was Claude's twentyfifth birthday, and in honour of that event Papa Joubert produced a bottle

of old Burgundy from his cellar, one of a few dozens he had laid in for great occasions when he was a young

During that week of idleness at Madame Joubert's, Claude often thought that the period of happy "youth,"

about which his old friend Mrs. Erlich used to talk, and which he had never experienced, was being made up

to him now. He was having his youth in France. He knew that nothing like this would ever come again; the

fields and woods would never again be laced over with this hazy enchantment. As he came up the village

street in the purple evening, the smell of woodsmoke from the chimneys went to his head like a narcotic,

opened the pores of his skin, and sometimes made the tears come to his eyes. Life had after all turned out

well for him, and everything had a noble significance. The nervous tension in which he had lived for years

now seemed incredible to him . . . absurd and childish, when he thought of it at all. He did not torture himself

One night he dreamed that he was at home; out in the ploughed fields, where he could see nothing but the

furrowed brown earth, stretching from horizon to horizon. Up and down it moved a boy, with a plough and

two horses. At first he thought it was his brother Ralph; but on coming nearer, he saw it was himself,and

he was full of fear for this boy. Poor Claude, he would never, never get away; he was going to miss

In the years when he went to school in Lincoln, he was always hunting for some one whom he could admire

without reservations; some one he could envy, emulate, wish to be. Now he believed that even then he must

have had some faint image of a man like Gerhardt in his mind. It was only in war times that their paths would

have been likely to cross; or that they would have had anything to do together . . . any of the common

Gerhardt and Claude Wheeler alighted from a taxi before the open gates of a squareroofed, solidlooking

house, where all the shutters on the front were closed, and the tops of many trees showed above the garden

wall. They crossed a paved court and rang at the door. An old valet admitted the young men, and took them

through a wide hall to the salon, which opened on the garden. Madame and Mademoiselle would be down

very soon. David went to one of the long windows and looked out. "They have kept it up, in spite of

The garden was spacious,like a little park. On one side was a tennis court, on the other a fountain, with a

pool and waterlilies. The north wall was hidden by ancient yews; on the south two rows of plane trees, cut

square, made a long arbour. At the back of the garden there were fine old lindens. The gravel walks wound

about beds of gorgeous autumn flowers; in the rose garden, small white roses were still blooming, though the

Two ladies entered the drawingroom. The mother was short, plump, and rosy, with strong, rather masculine

features and yellowish white hair. The tears flashed into her eyes as David bent to kiss her hand, and she

"Et vous, vous aussi!" she murmured, touching the coat of his uniform with her fingers. There was but a

moment of softness. She gathered herself up like an old general, Claude thought, as he stood watching the

group from the window, drew her daughter forward, and asked David whether he recognized the little girl

with whom he used to play. Mademoiselle Claire was not at all like her mother; slender, dark, dressed in a

white costume de tennis and an apple green hat with black ribbons, she looked very modern and casual and

unconcerned. She was already telling David she was glad he had arrived early, as now they would be able to

have a game of tennis before tea. Maman would bring her knitting to the garden and watch them. This last

suggestion relieved Claude's apprehension that he might be left alone with his hostess. When David called

him and presented him to the ladies, Mlle. Claire gave him a quick handshake, and said she would be very

glad to try him out on the court as soon as she had beaten David. They would find tennis shoes in their

room,a collection of shoes, for the feet of all nations; her brother's, some that his Russian friend had

forgotten when he hurried off to be mobilized, and a pair lately left by an English officer who was quartered

on them. She and her mother would wait in the garden. She rang for the old valet.

The Americans found themselves in a large room upstairs, where two modern iron beds stood out

conspicuous among heavy mahogany bureaus and desks and dressingtables, stuffed chairs and velvet

carpets and dull red brocade window hangings. David went at once into the little dressingroom and began to

array himself for the tennis court. Two suits of flannels and a row of soft shirts hung there on the wall.

"Aren't you going to change?" he asked, noticing that Claude stood stiff and unbending by the window,

looking down into the garden. "Why should I?" said Claude scornfully. "I don't play tennis. I never had a

"Too bad. She used to play very well, though she was only a youngster then." Gerhardt was regarding his legs

in trousers two inches too short for him. "How everything has changed, and yet how everything is still the

Claude stood in the window, watching Gerhardt's bare head and Mlle. Claire's green hat and long brown arm

When Gerhardt came to change before tea, he found his fellow officer standing before his bag, which was

"Not exactly." Claude bit his lip. "The fact is, Dave, I don't feel just comfortable here. Oh, the people are all

right But I'm out of place. I'm going to pull out and get a billet somewhere else, and let you visit your friends

"They very nearly do, from what they've been telling me. They've had a string of Scotch and English

quartered on them. They like it, too,or have the good manners to pretend they do. Of course, you'll do as

you like, but you'll hurt their feelings and put me in an awkward position. To be frank, I don't see how you

Claude stood looking down at the contents of his bag in an irresolute attitude. Catching a glimpse of his face

in one of the big mirrors, Gerhardt saw that he looked perplexed and miserable. His flash of temper died, and

"Come on, Claude! This is too absurd. You don't even have to dress, thanks to your uniform,and you don't

have to talk, since you're not supposed to know the language. I thought you'd like coming here. These people

"Oh, yes, I do! It's awkward for me, though." Claude pulled off his coat and began to brush his hair

vigorously. "I guess I've always been more afraid of the French than of the Germans. It takes courage to stay,

They had tea in the garden, English fashionEnglish tea, too, Mlle. Claire informed them, left by the

At dinner a third member of the family was introduced, a little boy with a cropped head and big black eyes.

He sat on Claude's left, quiet and shy in his velvet jacket, though he followed the conversation eagerly,

especially when it touched upon his brother Rene, killed at Verdun in the second winter of the war. The

mother and sister talked about him as if he were living, about his letters and his plans, and his friends at the

Conservatoire and in the Army. Mlle. Claire told Gerhardt news of all the girl students he had known in

Paris: how this one was singing for the soldiers; another, when she was nursing in a hospital which was

bombed in an air raid, had carried twenty wounded men out of the burning building, one after another, on her

back, like sacks of flour. Alice, the dancer, had gone into the English Red Cross and learned English. Odette

had married a New Zealander, an officer who was said to be a cannibal; it was well known that his tribe had

eaten two Auvergnat missionaries. There was a great deal more that Claude could not understand, but he got

enough to see that for these women the war was France, the war was life, and everything that went into it. To

After dinner, when they went into the salon, Madame Fleury asked David whether he would like to see

Rene's violin again, and nodded to the little boy. He slipped away and returned carrying the case, which he

placed on the table. He opened it carefully and took off the velvet cloth, as if this was his peculiar office, then

David turned it over under the candles, telling Madame Fleury that he would have known it anywhere, Rene's

wonderful Amati, almost too exquisite in tone for the concert hall, like a woman who is too beautiful for the

stage. The family stood round and listened to his praise with evident satisfaction. Madame Fleury told him

that Lucien was tres serieux with his music, that his master was well pleased with him, and when his hand

was a little larger he would be allowed to play upon Rene's violin. Claude watched the little boy as he stood

looking at the instrument in David's hands; in each of his big black eyes a candle flame was reflected, as if

"If Monsieur David would be so good as to play before I must go to bed" he murmured entreatingly.

"But, Lucien, I am a soldier now. I have not worked at all for two years. The Amati would think it had fallen

Lucien smiled. "Oh, no! It is too intelligent for that. A little, please," and he sat down on a footstool before

Mlle. Claire went to the piano. David frowned and began to tune the violin. Madame Fleury called the old

servant and told him to light the sticks that lay in the fireplace. She took the armchair at the right of the

hearth and motioned Claude to a seat on the left. The little boy kept his stool at the other end of the room.

She made no reply, but played on, her shoulders bent forward. Lucien drew his knees up under his chin and

shivered. When the time came, the violin made its entrance. David had put it back under his chin

They played for a long while. At last David stopped and wiped his forehead. "I'm afraid I can't do anything

"Nor can I. But that was the last thing Rene played on it, the night before he went away, after his last leave."

She began again, and David followed. Madame Fleury sat with halfclosed eyes, looking into the fire.

Claude, his lips compressed, his hands on his knees, was watching his friend's back. The music was a part of

his own confused emotions. He was torn between generous admiration, and bitter, bitter envy. What would it

mean to be able to do anything as well as that, to have a hand capable of delicacy and precision and power? If

he had been taught to do anything at all, he would not be sitting here tonight a wooden thing amongst living

people. He felt that a man might have been made of him, but nobody had taken the trouble to do it;

tonguetied, foottied, handtied. If one were born into this world like a bear cub or a bull calf, one could

Gerhardt wrapped the violin up in its cloth. The little boy thanked him and carried it away. Madame Fleury

David said he was warm, and suggested going into the garden to smoke before they went to bed. He opened

one of the long windows and they stepped out on the terrace. Dry leaves were rustling down on the walks; the

yew trees made a solid wall, blacker than the darkness. The fountain must have caught the starlight; it was the

only shining thing,a little clear column of twinkling silver. The boys strolled in silence to the end of the

"I guess you'll go back to your profession, all right," Claude remarked, in the unnatural tone in which people

"Not I. Of course, I had to play for them. Music has always been like a religion in this house. Listen," he put

up his hand; far away the regular pulsation of the big guns sounded through the still night. "That's all that

"I don't believe it." Claude stopped for a moment by the edge of the fountain, trying to collect his thoughts. "I

don't believe it has killed anything. It has only scattered things." He glanced about hurriedly at the sleeping

house, the sleeping garden, the clear, starry sky not very far overhead. "It's men like you that get the worst of

it," he broke out. "But as for me, I never knew there was anything worth living for, till this war came on.

"You'll admit it's a costly way of providing adventure for the young," said David drily.

Claude pursued the argument to himself long after they were in their luxurious beds and David was asleep.

No battlefield or shattered country he had seen was as ugly as this world would be if men like his brother

Bayliss controlled it altogether. Until the war broke out, he had supposed they did control it; his boyhood had

been clouded and enervated by that belief. The Prussians had believed it, too, apparently. But the event had

The intervals of the distant artillery fire grew shorter, as if the big guns were tuning up, choking to get

something out. Claude sat up in his bed and listened. The sound of the guns had from the first been pleasant

to him, had given him a feeling of confidence and safety; tonight he knew why. What they said was, that men

could still die for an idea; and would burn all they had made to keep their dreams. He knew the future of the

world was safe; the careful planners would never be able to put it into a straitjacket,cunning and prudence

would never have it to themselves. Why, that little boy downstairs, with the candlelight in his eyes, when it

came to the last cry, as they said, could "carry on" for ever! Ideals were not archaic things, beautiful and

impotent; they were the real sources of power among men. As long as that was true, and now he knew it was

truehe had come all this way to find outhe had no quarrel with Destiny. Nor did he envy David. He

would give his own adventure for no man's. On the edge of sleep it seemed to glimmer, like the clear column

of the fountain, like the new moon,alluring, halfaverted, the bright face of danger.

When Claude and David rejoined their Battalion on the 20th of September, the end of the war looked as far

away as ever. The collapse of Bulgaria was unknown to the American army, and their acquaintance with

European affairs was so slight that this would have meant very little to them had they heard of it. The German

army still held the north and east of France, and no one could say how much vitality was left in that sprawling

The Battalion entrained at Arras. Lieutenant Colonel Scott had orders to proceed to the railhead, and then

The cars were crowded, and the railway journey was long and fatiguing. They detrained at night, in the rain,

at what the men said seemed to be the jumping off place. There was no town, and the railway station had

been bombed the day before, by an air fleet out to explode artillery ammunition. A mound of brick, and holes

full of water told where it had been. The Colonel sent Claude out with a patrol to find some place for the men

to sleep. The patrol came upon a field of straw stacks, and at the end of it found a black farmhouse.

Claude went up and hammered on the door. Silence. He kept hammering and calling, "The Americans are

here!" A shutter opened. The farmer stuck his head out and demanded gruffly what was wanted; "What

Claude explained in his best French that an American battalion had just come in; might they sleep in his field

That one word, coming out of the dark in such an unpromising place, had a cheering effect upon the patrol,

and upon the men, when it was repeated to them. "Sure, eh?" They kept laughing over it as they beat about

the field and dug into the straw. Those who couldn't burrow into a stack lay down in the muddy stubble. They

The farmer came out to offer his stable to the officers, and to beg them not on any account to make a light.

They had never been bothered here by air raids until yesterday, and it must be because the Americans were

Gerhardt, who was called to talk to him, told the farmer the Colonel must study his map, and for that the man

took them down into the cellar, where the children were asleep. Before he lay down on the straw bed his

orderly had made for him, the Colonel kept telling names and kilometers off on his fingers. For officers like

Colonel Scott the names of places constituted one of the real hardships of the war. His mind worked slowly,

but it was always on his job, and he could go without sleep for more hours together than any of his officers.

Tonight he had scarcely lain down, when a sentinel brought in a runner with a message. The Colonel had to

go into the cellar again to read it. He was to meet Colonel Harvey at Prince Joachim farm, as early as possible

The Colonel sat with his eye on his watch, and interrogated the messenger about the road and the time it

would take to get over the ground. "What's Fritz's temper up here, generally speaking?"

"That's as it happens, sir. Sometimes we nab a night patrol of a dozen or fifteen and send them to the rear

under a oneman guard. Then, again, a little bunch of Heinies will fight like the devil. They say it depends on

Colonel Scott waited for an hour, and then went about, shaking his sleeping officers.

"Yes, sir." Captain Maxey sprang to his feet as if he had been caught in a disgraceful act. He called his

sergeants, and they began to beat the men up out of the strawstacks and puddles. In half an hour they were on

This was the Battalion's first march over really bad roads, where walking was a question of pulling and

balancing. They were soon warm, at any rate; it kept them sweating. The weight of their equipment was

continually thrown in the wrong place. Their wet clothing dragged them back, their packs got twisted and cut

into their shoulders Claude and Hicks began wondering to each other what it must have been like in the real

mud, up about Ypres and Passchendaele, two years ago. Hicks had been training at Arras last week, where a

The Battalion got to Joachim farm at nine o'clock. Colonel Harvey had not yet come up, but old Julius Caesar

was there with his engineers, and he had a hot breakfast ready for them. At six o'clock in the evening they

took the road again, marching until daybreak, with short rests. During the night they captured two Hun

patrols, a bunch of thirty men. At the halt for breakfast, the prisoners wanted to make themselves useful, but

the cook said they were so filthy the smell of them would make a stew go bad. They were herded off by

It was Gerhardt, of course, who had to go over and question them. Claude felt sorry for the prisoners; they

were so willing to tell all they knew, and so anxious to make themselves agreeable; began talking about their

relatives in America, and said brightly that they themselves were going over at once, after the warseemed

They begged Gerhardt to be allowed to do something. Couldn't they carry the officers' equipment on the

march? No, they were too buggy; they might relieve the sanitary squad. Oh, that they would gladly do, Herr

The plan was to get to Rupprecht trench and take it before nightfall. It was easy takingempty of everything

but vermin and human discards; a dozen crippled and sick, left for the enemy to dispose of, and several

halfwitted youths who ought to have been locked up in some institution. Fritz had known what it meant

when his patrols did not come back. He had evacuated, leaving behind his hopelessly diseased, and as much

filth as possible. The dugouts were fairly dry, but so crawling with vermin that the Americans preferred to

After supper the men fell on their packs and began to lighten them, throwing away all that was not necessary,

and much that was. Many of them abandoned the new overcoats that had been served out at the railhead;

others cut off the skirts and made the coats into ragged jackets. Captain Maxey was horrified at these

depredations, but the Colonel advised him to shut his eyes. "They've got hard going before them; let them

The Battalion had twentyfour hours' rest at Rupprecht trench, and then pushed on for four days and nights,

stealing trenches, capturing patrols, with only a few hours' sleep,snatched by the roadside while their food

was being prepared. They pushed hard after a retiring foe, and almost outran themselves. They did outrun

their provisions; on the fourth night, when they fell upon a farm that had been a German Headquarters, the

supplies that were to meet them there had not come up, and they went to bed supperless.

This farmhouse, for some reason called by the prisoners Frau Hulda farm, was a nest of telephone wires;

hundreds of them ran out through the walls, in all directions. The Colonel cut those he could find, and then

put a guard over the old peasant who had been left in charge of the house, suspecting that he was in the pay of

At last Colonel Scott got into the Headquarters bed, large and lumpy,the first one he had seen since he left

Arras. He had not been asleep more than two hours, when a runner arrived with orders from the Regimental

Colonel. Claude was in a bed in the loft, between Gerhardt and Bruger. He felt somebody shaking him, but

resolved that he wouldn't be disturbed and went on placidly sleeping. Then somebody pulled his hair,so

"Come along, boys. Orders from Regimental Headquarters. The Battalion is to split here. Our Company is to

Claude rose. "The men are pretty well beat out, Captain Maxey, and they had no supper."

Claude and Gerhardt went out to the barn and roused Hicks and his pal, Dell Able. The men were asleep in

dry straw, for the first time in ten days. They were completely worn out, lost to time and place. Many of them

were already four thousand miles away, scattered among little towns and farms on the prairie. They were a

After the Colonel had gone over the map with Captain Maxey, he came out and saw the Company assembled.

He wasn't going with them, he told them, but he expected them to give a good account of themselves. Once in

Beaufort, they would have a week's rest; sleep under cover, and live among people for awhile.

The men took the road, some with their eyes shut, trying to make believe they were still asleep, trying to have

their agreeable dreams over again, as they marched. They did not really waken up until the advance

challenged a Hun patrol, and sent it back to the Colonel under a oneman guard. When they had advanced

two kilometers, they found the bridge blown up. Claude and Hicks went in one direction to look for a ford,

Bruger and Dell Able in the other, and the men lay down by the roadside and slept heavily. Just at dawn they

Captain Maxey had no information as to how many Germans might be left in the town. They had occupied it

ever since the beginning of the war, and had used it as a rest camp. There had never been any fighting there.

"We are Americans, and must see the people of the house. If you don't open, we must break the door."

A woman's voice called; "There is nobody here. Go away, please, and take your men away. I am sick."

The Captain called Gerhardt, who began to explain and reassure through the door. It opened a little way, and

an old woman in a nightcap peeped out. An old man hovered behind her. She gazed in astonishment at the

officers, not understanding. These were the first soldiers of the Allies she had ever seen. She had heard the

Germans talk about Americans, but thought it was one of their lies, she said. Once convinced, she let the

No, there were no Boches left in her house. They had got orders to leave day before yesterday, and had blown

up the bridge. They were concentrating somewhere to the east. She didn't know how many were still in the

village, nor where they were, but she could tell the Captain where they had been. Triumphantly she brought

out a map of the townlost, she said with a meaning smile, by a German officeron which the billets were

With this to guide them, Captain Maxey and his men went on up the street. They took eight prisoners in one

cellar, seventeen in another. When the villagers saw the prisoners bunched together in the square, they came

out of their houses and gave information. This cleaning up, Bert Fuller remarked, was like taking fish from

the Platte River when the water was low, simply pailing them out! There was no sport in it.

At nine o'clock the officers were standing together in the square before the church, checking off on the map

the houses that had been searched. The men were drinking coffee, and eating fresh bread from a baker's shop.

The square was full of people who had come out to see for themselves. Some believed that deliverance had

come, and others shook their heads and held back, suspecting another trick. A crowd of children were

running about, making friends with the soldiers. One little girl with yellow curls and a clean white dress had

attached herself to Hicks, and was eating chocolate out of his pocket. Gerhardt was bargaining with the baker

for another baking of bread. The sun was shining, for a change,everything was looking cheerful. This

village seemed to be swarming with girls; some of them were pretty, and all were friendly. The men who had

looked so haggard and forlorn when dawn overtook them at the edge of the town, began squaring their

shoulders and throwing out their chests. They were dirty and mudplastered, but as Claude remarked to the

Suddenly a shot rang out above the chatter, and an old woman in a white cap screamed and tumbled over on

the pavement,rolled about, kicking indecorously with both hands and feet. A second crack,the little girl

who stood beside Hicks, eating chocolate, threw out her hands, ran a few steps, and fell, blood and brains

oozing out in her yellow hair. The people began screaming and running. The Americans looked this way and

that; ready to dash, but not knowing where to go. Another shot, and Captain Maxey fell on one knee, blushed

furiously and sprang up, only to fall again,ashy white, with the leg of his trousers going red.

"There it is, to the left!" Hicks shouted, pointing. They saw now. From a closed house, some distance down a

street off the square, smoke was coming. It hung before one of the upstairs windows. The Captain's orderly

dragged him into a wineshop. Claude and David, followed by the men, ran down the street and broke in the

door. The two officers went through the rooms on the first floor, while Hicks and his lot made straight for an

enclosed stairway at the back of the house. As they reached the foot of the stairs, they were met by a volley of

rifle shots, and two of the men tumbled over. Four Germans were stationed at the head of the steps.

The Americans scarcely knew whether their bullets or their bayonets got to the Huns first; they were not

conscious of going up, till they were there. When Claude and David reached the landing, the squad were

Bert Fuller and Dell Able ran down the narrow hallway and threw open the door into the room on the street.

Two shots, and Dell came back with his jaw shattered and the blood spouting from the left side of his neck.

"I couldn't see. Look out, sir! You can't get through that door more than two at a time!"

The door still stood open, at the end of the corridor. Claude went down the steps until he could sight along

the floor of the passage, into the front room. The shutters were closed in there, and the sunlight came through

the slats. In the middle of the floor, between the door and the windows, stood a tall chest of drawers, with a

mirror attached to the top. In the narrow space between the bottom of this piece of furniture and the floor, he

could see a pair of boots. It was possible there was but one man in the room, shooting from behind his

"There's only one fellow in there, I guess. He's shooting from behind a big dresser in the middle of the room.

Willy Katz, the Austrian boy from the Omaha packing house, stepped up and stood beside him.

"Now, Willy, we'll both go in at once; you jump to the right, and I to the left,and one of us will jab him. He

Claude thought he was taking the more dangerous position himself, but the German probably reasoned that

the important man would be on the right. As the two Americans dashed through the door, he fired. Claude

caught him in the back with his bayonet, under the shoulder blade, but Willy Katz had got the bullet in his

brain, through one of his blue eyes. He fell, and never stirred. The German officer fired his revolver again as

Sergeant Hicks ran in and shot the dying man through the temples. Nobody stopped him.

The officer was a tall man, covered with medals and orders; must have been very handsome. His linen and his

hands were as white as if he were going to a ball. On the dresser were the files and paste and buffers with

which he had kept his nails so pink and smooth. A ring with a ruby, beautifully cut, was on his little finger.

Bert Fuller screwed it off and offered it to Claude. He shook his head. That English sentence had unnerved

him. Bert held the ring out to Hicks, but the Sergeant threw down his revolver and broke out:

"Think I'd touch anything of his? That beautiful little girl, and my buddyHe's worse than dead, Dell is,

Claude nodded. David had come in, and was opening the shutters. This officer, Claude was thinking, was a

very different sort of being from the poor prisoners they had been scooping up like tadpoles from the cellars.

One of the men picked up a gorgeous silk dressing gown from the bed, another pointed to a dressingcase

full of hammered silver. Gerhardt said it was Russian silver; this man must have come from the Eastern front.

Bert Fuller and Nifty Jones were going through the officer's pockets. Claude watched them, and thought they

did about right. They didn't touch his medals; but his gold cigarette case, and the platinum watch still ticking

on his wrist,he wouldn't have further need for them. Around his neck, hung by a delicate chain, was a

miniature case, and in it was a painting,not, as Bert romantically hoped when he opened it, of a beautiful

Claude studied it, wondering. "It looks like a poet, or something. Probably a kid brother, killed at the

Gerhardt took it and glanced at it with a disdainful expression. "Probably. There, let him keep it, Bert." He

touched Claude on the shoulder to call his attention to the inlay work on the handle of the officer's revolver.

Claude noticed that David looked at him as if he were very much pleased with him,looked, indeed, as if

something pleasant had happened in this room; where, God knew, nothing had; where, when they turned

round, a swarm of black flies was quivering with greed and delight over the smears Willy Katz' body had left

on the floor. Claude had often observed that when David had an interesting idea, or a strong twinge of

recollection, it made him, for the moment, rather heartless. Just now he felt that Gerhardt's flash of high

spirits was in some way connected with him. Was it because he had gone in with Willy? Had David doubted

When the survivors of Company B are old men, and are telling over their good days, they will say to each

other, "Oh, that week we spent at Beaufort!" They will close their eyes and see a little village on a low ridge,

lost in the forest, overgrown with oak and chestnut and black walnut . . . buried in autumn colour, the streets

drifted deep in autumn leaves, great branches interlacing over the roofs of the houses, wells of cool water that

tastes of moss and tree roots. Up and down those streets they will see figures passing; themselves, young and

brown and cleanlimbed; and comrades, long dead, but still alive in that faraway village. How they will

wish they could tramp again, nights on days in the mud and rain, to drag sore feet into their old billets at

Beaufort! To sink into those wide feather beds and sleep the round of the clock while the old women washed

and dried their clothes for them; to eat rabbit stew and pommes frites in the garden,rabbit stew made with

As soon as Captain Maxey and the wounded men had been started on their long journey to the rear, carried by

the prisoners, the whole company turned in and slept for twelve hoursall but Sergeant Hicks, who sat in the

The next day the Americans came to life as if they were new men, just created in a new world. And the

people of the town came to life . . . excitement, change, something to look forward to at last! A new flag, le

drapeau etoile, floated along with the tricolour in the square. At sunset the soldiers stood in formation behind

it and sang "The Star Spangled Banner" with uncovered heads. The old people watched them from the

doorways. The Americans were the first to bring "Madelon" to Beaufort. The fact that the village had never

heard this song, that the children stood round begging for it, "Chantezvous la Madelon!" made the soldiers

realize how far and how long out of the world these villagers had been. The German occupation was like a

Before Claude was out of bed after his first long sleep, a runner arrived from Colonel Scott, notifying him

that he was in charge of the Company until further orders. The German prisoners had buried their own dead

and dug graves for the Americans before they were sent off to the rear. Claude and David were billeted at the

edge of the town, with the woman who had given Captain Maxey his first information, when they marched in

yesterday morning. Their hostess told them, at their midday breakfast, that the old dame who was shot in the

square, and the little girl, were to be buried this afternoon. Claude decided that the Americans might as well

have their funeral at the same time. He thought he would ask the priest to say a prayer at the graves, and he

and David set off through the brilliant, rustling autumn sunshine to find the Cure's house. It was next the

church, with a highwalled garden behind it. Over the bellpull in the outer wall was a card on which was

The priest himself came out to them, an old man who seemed weak like his doorbell. He stood in his black

cap, holding his hands against his breast to keep them from shaking, and looked very old indeed,broken,

hopeless, as if he were sick of this world and done with it. Nowhere in France had Claude seen a face so sad

as his. Yes, he would say a prayer. It was better to have Christian burial, and they were far from home, poor

fellows! David asked him whether the German rule had been very oppressive, but the old man did not answer

clearly, and his hands began to shake so uncontrollably over his cassock that they went away to spare him

"I suppose the war has used him up. How can he celebrate mass when his hands quiver so?" As they crossed

the church steps, David touched Claude's arm and pointed into the square. "Look, every doughboy has a girl

already! Some of them have trotted out fatigue caps! I supposed they'd thrown them all away!"

Those who had no caps stood with their helmets under their arms, in attitudes of exaggerated gallantry,

talking to the women,who seemed all to have errands abroad. Some of them let the boys carry their

After the funeral every man in the Company found some sympathetic woman to talk to about his fallen

comrades. All the garden flowers and bead wreaths in Beaufort had been carried out and put on the American

graves. When the squad fired over them and the bugle sounded, the girls and their mothers wept. Poor Willy

The next night the soldiers began teaching the girls to dance the "Pas Seul" and the "Fausse Trot." They had

found an old violin in the town; and Oscar, the Swede, scraped away on it. They danced every evening.

Claude saw that a good deal was going on, and he lectured his men at parade. But he realized that he might as

well scold at the sparrows. Here was a village with several hundred women, and only the grandmothers had

husbands. All the men were in the army; hadn't even been home on leave since the Germans first took the

place. The girls had been shut up for four years with young men who incessantly coveted them, and whom

they must constantly outwit. The situation had been intolerableand prolonged. The Americans found

"Did you know, sir," said Bert Fuller breathlessly as he overtook Claude in the street after parade, "that these

lovely girls had to go out in the fields and work, raising things for those dirty pigs to eat? Yes, sir, had to

work in the fields, under German sentinels; marched out in the morning and back at night like convicts! It's

One couldn't walk out of an evening without meeting loitering couples in the dusky streets and lanes. The

boys had lost all their bashfulness about trying to speak French. They declared they could get along in France

with three verbs, and all, happily, in the first conjugation: manger, aimer, payer,quite enough! They called

Beaufort "our town," and they were called "our Americans." They were going to come back after the war, and

"Chezmoi, sir!" Bill Gates called to Claude, saluting with a bloody hand, as he stood skinning rabbits before

"You know, Wheeler," David remarked one morning as they were shaving, "I think Maxey would come back

here on one leg if he knew about these excursions into the forest after mushrooms."

"Not I!" Claude jerked, setting the corners of his mouth grimly. "If the girls, or their people, make complaint

"Oh, the girls" David laughed softly. "Well, it's something to acquire a taste for mushrooms. They don't get

When, after eight days, the Americans had orders to march, there was mourning in every house. On their last

night in town, the officers received pressing invitations to the dance in the square. Claude went for a few

moments, and looked on. David was dancing every dance, but Hicks was nowhere to be seen. The poor

fellow had been out of everything. Claude went over to the church to see whether he might be moping in the

There, as he walked about, Claude stopped to look at a grave that stood off by itself, under a privet hedge,

with withered leaves and a little French flag on it. The old woman with whom they stayed had told them the

The Cure's niece was buried there. She was the prettiest girl in Beaufort, it seemed, and she had a love affair

with a German officer and disgraced the town. He was a young Bavarian, quartered with this same old

woman who told them the story, and she said he was a nice boy, handsome and gentle, and used to sit up half

the night in the garden with his head in his handshomesick, lovesick. He was always after this Marie

Louise; never pressed her, but was always there, grew up out of the ground under her feet, the old woman

said. The girl hated Germans, like all the rest, and flouted him. He was sent to the front. Then he came back,

sick and almost deaf, after one of the slaughters at Verdun, and stayed a long while. That spring a story got

about that some woman met him at night in the German graveyard. The Germans had taken the land behind

the church for their cemetery, and it joined the wall of the Cure's garden. When the women went out into the

fields to plant the crops, Marie Louise used to slip away from the others and meet her Bavarian in the forest.

The girls were sure of it now; and they treated her with disdain. But nobody was brave enough to say

anything to the Cure. One day, when she was with her Bavarian in the wood, she snatched up his revolver

from the ground and shot herself. She was a Frenchwoman at heart, their hostess said.

"And the Bavarian?" Claude asked David later. The story had become so complicated he could not follow it.

"He justified her, and promptly. He took the same pistol and shot himself through the temples. His orderly,

stationed at the edge of the thicket to keep watch, heard the first shot and ran toward them. He saw the officer

take up the smoking pistol and turn it on himself. But the Kommandant couldn't believe that one of his

officers had so much feeling. He held an enquete, dragged the girl's mother and uncle into court, and tried to

establish that they were in conspiracy with her to seduce and murder a German officer. The orderly was made

to tell the whole story; how and where they began to meet. Though he wasn't very delicate about the details

he divulged, he stuck to his statement that he saw Lieutenant Muller shoot himself with his own hand, and the

Kommandant failed to prove his case. The old Cure had known nothing of all this until he heard it aired in the

military court. Marie Louise had lived in his house since she was a child, and was like his daughter. He had a

stroke or something, and has been like this ever since. The girl's friends forgave her, and when she was buried

off alone by the hedge, they began to take flowers to her grave. The Kommandant put up an affiche on the

hedge, forbidding any one to decorate the grave. Apparently, nothing during the German occupation stirred

It would stir anybody, Claude reflected. There was her lonely little grave, the shadow of the privet hedge

falling across it. There, at the foot of the Cure's garden, was the German cemetery, with heavy cement

crosses,some of them with long inscriptions; lines from their poets, and couplets from old hymns.

Lieutenant Muller was there somewhere, probably. Strange, how their story stood out in a world of suffering.

That was a kind of misery he hadn't happened to think of before; but the same thing must have occurred again

and again in the occupied territory. He would never forget the Cure's hands, his dim, suffering eyes.

Claude recognized David crossing the pavement in front of the church, and went back to meet him.

"Hello! I mistook you for Hicks at first. I thought he might be out here." David sat down on the steps and lit a

"Oh, I expect he's found some shoulder to cry on. Do you realize, Claude, you and I are the only men in the

Company who haven't got engaged? Some of the married men have got engaged twice. It's a good thing we're

pulling out, or we'd have banns and a bunch of christenings to look after." "All the same," murmured Claude,

"I like the women of this country, as far as I've seen them." While they sat smoking in silence, his mind went

back to the quiet scene he had watched on the steps of that other church, on his first night in France; the

When they walked back across the square, over the crackling leaves, the dance was breaking up. Oscar was

"Le dernier baiser," said David. "Well, tomorrow we'll be gone, and the chances are we won't come back this

"With us it's always a feast or a famine," the men groaned, when they sat down by the road to munch dry

biscuit at noon. They had covered eighteen miles that morning, and had still seven more to go. They were

ordered to do the twentyfive miles in eight hours. Nobody had fallen out yet, but some of the boys looked

pretty well wilted. Nifty Jones said he was done for. Sergeant Hicks was expostulating with the fainthearted.

"If I can do it, you can. It's worse on a fat man like me. This is no march to make a fuss about. Why, at Arras

I talked with a little Tommy from one of those Pal Battalions that got slaughtered on the Somme. His

battalion marched twentyfive miles in six hours, in the heat of July, into certain death. They were all kids

out of school, not a man of them over fivefootthree, called them the 'Bantams.' You've got to hand it to

"I'll hand anything to anybody, but I can't go no farther on these," Jones muttered, nursing his sore feet.

"Oh, you! We're going to heave you onto the only horse in the Company. The officers, they can walk!"

When they got into Battalion lines there was food ready for them, but very few wanted it. They drank and lay

down in the bushes. Claude went at once to Headquarters and found Barclay Owens, of the Engineers, with

"Glad to see you, Wheeler. Your men ought to be in good shape, after a week's rest. Let them sleep now.

We've got to move out of here before midnight, to relieve two Texas battalions at Moltke trench. They've

taken the trench with heavy casualties and are beat out; couldn't hold it in case of counterattack. As it's an

important point, the enemy will try to recover it. I want to get into position before daylight, so he won't know

fresh troops are coming in. As ranking officer, you are in charge of the Company."

"I'm sure you will. Two machine gun teams are going up with us, and some time tomorrow a Missouri

battalion comes up to support. I'd have had you over here before, but I only got my orders to relieve

yesterday. We may have to advance under shell fire. The enemy has been putting a lot of big stuff over; he

Claude and David got into a fresh shell hole, under the halfburned scrub, and fell asleep. They were

At ten o'clock the Battalion, after a hot meal, began to advance through almost impassable country. The guns

must have been pounding away at the same range for a long while; the ground was worked and kneaded until

it was soft as dough, though no rain had fallen for a week. Barclay Owens and his engineers were throwing

down a plank road to get food and the ammunition wagons across. Big shells were coming over at intervals of

twelve minutes. The intervals were so regular that it was quite possible to get forward without damage. While

B Company was pulling through the shell area, Colonel Scott overtook them, on foot, his orderly leading his

"Know anything about that light over there, Wheeler?" he asked. "Well, it oughtn't to be there. Come along

The light was a mere matchhead down in the ground, Claude hadn't noticed it before. He followed the

Colonel, and when they reached the spark they found three officers of A Company crouching in a shell crater,

"Put out that light," called the Colonel sharply. "What's the matter, Captain Brace?"

A young man rose quickly. "I'm waiting for the water, sir. It's coming up on mules, in petrol cases, and I don't

want to get separated from it. The ground's so bad here the drivers are likely to get lost."

"Don't wait more than twenty minutes. You must get up and take your position on time, that's the important

As the Colonel and Claude hurried back to overtake the Company, five big shells screamed over them in

rapid succession. "Run, sir," the orderly called. "They're getting on to us; they've shortened the range."

"That light back there was just enough to give them an idea," the Colonel muttered.

The bad ground continued for about a mile, and then the advance reached Headquarters, behind the eighth

trench of the great system of trenches. It was an old farmhouse which the Germans had made over with

reinforced concrete, lining it within and without, until the walls were six feet thick and almost shellproof,

like a pillbox. The Colonel sent his orderly to enquire about A Company. A young Lieutenant came to the

"A Company is ready to go into position, sir. I brought them up." "Where is Captain Brace, Lieutenant?"

"He and both our first lieutenants were killed, Colonel. Back in that hole. A shell fell on them not five

"Yes, sir. There was a cook wagon struck at the same time; the first one coming along Julius Caesar's new

road. The driver was killed, and we had to shoot the horses. Captain Owens, he near got scalded with the

The Colonel called in the officers one after another and discussed their positions with them.

"Wheeler," he said when Claude's turn came, "you know your map? You've noticed that sharp loop in the

front trench, in H 2; the Boar's Head, I believe they call it. It's a sort of spear point that reaches out toward the

enemy, and it will be a hot place to hold. If I put your company in there, do you think you can do the

"It's the nastiest bit of the line to hold, and you can tell your men I pay them a compliment when I put them

The Colonel bit off the end of a fresh cigar. "They'd better, by thunder! If they give way and let the Hun

bombers in, it will let down the whole line. I'll give you two teams of Georgia machine guns to put in that

point they call the Boar's Snout. When the Missourians come up tomorrow, they'll go in to support you, but

until then you'll have to take care of the loop yourselves. I've got an awful lot of trench to hold, and I can't

The Texas men whom the Battalion came up to relieve had been living for sixty hours on their iron rations,

and on what they could pick off the dead Huns. Their supplies had been shelled on the way, and nothing had

got through to them. When the Colonel took Claude and Gerhardt forward to inspect the loop that B

Company was to hold, they found a wallow, more like a dump heap than a trench. The men who had taken

the position were almost too weak to stand. All their officers had been killed, and a sergeant was in

"Sorry to leave such a mess for you to clean up, sir, but we got it bad in here. He's been shelling us every

night since we drove him out. I couldn't ask the men to do anything but hold on."

"That's all right. You beat it, with your boys, quick! My men will hand you out some grub as you go back."

The battered defenders of the Boar's Head stumbled past them through the darkness into the communication.

When the last man had filed out, the Colonel sent for Barclay Owens. Claude and David tried to feel their

way about and get some idea of the condition the place was in. The stench was the worst they had yet

encountered, but it was less disgusting than the flies; when they inadvertently touched a dead body, clouds of

wet, buzzing flies flew up into their faces, into their eyes and nostrils. Under their feet the earth worked and

moved as if boa constrictors were wriggling down there soft bodies, lightly covered. When they had found

their way up to the Snout they came upon a pile of corpses, a dozen or more, thrown one on top of another

like sacks of flour, faintly discernible in the darkness. While the two officers stood there, rumbling, squirting

sounds began to come from this heap, first from one body, then from anothergases, swelling in the

liquefying entrails of the dead men. They seemed to be complaining to one another; glup, glup, glup.

The boys went back to the Colonel, who was standing at the mouth of the communication, and told him there

"I expect!" The Colonel shook his head. When Barclay Owens arrived, he asked him what could be done here

before daybreak. The doughty engineer felt his way about as Claude and Gerhardt had done; they heard him

coughing, and beating off the flies. But when he came back he seemed rather cheered than discouraged.

"Give me a gang to get the casualties out, and with plenty of quicklime and concrete I can make this loop all

"The Hun left about fifty sacks of it in the cellar, under your Headquarters. I can do better, of course, if I have

"Go ahead, Captain." The Colonel told Claude and David to bring their men up to the communication before

light, and hold them ready. "Give Owens' cement a chance, but don't let the enemy put over any surprise on

The shelling began again at daybreak; it was hardest on the rear trenches and the threemile area behind.

Evidently the enemy felt sure of what he had in Moltke trench; he wanted to cut off supplies and possible

reinforcements. The Missouri battalion did not come up that day, but before noon a runner arrived from their

Colonel, with information that they were hiding in the wood. Five Boche planes had been circling over the

wood since dawn, signalling to the enemy Headquarters back on Dauphin Ridge; the Missourians were sure

they had avoided detection by lying close in the underbrush. They would come up in the night. Their

linemen were following the runner, and Colonel Scott would be in telephone communication with them in

When B Company moved into the Boar's Head at one o'clock in the afternoon, they could truthfully say that

the prevailing smell was now that of quicklime. The parapet was evenly built up, the firing step had been

partly restored, and in the Snout there were good emplacements for the machine guns. Certain unpleasant

reminders were still to be found if one looked for them. In the Snout a large fat boot stuck stiffly from the

side of the trench. Captain Ovens explained that the ground sounded hollow in there, and the boot probably

led back into a dugout where a lot of Hun bodies were entombed together. As he was pressed for time, he had

thought best not to look for trouble. In one of the curves of the loop, just at the top of the earth wall, under the

sand bags, a dark hand reached out; the five fingers, well apart, looked like the swollen roots of some noxious

weed. Hicks declared that this object was disgusting, and during the afternoon he made Nifty Jones and Oscar

scrape down some earth and make a hump over the paw. But there was shelling in the night, and the earth fell

"Look," said Jones when he wakened his Sergeant. "The first thing I seen when daylight come was his old

fingers, wigglin' in the breeze. He wants air, Heinie does; he won't stay covered."

Hicks got up and reburied the hand himself, but when he came around with Claude on inspection, before

breakfast, there were the same five fingers sticking out again. The Sergeant's forehead puffed up and got red,

and he swore that if he found the man who played dirty jokes, he'd make him eat this one.

The Colonel sent for Claude and Gerhardt to come to breakfast with him. He had been talking by telephone

with the Missouri officers and had agreed that they should stay back in the bush for the present. The continual

circling of planes over the wood seemed to indicate that the enemy was concerned about the actual strength

of Moltke trench. It was possible their air scouts had seen the Texas men going back,otherwise, why were

While the Colonel and the officers were at breakfast, a corporal brought in two pigeons he had shot at dawn.

One of them carried a message under its wing. The Colonel unrolled a strip of paper and handed it to

"Yes, sir, it's in German, but it's code stuff. It's a German nursery rhyme. Those reconnoitering planes must

have dropped scouts on our rear, and they are sending in reports. Of course, they can get more on us than the

After breakfast the Colonel went to inspect B Company in the Boar's Head. He was especially pleased with

the advantageous placing of the machine guns in the Snout. "I expect you'll have a quiet day," he said to the

men, "but I wouldn't like to promise you a quiet night. You'll have to be very steady in here; if Fritz takes this

They had, indeed, a quiet day. Some of the men played cards, and Oscar read his Bible. The night, too, began

well. But at four fifteen everybody was roused by the gas alarm. Gas shells came over for exactly half an

hour. Then the shrapnel broke loose; not the long, whizzing scream of solitary shells, but drumfire,

continuous and deafening. A hundred electrical storms seemed raging at once, in the air and on the ground.

Balls of fire were rolling all over the place. The range was a little long for the Boar's Head, they were not

getting the worst of it; but thirty yards back everything was torn to pieces. Claude didn't see how anybody

could be left alive back there. A single twister had killed six of his men at the rear of the loop, where they

were shovelling to keep the communication clear. Captain Owns' neat earthworks were being badly pounded.

Claude and Gerhardt were consulting together when the smoke and darkness began to take on the livid colour

that announced the coming of daybreak. A messenger ran in from the Colonel; the Missourians had not yet

come up, and his telephone communication with them was cut off. He was afraid they had got lost in the

bombardment. "The Colonel says you are to send two men back to bring them up; two men who can take

When the messenger shouted this order, Gerhardt and Hicks looked at each other quickly, and volunteered to

Claude hesitated. Hicks and David waited for no further consent; they ran down the communication and

Claude stood in the smoke that was slowly growing greyer, and looked after them with the deepest stab of

despair he had ever known. Only a man who was bewildered and unfit to be in command of other men would

have let his best friend and his best officer take such a risk. He was standing there under shelter, and his two

friends were going back through that curtain of flying steel, toward the square from which the lost battalion

had last reported. If he knew them, they would not lose time following the maze of trenches; they were

probably even now out on the open, running straight through the enemy barrage, vaulting trench tops.

Claude turned and went back into the loop. Well, whatever happened, he had worked with brave men. It was

worth having lived in this world to have known such men. Soldiers, when they were in a tight place, often

made secret propositions to God; and now he found himself offering terms: If They would see to it that David

came back, They could take the price out of him. He. would pay. Did They understand?

An hour dragged by. Hard on the nerves, waiting. Up the communication came a train with ammunition and

coffee for the loop. The men thought Headquarters did pretty well to get hot food to them through that

Claude took this up and showed it to the machine gunners in the Snout. Turning back, he ran into Hicks,

stripped to his shirt and trousers, as wet as if he had come out of the river, and splashed with blood. His hand

was wrapped up in a rag. He put his mouth to Claude's ear and shouted: "We found them. They were lost.

The bombardment ceased with a suddenness that was stupefying. The men in the loop gasped and crouched

as if they were falling from a height. The air, rolling black with smoke and stifling with the smell of gases

and burning powder, was still as death. The silence was like a heavy anaesthetic.

Claude ran back to the Snout to see that the gun teams were ready. "Wake up, boys! You know why we're

Bert Fuller, who was up in the lookout, dropped back into the trench beside him. "They're coming, sir."

Claude gave the signal to the machine guns. Fire opened all along the loop. In a moment a breeze sprang up,

and the heavy smoke clouds drifted to the rear. Mounting to the firestep, he peered over. The enemy was

coming on eight deep, on the left of the Boar's Head, in long, waving lines that reached out toward the main

trench. Suddenly the advance was checked. The files of running men dropped behind a wrinkle in the earth

fifty yards forward and did not instantly reappear. It struck Claude that they were waiting for something; he

ought to be clever enough to know for what, but he was not. The Colonel's line man came up to him.

"Headquarters has a runner from the Missourians. They'll be up in twenty minutes. The Colonel will put them

While he was speaking, everything was explained. The Boar's Snout spread apart with an explosion that split

the earth, and went up in a volcano of smoke and flame. Claude and the Colonel's messenger were thrown on

their faces. When they got to their feet, the Snout was a smoking crater full of dead and dying men. The

It was for this that the Hun advance had been waiting behind the ridge. The mine under the Snout had been

made long ago, probably, on a venture, when the Hun held Moltke trench for months without molestation.

During the last twentyfour hours they had been getting their explosives in, reasoning that the strongest

Here they were, coming on the run. It was up to the rifles. The men who had been knocked down by the

shock were all on their feet again. They looked at their officer questioningly, as if the whole situation had

changed. Claude felt they were going soft under his eyes. In a moment the Hun bombers would be in on

them, and they would break. He ran along the trench, pointing over the sand bags and shouting, "It's up to

The rifles recovered themselves and began firing, but Claude felt they were spongy and uncertain, that their

minds were already on the way to the rear. If they did anything, it must be quick, and their gunwork must be

accurate. Nothing but a withering fire could check . . . . He sprang to the firestep and then out on the parapet.

"Steady, steady!" He called the range to the rifle teams behind him, and he could see the fire take effect. All

along the Hun lines men were stumbling and falling. They swerved a little to the left; he called the rifles to

follow, directing them with his voice and with his hands. It was not only that from here he could correct the

range and direct the fire; the men behind him had become like rock. That line of faces below; Hicks, Jones,

Fuller, Anderson, Oscar . . . . Their eyes never left him. With these men he could do anything.

The right of the Hun line swerved out, not more than twenty yards from the battered Snout, trying to run to

shelter under that pile of debris and human bodies. A quick concentration of rifle fire depressed it, and the

swell came out again toward the left. Claude's appearance on the parapet had attracted no attention from the

enemy at first, but now the bullets began popping about him; two rattled on his tin hat, one caught him in the

shoulder. The blood dripped down his coat, but he felt no weakness. He felt only one thing; that he

commanded wonderful men. When David came up with the supports he might find them dead, but he would

find them all there. They were there to stay until they were carried out to be buried. They were mortal, but

The Colonel's twenty minutes must be almost up, he thought. He couldn't take his eyes from the front line

long enough to look at his wrist watch . . . . The men behind him saw Claude sway as if he had lost his

balance and were trying to recover it. Then he plunged, face down, outside the parapet. Hicks caught his foot

and pulled him back. At the same moment the Missourians ran yelling up the communication. They threw

their machine guns up on the sand bags and went into action without an unnecessary motion.

Hicks and Bert Fuller and Oscar carried Claude forward toward the Snout, out of the way of the supports that

were pouring in. He was not bleeding very much. He smiled at them as if he were going to speak, but there

was a weak blankness in his eyes. Bert tore his shirt open; three clean bullet holes. By the time they looked at

him again, the smile had gone . . . the look that was Claude had faded. Hicks wiped the sweat and smoke

from his officer's face. "Thank God I never told him," he said. "Thank God for that!"

Bert and Oscar knew what Hicks meant. Gerhardt had been blown to pieces at his side when they dashed

back through the enemy barrage to find the Missourians. They were running together across the open, not

able to see much for smoke. They bumped into a section of wire entanglement, left above an old trench.

David cut round to the right, waving Hicks to follow him. The two were not ten yards apart when the shell

The sun is sinking low, a transport is steaming slowly up the narrows with the tide. The decks are covered

with brown men. They cluster over the superstructure like bees in swarming time. Their attitudes are relaxed

and lounging. Some look thoughtful, some well contented, some are melancholy, and many are indifferent, as

Sergeant Hicks was standing in the stern, smoking, reflecting, watching the twinkle of the red sunset upon the

cloudy water. It is more than a year since he sailed for France. The world has changed in that time, and so has

Bert Fuller elbowed his way up to the Sergeant. "The doctor says Colonel Maxey is dying, He won't live to

Hicks shrugged, as if Maxey's pneumonia were no affair of his. "Well, we should worry! We've left better

"I'm not saying we haven't. But it seems too bad, when he's so strong for fuss and feathers. He's been sending

"Huh!" Hicks elevated his eyebrows and glanced sidewise in disdain. Presently he sputtered, squinting down

at the glittering water, "Colonel Maxey, anyhow! Colonel for what Claude and Gerhardt did, I guess!". Hicks

and Bert Fuller have been helping to keep the noble fortress of Ehrenbreitstein. They have always hung

together and are usually quarrelling and grumbling at each other when they are off duty. Still, they hang

together. They are the last of their group. Nifty Jones and Oscar, God only knows why, have gone on to the

During the year they were in the Rhine valley, Bert and Hicks were separated only once, and that was when

Hicks got a two weeks' leave and, by dint of persevering and fatiguing travel, went to Venice. He had no

proper passport, and the consuls and officials to whom he had appealed in his difficulties begged him to

content himself with something nearer. But he said he was going to Venice because he had always heard

about it. Bert Fuller was glad to welcome him back to Coblentz, and gave a "wine party" to celebrate his

return. They expect to keep an eye on each other. Though Bert lives on the Platte and Hicks on the Big Blue,

Bert is the same sweettempered boy he was when he left his mother's kitchen; his gravest troubles have been

frequent betrothals. But Hicks' round, chubby face has taken on a slightly cynical expression,a look quite

out of place there. The chances of war have hurt his feelings . . . not that he ever wanted anything for himself.

The way in which glittering honours bump down upon the wrong heads in the army, and palms and crosses

blossom on the wrong breasts, has, as he says, thrown his compass off a few points.

What Hicks had wanted most in this world was to run a garage and repair shop with his old chum, Dell Able.

Beaufort ended all that. He means to conduct a sort of memorial shop, anyhow, with "Hicks and Able" over

the door. He wants to roll up his sleeves and look at the logical and beautiful inwards of automobiles for the

As the transport enters the North River, sirens and steam whistles all along the water front begin to blow their

shrill salute to the returning soldiers. The men square their shoulders and smile knowingly at one another;

some of them look a little bored. Hicks slowly lights a cigarette and regards the end of it with an expression

By the banks of Lovely Creek, where it began, Claude Wheeler's story still goes on. To the two old women

who work together in the farmhouse, the thought of him is always there, beyond everything else, at the

Mrs. Wheeler got the word of his death one afternoon in the sittingroom, the room in which he had bade her

"Is this the Wheeler farm? This is the telegraph office at Frankfort. We have a message from the War

Mrs. Wheeler said, "Thank you," and hung up the receiver. She felt her way softly to her chair. She had an

hour alone, when there was nothing but him in the room,but him and the map there, which was the end of

Claude's letters kept coming for weeks afterward; then came the letters from his comrades and his Colonel to

In the dark months that followed, when human nature looked to her uglier than it had ever done before, those

letters were Mrs. Wheeler's comfort. As she read the newspapers, she used to think about the passage of the

Red Sea, in the Bible; it seemed as if the flood of meanness and greed had been held back just long enough

for the boys to go over, and then swept down and engulfed everything that was left at home. When she can

see nothing that has come of it all but evil, she reads Claude's letters over again and reassures herself; for him

the call was clear, the cause was glorious. Never a doubt stained his bright faith. She divines so much that he

did not write. She knows what to read into those short flashes of enthusiasm; how fully he must have found

his life before he could let himself go so farhe, who was so afraid of being fooled! He died believing his

own country better than it is, and France better than any country can ever be. And those were beautiful beliefs

to die with. Perhaps it was as well to see that vision, and then to see no more. She would have dreaded the

awakening,she sometimes even doubts whether he could have borne at all that last, desolating

disappointment. One by one the heroes of that war, the men of dazzling soldiership, leave prematurely the

world they have come back to. Airmen whose deeds were tales of wonder, officers whose names made the

blood of youth beat faster, survivors of incredible dangers,one by one they quietly die by their own hand.

Some do it in obscure lodging houses, some in their office, where they seemed to be carrying on their

business like other men. Some slip over a vessel's side and disappear into the sea. When Claude's mother

hears of these things, she shudders and presses her hands tight over her breast, as if she had him there. She

feels as if God had saved him from some horrible suffering, some horrible end. For as she reads, she thinks

those slayers of themselves were all so like him; they were the ones who had hoped extravagantly,who in

order to do what they did had to hope extravagantly, and to believe passionately. And they found they had

hoped and believed too much. But one she knew, who could ill bear disillusion . . . safe, safe.

Mahailey, when they are alone, sometimes addresses Mrs. Wheeler as "Mudder" ; "Now, Mudder, you go

upstairs an' lay down an' rest yourself." Mrs. Wheeler knows that then she is thinking of Claude, is speaking

for Claude. As they are working at the table or bending over the oven, something reminds them of him, and

they think of him together, like one person: Mahailey will pat her back and say, "Never you mind, Mudder;

you'll see your boy up yonder." Mrs. Wheeler always feels that God is near,but Mahailey is not troubled by

any knowledge of interstellar spaces, and for her He is nearer still,directly overhead, not so very far above