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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Where the Souls of Men are Calling, by
+Credo Harris and John R. Neill
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Where the Souls of Men are Calling
+
+Author: Credo Harris
+        John R. Neill
+
+Release Date: October 7, 2008 [EBook #26835]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WHERE THE SOULS OF MEN ARE CALLING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Garcia and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Kentuckiana Digital Library)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: _Where the Souls of Men are Calling_]
+
+   WHERE THE SOULS
+   OF MEN
+   ARE CALLING
+
+   BY
+   CREDO HARRIS
+
+   _Frontispiece by_
+   JOHN R. NEILL
+
+   NEW YORK
+   BRITTON PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+
+   Copyright, 1918
+
+   By
+
+   BRITTON PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+   All Rights Reserved
+
+   Made in U. S. A.
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+     TO MAUD BLANC HARRIS
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+WHERE THE SOULS OF MEN ARE CALLING
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+Hillsdale is "somewhere in the United States of America"--but there are
+hundreds of Hillsdales!
+
+This particular Hillsdale is no less, no more, than the others. It
+contains the usual center of business activity clustering about a rather
+modern hotel. One of its livery stables has been remodelled into a
+moving-picture house, the other into a garage; one of its newspapers has
+become a daily, the other still holds to a Friday issue. In its outlying
+districts will be found hitching racks before the stores. Altogether,
+Hillsdale might be said to be "on the fence," with one leg toward
+progressiveness, the other still lingering in the past.
+
+Its residences have not grown beyond the rambling, mellow kind, that
+drowse in poetic languor amidst flowering vines and trees. These trees,
+that also line the streets, meeting in cathedral arches overhead, might
+be stately elms of New England, poplars of the middle-west, or live-oaks
+of the south; for it must be strictly borne in mind that Hillsdale is
+"somewhere in the United States."
+
+One mild day in early April, 1917, in the side yard of a corner house
+well away from traffic noises, two trim little women, Miss Sallie and
+Miss Veemie Tumpson, were delicately uncovering their tulip beds when
+Colonel Hampton, passing on his way down town, stopped and raised his
+hat. An imperceptible agitation rustled their conventional exteriors,
+since it was an occasion of pleasure when Colonel Hampton paused at
+anyone's fence. They noticed, however, that his usual geniality was
+lacking; that the kindly seams in his face were set into lines of
+sternness.
+
+"Well, m'em," he thundered, "their damned outrages continue!"
+
+Miss Sallie gasped and stared at him, while her more timid sister was
+too much taken aback to move. In the forty-odd years of their
+acquaintance with this agreeable product of the mid-Victorian era, this
+was the first time they had heard an oath pass his lips--without an
+immediate apology; and the apology had not been forthcoming.
+
+"Yes, m'em," he cried, striking the ferrule of his cane on the sidewalk,
+"their damned outrages continue!"
+
+"Why, Colonel," Miss Veemie faltered, "whatever can have happened?" She
+was a trifle deaf, but she had no difficulty whatever in understanding
+the irate gentleman before her.
+
+"Colonel Hampton," Miss Sallie, as was her habit, took the offensive,
+"what do you mean, sir!"
+
+"Mean enough, and happened enough!" The cane again added emphasis.
+"Those German vipers have torpedoed another of our ships! The
+de-humanized outcasts, the blood-crazed toads, have wantonly destroyed
+more American lives! I tell you, m'em, our President is getting damned
+tired of it, and we'll have war as certain as your tulips are sure to
+be the fairest in our proud city, m'em!"
+
+The cheeks of the little ladies flushed at this dull prophecy, but for
+quite a minute the three remained silent.
+
+"Mercy, I hope not," Miss Veemie sighed at last--meaning the war, of
+course. "It's terrible!"
+
+"And peace can be terrible," the Colonel thundered. "A country that buys
+peace at the price of dishonor is no better than a frump who sells her
+soul for gewgaws and furbalows! When posterity shall read of how the
+diseased mind of a single lunatic has stabbed history's richest pages
+with a sword of murder, rapacity and lust, it will turn a lip of
+contempt toward every nation that stood upon a vacuous neutrality. To
+hell with neutrality, when a madman stalks abroad!"
+
+Miss Veemie now felt that she had been silenced for the rest of time,
+and Miss Sallie's delicate hands, incongruously housed in heavy garden
+gloves, became expressive of horrified amazement.
+
+"What?" he demanded, looking more than ever furious.
+
+The little ladies jumped, and Miss Sallie made haste to say:
+
+"Why--why nothing."
+
+He eyed them for a moment; not suspiciously, but with anger at
+everything in the universe--themselves, perhaps, excepted.
+
+"Where's Jeb?" he asked.
+
+"He went into the country again with his rifle this morning," Miss
+Sallie answered. "He feels as you do, Colonel, that the time has come to
+strike and we must be preparing for it."
+
+"But I wish you'd speak to him," Miss Veemie imploringly added. "He's
+bent on getting ready and being among the first, if the time comes,
+and--and----"
+
+"And he'll do it in splendid style, rest assured of it, m'em! Jeb will
+make a fine soldier!--he comes from a line of soldiers!"
+
+Tears filled Miss Veemie's eyes.
+
+"We've never seriously thought that Jeb----" she began, but could get no
+farther and relapsed into a sorrowful contemplation of the tulip bed.
+
+"There, there; I know, I know," the old gentleman interrupted gently. "I
+know how you feel about him; I know how you've both been more than
+mothers to him!"
+
+"We've done our best," there was a tightness in Miss Sallie's voice. "He
+never remembered his own mother, and was so little when dear brother
+Jebediah died."
+
+"I know, I know," he murmured. "How old is Jeb?"
+
+"Twenty-six."
+
+Another silence fell upon them. Then the Colonel sighed, turned and
+started on his way downtown, still muttering to himself as he went:
+
+"I know, I know. All the same, that Kaiser's a damned murderer, and
+we've got to smash him if it takes the last drop of blood in Hillsdale;
+yes, sir, the last precious drop!" So by the time he reached the hotel
+his step was vigorous and the ferrule of his cane struck the sidewalk
+with military precision. Fifty-three years ago he had marched that way
+with Grant--or was it with Lee? Hillsdales do spread over such a lot of
+territory!
+
+"Did you ever!" Miss Sallie gasped, breaking the silence.
+
+"Sakes alive," Miss Veemie whispered, calling upon her nearest approach
+to profanity. But they continued to stare after him, by unspoken accord
+moving to the fence and leaning over it, farther and farther, to keep
+him in sight as long as possible.
+
+It was while they were so occupied that a girl stepped out upon the side
+veranda. She hesitated an instant, poising lightly in surprise at their
+rather unusual attitudes, and biting her lips to keep from laughing
+outright. Then coming down into the garden, she asked:
+
+"Is the parade in sight yet?"
+
+Turning, they rushed at her.
+
+"_Marian!_ When did you get home? How did you get in without our seeing
+you?"
+
+Her parasol fell to the ground before their onslaught of affectionate
+greetings, as they held her off, only to draw her close to them.
+
+"Why," she laughed, somewhat out of breath, "the front door was open--as
+usual; so I came on through--as usual--looking for you!"
+
+"_When_ did you get home?" they insisted. "Is it really you?"
+
+"You little dears," she cried. "Oh, but it's good to see you!"
+
+"But _when_ did you come?"
+
+"Last night!"
+
+"And you're going to stay?"
+
+"Hm-hm," she laughed, kissing them upon the cheeks. "I suppose I'll have
+to, unless Daddy has a change of heart and lets me go to France."
+
+"France, nonsense! Stand off, and let's see you," Miss Sallie commanded.
+"My! My! And you're really a trained nurse?"
+
+"Really a trained nurse," she answered enthusiastically.
+
+"I could never understand why you wanted to be," Miss Veemie faltered,
+looking at her as though she were convinced that contact with the big
+cities and hospitals and surgical cases must surely have left an
+unfavorable impress. "But you haven't changed--I do believe! Why, child,
+you're even prettier! Is that taffeta, my dear? How much did you pay for
+it?"
+
+"Sister Veemie," Miss Sallie interrupted with a shade of annoyance,
+"for pity sake don't begin to talk dresses--though it _is_ becoming, my
+dear," she turned to Marian. "Have you seen Jeb?"
+
+The girl hesitated, yet not exactly in embarrassment, and answered
+slowly:
+
+"No. Is he well?"
+
+"More than well--and simply daft with his preparations for the war!"
+
+"Preparations for the war?" she asked, not understanding.
+
+"Why, my child, he goes into the country every day to shoot his rifle,
+he's so in earnest! I do believe that if Congress could hear half he
+thinks about the insults we are forced to swallow, they'd declare war
+to-morrow!"
+
+"Sister Sallie thinks he should have been named Patrick Henry," Miss
+Veemie sighed, "but I'm sure I can't imagine why! Jebediah is much
+prettier."
+
+Miss Sallie ignored this, and in a more confidential tone continued:
+
+"When he was a little boy, a fortune teller said----"
+
+"Oh, I know," Marian laughed, "--said he might be President some day!"
+
+"Well, my dear, I really shouldn't wonder! But, oh, why have you stayed
+away from us so long! Did nursing take so much time to learn? Now that
+you're back," her voice grew tender, "I do hope you and Jeb--well, you
+know that it was your dear mother's wish, and his dear mother's wish,
+Marian."
+
+"Please don't," the girl interrupted hastily. "I've heard that a
+thousand times. Besides, Jeb and I were only four months old when our
+mothers died; and besides that," she smiled prettily, "Jeb has surely
+recovered from his silly notions by now."
+
+"Jeb will entertain whatever notions I tell him to," Miss Sallie
+declared with vigor.
+
+"Then I don't want to see him," Marian laughed, though with not enough
+conviction, perhaps, to keep Miss Sallie from darting a look of
+encouragement at her sister, who, failing to understand it, observed:
+
+"Colonel Hampton just passed before you came; did you see him?"
+
+"No!--bless his old heart! How is he?--quite as foolishly angry with my
+father as ever, I suppose?"
+
+"He's not all to blame for that." Miss Sallie compressed her lips. "Your
+father, my dear, is as good a hater as he is an editor."
+
+"Which is going some," Marian laughed.
+
+"Going how?" Miss Veemie asked, protestingly.
+
+"I must say," Miss Sallie interposed, "that the Colonel has been a
+devoted friend to Jeb!"
+
+"And I'm devoted to the Colonel," Marian quickly replied, as though her
+loyalty had been challenged. "You both know how I've deplored that
+quarrel--why, it started long, long before I was born, and I'm sure
+they've forgotten its origin!"
+
+"Politics! Wretched politics," Miss Sallie sighed. "I've often thought,
+my child, how easily you might re-cement their friendship." She looked
+wistfully at the girl, who asked in all sincerity:
+
+"How?"
+
+"The Colonel is so fond of Jeb, and you are your father's only child!
+Can't you just fancy them clasping hands beneath a wedding bell of
+beautiful lilies?"
+
+"It's easier to fancy them quarreling again the next day! No," she began
+to laugh delightedly, "if you're so set on having a wedding, marry them
+to each other; then they can fuss to their heart's content and nobody
+will mind. There, forgive me!" she cried, putting her arms about Miss
+Veemie, who was taking this seriously, and almost gasping for breath, "I
+was horrid to joke about it! But you mustn't let Miss Sallie put those
+silly thoughts on Jeb and me, really! Remember, I've been away two
+years--two years this very sixth of April--and see how we've both
+improved!"
+
+There might have been a slight suspicion of yearning that somehow got
+into her voice as she said this; at any rate, Miss Sallie thought so,
+and wisely decided to let the subject rest awhile.
+
+Marian walked to the fallen parasol, picked it up and opened it.
+
+"I suppose I ought to be going," she said. "Father expects me about
+twelve. Your tulips are looking well, for this early," she continued
+evenly. "Do you still have the scarlet ones in this bed? And, oh, I
+wonder if I can see the courthouse clock from your fence, as I used to!"
+
+She leaned over the pickets, looking; then glanced up the street in the
+other direction. Miss Sallie did not miss the significance of this, and
+smiled.
+
+"What time is it?" she asked, as Marian turned around.
+
+"I--I really; isn't that funny? I've forgotten!" And to hide a very
+genuine embarrassment she leaned again over the pickets; glancing, as
+before, up and down the street where the courthouse was, and was not,
+but now giving a little exclamation of pleasure.
+
+"He's coming! Your spoiled nephew is at the corner."
+
+She glanced at Miss Sallie, and found that little lady beaming
+pleasantly with a "bless you, my children," countenance that sent the
+blood flying to her cheeks. She felt suddenly afraid to stay and face
+the man from whom, at the last moment and as a last resort, she had fled
+to keep from giving a certain answer to his insistent pleadings. She
+knew that he would plead again, even after two years of waiting; and, in
+a sense, she wanted him to plead, though not just at this spot, nor
+until she had gathered up her forces with which she might artfully
+resist him awhile longer.
+
+"Well, goodbye, everybody," she said quickly. "I must hurry downtown."
+
+"Without seeing Jeb?" Miss Sallie exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, I'll see him soon. We can't escape each other very long in
+Hillsdale," she laughed.
+
+"But, my child, it will only be a minute! You surely----"
+
+Jeb, having entered by the front way, was now heard whistling as he came
+through the house, and the next moment he stepped out on the side
+veranda; then stopped, crying joyously:
+
+"Marian!"
+
+"Hello, Jeb," she said, advancing with a candor that belied the look
+Miss Sallie had surprised half a minute before.
+
+"Oh, Jeb," Miss Veemie glided toward him, "I've been so worried for fear
+your gun had exploded and done something! Are you tired, dear?"
+
+This adulation had been a daily occurrence in Jeb's life since he was
+four years old, when these adoring aunts had taken him beneath their
+roof. Usually he met it half way, but now, with an indifference that in
+a moment of less excitement would have been pronounced, he passed her
+and caught Marian's hand, crying:
+
+"This _is_ a surprise! Did you drop out of the trees?"
+
+"That savors horribly of monkeys, Jeb," she laughed, quietly withdrawing
+her hand. "You used to do better!"
+
+"I meant to ask how long since you dropped down from heaven, angel," he
+smiled. "My word, but you're looking fit! For a three times winner, you
+just about take the cake!"
+
+"Cake, dear?" Miss Veemie sweetly inquired. "Certainly you shall!" And,
+turning, she hurried busily into the house, Miss Sallie following with
+an expression about her mouth which said as plainly as words that her
+well-meaning sister would not emerge with cake, or anything else, to
+interrupt a _tete-a-tete_ so promising.
+
+Jeb waited until they had quite disappeared, then he crossed to Marian,
+asking soberly:
+
+"Why did you run away, just when you promised to tell me what I wanted
+to hear?--and why didn't you answer my letters?"
+
+"I wonder," she said, turning toward the flower beds, "if the tulips
+will be in bloom soon! I'd so love to see them again!"
+
+He laughed tenderly, but persisted:
+
+"Why did you run away?--why didn't you answer my letters?"
+
+"Oh, those things happened two years ago, Jeb. Haven't you advanced at
+all?--do you always live in the past like a silly old man? You didn't
+write but three times, anyway!"
+
+"Good Lord, how many times did you expect me to write without getting an
+answer?" he cried.
+
+"Oh," she answered indifferently, "as many times as you thought it was
+worth doing. I might have answered the fourth; one can never tell about
+those things. Miss Sallie says you're getting ready to fight, Jeb. Are
+you thinking of going over to join the British or French?"
+
+"Not for me," he laughed, disregarding, somewhat to her surprise, the
+subject of letters and answers. "They can peg along with their own
+scrap; I'm getting in shape for this country, if it becomes involved!
+You ought to see the hikes I take, Marian! Twelve miles in a
+forenoon--easy! And my shooting is really--look here!" He began fumbling
+in his pocket and brought out several paper targets which he unfolded
+and held before her. "What d'you think of that for three hundred
+yards!--five centers! Here's the four hundred!--look, Marian! Isn't it a
+peach? By Jove, if ever I get a crack at those Huns, there'll be a few
+less!"
+
+From the targets, over which he was now bending in feverish interest,
+she glanced up at him without being observed, her face somewhat puzzled.
+She felt extremely gratified that Jeb had made these perfect scores, and
+her spirit thrilled with his martial fervor; but, on the other hand, he
+had just been talking about a certain question which she had evaded two
+years ago by running away to take a hospital course in nursing, and it
+seemed to her that he was dismissing it rather abruptly. Yet she knew
+Jeb's temperament, as any girl will know a man with whom she has been a
+play-fellow since childhood; and, although hardly prepared for it just
+at this moment, she read aright that his love of self, his thirst for
+praise, had in no wise diminished. Had she been asked for a direct
+answer she could have told that his enthusiasm for target practice in
+the woods, where for hours he pretended to be shooting Germans, was
+vital to his abnormally active imagination; for Jeb, although a giant in
+strength and a god in grace, possessed the brow and eyes of an
+inveterate dreamer.
+
+Formerly his dreams had run to adventure of a milder form, sometimes to
+verse, once or twice or thrice or more to love. He had, as a matter of
+fact, for short periods loved nearly all the girls in Hillsdale who were
+pretty enough, and clever enough; never becoming really serious--unless
+it was with her! But she had laughed at him then, sympathetically and
+sweetly, reminding him that they had grown up together, besides being
+each of them twenty-four.
+
+Not that she believed these were serious obstacles, but at the time
+they served; for, if the strict truth be told, Marian understood Jeb too
+well to confess how much she cared. His exceptional charm, fascinating
+her beyond anything she had experienced, was, on the other hand, marred
+by his inordinate vanity. His extreme courtesy, urban manner and quick
+instinct for thoughtful attentions to old and young alike, she read
+truly as superficial, rather than sincere, kindnesses. The casual
+acquaintance would not have discovered this--but Marian had grown up
+with him! She _could_ love him, she had more than a hundred times told
+herself--God, yes! Alone in the nights when his warm bronze coloring of
+perfect health seemed near to her, she had admitted this. Yet by day she
+laughed at it; and laughed at Jeb. Thereupon Jeb had settled down in
+earnest to win her.
+
+Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie had watched through a prayer-glass the
+beginning of that ardent affair. From their lofty place of vantage
+twenty-four and twenty-four might not have been quite suitable, but
+years could stand for naught against the tower of mental strength and
+character with which they knew Marian to be possessed. They would
+gladly have greeted her as one of themselves, one to mother Jeb, to see
+that he was warmly clothed and did not eat imprudently. He had always
+been a child to them! Many times, in the bygone days, Miss Sallie would
+hint at this ideal mating, till at last the daughter of Amos Strong had
+wrapped the little woman in her arms, saying sweetly that she preferred
+something in life besides "mothering an overgrown, selfish boy."
+
+It had cost her something to say this, for in her heart she was just
+beginning to know how adoringly she could be these things and more to
+him. As a child she mothered him; at ten he bullied her; in their 'teens
+she had bossed and mothered him again! Love him? She admitted it through
+tears to her mirror--and yet, withal, she had understood him just a
+shade too well!
+
+Then came the day--as such days will--when she was cornered, pinioned,
+made captive!--when she could no longer fight, and knew that surrender
+was but a matter of hours. Much of that night (she remembered every
+minute of it now!) she had lain awake watching her heart and her level
+judgment wage their last battle; and the next afternoon, an hour before
+he was to come, she quietly left for Baltimore, or New York--or it may
+have been Chicago--to take the course in nursing.
+
+Her eyes now swept him with tenderness as the memory of that day came
+rushing back, but a shadow of disappointment crossed them as she saw
+that he was still looking, fascinated, at the proof of his skill. Was
+her return, after an absence of two years, so meaningless that he could
+be engrossed by a few sheets of inert paper while she stood within touch
+of him?
+
+"You shoot very well, Jeb," she said, casually.
+
+"Don't I though!" he cried. "See, Marian--here's the five hundred!"
+
+"I should think," she said, glancing at it indifferently, "that you'd
+join the regular army."
+
+"You bet I will, if the time ever comes when we've got to fight! I
+wouldn't ask for anything better! Gee, I wish we'd declare war
+to-morrow!"
+
+"I rather think," she slowly replied, "that your wish is very near
+fulfillment, Jeb."
+
+He turned quickly and stared at her.
+
+"What makes you say that?" he asked, tensely.
+
+Had her eyes been looking at him then she might have seen something in
+his drawn face and blanched cheeks that would have struck dismay into
+her very soul; but, as it was, she attributed the question purely and
+simply to his eagerness for service, and answered with a suggestion of
+sharpness that was not lost on him:
+
+"Because there's a limit, Jeb, to the patience of a country, just as
+there is to the patience of men and women. Even the mildest of us reach
+the end of our endurance, sooner or later," she added, not knowing
+whether she wanted to laugh or be furious.
+
+"Oh, come," he cried, squaring his shoulders. "I thought maybe you had
+some inside news from your father! Don't be a gloom, Marian! The war's
+three thousand miles away from us, and that's where it's going to
+stay--take my word for it!"
+
+"But I thought you were crazy for it," she turned on him in surprise.
+
+He shifted uneasily, but his voice rang strong and true as he answered:
+
+"I am crazy for it! What d'you suppose I've been getting ready for all
+these months? But you leave wars and that sort of thing to us men! You
+haven't anything to do with 'em!"
+
+"We have to nurse you in wars, Jeb, just as we do in times of peace,"
+she laughed. "Really, I don't see how such big babies as some men I know
+can conduct a first class war, anyhow!"
+
+This was the old Marian again; lightly bantering, deliciously good to
+look upon. He moved close to her, and asked earnestly:
+
+"Why did you run away from me?"
+
+"I wanted to be a nurse," she answered.
+
+"But why did you decide so quickly to be a nurse?"
+
+She hesitated, then smiled:
+
+"It was better than the other alternative."
+
+"Now that you are a nurse, can't you accept the other alternative, too?
+You know I want you just as much."
+
+His voice, deep and resonant with a timbre that went to women's hearts,
+thrilled her delightfully. But she had not forgiven him for the paper
+target episode, wherein she had been pushed aside to make way for his
+skill. There were, moreover, plans that had been fermenting in her mind
+for many months--plans of which marriage should not be a part--and she
+answered him frankly:
+
+"I really don't know at all, Jeb--I haven't had time to think. Of
+course, should our country get into this war, daddy has promised to let
+me go across at once; otherwise he insists that I can't. Still, if I go
+to France, you will, too, for that matter," she added brightly. Then the
+color flew to her cheeks. "Maybe when I saw you in uniform, Jeb, and
+realized that you--that we might neither of us get back, then I
+might--we might----"
+
+She was looking down, unable to go farther without assistance; but he
+offered none, and they stood for several moments in absolute
+silence--for a quick spasm of fright had shot across his soul! The
+sublimity of her partial surrender, contingent only upon his
+transportation to a foreign battlefield, suddenly brought the war from
+three thousand miles away to his very door. But his next feeling was one
+of self-contempt, and squaring his shoulders with a jerk he said:
+
+"I love your pluck! Then it's all settled."
+
+"Oh, it isn't all settled by a great deal," she laughed; but, seeing his
+face, gasped in mock astonishment. "Heavens! Which is making you look so
+like a ghost--marriage or war?"
+
+"They're quite synonymous," he replied, trying to match her banter. "May
+I speak to your illustrious father?"
+
+"That reminds me that I've an engagement with him right now," she
+exclaimed. "For the present, you may say good-bye to Miss Sallie and
+Miss Veemie for me."
+
+With a pretty smile and toss of her head she swept him a little
+courtesy, then turned to the gate, but he called after her:
+
+"Wait! I'll go with you--and show him my targets!"
+
+She stopped, looking back as though she had not heard aright.
+
+"Targets?" she asked, slightly arching her brows.
+
+"Why, these, of course," he cried, drawing them again from his breast
+pocket. "I always hunt him up, or the Colonel, when I've made a
+cracker-jack score! It tickles 'em to death!"
+
+He sprang to the gate and held it open for her to pass, apparently
+having forgotten everything but a desire to reap praise from one or the
+other of these old gentlemen; who in their turns, although separately,
+had never failed to be genially appreciative. The flavor of war, which
+filled the air as a restless spirit since diplomatic relations with
+Germany had come to an end--the numb fear with which he had been
+obsessed but a moment ago--were completely relegated to the limbo of
+forgetfulness as he now issued forth in search of praise wherewith to
+feed his vanity.
+
+Whenever it so happened that he failed to get a sufficient amount of
+this from one or the other of these men, or from his adoring aunts, he
+drew it from himself. He could not have named a night for months that he
+had fallen asleep without first thinking of the splendid soldier he
+would make. He would let his imagination run riot and live through
+battle after battle, leading his men intrepidly--men who loved the very
+ground on which he trod. Into the thickest places where old veterans
+could not have stood the gaff, he went with calm indifference. Victory
+followed victory--complete, hilarious victories! Dead Germans,
+prisoners, and cannon which Jeb flung into the game bag of his waking
+dreams, if put side by side, would have reached around the world.
+
+'Tis true, that this top-lofty state of mind suffered a complete relapse
+when Bernstorff got his papers, and for the first time Jeb seriously
+felt the cold fingers of fear reach out and touch him. It had been a
+peculiar change, that for awhile startled him more than the imminence of
+war. He might have been thrilled over the wild race, the reckless dash,
+as of unbridled horses, with which a nation long in suspense hurtled
+toward a finality; but it was an elation thoroughly dampened by dread.
+As the days had passed, however, and nothing more terrible happened, his
+courage came creeping back, even growing into modest bravado. Excursions
+to the country with his rifle became frequent again. He began to feel
+himself stiffen-up when Miss Sallie would tell a neighbor how he was
+getting ready for the possible war; this neighbor told other neighbors,
+and he was soon basking in admiring looks which were as meat and drink
+to him. It was on this crest of popularity that Marian found him when
+she returned to Hillsdale.
+
+With a face utterly devoid of expression she watched him now while he
+held back the gate with one hand while trying to stuff the bulkily
+folded targets into his pocket.
+
+"Maybe you'd rather carry them, Marian," he said, "and we can look at
+them again on the way downtown!"
+
+She did not answer.
+
+"I always take them down to your father, you know," he said again.
+
+"I should think daddy would be immensely flattered," she observed,
+passing out to the street.
+
+Scarcely had the gate closed after them when Miss Sallie and Miss
+Veemie, guilt written in every line of their radiant faces, tiptoed from
+the house, stepped into the garden and ran to the fence. As they had
+formerly done while watching Colonel Hampton stalk angrily townward,
+they now, also, leaned farther and farther over the pickets, keeping the
+young people who comprised their hope in view to the very last.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+Colonel Hampton, after leaving the Tumpson sisters in a fog of
+astonishment, did not pause at the hotel and sink into the porch chair
+that had become his by right of daily occupation. This morning his mind
+was set upon greater things. Affectionate greetings from passing friends
+hardly checked him, and he strode deliberately onward to the office of
+the Hills County _Eagle_, the daily, owned and edited by Amos Strong--a
+long ago friend, although for twice a score of years his most
+unrelenting political foe. There had been a time when the town
+prophesied a "meeting" between these two, but their enmity had finally
+congealed into nothing more deadly than complete estrangement.
+
+Now, indifferent to a look of consternation on a reporter's face, the
+Colonel stamped across the "city room," glared around until he saw a
+glass door marked "editor," pushed it violently open without knocking
+and closed it after him. This had not happened in the reporter's memory;
+it had, on the other hand, been just the thing everybody feared might
+come to pass.
+
+The grizzled editor did not immediately look up; yet, when he did, his
+astonishment was complete, and his ever alert mind reviewed the
+_Eagle's_ recent utterances to discover if therein lay a reason for this
+visit. Recalling nothing of particular belligerency--at any rate,
+nothing against the Colonel--he said crisply:
+
+"Take a seat, Colonel Hampton."
+
+"Colonel Hampton will never take a seat in your office, sir," his caller
+thundered, greatly emphasizing "Colonel Hampton." And, answering a
+further look of perplexity in the editor's face that now betrayed a
+growing anger, he continued jerkily: "We're coming very near to war,
+sir; this country, our country, against those sickening anti-Christs who
+bayonet children, rape women, and wantonly torture unto death
+defenseless men--and boast of it, sir; gloat over it! It'll be our
+country against that polluted swamp of slimy creatures, sir; and in our
+country there shall be neither Democrats nor Republicans! Politics be
+damned, sir! Until those breeders of paresis--those Hohenzollern
+upstarts who, as God is my witness, are the vomit of hell--shall be
+stripped of their freedom, you and I cast our vote for Humanity! Amos, I
+want to take your hand, and I want you to take mine!"
+
+Mr. Strong sprang to his feet and his chair fell heavily to the floor.
+It was this alarming noise that reached the listening reporter's ear and
+brought him in haste to his chief's aid; yet when he had pushed open the
+door, unnoticed by those within, he drew quickly back and tiptoed to his
+desk. There are some things at which even a reporter may not gaze.
+
+"Do you agree with me that there should and will be war, Roger?" Mr.
+Strong was saying half an hour later. They were comfortably settled now,
+with cigars alight, and except for slight traces where tears had marked
+their cheeks no one would have suspected aught but a lifetime of
+congeniality.
+
+"Both should and will, Amos! It is one of the few expressions in your
+columns with which I have thoroughly concurred."
+
+Mr. Strong burst into a merry laugh and waved the handkerchief that was
+still in his hand, crying:
+
+"Truce, truce! You forget, Roger!"
+
+"So I do, so I do, Amos! We sha'n't open the old wounds again--at least,
+not so long as our country is in need of cohesion. My anger, I assure
+you, was never as great as my amazement that one of your talents
+could--but there, there! I may have been somewhat wrong, also--as a
+matter of fact, Amos, I shouldn't be surprised if that were so! Tell me
+of Marian! When is she coming back to us again?"
+
+A look of new pleasure crossed the editor's grizzled face as he
+answered:
+
+"She got home last night, Roger--and the first thing she did was to ask
+about you, whom she believed I hated!" Again he laughed, with a buoyancy
+that had not been in his voice for many years.
+
+"She did that?" the Colonel cried, his eyes filling with tears. "God
+bless her! She's a noble girl, worthy of her noble father! Do you know,
+Amos, I'm beginning to believe that she showed extraordinary foresight
+in taking that training! Why, even I considered it a romantic waste of
+time,--and so did you, Roger," he turned accusingly. "Admit it!"
+
+"I did, but I wanted to humor her; for the purpose was noble, and it
+does a girl no harm. But I hope she won't hold me to a foolish promise I
+made, to let her go across should we become involved in this titanic
+struggle."
+
+"God guide her aright," the Colonel whispered; to which his old friend
+murmured:
+
+"Amen."
+
+"I stopped by the Tumpson's," the Colonel resumed, after they had been
+for a moment silent. "Miss Sallie tells me that Jeb is out again with
+his rifle, as usual, and is showing more eagerness to be ready. I
+believe all our young men will respond nobly if the President calls for
+volunteers."
+
+"Without a doubt of it, Roger; and Jeb ought to make a fine
+soldier--although he's had no military training."
+
+"Well, no; but he's a handsome fellow, and a gentleman, and his father
+was our friend, Amos. I can coach him, and give him a pretty fair idea
+of what war is like."
+
+"There's some talk of schools being inaugurated for teaching such chaps
+as he, should the struggle really come; schools where the most approved
+methods of modern warfare will be demonstrated by our regularly
+qualified officers."
+
+"Schools be damned, sir," the Colonel thundered. "What school, what
+infant West Pointer, is qualified better than I, who fought my weight in
+wildcats four successive years!--or you, sir, who I've no doubt fought
+well, too, although under the banner of a----"
+
+"Truce, truce!" Mr. Strong cried, this time laughing till tears of
+pleasure ran down his cheeks. "At Shiloh, Roger, you knew how to honor a
+truce, for I carried the flag to you myself--and you weren't old enough
+to raise a mustache, either!"
+
+"So you did, Amos; so you did--and, by gad, your cheeks were as smooth
+as a girl's, too!" the Colonel's voice dropped to the softness of
+reminiscence, growing harsh again as he added: "If I temporarily forget
+the rules of honorable warfare, it's because my memory has been
+corrupted by the vileness of those Outcasts who, in their ego-mania,
+blaspheme the Almighty God by claiming kinship with Him. I wish you and
+I could go over there and clean up that pestilential Prussian herd! By
+gad, sir, they've the hoof and mouth disease, each confounded one of
+them! Whenever I think of them I get rush of blood to the head!"
+
+"And rush of words to the tongue, Roger," the editor added, good
+naturedly. "But, my friend, such blasts of hatred are too German to be
+acceptable. We're not a nation of small venom!"
+
+"I don't give a cracky whether we are or not! Those rag-tag and bobtail
+vermin are calling us names!--and, if I can't fight, by gad, I'll cuss
+back!"
+
+"No, you won't, and be part of the big, conquering nation that you are.
+Those 'hymns of hate' don't affect England!--neither do the scores of
+lewd verses that flow like filth all over Germany! They are merely the
+wails of disappointed people, Roger,--the shrieks of a cruelly tricked
+national soul! Let them pass!"
+
+"Disappointed people fiddle-sticks!--and I say that it's a tragic
+mistake to let anything pass! The most dangerous propaganda waged by
+German spies in this country--more alarming in its results thus far than
+the blowing up of munition factories, the setting afire of grain
+elevators, the enciting of Mexico--has been the honorless skill with
+which they have fed the American mind upon the idea of a disgruntled
+Germany, a starving Germany, and all such twaddle! Can't you see why
+such tales are being circulated? Simply to inject into our minds the
+poison of national inertia, so that when war comes--as it some day
+shall--every fellow will be likely to think: 'Oh, it can't last long
+now!--let the other boys get ready; I haven't time!'"
+
+"I hadn't thought of that, Roger."
+
+"Then think of it now; and, furthermore, remember this, Amos: that no
+sooner will war be declared before their propaganda will go one step
+farther. Do you know what it will be? Peace talk! Crumbling Germany
+ready to make terms! Why? Simply to keep filling our systems with more
+of the national inertia poison--to keep us retarded--to keep us from
+dashing into the big game with every fibre quivering, and our souls
+afire to finish it up! Berlin's hope is that while America grows sleek
+with too much optimism, Germany will grow stronger to prolong her
+insolent and murderous campaign. Open your columns, Amos, and shout
+these truths broadcast--for therein will rest the salvation of our
+country! Germany poor in food or munitions?--fiddle-sticks! The German
+people disgruntled?--twaddle!"
+
+"Where do you get this idea?" Mr. Strong looked at him in amazement.
+
+"Out of my good, common horse-sense brain! You recall that story of the
+German Government confiscating the people's copper utensils and taking
+copper from the roofs of buildings, to keep up the manufacture of
+ammunition? Any school boy should have known that they didn't
+appropriate one copper pot, nor lift an inch of copper roofing, when the
+vast mines of Sweden pour their enormous output--not only of copper, but
+of unrivaled iron ore--in almost a continuous stream from Stockholm to
+Luebeck Bay; and von Capelle's fleet is there to see it safely across,
+too! The cry came forth that they were short of cotton for
+explosives--and that cry was sent out on the very day a national holiday
+had been proclaimed to celebrate their discovery of a method by which
+all types of high explosives can be made without cotton! Why, Amos,
+lying is a fine art with that government! I read in your own paper a
+long and pathetic ditty, cabled from Amsterdam, about 'starving
+Germany!' Don't you know that, with the millions of deported Belgians,
+Serbians, and Poles--to say nothing of the war prisoners--Germany should
+have this year a larger acreage under cultivation than at any time since
+the Confederation? They know how to farm intensively over there, and get
+their fertilizer, as they have already been getting their fats--from
+their own dead. These are but the beginnings of other things our common
+sense would teach us, were we not hypnotized with a morbid craving to
+swallow their neatly prepared fairy-tales!"
+
+"Roger," Mr. Strong sprang to his feet, "by the eternal, you speak
+inspired words! They _have_ poisoned us with lies of a starving Imperial
+Government; they'll continue to poison us with lies of an early
+peace--and then prepare fresh blows while we wallow in our
+self-complaisance! Open my columns? They'll blaze as columns of
+righteous fire!" Leaning forward, he added: "Why shouldn't we be getting
+ready here in Hillsdale? There's fine material for a company of militia!
+Will you join with me in equipping one?"
+
+The Colonel banged his hand down on the table.
+
+"Done!" he cried.
+
+"And there," the editor continued, pointing out of the window, "is the
+captain for it!"
+
+In an instant the Colonel was upon his feet, looking across the street
+to where his old friend pointed.
+
+"Jeb!--and Marian!" he added, his voice ringing with delight. "Which is
+going to be the captain, Amos?" he chuckled. "By Gad, they're coming up!
+He'll make a fine officer!"
+
+But Amos Strong was looking tenderly at the girl; then he turned and
+caught the Colonel's hand, crying:
+
+"Roger, we'll set the pace for every city and town throughout our
+country. We'll equip the company, so it'll be ready to go at the first
+crack--and Jeb will be a credit!"
+
+"One who'll capture hearts as well as Huns, I'll warrant--if he's not
+already a helpless prisoner!"
+
+The two old men looked at each other and smiled, and it was while they
+were in this attitude that Marian and Jeb entered.
+
+She stopped on the threshold, scarcely believing her eyes; and Jeb,
+looking over her head, was no less mystified. That these two sworn
+enemies should be standing there, holding hands in all friendliness,
+surpassed the miraculous.
+
+The men had turned cordially to welcome her, but hesitated at the
+amazement that was pictured in her face. Their reconciliation had been
+so spontaneously genuine that it seemed already to be a thing of long
+standing, and they did not penetrate Marian's embarrassment until she
+timidly advanced, asking:
+
+"Is it all right for us to come in, Daddy? Were you and Colonel Hampton
+really shaking hands?"
+
+He approached swiftly and took her in his arms, turning to the Colonel
+and repeating the girl's question:
+
+"Were we really shaking hands, Roger?"
+
+"By gad, Amos, we've been shaking hands every day for forty years, only
+we didn't know it!"
+
+"You should have come in before, Roger."
+
+"How, in thunder, could I come in, when your perverted editorial columns
+were----"
+
+"Stop!" Marian cried, running to him and throwing her arms about his
+neck. "Do you want it to begin all over again, just when I have you both
+together for the first time in my life?"
+
+But her father laughed good-naturedly, knowing that as soon as he called
+"Truce!" the irate Colonel would subside.
+
+"How in the world did it happen?" she asked, still clinging to the
+Colonel's neck and looking up into his eyes which were fast growing
+moist with tears of happiness. "Tell me at once, which of you was
+generous enough to make the first move?"
+
+"Poof and nonsense!" he exclaimed, trying to frown upon her severely.
+"There was no generosity about it! I reckon Amos and I know where each
+other lives!"
+
+"You'll tell me, Daddy," she turned to him. "Which of you big babies was
+big enough----"
+
+"Don't tell her a thing, Amos," the Colonel thundered, getting red.
+
+"So you're the one, then," she smiled up at him. "I'm going to call you
+Uncle Roger!"--and she kissed him.
+
+"I wish she'd call me Uncle Jeb," came a half sigh from across the
+table.
+
+"She'll be calling you _Captain_ Jeb,--eh, Roger?" Mr. Strong laughed.
+"Tell them about it!"
+
+"Oh," the Colonel said, wiping his glasses, "my best friend, here, has
+proposed that he and I recruit a company of soldiers, equip it, and have
+it ready for business. Jeb is to be its captain."
+
+"You mean uniforms, and everything?" Jeb cried.
+
+"Uniforms and everything," Mr. Strong emphatically answered. "The story
+will run in to-morrow's _Eagle_, and we'll take recruits right here in
+this office, where Colonel Hampton--your Uncle Roger," he pinched
+Marian's cheek, "will have charge. We'll wire Washington for a hundred
+and fifty equipments, and be drilling by this time next week. Now, what
+do you think about it?"
+
+"I'm crazy about it," Jeb shouted; and Marian, catching his hands,
+cried:
+
+"_Captain_ Jeb! I'm as proud of you as I can be!"
+
+His eyes were sparkling as he gazed down at her; his vivid imagination
+had lost no time picturing the khaki-clad lads, with him at their head,
+marching, drilling, and doing all manner of things of which he could not
+have told the names but had seen in the movies. She gloried in his
+enthusiasm, and squeezed his hands again, whispering:
+
+"I'm proud of you!"
+
+"There must be books and manuals and the like in Washington," the
+Colonel was saying, "which teach the duties of a captain; so we'll wire
+for them, also. Then I'll coach you, Jeb; I'll make an officer out of
+you, you young cub!"
+
+More and more each of them had caught the spirit. Jeb's eyes danced; his
+pulse was bounding; his dreams of military splendor were coming true.
+Marian had clasped her hands and rather worshipfully stared at him. Mr.
+Strong stood with legs apart, looking him over with unfeigned
+admiration; while the Colonel, also gazing, unconsciously drummed a
+marching tattoo with his fingers on the table.
+
+It all seemed so easy! With the simple faith of men who implicitly
+believed the War Department would suspend business to fulfil their
+wishes, they decided to order uniforms and wire the Hillsdale
+representative to dash out in search of books. Jeb would absorb the
+books and become a captain; the Colonel, ensconced in Mr. Strong's room,
+would recruit the company, which, in turn, would don the uniforms and
+make Hillsdale gasp at its brilliant efficiency. Flags would wave,
+citizens would applaud, and the President would send a message of
+fervent congratulations. That was the way it seemed to Jeb. He did not
+dream of the nearness of the war, which had been viewed by him, as by
+millions of others, as a mirage far off beyond the seas. Now he spoke in
+a voice that trembled with pride:
+
+"I'll make it a company of sharpshooters in no time; for, if there's one
+thing I can do, it's shoot! Look at my last targets!" he cried, drawing
+them from his pocket.
+
+Meanwhile, the key out in the telegraph room began an agitated ticking.
+It was too early for "A.P. stuff," but the reporter recognized, by long
+association, sounds resembling the _Eagle's_ call. Now he heard the
+operator give a low whistle, and that, also, from long association, he
+knew meant "flash!" so he sauntered back and sat on the table, waiting.
+In another moment he burst into Mr. Strong's room, thrusting a message
+across the targets which Jeb had just unfolded.
+
+The editor read it and caught his breath, then passed it over to his
+friend, with the brief remark to all:
+
+"War's declared!"
+
+The Colonel sprang up as if electrified. Standing at full height he
+clasped both hands above his face and fervently cried:
+
+"Thank God! The honor of our country is vindicated!"
+
+War! Jeb felt suddenly sick and dizzy. The targets which had meant so
+much to him, taking on a lustre as if they were jewels in his crown of
+pride, and passports to a military future, became gray and sordid. He
+hated them, he hated everything they stood for, and, seeing the eyes of
+Marian and her father fixed upon the Colonel, he surreptitiously dropped
+them to the floor, pushing them farther out of sight beneath the table
+with his foot.
+
+"War!" Marian gasped, as though she were struggling to take in the full
+significance of this startling news. Then she flew to the editor and
+wrapped him in her arms, saying excitedly: "Oh, Daddy, remember your
+promise! I'm going!--I'm going! You _said_ I could if it ever came!--and
+I'm all ready, Daddy dear, for the very first boat that leaves!"
+
+The Colonel could not have told why, but suddenly he burst into tears,
+coughed, made a great fuss pulling himself together, and thundered:
+
+"War! War on the damnedest hierachy of fiends--if I may use the
+term--the world has ever known! And we're going to thrash 'em if it
+takes the last drop of blood in Hillsdale; yes, sir, the very last drop!
+You, Jeb, will now lead your company into the thick of it! Lord, boy,
+but I envy you!"
+
+Marian left her father and ran to Jeb.
+
+"Oh, just think!--maybe we can go on the same----" She stopped short,
+frightened at the appearance of his face. She tried to finish the
+sentence, but stammered over it as though her eyes, dilated with horror,
+were holding her tongue captive by what she saw.
+
+Amos Strong had turned and was looking out of the window, overcome by
+the far-reaching consequences of his promise made half thoughtlessly two
+years before, and he therefore did not see the mute tragedy being played
+behind him; but the Colonel missed none of it, although his faith in Jeb
+was too deeply rooted to be shaken. He merely believed that his young
+friend had been shocked--for the moment shocked--and nothing more; a
+belief which he considered justified when Jeb, calling upon every ounce
+of the Tumpson pride, forced his knees to stiffen and his lips to smile.
+
+Marian approached him.
+
+"Jeb," she said, laughing a little hysterically, "you frightened me."
+
+"How?" he turned to her slowly, still hammering himself into better
+control.
+
+"Never mind now! Some day I'll offer you an apology."
+
+Although she was still laughing, the Colonel saw at once what had been
+passing in her mind. It was an unfair suspicion, he thought, one
+unworthy of her, and for an instant his anger flamed. _He'd_ show her
+what kind of stuff the son of his old friend was made of! He'd make her
+repent bitterly, by letting her realize that, once in France, Jeb might
+be lost to her forever! It was a cruelty unlike the Colonel, but he was
+mad through and through. To touch Jeb's honor was akin to touching his
+own. So he joined in laughing with her, and exclaimed:
+
+"Jeb, your company will get the pick of it, for it's always the first
+boys over who draw the primest fighting--and you ought to be on the
+firing line by June! Think of that, sir! Why, it'll be another case of
+Kitchener's first hundred thousand--you'll get chewed up into little
+bits! Gad, but I envy you! Why, I'll bet a cooky there isn't a fellow in
+your company who comes out with both legs! It's an opportunity of a
+life time, sir!"
+
+Had Jeb not been quick enough to know that Marian was closely watching
+him, he might have cried aloud for the Colonel to be quiet. The old
+gentleman's enthusiastic words, in contrast to Jeb's earlier vision of
+gay uniforms, flashing bayonets, flags, soft smiles and dewy eyes, made
+the picture of actual war take on a thousand new horrors. He felt sick;
+the next instant he hated himself--but, above all other things, these
+people must never suspect him!
+
+In the midst of this depression, while he seemed to be standing on a
+slave-block, while critical eyes bored him for defects, he thought of
+somebody's prophecy that the war would be over by July. This was a very
+large straw for Jeb just then, so he grasped it eagerly, summoning
+another grin and saying with a tremendous effort to keep his voice
+steady:
+
+"I wouldn't ask for a greater picnic--if we get there in time! But some
+people think Germany's about done for!"
+
+"That's because Germany _wants_ us to think so." Mr. Strong, still
+looking out of the window, flung the words over his shoulder. "It's a
+crafty part of their scheme to bait us--Roger has opened my eyes to
+that!"
+
+"By gad," the Colonel exclaimed, immensely pleased by the editor's
+acknowledgment, "the war won't be over until the armies of William the
+Vile, the Prussian Outcast Emperor, are licked to a frazzle--and that's
+going to take five million of our men, a hundred billion of our dollars,
+and a damned sight longer than any year, or two years, or three years;
+you can bet your last nickel on it!"
+
+Marian gasped, and turned quickly away in order that he might not see
+her. She had not been as much affected by his words as by another look
+in Jeb's grinning, sickly face which made her want to run and hide--and
+cry. She, more than any of those present, could read his expressions
+like type in a book; yet in all justice to him she had never before seen
+an indication of cowardice and, impulsively loyal, desiring only to
+rescue him in time so that the Colonel might not find him out, she swung
+upon the old fellow's arm, saying gaily:
+
+"He's unhappy thinking he won't get a chance!--that's what's the
+matter, Uncle Roger!"
+
+But even this new and affectionate title of "Uncle Roger" did not at
+once penetrate the old gentleman's mind. His eyes, which had been fixed
+on Jeb with an expression of hopefulness, were now studiously looking at
+the floor. Rather hysterically, Marian caught the lapels of his coat and
+put her face directly in his range of vision, crying:
+
+"That's what it is!--I know it, Uncle Roger! Please understand me!"
+
+"Sure, that's what it is," Jeb shouted forcefully, seeing the brink upon
+which he had been standing, and making an heroic effort to act the part
+of a man. "Sure it is," he repeated, with even more emphasis. "I don't
+care how long the darned old war lasts!--it's only how short it might
+last, that gets my goat!"
+
+Marian was not deceived, but the Colonel, looking as though twenty years
+had been taken from his shoulders, swallowed it whole and struck the
+table sharply with his hand.
+
+"By gad!" he cried, in a voice of thunder. "I know it, lad; I know it!
+For a second--why, by gad, sir!"
+
+Mr. Strong turned from the window.
+
+"What's the matter, Roger?" he asked.
+
+Marian, seeing traces of tears upon his cheeks--and guessing well the
+reason--affectionately took his hand and pressed it to her lips. But her
+eyes were staring, somewhat fearfully, at the Colonel, who cleared his
+throat, looked at her steadily, and answered:
+
+"Nothing, Amos."
+
+"I--I'd better be going now," Jeb suggested, "for Aunt Sallie and Aunt
+Veemie will want to hear the news."
+
+"Tell them the town will be proud of you, my boy," Mr. Strong gave him a
+salute; and the Colonel, in his enthusiasm forgetting he had harbored a
+doubt of Jeb, shouted:
+
+"And tell 'em I wouldn't be surprised if some day we put up a monument
+to you! When a fellow charges through hails of bullets, each singing him
+a lullaby, he never knows what instant one will come 'chunk!' into his
+stomach! Gad, but it's a great game! I envy you, boy! And I'm going to
+teach you all I know, so you'll be the best prepared officer that ever
+stepped on foreign soil. You'll know how to lean low while charging,
+sir, to escape some of the fire--for a man can keep on going with a hole
+in his arm, or leg, or maybe his face, but protect your stomach, sir! A
+hole through it brings on nausea, and nine times out of ten you'll have
+to sit down. Officers don't sit down, sir, till they're knocked down for
+keeps!"
+
+Jeb had walked to the door, using all of his will power to shut out
+these words which had so nearly snapped the last thread of his waning
+courage. Thus far, he felt assured, no one in the room had suspected the
+turmoil that had well nigh driven him frantic. It was not cowardice, he
+told himself; merely a loss of self-control--for how could a chap remain
+calm while the old Colonel was shooting his stomach full of holes? His
+quick perception of situations made it clear that his exit now must
+remove whatever vestige of doubt there might have existed in the minds
+of those behind him, and, turning at the threshold, he laughed
+boisterously:
+
+"I'll remember everything, Colonel! You just teach me how to do it, and
+between us the Huns'll get all their hides can hold!" He slammed the
+door, and was gone.
+
+"I'd forgotten you were such a bloodthirsty old wildcat, Roger," Mr.
+Strong began to laugh.
+
+"You've had no cause to," the Colonel looked humorously across at him.
+"But my bark in this case was worse than my bite. I merely wanted to
+stir the young man's ardor so that he'll be the more keen for a smell of
+powder. Did you note his eyes sparkling, Amos?--did you, Marian?"
+
+Marian had not stirred during the Colonel's admonitions to Jeb. She had
+been sitting limply in her father's desk chair, looking at the targets
+which lay crumpled and forgotten beneath the table. Now she answered
+listlessly:
+
+"Yes, I noticed it."
+
+Her tone, as well as her attitude, caught the Colonel's attention and
+sobered him. He glanced toward Amos Strong, who had again turned to the
+window and, with hands crossed behind his back, was gazing down into the
+street; then whispered guardedly:
+
+"You mustn't jump at conclusions, my dear little girl. Jeb's the soul
+of honor, and of courage; he's just a mite unstrung, that's all--why
+shouldn't he be?"
+
+"Why do you think I'm jumping at conclusions?" she asked, smiling at
+him. "He ought to make a very fine soldier, and I'm sure he will."
+
+"He will, indeed," the old fellow patted her cheek. "And now let me beg
+of you, for your dear father's sake, to let the honor of Hillsdale rest
+with Jeb, and you stay home here with us!"
+
+"Oh, I couldn't stay home," she moved restlessly. "Don't put your plea
+on old daddy's account--it isn't fair! He has you, now," she added,
+trying to smile bravely. "Why, Uncle Roger, I was counting on you to
+support me!"
+
+"There, there! I will, I will! When do you want to start?"
+
+"To-day," she answered, again listlessly.
+
+"To-day?" he cried in astonishment. "Why, my dear child----"
+
+She sprang to her feet, fighting back tears, and faced him.
+
+"Certainly to-day," she said quickly. "Aren't men falling
+to-day?--suffering and crying for help to-day? Are the Germans going to
+stop firing until I get there?--or any of us can get there? Don't you
+see the sooner everyone gets busy the sooner it will be over?--and can't
+you see that I--I can't stay here a minute longer than is absolutely
+necessary?" She looked down again at the fallen targets, and a little
+shiver seemed to pass over her; then she crossed to her father, tiptoed
+behind him and put her arms around his neck. "Your promise, Daddy?" she
+asked, tenderly.
+
+He wheeled, almost savagely, and gathered her close to him, saying
+huskily:
+
+"Your daddy never went back on a promise, dear."
+
+"Damn those Hun outcasts!" the Colonel thundered, stamping from the room
+and banging the door after him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Jeb had stepped out upon the street with heavy feet. There was a dull
+weight at his heart; a sickening weariness permeated his entire body.
+The Colonel's words of warning to protect his stomach, the suggestion of
+bullets ploughing through it, caused him to stop and loosen his belt,
+which had begun to feel uncomfortable. He even ran his had over that
+part of his anatomy and found that it seemed actually to be tender.
+
+"What the hell's the matter with me?" he asked himself. "I'm no coward;
+there hasn't been a coward in my family since the Crusade. No, it's the
+Colonel's eternal cackling that's got my goat!"
+
+Heartened somewhat, he continued at a faster pace and soon turned
+through the side gate, thence across the porch into the Tumpson home.
+Miss Sallie's voice from upstairs greeted him.
+
+"Back safe, Jeb?"
+
+The tenderness of her inquiry, subtly--though
+unintentionally--suggesting that the manor lord had returned and
+therefore the womenfolk must haste with ministering, greatly restored
+his self-esteem. Again the sword began to lose its tarnish; again it
+flashed in his hand with zest; again in imagination his company stepped
+off with the precision of regulars!
+
+"War's declared," he shouted. "Colonel Hampton and Mr. Strong have
+patched up their fuss, and are going to recruit a company and make me
+captain. We'll be smashing the Germans inside a month!"
+
+He wondered at the strength with which these last words were spoken, and
+was on the point of repeating them because their sound had caressed his
+pride, when Miss Sallie gave a cry.
+
+"Sister Veemie," she called, "come with me quickly! War is declared, and
+our Jeb has been appointed to lead the soldiers! Oh, what shall become
+of us!"
+
+The last symptoms of trepidation lingering in his make-up now
+disappeared entirely, and it was a tall, proud, imperious officer who
+stood in the front hall waiting for the little ladies who, hand-in-hand,
+came timidly down. Without speaking, Miss Veemie crossed to where he
+stood. She did not seem to walk, but glide, so smooth and gentle was her
+movement and the flow of her wide, rather old-fashioned skirt. Tiptoeing
+and putting her arms around his neck, she simply whispered:
+
+"Jeb!"
+
+"Pshaw, Aunt Veemie," he said, feeling delightfully heroic, "it isn't
+anything to take on about. We're at war, and at it for keeps!--that's
+all there is to it! I've been honored with a captaincy, and we'll be in
+France before July Fourth, and in Berlin by Thanksgiving. Think of
+that!"
+
+Miss Sallie caught his sleeve.
+
+"Oh, Jeb," she cried, "if your dear father had lived to hear you speak
+thus spiritedly!"
+
+"We're so proud of you, dear," Miss Veemie whispered, her eyes gazing up
+at him through tears of adulation. "You'll try not to get hurt, won't
+you?" She admonished simply from force of habit.
+
+It might have been a war god who dined in their home that evening. He
+was seated in Jeb's place, and on either side of him sat a seamed though
+gentle handmaiden, missing no opportunity to load his plate with good
+things. Their faded cheeks were tinged with a glow that had not been
+there in many years, their eyes sparkled with an almost forgotten light,
+and the lace on their narrow-breasted bodices rose and fell with an
+agitation that required at times a delicate hand to still.
+
+The talk was of war, and Jeb handled the subject to his entire
+satisfaction. His highly strung mind drew pictures that more and more
+stirred their admiration--and horror. Working upon fragments of fact
+that from day to day had been printed in the _Eagle_, he built a
+structure of sacrifice and slaughter from which he alone arose supreme.
+It was a dramatic dissertation and contained red-blooded sentiments that
+would have done credit to a man who had actually played the giant game,
+swapped trick for trick with death, and won out by sheer luck.
+
+Curiously enough, he believed himself; he believed that his moment of
+weakness earlier in the day had now passed into the limbo of things
+never to be resurrected; he believed that his courage was absolute, that
+no terrors were great enough to shake it. The ancient Egyptians brought
+a skeleton to their feasts to remind them of death, but Jeb's apparent
+familiarity with carnage seemed to be giving him new life.
+
+A man may think he possesses a determined belief, yet unless he has
+energy and faith enough to test it he is harboring little more than a
+wish, a hope. If he is downright honest he will not permit himself to be
+deceived--but the trouble is that hopes which he wishes were beliefs,
+and wishes that he hopes will become beliefs, are blindfolds
+deliberately placed across his eyes to spare him an unrestricted vision
+of his naked soul. This is the most common type of cowardice in the
+world.
+
+The brave words Jeb uttered were most agreeable to his senses; they fed
+the hole that should have been filled with courage, and he therefore
+plunged onward into the realm of imageries until the little ladies felt
+that they had never really known their Jeb. Certain were they that his
+manliness had received a most inadequate appreciation.
+
+Dinner over, he left them for the quietude of the garden. Back and forth
+upon the path, bordered by wee budding tulips, he walked with springing
+steps. His gaze was in the laced branches overhead, a tangle that broke
+the calm flood of moonlight into silver patches and scattered them over
+the ground. Back and forth across these he strode--one moment in sharp
+outline, the next obscured--thinking, dreaming. He would not stop to
+hear the unspoken message of this place, whispering to him everywhere
+that the intricate mesh of branches represented Fear, through which the
+pulseless courage shed upon man from God is shattered. He would not see,
+in the tiny green tips pushing through the earth, that man's blooming
+into perfection is a slow process, dependent upon the cultivation of his
+soul. In this night of his greatest promise, he asked only to live with
+dreams.
+
+The soil surrounding Jeb's progress thus far in life had been prepared
+by his two adoring aunts with very much the same care they bestowed on
+their tulips. After he was put into their hands at the age of four,
+neither their time, nor thought, nor means were spared in forcing his
+development. But while Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie could intensify the
+development of a tulip, it might not be said that they knew anything
+about boys. To a critical eye--had it watched Jeb now walking this way
+and that as a restive animal--the fruit of their labor would without
+doubt have been pronounced satisfactory; yet only in a visual sense
+could he have been called animal. So far as concerned temperament he was
+merely a fretful peri locked up in a cage of flowers--for how in the
+name of all creation had it been possible for Miss Sallie and Miss
+Veemie, sole proprietresses of this male machine, to make him properly
+masculine!
+
+Within the dining-room there were no dreams. As he had passed out, the
+little ladies remained silent for several minutes. Slowly Miss Sallie
+raised her eyes and looked at her sister, then sharply exclaimed:
+
+"Don't be a fool, now, Veemie!"
+
+"I can't help it," the other choked. "It's an outrage for the Colonel to
+have selected Jeb to do all those horrid things! He's nothing but a
+boy!"
+
+Miss Sallie was seldom out of patience with her more tender sister, yet
+at this moment her love and her patriotism--by which is meant her heart
+and soul--were violently in conflict. Fearing lest the former might
+prevail, she replied with greater asperity:
+
+"Well, be a fool if you must, but for pity sake don't let Jeb see you!
+He's no boy any more; since this morning he's grown into a big, mature
+man!--just the kind we need to end this horrible war! As for Marian,
+she'll be glad enough to wait for him!"
+
+Miss Sallie appeared not to see her sister rise hurriedly and leave the
+room; but she waited, listening, until a door upstairs slammed, then
+called softly to their maid:
+
+"Be sure that Mr. Jeb's room is right!"
+
+With this nightly admonition she went on tiptoe to her own room and
+locked herself in. Until well nigh daylight a far-seeing God gazed
+tenderly into the upturned faces of two women whose souls writhed in an
+agony of pleading.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+When Jeb opened his eyes next morning, rather heavy after a scanty
+sleep, he did not at once remember the great change that had come into
+his life. He vaguely knew something had happened; then suddenly the
+captaincy loomed ahead, startling him as though it were an exploding
+bomb. There was nothing imaginary about this, and he lay awhile
+considering it.
+
+The same unpleasant weight crept over him; his heart beat rapidly, and
+his body seemed to be very hollow. Unceasing panoramas of heroism cast
+on his mental screen were one thing, but the military company in the
+broad daylight of cold, hard fact did not appeal to him at all.
+Embarking for a distant shore where men were torn by shells, where the
+ground was slippery with the blood of countless thousands, where a
+fellow's chances of getting back alive were, so he pictured it, one in a
+million, brought a distinct feeling of panic. He could see the air
+literally filled with bursting shrapnel, while red-hot bullets from
+machine-guns swept the earth as clean as a scythe goes through the
+ripening wheat. Man simply could not endure in a hell like that! It was
+utterly impossible!
+
+For a little while he gained a modicum of comfort by swearing at the
+Administration, the President, the Cabinet. What right had they to
+declare war, anyhow? Now, if we were going to fight Mexico!--or if the
+Germans tried to come over _here_!--well, that would be a different
+proposition!
+
+The usual tonic of his bath, a shave, fresh clothes and breakfast began
+to improve the situation, but he was still desperately depressed. The
+adoring solicitude of his aunts--more tender after their night of
+prayerful and palpitating concentration--helped but little.
+
+"Where are you going this morning, dear?" Miss Sallie, trying to seem
+natural, asked as he arose from the table. Miss Veemie repeated the
+question with a look, not trusting herself to speak.
+
+"Oh," he answered, with that indifference which is intended to imply
+the highest type of courage--but never does unless the courage is
+there!--"I suppose I ought to run downtown and see if the War Department
+has answered about our uniforms and rifles. Then I'll stop by for a game
+of tennis with Marian."
+
+Miss Veemie, still silent, closed her eyes as though shutting out a
+reality that her prayers had been unable to dissolve. Her sister became
+busy taking up and putting down into their same places the sideboard
+silver. Jeb felt an undeniable interest in the uniforms and rifles,
+looking forward to them very much as a condemned man might view a
+gallows. Nevertheless, after he had walked halfway to the _Eagle_
+office, the mood sufficiently passed for him to enter with a certain
+amount of _savoir faire_.
+
+The Colonel had been there since eight o'clock, properly ensconced
+behind a table especially placed for him. A ledger for recruits' names
+lay open, with pens and ink-pot ready. Mr. Strong had not yet come down;
+neither had a man thus far been recruited, although the _Eagle's_ story
+was setting Hillsdale aflame with patriotism.
+
+"Any news?" Jeb asked, shaking hands.
+
+"No, sir," the Colonel answered, leaning near the window to glance up at
+the courthouse clock. "But our telegrams have been received, and the War
+Department is doubtless busily packing the things at this moment. They
+ought to reach here to-morrow, without fail, if sent by express--as they
+will be sent, of course. In times of war, Jeb, materials have to move
+quickly, remember that! It was the secret of Stonewall Jackson's
+greatest strength--and of Napoleon's. They moved like meteors!"
+
+To-morrow! This brought the crisis so close that Jeb sat down and drew a
+long breath. The old gentleman watched him for a moment, then in a voice
+of tenderness asked:
+
+"Did you know that Marian leaves to-night? Her father is going with her
+as far as New York."
+
+"Leaves for where?" Jeb exclaimed, straightening up.
+
+"For France, of course! Where else would she be leaving for at a time
+like this? Her father burned the wires last night; although I know how
+each message burned more deeply into his heart! They leave here about
+midnight."
+
+Jeb remained silent, crushed by feelings of self-condemnation. How was
+it that she possessed the courage to go, and he did not! The Colonel,
+divining a different type of depression and wanting to cheer him up,
+cried good humoredly:
+
+"Here, sir! Before giving yourself over to moonings, just sign this
+page; then you'll belong to your government body and soul! Your name
+should be the first, anyhow!"
+
+He held out the pen, but Jeb did not appear to see it. Instead, he arose
+abruptly, saying:
+
+"I'll--I'll have to attend to something first," and he hurried out.
+
+"I'll sign it for you," the Colonel called; adding to himself, as he
+chuckled merrily: "Gone after Marian, the young cub!"
+
+But Jeb was after nothing but to escape that terrifying page which
+suddenly appeared to him as a chamber of horrors; he heard nothing now
+but the Colonel's promise to sign it by proxy, and an outraged voice
+within which called him to look upon the courage of a girl. They were
+driving him mad. He turned toward the open country, walking fast, but as
+one who walks in sleep. Many tried to stop him, to congratulate him on
+the good fortune of being a captain, but he rudely passed with scarcely
+a word. Some looked after him, and a few complained rather knowingly:
+
+"That's the trouble with militarism; it makes the officers so stuck up!"
+
+On and on he went, to the wood where he had killed imaginary Germans;
+and there, throwing himself on the ground, he began to fight another, a
+very much more real battle.
+
+In the meanwhile, long before the courthouse clock struck the hour of
+noon, the Colonel had filled many pages of his ledger. Marian and her
+father had come down, being afraid to leave each other during these last
+few hours they would have together. The Colonel had told of Jeb's brief
+visit, adding his own belief that the lad had gone out to the Strong
+residence; and Marian took a seat by the window, where she could watch
+the street and at the same time greet each recruit who entered to put
+his name down on the company roster.
+
+Despite the nearness of her departure, Mr. Strong and Colonel Hampton
+were almost joyous as they noted the happy, though firm, looks of
+determination radiating from the faces of men who came in streams to
+offer the best they had.
+
+The barber's assistant followed Hillsdale's most promising young lawyer;
+the driver of Hincky's grocery wagon reached the door simultaneously
+with the rising banker, and Mr. Strong felt a catch of pleasure at his
+throat when the financier, stepping aside and putting a hand on the
+driver's shoulder, said:
+
+"After you, old fellow!"
+
+An Italian bootblack from the hotel-stand looked in, asking shyly:
+
+"You tak'a me?"
+
+A woman in a faded dress brought her husky lad who twisted his hat with
+awkward fingers.
+
+"He ain't quite twenty-one," she said, in a low voice, "so I come to
+give consent. He wants to go, thank God!--an' I can git along."
+
+Colonel Hampton sprang up and embraced them both in one sweep of his
+long arms; and, when the woman cried a little, Marian soothed her with
+endearing words of praise.
+
+Hillsdale, one way or another, was responding to its country's need.
+During the day the recruiting list grew past the four-hundred mark--but,
+although Marian's eyes grew tired gazing down upon those who were coming
+and going in the street, nowhere did she get a glimpse of Jeb.
+
+There had been neither time nor thought of luncheon, and during a lull,
+about the middle of the afternoon, she arose wearily, saying:
+
+"I think I'll go home now, and pack."
+
+Both of the old gentlemen turned and looked at her mutely, their eyes
+expressive of pain; for in the excitement of recruiting they had
+temporarily forgotten the nearness of her leaving.
+
+"Don't be sad," she smiled, bending over her father. "You'll have me for
+several more days!" The Colonel, who for once forgot his gallantry and
+remained seated, she kissed upon the forehead, murmuring: "I won't say
+goodbye to you now, Uncle Roger, because I know you'll be down at the
+train to-night. But you'll promise me to take care of daddy, won't you?
+And Daddy," she turned, making a brave effort to laugh, "you promise to
+take care of Uncle Roger, too!"
+
+She realized that were either of them to attempt a word they would make
+a sorry showing, and this would throw her into a torrential storm of
+tears. Of all three in the editor's office, her shoulders carried the
+heaviest burden. Each of the men was losing but one whom he loved; she
+was losing two--and, besides these two, there was Jeb! Jeb, who had
+thought more of his targets than of her return!--Jeb, who had not signed
+the company roster, although over four hundred of Hillsdale's men had
+come in gladly! She patted the Colonel's head and threw a hurried kiss
+to her father, then was gone.
+
+"I've never been more proud of her," the Colonel said, beginning to
+cough; and there was a huskiness in the editor's throat as he replied:
+
+"I wish her dear mother could have lived to share our pride, Roger."
+
+When at sundown the Colonel, closing his ledger with a bang, announced
+the time was up, Mr. Strong took his arm and drew him gently from the
+chair.
+
+"I don't make a practice of this, Roger," he said, "but I think we're
+entitled to stop by the hotel for a small--er----"
+
+About this time a man, deep in a distant wood, turned wearily over on
+the ground. His hair was disordered, and there were signs of suffering
+in his face. A close observer would have noticed that his finger nails
+were dirty, not from personal untidyness but because, while in some
+mental anguish, they had been dug into the earth.
+
+As wearily as he had turned, he now arose, swaying slightly from his
+long prostrate position. Then he started cityward, at the same moment
+that Colonel Hampton and Mr. Strong were touching glasses, with an
+unspoken toast, to the health and safety of a girl who personified the
+fighting spirit of America.
+
+Long after Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie had retired that night Jeb sat in
+the garden, a prey to desperate thoughts. When, far across the
+undulating landscape, he heard the long, low whistle of an express that
+would stop at Hillsdale, he arose and went slowly, with hesitating
+steps, to the station. Mr. Strong and Marian and the Colonel were there
+when he came within the circle of light; and, to his surprise, they
+greeted him warmly--for he had feared this meeting, and would have been
+almost glad to avoid it. Within his own conscience he had been so
+pitilessly accused that it seemed as though every man and woman must
+accuse him, also.
+
+Through the silence of that midnight hour they stood, speaking
+nervously, oppressed by the torturing heaviness which accompanies such
+partings. With an effort Marian turned to him suddenly:
+
+"When will you be coming over, Jeb?"
+
+He was expecting this question; before leaving the garden he knew to a
+certainty that it would be asked, and now answered promptly:
+
+"I wish I were going with you to-night! But you're lucky in having had
+your training, while mine is still to come. You can look for me, though,
+just as soon as we can get the company in shape!"
+
+"By gad," the Colonel exclaimed.
+
+"Oh, Jeb," Marian leaned impulsively toward him, "you can't possibly
+know how happy that makes me!"
+
+The rails were beginning to hum, and a glaring headlight shot into view.
+It was but a matter of seconds then before the brake-shoes ground upon
+the metal wheels--another few seconds for hasty adieux--and the train
+was off again.
+
+Jeb and the Colonel watched the two red signal lights growing smaller,
+until shut out by a curve; but they continued to stand, listening to the
+rumble as it faded into the distance--into the dawn of a new world,
+where the souls of men were calling, and from which the souls of
+slackers stood back in fear!
+
+When the last faint sound had become lost, and the purity of the night
+was undisturbed, the two saddened men turned by mutual consent and
+walked slowly homeward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+Three days later Mr. Strong returned and took up his duties with stoic
+bravery. Marian had sailed with a unit happening to be in need of
+nurses, and by now, he told the Colonel, she must be far out upon the
+ocean. Each time the telegraph operator entered the anxious father's
+heart stood still--for there were nests of conscienceless submarines
+waiting for just such prey! But the cable came at last announcing:
+"Safe. Quickly front." It required no translation to know that she was
+doubtless at that moment speeding on her mission of mercy to the
+trenches. For an hour the two old men sat without speaking, moodily
+staring out of the window.
+
+No word came from Washington, other than a polite note from the
+Congressman which stated that books, such as he presumed the gentlemen
+wanted, were much in demand but would be sent if procurable. From the
+War Department--nothing!
+
+At the expiration of another week, however, the official envelope
+arrived. In warm terms its writer appreciated the patriotism of
+Hillsdale, but regretted that uniforms and rifles were not being issued
+just at present to organizations such as the gallant company in
+question. The Colonel had inserted that word "gallant" when reading this
+at a meeting called for the purpose, assuaging his conscience with the
+excuse of civic necessity. He pointed out, also, that the equipment was
+tentatively promised--if one chose to interpret the letter in this way;
+and, of course, everyone did so choose. Then came another wait through
+which the Colonel and Mr. Strong grew more and more depressed. For hours
+they would sit in semi-silence, intermittently exchanging thoughts of
+Marian and Jeb.
+
+Since Jeb's name had been entered on the roster book he felt chained to
+a slowly gnawing torture, for any train might bring over an army man to
+administer the oaths of allegiance, and there would then be no escape.
+But as weeks passed and nothing happened he began to breathe more
+hopefully. The depression, born of fear, was wearing off, while the
+self-satisfied conceit slunk back into its former place. It would have
+been safe to say that Jeb was close to normal.
+
+This respite, however, took a precipitate tumble one morning when he
+received word to come at once to the office. As he entered, Mr. Strong
+and the Colonel looked up with serious faces.
+
+"There isn't any bad news from Marian?" he asked, breathlessly.
+
+They shook their heads. But he saw that something serious had happened,
+and guessed in a flash that the dreaded time was at hand! With a rush
+all the old fear surged back to torture him.
+
+"Jeb," the editor said, pointing to a chair, "we've decided your best
+chance lies in the Reserve Officers' Corps. If you're ready now, we'll
+help you make out the papers and see that you get properly fixed up."
+
+"Chance of a lifetime, Jeb," the Colonel enthusiastically cried.
+"Training, commission, fighting with the first contingent that goes
+over! I congratulate you, sir!"
+
+"But--but what about the company?" he faltered, feeling the world wobble
+and reel.
+
+"Company the devil, sir! Amos and I don't believe the Department intends
+sending us the stuff! No, sir, they've doubtless settled on this other
+scheme."
+
+Only for a moment did Job hesitate, and then he arose supreme. His face
+was white, his eyes blazed as fire, his voice became pinched and high
+with emotion. Never, he declared, would he turn back from the duty
+toward which he had set his will! That duty was to his comrades in
+Hillsdale, who had paid him the high compliment of dedicating their
+lives to his leadership. Desert them now, when the first opportunity
+came for personal advancement, and he would be a traitor to all mankind!
+If, merely for the love of fighting, he could so far forget these
+confiding fellows, how could he ever look them in the eyes again!
+
+The truth of the matter was that Jeb worked himself into a frenzy of
+oratory which convinced in spite of logic. He was pleading desperately
+for Jeb, for Jeb's hide, for Jeb's life. Having no suspicion of this the
+two old gentlemen listened with rapture expressed in their moistening
+eyes, and when he concluded, out of breath but defiant, they sprang up
+and embraced him.
+
+"By gad, sir," the Colonel cried, "you made the shades of eloquence,
+from Webster to Demosthenes, sit up and cock their ears! Amos, when this
+war's over we'll run him for the senate, eh?"
+
+So the Officers' Reserve Corps was laid upon the shelf. Other men in
+Hillsdale applied for it; some were ordered to report at the training
+camp of their divisional area; but, for Jeb, the dark angel of torture
+had again passed by.
+
+At breakfast one morning, opening the _Eagle_, his blood congealed into
+fine particles of ice. His head whirled, his body became sick in every
+part. Leaving abruptly he went into the garden and there read, painfully
+read, the big headlines and their accompanying story.
+
+The draft! Drafting between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one--and
+he was twenty-six! He could not have been more in the center, in the
+very bull's-eye, of the age selection! With all his senses in a panic,
+his mind darted this way and that, seeking, as a trapped rat, some
+avenue of exit; but on every side, so far as years counted, he was
+equally hemmed in. A moment of fury took the place of fear, wherein he
+cursed and raved against a government, calling itself paternal, that
+would play fast and loose with its people's lives; but at last he fell
+into a dull brooding, tinged with physical and mental nausea.
+
+He was aroused by a voice, and looked up to behold the Colonel's head
+and shoulders above the picket fence. The old gentleman's face was grave
+and his well-known Stetson had been pulled lower to his eyes.
+
+"I thought I'd find you," he was saying. "Walk down to my office with
+me."
+
+Since the sixth of April, now almost two months passed, the Colonel had
+referred to the table in Mr. Strong's editorial sanctum as his office;
+not alone because it pleased him so to do, but equally because his
+friend would tolerate no other arrangement. Never having possessed an
+office of any kind, he felt that it added dignity to his declining
+years; and there, each morning, he would re-check the names on his
+recruiting ledger, besides writing suggestions--some very good
+suggestions--to the War Department. If the young Martian clerks, working
+like bees in that august building at Sixteenth and Pennsylvania Avenue,
+grew into the habit of unopening fat envelopes postmarked "Hillsdale"
+until the very last moment, they learned to do so after a manner of
+self-protection--but had the Colonel suspected this he would have gone
+forthwith and flourished his cane, not only over their heads, but over
+the heads of their heads, even unto the Mr. Secretary of War himself.
+
+"I'm unhappy about you, Jeb," he said, as they fell into stride.
+
+Jeb, having reached a state of mind wherein he expected at any moment to
+be called a coward, felt his body stiffen as if to receive a blow. He
+had become ashamed even to inquire for news of Marian, during these last
+few days, as the contrast of their characters was a thing he preferred
+keeping in the background. He now looked stolidly at the pavement, and
+asked:
+
+"What about?"--but the words were huskily inarticulate and he repeated
+them, this time in a louder voice: "What about?"
+
+"Oh, everything," the old gentleman answered. "Your splendid loyalty to
+the company that won't be formed has robbed you of a place in other
+branches of the service which by this time would have meant much to you,
+and I'm afraid now it's too late to recover the lost ground." He failed
+to notice that his young friend drew a breath of relief, or that he
+stepped out with greater confidence. "You might be training this minute,
+Jeb, were it not for my vain desire to put you quickly in a place of
+command! I am greatly distressed--greatly to be blamed!"
+
+"Please don't say that, sir," Jeb turned to him quickly, yet with more
+pleasure than solicitude in his voice. "There'll be a second camp, and I
+won't lose anything in the long run. Even if I never get to go at all,
+Colonel, I've the satisfaction of having tried--that is, I _will_ have
+tried; which, along with your kindness, is more than a compensation."
+
+He meant this. He saw an opportunity, moreover, to beat the draft by
+giving out ahead of time his determination to attend the second training
+camp. It had not before occurred to him, because he had been too
+mentally paralyzed to think clearly. Now a suspicion which once had
+flickered in his mind came back with renewed vigor: that a kind of Fate
+was watching his career. It had steered him safely past the home
+company, and later had steered through rapids that might easily have
+dashed him against the first training camp. At present it was pointing
+to a secret passage of escape from conscription. To-day, he figured
+rapidly, was the thirty-first of May; the second camp would not open
+until August the twenty-seventh. Oh, lots of things could happen in
+three months! Jeb had not felt quite so hopeful since the declaration of
+war, and launched a flow of pyrotechnical sentiments which warmed the
+Colonel's blood.
+
+This wordy recklessness continued while they turned into the _Eagle_
+building and ascended to the "office." Mr. Strong looked up smilingly as
+they entered, and the Colonel, standing with legs apart, pushed back his
+hat, exclaiming:
+
+"Amos, Jeb has in him, I declare, sir, the spirit of the old days! He'll
+make a record, sir, of which we'll be proud; and also make those
+wretched Huns take water or I don't know a soldier! Rather than feel
+depressed because our planning has thus far kept him away from the
+Colors, he's confidently and happily looking forward to the second
+training camp for officers, sir. Incidentally this will spare him the
+odium--the odium, sir--of being drafted like a common slacker!"
+
+"I'd die if I were drafted," Jeb put in. "I don't see how drafted men
+can face their own kind, much less the enemy!"
+
+"You're right," the Colonel thundered. "Such a system saps our manhood!
+I thank God, Amos, that in the old days men responded to the call
+without being driven like a herd of moral lepers!"
+
+"Not so fast, not so fast," Mr. Strong began to laugh at them. "In the
+old days, Roger, we owed our successes at arms to luck, rather than to a
+finely organized army. Washington couldn't have whipped the British
+without France; we couldn't have held our own with them again in 1812 if
+they hadn't been up to their ears in the Peninsular War, and unable to
+send anything like an equal force over here to engage us. It's the
+truth, Roger, and we lose nothing by admitting it! The Mexican War was a
+vastly superior power against a little one, and the same condition
+prevailed when we tackled Spain. Only once in our history did we find it
+necessary to draft, and that was when we fought an antagonist--I will
+not say an enemy--in every way our equal; that, Roger," he laid his hand
+on the Colonel's arm and spoke tenderly, "was when we fought you."
+
+The Colonel looked out of the window. His eyes blinked several times
+before he replied, in the same gentle voice:
+
+"By gad, Amos, you did have to draft then, didn't you!"
+
+"We did, and I'm frank to say we should have done so in every war before
+and after. It's the only fair way, and the only efficient way! But aside
+from what we should have done, today we're fighting neither Mexico nor
+Spain. We're fighting a blood-glutted monster whose breath is poisonous
+gas, whose touch is fever, whose thoughts are leprous. This is too
+serious an emergency to trust in the hands of a fallacious volunteer
+system! The Government, by which I mean ourselves, must look to its
+knitting with an alertness never before found necessary, or this time we
+perish. And I want to tell you, Roger, with all solemnity, that there
+may be a score of legitimate reasons why a young man should not
+volunteer, but none to caste dishonor on his endraftment. This nation
+merely says to its young fighting men, 'Step up, my sons!'--then, all
+who should fight, will; and those who should not, won't! There is no way
+more fair; there is no way more honorable! So do not re-utter your
+sentiments, either of you!"
+
+"I expect you're right," the Colonel murmured.
+
+"I know I am. And you'll realize it next Tuesday, Roger, when you see
+what fine types of young fellows come before you to be registered. I put
+you down as a registrar," he added, "because I am to be one, also."
+
+"Thank goodness I won't have to register," Jeb said contentedly. "I'm
+going to the second camp."
+
+"You'll have to register, all the same, Jeb," the editor turned to him.
+"All men in the age must do that."
+
+"But how about the second camp?"
+
+"There's some talk of taking no men in the second camp who are in the
+draft age. Youngsters like you are wanted for the rank and file."
+
+Mr. Strong turned to his desk and began opening mail, else he might have
+read Jeb's secret at a glance. The Colonel, blissfully ignorant, leaned
+over the ledger and began for the hundredth time to check off the
+extinct roster, saying with resignation:
+
+"That sounds reasonable, Amos; and, since there's no odium attached to a
+drafted man, it may be all the greater achievement in the long run when
+Jeb has worked himself up from the ranks. He'll be a better officer for
+it."
+
+"When is this registration?" Jeb tried to make his voice sound natural.
+
+"Next Tuesday," Mr. Strong answered over his shoulder. The Colonel was
+still preoccupied and did not look up. The next moment Jeb slipped out
+and turned, dizzily, into Main street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+For the remainder of that week Jeb was an ill man. He could neither eat
+nor sleep, but paced restlessly about the garden, sometimes going far
+into the country and coming home exhausted. He did not realize that his
+panic-stricken mind was showing signs of its agony, or that his aunts
+were becoming greatly alarmed. But Sunday morning Miss Sallie and Miss
+Veemie held a consultation and decided to call Doctor Purdy--a gruff,
+good-natured friend of the family, who not infrequently dropped in for a
+cup of tea. This time he found his patient in the garden and was soon
+walking arm in arm with him. Later he rejoined the ladies on the front
+porch.
+
+"Is it serious?" they asked, in a breath.
+
+"Um," he answered, pursing his lips and looking out across the lawn,
+"no."
+
+They did not suspect that Doctor Purdy was utterly in the dark about
+Jeb's ailment; nor that in a general way he had diagnosed it to be love
+or debt, judging solely from a very evident depression. Neither did the
+man of medicine guess how dangerously ill in mind his patient had
+become; for Jeb, in the darkest hours of these days, during which he was
+imminently faced with conscription--meaning to him a hell of hells in a
+foreign battlefield--had so worked himself into an hysteria that
+personal injury seemed the easiest and only solution to his suffering.
+Were he to shoot off his finger, for instance, he would not be drafted!
+He had read of this being done in other countries! Or, he might point
+the rifle at his foot--but that, perhaps, would be a needless sacrifice.
+
+He had thought it carefully out, and had been actually on the point of
+deciding when the old physician appeared. Then Doctor Purdy, reading in
+his eyes the very image of despair, left good suggestions as the best
+medicine he then knew to bolster him up. The consequence was that Jeb,
+instead of resorting to wounds, settled on a better plan: he would
+become more ill, grow worse and worse, so that by Tuesday the doctor
+might carry a certificate to the registration place exempting him from
+service. He brightened wonderfully after this; he really became a
+hopeful looking invalid for one who intended to flirt shamelessly with
+death. He almost laughed. His appetite returned, and it was a hard knock
+for him to take to his bed instead of sitting down at the sumptuous
+feast which he knew Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie had provided. But bed it
+must be, and no dinner.
+
+News of his illness had got abroad somewhat, and during the afternoon
+the Colonel and Mr. Strong called. When Miss Veemie, out of breath, came
+up to tell him this he expressed a feeble wish to see them, arranging
+himself deeper in the pillows and trying to remain calm.
+
+"Well, sir," said the Colonel jovially, "this is no place for a soldier!
+The time will come, doubtless, when we'll be dropping by to see you
+tucked in white sheets, but then you'll have a leg off, or half your
+head! You'll be a battle-scarred veteran, then!"
+
+The light was not strong enough for any of them to have seen the effect
+of this encouraging speech, but Jeb acquiesced feebly, adding a weak
+desire that the prophecy might come true. This sentiment, just at this
+time, did not escape the Colonel, who looked for the merest instant
+startled--then put an unworthy thought aside as the invalid concluded:
+
+"I'm awfully sorry I won't be out Tuesday to register."
+
+"Don't let that worry you, my boy," Mr. Strong leaned gently over and
+spoke to him. "The War Department has provided for those who happen to
+be ill, so you won't miss it; we promise to see to that, eh, Roger?"
+
+"He's in my district," the generous Colonel answered, "so I'll come by
+here first thing Tuesday morning and fill out his card. Why, it'll be a
+pleasure, Jeb!"
+
+Where was the good fairy, the kind Fate, now that had stood between him
+and this war horror! He felt limp and willing to lie still awhile; but
+as soon as the guests had left he sprang up and feverishly paced the
+floor.
+
+Had he possessed one chum, to whom he could pour out this agony and who
+in turn could have jolted him back into a normal perspective, Jeb might
+have faced the issue with coolness and even gladness, as millions of
+other fellows were doing. But he had started wrong, and the farther he
+stumbled down the wrong road the harder it was to struggle back. Each
+hour he had let himself be confronted with agonizing thoughts of pain
+and death--strangling in the cruel embrace of the one, or being drawn
+whimpering into the mysterious uncertainty of the other; vivid
+prospects, these, that drew him into a state of dumb hysteria. He
+loathed himself, he loathed everything about him, until the untoward
+tomorrows were nearly effaced by the self-torment of todays. To be
+caught between the two was an endless terror--since tomorrows are always
+tomorrows, and todays face us with every dawn. Trembling at the
+uncertainties ahead, he longed for that peace which is only found in the
+finalities of yesterdays. With anguished eyes he peered into the future,
+and wrung his hands impotently.
+
+When he heard Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie coming up to say goodnight, he
+slipped between the sheets and remained impassive while they fussed
+about, touching the pillow here or patting the coverlet there. At last,
+alone for the night, he crossed silently to the door and locked it; then
+drew a chair to the window and gazed moodily out into the trees, one of
+whose branches brushed the sill on which he leaned.
+
+There was an agitation in the leaves that seemed to whisper eerie things
+to him; they were stirred by some invisible emotion--by fear, he
+thought. To his mind all nature was trembling before the great human
+sacrifice about to be demanded of this fair land; and he imagined other
+trees, forests upon forests of them, vines, flowers, grasses--aye,
+mountains and gorges, even--being obsessed by this same dumb shivering.
+"The world is shivering," he whispered. He was shivering! How long, he
+wondered, must it be before this quietly shivering world would burst
+into a raging frenzy, as these trees within touch of him had been
+whipped by storms of unbridled passion! He recalled a storm in the
+previous summer, when green leaves torn from their stems were driven
+before the hurricane and plastered on these very window panes above his
+head. He likened it to a man-made fury, wherein pieces of human body
+would be blown about with the same unrelenting indifference.
+
+By eight o'clock next morning Jeb was on his way downtown. Although his
+face was white and somewhat drawn, the illness had disappeared; he had
+eaten a man's size breakfast and declared himself to be fit. The shivers
+that earlier made a playground of his frame were quiet; their elements
+were present, but scattered by a resolution that was now driving him
+onward--and well nigh driving him mad!
+
+Turning into the _Eagle_ building he walked stolidly to the editor's
+room and entered. As he had hoped, Mr. Strong was not there, and only
+the Colonel arose, crying with outstretched hands:
+
+"A soldier's recovery, on my word, sir! Jeb, you rebound like a rubber
+ball--I'm proud of you!"
+
+"You mustn't be proud of me," he replied slowly, not looking into the
+honest face that smiled at him. "I am not fit to be proud of."
+
+The words might have been taken for extreme modesty, but the tone fell
+unpleasantly on the Colonel's ears. He recognized, or thought he
+recognized, something that had its root in this young man before him;
+not merely an expression of the moment. For an instant his keen eyes
+bored into the averted face, causing Jeb to look up rather defiantly.
+
+"Colonel," he said jerkily, "tomorrow is draft day. I'm afraid of it;
+I'm a--a----" then it burst in a tone of desperation, "--a coward, sir!"
+
+The office was perfectly still for nearly a minute, during which the
+Colonel's scrutinizing gaze never faltered. He would have been vacuous
+indeed to ask if this thing were a joke, for Jeb's whole attitude
+condemned him. But the old gentleman was not the type who easily
+surrendered the honor of his friends, and when he spoke his words came
+haltingly, as though he were weighing this damning statement against all
+that had formerly been good; he was unwilling to pronounce a verdict on
+the bare face value of such an accusation without throwing into the
+balance, not only Jeb's character since boyhood, but the affectionate
+memory of his father.
+
+"It takes a brave man to say that, Jeb, and you've certainly shown no
+cowardice thus far. I prefer to think that you are mistaking a new
+situation, a strange sensation, for this more unworthy thing--I won't
+name it, sir!"
+
+Whatever the hope to which Colonel Hampton clung, he could no longer
+doubt Jeb's earnestness nor his sanity. He saw that this son of his dead
+friend was speaking a horrible truth which he, himself, could not
+possibly understand. And then he seemed suddenly to have aged, to have
+grown old in a moment.
+
+Sometimes an autumn will progress far while still holding the bounteous
+greens of summer; the skies will have tempered their chill to trees and
+grass, and even scattered wild flowers will retain their bloom. But, one
+night, something taps upon the window pane. Faster, faster, like
+metallic clicks of a speeding-up machine, the sleet rattles for a little
+while, and lo! where are the leaves, the flowers, of yesterday! Thus did
+the Colonel age at this quick approach of blighting cold which the
+optimism of his nature was impotent to withstand. Yet he was still
+unwilling to give up the fight. Jeb was afraid, not a coward! There lay
+a vast difference between these, and he said hopefully:
+
+"Get this in your mind, Jeb: bravery is the absence of fear, but courage
+is the ability to overcome fear! It's no disgrace to be afraid; it's
+only a disgrace to be a slave to fear. The man who possesses one pound
+of fear and two pounds of courage, is a lion; reverse this order and you
+have--that other thing, which I won't believe you are! Why, boy, I
+remember my first experience well! My regiment was behind a hill,
+waiting the word that would send us charging into action--and a red-hot
+fight they said it would be, too! I was leaning on my rifle in the most
+nonchalant attitude of indifference, but the truth was that if it hadn't
+been for that prop my knees would have crumpled up. You're the first man
+I ever told this to, and I wouldn't now unless I thought it would help
+you. That was the most unhappy moment in my life; but, like all
+troubles, it appeared to be much greater at a distance. Once in action I
+had a rattling good time and hated like the devil to quit; and you'll be
+the same way--I know you will. I'll go a step further with your case--as
+also mine--and assert that the man who doesn't know fear is an utter
+stranger to the extreme delights of courage--for courage is a delight to
+the very soul after it takes possession. The trouble is, you've been
+thinking too much; you've been picturing foreign things in a foreign
+land, and your vision is distorted. Go to it, lad, and you'll be the
+same game rooster your daddy was before you!"
+
+The Colonel finished with a burst of enthusiasm that was genuine until
+he saw the face of his staring listener. Then his jaws set and the
+appearance of age again crept slowly back. He turned away and began
+drumming on the table with his pencil.
+
+"I suppose it can't be helped," he said, tremulously, after a death-like
+silence wherein the breathing of each was distinctly audible. "I suppose
+it's in one's make-up," he continued, as though pleading with an
+invisible accuser who was sitting there in judgment upon the son of his
+old friend. "It's probably like an ear for music, an eye for color, an
+aptitude for this or that pursuit in life--just stuck in, you know,
+without apparent cause; and so with the stuff that makes soldiers."
+Then, turning in a sudden fury, he thundered: "But the hell of it is,
+that every born male baby should be then and there a born soldier, else
+nature has blundered in making it a male!--for a boy-child that comes
+into the world without that divine element which later would make it
+joyfully die for its country, ought to be a girl-child! I'm not sure
+that it ought to be anything at all, judging from the nobility our
+girls, our women, have always shown when their country bleeds! There's
+Marian Strong, possessed with the courage of a lion--yes, sir, a lion! I
+don't understand you; I don't understand anything--I'm damned if I
+do!--not anything at all!"
+
+Again, except for the drumming pencil, the same sickening stillness
+filled the room. When Mr. Strong was heard outside talking to a member
+of his staff, the old soldier and the young slacker looked at each other
+quickly, almost guiltily, as if they had nearly been surprised in a
+crime. To their relief he turned and descended the stairs, but the
+Colonel tilted his chair until he could see the courthouse clock, saying
+drily:
+
+"He'll be back in a few minutes. The draft registration is tomorrow.
+What are we going to do?"
+
+Jeb felt as though his body were a sponge that had absorbed all the
+sickening heaviness extant throughout the world. There was a strong
+tugging within that demanded of him to cry aloud his intention to
+enlist, but another personality whimpered desperately, "I can't--I
+can't!" His own face now was drawn as the Colonel's had been; his eyes
+seemed filmy, and when he spoke his voice was lifeless.
+
+"I know it is," he said.
+
+It did not escape the Colonel that Jeb had replied directly to the thing
+which most concerned him. The draft was his evil fetish; second in
+importance came the question of what he should do, or whether Mr. Strong
+might return and be a witness to his disgrace--yet the Colonel even now
+was unwilling to call it this. Applied to any one else--yes! Treating
+with any one else he would doubtless have ordered him from the office.
+But this was the son of his old friend; the boy he had watched with
+pride, lo! these twenty-six years. One cannot in the batting of an eye
+shake off an affection so deeply grounded!
+
+"Well, sir, I know it, too," he suddenly exclaimed. "I ask you what we
+are going to do!"
+
+"I--I wish I knew," Jeb answered desperately. "I--I want to do
+something----"
+
+"You've _got_ to do something," the interruption came with
+uncompromising sternness.
+
+The door opened and Mr. Strong entered.
+
+"Hullo," he cried, with a brevity characteristic of him when hurried.
+"Would have been here sooner, but that plagued unit had to be got
+fixed."
+
+"What unit are you talking about, Amos?" the Colonel asked, glad and
+sorry for the interruption.
+
+The editor seated himself and began to run a thin steel paper knife
+through one after another of several unopened letters.
+
+"Barrow's," he answered, without turning around. "Barrow's hospital
+unit--leaves some time tonight; and Wade, the man listed to go from
+here, dropped a packing box on his foot. Barrow 'phoned me last night,
+and I've been looking for a suitable man all morning."
+
+Nearly everyone in Hillsdale had heard that the great Barrow was heading
+a hospital unit, and the editor's nearest friends knew that he had been
+honored with permission to select one man from his own town. Now this
+man had come to grief! The Colonel looked across at Jeb. He saw at once
+a miraculous opportunity, and whispered:
+
+"Helping about a hospital is a fine work, Jeb. Of course, it isn't like
+being with the Colors, but it means service--a very noble service!"
+
+Jeb's mind had sprung farther ahead than the nobility of service. It saw
+a place of comparative safety, far from the range of shells; there would
+be no charging over parapets, no bullets would come ploughing through
+his stomach, no shrapnel would tear shreds from his face! He thought
+much of that face. He could actually be in France and come home a hero!
+Besides all these considerations, he would escape the draft!
+
+The Colonel, watching closely, read each argument, each emotion. For a
+moment his own fearless, honest eyes drew to shiny points and his lips,
+had he not controlled them, would have curled in disgust. But he could
+not quite forget that Jeb was the son of his old friend; aye, and his
+own friend. As there had been two personalities in Jeb, tugging for and
+against enlistment, so were there two beings in the Colonel's soul
+condemning and pleading for this weakling Hercules. He now turned
+anxiously to the editor, asking:
+
+"You haven't found anyone, have you, Amos?"
+
+"Eh? No, Roger, I haven't. Our boys, who are not already pledged to the
+Colors, prefer taking their turn with the draft."
+
+"Then wire Barrow quickly that Jeb takes Wade's place!"
+
+Mr. Strong swung about in his chair.
+
+"Jeb? Does Jeb want _that_ branch of service?"
+
+"He's crazy for it, Amos! He wants anything that'll get him to France as
+speedily as possible."
+
+The Colonel tried manfully, for the love of old associations, to look
+without flinching into the eyes of Amos Strong. He felt that Jeb should
+have told this lie--not, perhaps, an out and out lie, for Jeb did truly
+want any service wherein he would escape the draft and gun-fire; but it
+was a lie, nevertheless, and the Colonel's cheeks burned hotly.
+
+"Well, I'm----!" Mr. Strong did not say it--not that he wouldn't have!
+He turned, wrote a hurried direction and rang for his stenographer;
+then, as she retired, he wheeled back again with a cordial smile.
+
+"You've greatly surprised me, Jeb--that is, I'm delighted with your
+resolution. I've a blank somewhere," he now began fumbling over the
+littered desk, "and we'll make it out at once; just a form, you
+know--all units have 'em in one style or another! Now: Name? ----
+Residence? ---- Age? ----"
+
+It was soon done and passed over for Jeb's signature which was attached
+with a firm, confident hand. Mr. Strong wrote awhile further, and looked
+up, saying:
+
+"It may be slightly irregular, but the time is so short we can't help
+ourselves; so I've vouched for your physical condition. I've also waived
+indemnity in case you're killed, since, of course, thus far in life
+you've contributed nothing to the support of your aunts."
+
+This mention of being killed, put down in regular form, drove the color
+from Jeb's cheeks; but it seemed absurd to him and the next moment he
+laughed, saying:
+
+"I don't suppose there's one chance in a thousand of that, way back in a
+hospital!"
+
+The desk telephone rang and Mr. Strong took up the receiver, thus
+checking his reply.
+
+"Yes, Barrow, I called you. I've a man for Wade's place. Still room?
+Good! Jeb Tumpson--known him all his life! J-E-B, yes, Jeb. Not time to
+mail it?--wait!" He reached for the application and began to read it
+slowly, sometimes repeating so the listener could take it correctly
+down. "When shall he report, Barrow? Good! He'll be uniformed there?
+Splendid! Don't forget, if you should see my daughter! Well, goodbye and
+good luck, Barrow; yours is a noble work, and God husband you!"
+
+"Amen," the Colonel whispered.
+
+Mr. Strong, hanging up the receiver, swung about enthusiastically.
+
+"Jeb," he cried, "hustle! Barrow says bring only a suitcase and toilet
+articles; report to his hospital as soon as your train lands you, and be
+fitted out. I'll mail this original application to the proper place with
+a notation that you've left. You'll take the fast express this
+afternoon, reach him about nine-thirty, and sail some time after
+midnight. That's moving some!" he slapped his thigh. "Now hurry home and
+tell the little aunts. Roger and I will have money at the train for you.
+Oh, by the way," he arose and followed Jeb who was about to pass out, "I
+wouldn't let on about dangers, understand? Just pretend there aren't
+any; for if those dear ladies knew you were going into a branch of
+service where the death toll is higher than any place else in the army,
+they'd be ill with worrying."
+
+Jeb leaned against the door-jamb and opened his lips wide for breath.
+His throat felt parched, his heart was beating like the roll-call on a
+drum. But Mr. Strong, moved greatly by the moment, laid a hand on his
+shoulder, adding:
+
+"I haven't said as much as I want; I'm not going to, either. You know I
+want to be proud of you, and I'll be watching for news with an interest
+akin to that which I feel for Marian. You're going away to play a mighty
+big game, boy, wherein Humanity is trumps and Patriotism, Righteousness
+and Service are the other three aces. Yet even if you hold all these,
+you may still lose unless you possess one more magic card: Self-respect.
+We all owe to our soul a certain measure of self-respect, Jeb. It is a
+gentleman's personal debt of honor to himself, demanding payment before
+every other obligation, and is satisfied only when we face each of
+life's crises with steel-tipped, crystal courage. Think of this often;
+carry it with you everywhere; it is the last and best thing I can give
+you. Now hustle!" he gave him an affectionate push. "We'll be at the
+depot waiting."
+
+Job went down the stairs in a storm of mental hysteria. His physical
+senses seemed to be numb, but the brain more than made up for this. It
+was writhing in an agony of fear, a chaos of racing tortures; yet in
+their midst one thing stood aloof with the firmness of rock. This was
+the belief--unassailable, absolute--that he could not by any human means
+turn from the direction his life was pointing. He felt this profoundly.
+His mind kicked and held back against it, but a great something was
+calmly impelling him on. He hated this inexorable force; he cursed it;
+for he did not realize that it was his own soul!
+
+The editor had followed him out, having duties elsewhere in the
+building, so the Colonel sat alone listening to their retreating steps.
+His fine head was erect, his hands were clasped and his arms thrust out
+before him on the table. Jeb's confession was burning into his brain as
+he reviewed every chapter of the boy's behavior since early April. Each
+of Jeb's procrastinations and evasions now stood out clearly, connoting
+but one thing, predicated on but one thing! Slowly the old gentleman's
+mustache began to move in a curious way; by degrees his face became
+convulsed; then, letting his head fall between the outstretched arms, he
+yielded to a great sob:
+
+"My God--a coward!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+Some time before daylight Jeb fell asleep. In the work and hustle of
+getting aboard and stowing supplies for his unit, of dodging a company
+of Canadians looking to their own embarkation, and of steering his
+course through half an army of sweating stevedores who were loading vast
+quantities of freight for the Allied army, he had not thought of
+himself. But he had felt the elation which comes to all who are
+cohesively striving for a single purpose that lies beyond dangerous, and
+as yet insurmountable, ground. He had responded to the _camaraderie_ of
+these Canadian chaps, and it had been good. Now he slept.
+
+The steamer that took his unit to France, and these few furloughed boys
+from Canada back to their regiment, was not large as steamers go, but it
+looked monstrous to Jeb. Had he been familiar with trans-Atlantic travel
+he would have missed the library, main saloon, smoking and
+writing-rooms, as these spaces which formerly belonged to the pleasure
+traveler were now converted into bunks. Bunks were everywhere--empty
+bunks for the most part on this trip, but ready for the great movement
+later on. Perhaps the next time over she might bring the American boys!
+
+When these lads from Canada, the doctors and the nurses (and the
+stretcher bearers, of which Jeb was one, although he had not yet
+discovered it) realized their transport was an old reconverted German
+tub, they would have cheered an irony so delightful had not orders been
+issued for complete silence. No one must know that this ship, secretly
+restored from the ravages of her former crew, entertained the slightest
+idea of sailing; not one of the swarm of spies in German pay, infesting
+New York and its environs, must suspect this midnight-to-dawn
+embarkation! So, while Jeb slept, tugs quietly warped her out, towed her
+in ghostlike fashion toward the Bay and turned her free. By daylight she
+was over the horizon.
+
+And no one suspected that before daylight one of the sweating
+stevedores, washed and smartly dressed, left his back-hall room in a
+Hoboken boarding house, crossed to New York and entered a telephone
+booth in a large hotel; thereupon calling an uptown number and telling a
+keen-eyed man who listened gratefully that his wife was out of danger
+and the doctor had left at two o'clock. Later that morning one of the
+commercial messages which loaded the telegraph wires sped to a merchant
+in Buenos Ayres asking quotations on 8,000 feet of 2-A grade mahogany
+veneer; and, half an hour later, the Swedish Legation there was telling
+Berlin that, upon this date, at 2 A. M., a steamer of 8,000 tons burden
+had cleared New York, destination France.
+
+When the bugles sounded reveille Jeb fell out with the others. This
+taste of the military was decidedly acceptable to him. He regretted that
+his unit did not fall in for mess, as the Canadian veterans, for
+instance. He regretted keenly his ignorance of army matters, the manual,
+even, and the habit that came with constant discipline of keeping
+oneself smart, straight, clear-eyed and ever courteous--as a good
+soldier is. There were several pretty nurses aboard--several who were
+not!--and for once his classic features found worthy rivals in the less
+handsome, though more perfectly conditioned, regulars.
+
+Jeb had not realized as yet that he was stepping into an age where
+Service counts above all other human assets; where the millionaire who
+sits smugly in his club is contemptible beside the twenty-five dollar a
+week man who puts his shoulder to the yoke. He had not seen this as yet,
+nor could he have believed that henceforth, as never before, the real
+men and real women of the world would be graded by the stamp of
+_sterling service_, as distinguished from, and higher than, sterling
+dollars. This great lesson he had yet to learn, as millions are learning
+and will continue to learn.
+
+There sometimes comes in the life of men an affinity for other men; when
+two from afar will be drawn together as old acquaintances. This is more
+usual when the sexes are crossed--at least, poets would have it so--but
+in all reaches of human habitation there are moments when a man will see
+another in a crowd and say to himself, "I'd like to meet that chap!"
+Thus it was with Jeb and Sergeant Tim Doreen, one-time citizen of Galway
+(the old sod), later American citizen, still later discharged with honor
+from a Canadian regiment because of a grievous wound. But wounds meant
+less to Tim than fighting and now, within six weeks, he was on his way
+back. "Not as I wouldn't love to go wid me Stars an' Stripes, lad," he
+carefully explained, "--for 'twould do me 'art good to slug the heathen
+Boche from under its majistic folds--but ye'll be some time gittin'
+ready over here, whilst the b'ys av me old rigiment is standin' at
+attintion waitin' fer me this minute!"
+
+He and Jeb possessed not one thing in common, yet each was endowed with
+something the other would have given his all to own. Jeb's face, for
+instance, was like a cameo, high-bred, delicate and intellectual; Tim's
+was scarred by shrapnel--although it had never been much of a face to
+start with! He had always wanted to be handsome, for he loved beauty
+extravagantly, be it in man or woman. Jeb, moreover, was tall,
+splendidly built, graceful; his hands were smooth, his fingers well
+groomed, he carried himself with the air of a gentleman. Tim was short,
+perhaps just within the army requirement; he was built like a pine knot,
+was smartly soldierly but lacked every other grace; his hands were what
+hands should be that had not shirked in the trenches. He could not have
+passed for a gentleman--or for what is the usually accepted term for
+that individual--with all the arts of Poole and the rest of Piccadilly
+thrown in; and Tim's highest ambition would have been to walk some
+evening into the Ritz-Carlton, Sheppards, Continental, or Plaza, "wid
+clothes enough an' manners enough to make them as eats there break their
+sweet necks wid lookin', an' strain their soft eyes wid admirin' av me!"
+
+Jeb could have done it, for he drew just such looks in places given over
+to social frivolities; so Tim liked Jeb, because Tim was generous and
+knew only a manly man's psychology. Little did he dream which of the two
+would attract the smiles of admiration, the tears of adulation, in the
+great field of human service! Just one thing he did possess, however,
+which Jeb would have given his world for, and that was courage. If ever
+man bore the mark of courage, 'twas Tim Doreen! Perhaps the widest
+breach between them might have been thus summed up: Jeb was well aware
+that Jeb was handsome; Tim had never given a thought to the fact that
+Tim was in the highest sense courageous.
+
+The duties of a sergeant are not all hammocks and cigarettes. He
+occupies an anomalous position of go-between for his captain and the
+men; he must swear here, praise there, appear to be hurt at other times.
+He must never miss anything, from a grumble beneath the breath to a
+blistered heel or a bad tooth. He must lay alongside the men, in a
+figurative sense, and get to know their souls; and get them to love him
+or to hate him--but never to think of him with indifference. If his
+captain is wise, he will listen to him patiently and follow his advice;
+for a good sergeant maketh a happy company, just as truly as a good
+housewife maketh a contented home.
+
+There were few duties aboard ship. The Canadians were already veterans,
+and their new captain who was taking them back allowed more loafing than
+usual. He believed in a generous breathing space before the sterner
+days to come--providing they kept themselves fit! Neither did Barrow
+care much how his unit employed its time, if all hands attended his
+lectures and first aid demonstrations; and so it came about that Tim and
+Jeb sat many hours together. It also followed that Tim saw in his new
+friend elements which puzzled him, for now, the sixth day out, he
+turned, saying quietly:
+
+"Lad, ye've been talkin' a lot about this Medical Corps job av yours,
+an' the risk ye're takin'; an' whin ye're not talkin', ye're wonderin'
+how soon we'll be blowed up be a submarine! W'ot ails ye now? W'ot's
+bitin' ye?"
+
+The irresistible caress of the Celtic tongue was in Tim's question, and
+Jeb, hesitating but a moment, impulsively leaned toward him.
+
+"Tim," he said, "I don't want you to think less of me, but the idea of
+being sunk out here in mid ocean, or being shot up in a battle, scares
+me stiff. I guess I'm a--a----"
+
+"Don't say it," the other checked him. "Don't be callin' yeself w'ot
+ye'd be knockin' the head off anither mon for sayin! I've suspected ye
+had a strong leanin' thot way, Jeb, but hadn't thought no less av ye,
+as I've seen manny a lad change from bad to good in the jumpin' av a
+cartridge clip."
+
+"But the worst of it is, Tim, that I came away to escape the draft; and
+now I see the draft was a cinch to what I've got into."
+
+"It _is_ not!" Tim vigorously replied. "I'd sooner have yer job twinty
+times! To begin wid, ye only had wan chanct in eight to be taken in the
+draft, but wid the doctors ye're _shure_ to see scrappin'! Thot's the
+way to look at it, lad!"
+
+"Oh, I know!--but I can't," Jeb muttered, despairingly. "Since Barrow
+told me I had to lug a stretcher I haven't eaten a meal a day, Tim. It
+isn't sea-sickness, either, for the ocean's like a mill pond; it's just
+knowing the Medical mortality is heavier than any branch of the
+service--heavier'n air fighting, even!"
+
+"Thot's right," Tim said thoughtfully. "Medical comes
+first--fifty-fifty, mind ye; thin the infantry, an' thin the air--or
+maybe 'tis the artillery; I forget now. But, anyway, thot's w'ot makes
+it worth a domn, can't ye see, lad? I own thot it don't strike me
+funny-bone, though. Whin I stand up for to be shot at, I want to do
+some shootin' meself; I don't want to have me hands glued to no
+stretcher, an' me heart bleedin' for the poor divil on it, an' let a lot
+of 'arf-fed outcasts plug me lights out! No, sor! Whin anny lunatic av a
+Hun pulls his trigger at Tim Doreen it arouses me timper, an' I'd be apt
+to drop me load an' go back an' take a swat at 'im; thin, like as not,
+the doctors 'd have me court-martialled!"
+
+"If you hadn't got blown up first," Jeb bitterly replied.
+
+"Now, don't ye go thinkin' 'bout bein' blowed up! 'Tis the worst kind av
+weed a soldier can smoke!--an' I'm sayin' 'tis been the trouble wid ye,
+Jeb; ye think too much! Transfer thim thoughts to how quick ye're goin'
+to blow up the inimies av yer country; thin yell wanst or twict like the
+ould divil hisself, an' ye'll be itchin' for a scrap so's ye can't
+sleep! Quit thinkin' thot rot 'bout bein' kilt--which ye can't control
+in anny case; an' begin thinkin' how ye'll kill a Hun--which ye _can_
+control! Thot's the creed, as good soldiers sees it!"
+
+"But hell, Tim," he said, with something like a whine, "I can't
+possibly shut out the dangers! They loom up like mountains."
+
+"Hell yer _own_ self," the sergeant turned on him. "Dangers as looks
+mountain high ain't no more'n a hill o' beans whin ye git ye're belly on
+'em! W'y, look!--me ould fayther, wanst, waked me in the night sayin' as
+a gang o' burglars was downstairs lootin' the family silver. Well, lad,
+bein' but half awake I believed 'im, an' the goose flesh growed out on
+me ar-rms so that--'tis the truth I'm tellin' ye--I plucked enough for a
+parlor duster! But whin I got downstairs investigatin', the gang was no
+more'n a loose shutter flappin' in the wind. The burglars was just a
+noise--d'ye git me? No danger, but a noise--an' w'ot's a noise? Ye see,
+Jeb, 'twas the wrong kind of thinkin'; an' the wrong kind of thinkin'
+breeds fear, an' fear shrinks up a man whilst it makes the inimy grow
+six inches. Put them six inches on yeself, say I, an' let the Boche
+shrink--which he'll do, too, whin he sees ye've the bigger courage!"
+
+It did not occur to Jeb that this man was doing his very utmost to
+inspire one spark of the lacking courage; he did not realize that Tim
+was thoughtfully picking his words, as carefully as though he were
+telling stories to a little child. Tim would not have been the crack
+sergeant that he was had Jeb suspected this!
+
+"I can see them shrinking now," Jeb said, with something like a sneer at
+Tim's assurance. "Why, everybody says they're the finest fighters on
+earth!"
+
+"Thin iverybody lies, an' 'tis Tim Doreen as says it! There ye go again
+wid a lot of domn fool thinkin' of w'ot ye got no cause to think. Wasn't
+I just after tellin' ye there ain't no worse dry-rot for a soldier? The
+Boche can put up as good a scrap as most, lad, whin they're bunched in a
+crowd, but take 'em mon for mon an' they ain't no fighters a-tall,
+a-tall. I ain't denyin' their officers is hep to the game--but thot's
+just w'ot proves me p'int: for do ye s'pose their fat-headed gineral
+staff'd be silly enough to march ar-rmy after ar-rmy jam up aginst our
+strong positions, bunched like a herd o' sheep, if they didn't know the
+men was too spineless to go into the fray like us, or the British, or
+the Frinch--which is to say, in open order an' like hell?"
+
+"I don't see how that'll get us anywhere," Jeb remarked.
+
+"'Twill get us _iverywhere_," Tim replied emphatically. "Didn't it get
+us as far as we've got, whin we were at our wur-rst, an' thim at their
+best? An' they was shure a rattlin' ar-rmy thot first year, make no
+mistake on thot, lad! There was fine steel in 'em, mind ye: the 2nd
+Bavarian Corps, now, which did me heart good to fight wid!--cruel,
+unprincipled outcasts, to be shure, an' wid no mercy nor respect for
+women--still, they was good fighters! But of late the b'ys tells me
+their whole ar-rmy's been so watered down wid inferior stuff thot ye'd
+not know it for the same; an' lest they're touchin' elbows an' absorbin'
+courage w'ot comes from bein' clost, they ain't w'ot ye'd call reliable,
+anny more. They can't stand the gaff as they wanst could! W'y, I was in
+at the takin' av wan av their artillery positions on the Somme, lad, an'
+may I be shot for a spy if we didn't find gunners chained to the wheels!
+Ye don't need no searchlight to find the answer av thot, do ye now?
+Their fightin' _machine_ is good, mind ye; but it ain't no more nor
+less'n a red sausage machine whin iverythin's considered! But as for
+the individual fightin' mon, w'y, he don't grow over there, a-tall,
+a-tall!"
+
+"That's all very well, Tim, but they kill a lot of our fellows, just the
+same!"
+
+"Shure, ivery now an' thin wan av the b'ys is sent west; but ye wouldn't
+have a war all wan-sided, would ye? 'Twould be no war if ye did."
+
+"It's all so horrible," Jeb shuddered. The mention of being "sent west"
+did not appeal to him since he had learned that it was the Tommy's way
+of saying that a man had been killed.
+
+"Now, thot's where ye're wrong, lad," Tim straightened up to reach in
+his breeches pockets for "the makings," but his hand came out empty and
+he continued: "There's plenty av fun goin' on, an' laughs, too. I mind
+me wan day whin the '75's was barkin' their throats out an' bein'
+answered by God knows w'ot mighty ingines av war. We'd been brought up
+clost an' was lookin' for a rush anny minute, so the men was jokin' for
+the most part--thot or cussin'; 'tis all the same whin a rigiment feels
+good! I was sint along to help the bombers adjust detonators an'
+straighten out pins, whin I come on a little cockney lad--timid like
+yeself, Jeb--holdin' a puddin' an' not knowin' w'ot to do wid it; so I
+says to 'im:
+
+"'Whin they git clost, now, pull out thot pin, count four, an' let her
+fly!'
+
+"''Ow let 'er fly?' he asks.
+
+"'W'y, chuck 'er, ye blighter!' says I.
+
+"'But 'ow farst must Hi count four?' he asks agin, lookin' worrit;
+'s'pose she goes hoff in me 'and?' he says.
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'if she goes hoff in ye 'and, sonny, ye may stop
+countin'.'
+
+"An', Jeb," the sergeant added, "he laughed so 'twas all he could do to
+keep from droppin' it; but he got the hang, so help me, an' did a man's
+work thot day!"
+
+"Oh, I couldn't do anything like that," Jeb cried despairingly. "I just
+couldn't! The whole idea is horrible! And look at their submarines, all
+around us everywhere!"
+
+"Well, _look_ at 'em! Where the divil d'ye see 'em! Has anny wan av 'em
+been comin' aboard for a nip av grog? There ye go thinkin' wrong again,
+Jeb; ye make me lose me timper! Haven't we been sailin' right along in a
+sea as smooth as a lass's cheek, now comin' sivin days? W'y, me b'y,
+even this ould tub's too fast for 'em!" Tim yawned and rolled over on
+the deck, where they had been sitting with their backs against a
+partition wall that, in former days of German ownership, had inclosed
+the "gesellschafthalle." He searched again through his pockets, and
+yawned once more, saying: "Shure, an' 'tis a long time gittin' back wid
+the b'ys! But don't ye worry over w'ot's ahead--wait till it comes clost
+enough for ye to grab it. Most ivery trouble, lad, dies 'asy whin ye git
+yer teeth in good, an' shake it wanst or twict! Give me a bit av the
+makin's, Jeb; I left me own below!"
+
+Jeb passed over his pouch and papers, then watched the sergeant roll a
+cigarette, light it, and give the match an outward flip. Taking a few
+deep inhalations he eyed Jeb back, and said thoughtfully:
+
+"Lad, I don't want ye to take this wrong, but I've a mind to be askin'
+if ye have less courage than a gir-rl--a _lady_ gir-rl, w'ot's been
+raised in silver an' gold an' soft pilleys! I want ye to keep thot in
+mind whilst I tell ye a story; 'tis a story av me own wound, whin I got
+me 'packet' for Blighty--an' av a nurse w'ot had jist come out from the
+States, an' av a Frinch doctor w'ot's the king av all men, so help me!
+'Twas 'im as brought me in off No Man's Land, where I was bleedin' me
+life away! He come right out through a rain av fire thot would have
+curled yer hair into little kinks av wire--for his stretcher bearers had
+been sore shot up thot day, an' he was doin' ivery kind av wur-rk at
+wanst. But, to git along: Whin I opened me eyes in the dressin' station
+dug-out I scarce knowed if I was alive or dead--so weak did I feel. He
+was standin' near, shakin' his head at a purty nurse, an' sayin': 'We
+got to lose 'im, for he's lost too much blood! If we had anny to
+transfuse,' he says, 'we'd pull 'im through, but thot's impossible,' he
+says, 'for me b'ys have bled too much a-ready,' he says."
+
+Tim took another inhalation, and slowly continued:
+
+"I was too weak to say me prayers--not thot I wasn't in need av thim!
+The nurse was lookin' up at 'im wid big, wonderin' eyes, an' her breast
+was heavin'. 'Will thot save 'im?' she asks. ''Tis the only thing,' he
+answers, sorrowful. 'Thin save 'im,' she says, rollin' up her sleeve;
+'here's the blood--save 'im, quick!'
+
+"Well, Jeb," Tim sighed, "I never see sich a look as come into thot
+doctor's face. He stared at her, thin shouted so's ye could a-heerd 'im
+a mile: 'I won't do it!' But still she stands her ground, an' says in a
+flash: 'Ye will, if ye do yer dooty!' 'But I need ye', he cries again;
+'I can't spare ye!' But she gives it to 'im strong, lad, an' says: 'A
+fightin' man is worth more'n a nurse jist now! Hurry, Doctor
+Bonsecours!'--for thot's his name, Jeb. 'But I need ye anither way, me
+darlin',' he pleads wid her--an' I hope to be shot for a spy if iver I
+see a holier look in a mon's face! She weakened a bit, an' her cheeks
+got r-rosy red, but she says up to him, brave as iver: 'Save this mon
+first, for all av France needs him!' Mind ye, lad, her sayin' thot all
+av France needed a beggar like me!--but 'twas because he hisself was
+Frinch, no doubt!"
+
+Tim wiped his sleeve across his eyes. He made no pretense at hiding the
+tears that sprang to them, for they were tokens of a deep and lasting
+gratitude, and he was not ashamed.
+
+"An' so they did it, right there, lad, for a little runt av an Irishman;
+an' the last thing I heerd her sayin', as she breathed in thot stuff--I
+can't for the life av me remember its name--was: 'Plase be shure to take
+enough, Doctor!'"
+
+Tim did not mention how he had joined what little voice he possessed
+with that of Bonsecours, pleading with her to make no such sacrifice;
+and then, finding this useless, threatening to kill the great surgeon if
+he so much as scratched her arm.
+
+"Thot's the way people fight an' live out there, lad. Mind ye, the
+blessed nurse hadn't known 'im more'n a week--maybe less; but it don't
+take long for men or women to see the kind av stuff as is in each ither,
+whin they're totterin' on the edge av No Man's Land! Annyway, I don't
+know as she iver give 'im the answer he wanted; but w'ot's more to the
+p'int av me story is this; thot she's nothin' but a blessed gir-rl, from
+a little town back home, mind ye, but I'd have ye know thot the gr-reat
+wur-rk Doctor Bonsecours has done is the talk av the Frinch ar-rmy--an'
+she's his right-hand liftenant. She's as tender as tears, lad, but as
+brave as a lion--an' in about the same job as yeself. She don't mind the
+shells a-tall, a-tall! D'ye git that, Jeb?"
+
+"What town did she come from?" Jeb asked, his eyes growing thoughtful.
+
+"Sure, an' I can't think av it!"
+
+"Was it----" He stopped abruptly, as a strange and curious sensation
+seized him. It seemed as though the deck suddenly heaved upward--very
+much like the feeling he would have if, sitting in a hammock, someone
+sat down beside him. Immediately following this came a terrific
+explosion, numbing in its intensity, and a wall of maddened water leaped
+past the rail for a hundred feet into the air. In a twinkling Tim
+dragged him through the door, as a shower of debris came down upon the
+place where they had been sitting. The huge smoke funnel crashed to the
+deck, scattering soot in all directions, then balanced an instant, and
+plunged into the sea.
+
+In the midst of this confusion, even before the funnel disappeared, Tim
+was bellowing a command. His captain, at his side, waited as the men
+poured up to them, then said drily:
+
+"Belts on the nurses; see that everyone's on deck, and belt yourselves!"
+
+Life belts were everywhere within easy reach and, as the men scattered,
+Tim stopped an instant to hand one of them to his captain, who smilingly
+took it but was later seen tying it on Dr. Barrow.
+
+The sergeant then dashed below, hurrying toward the staterooms to be
+sure that everyone got up to deck. In his reckless determination to make
+Jeb see this duty through, he had not let go of his sleeve.
+
+"Take the doors on thot side," he now yelled at him in a voice of
+thunder, "an' I'll take this! Smash 'em down where they're jammed, an'
+look clost iverywhere inside! Sometimes women faints!"
+
+With this he released his hold; but Jeb, trying to go on, could not--he
+could only cross his arms against the panels and press his head there to
+shut out the terror. When Tim, kicking in a door three staterooms away,
+saw this he made one spring back and landed his next kick on a spot that
+made Jeb flinch. This was followed by another, and still another, while
+a string of lurid oaths poured from his lips which burned like a lash of
+fire. Jeb sprang around, one fist drawn back to kill, his eyes
+glittering as points of iron; but the sergeant's eyes were as points of
+steel. The next moment Jeb had started on the work of rescue. Tim worked
+across from him--and smiled.
+
+When Tim had become satisfied that no one remained below, they began
+their retreat. By now the ship was listing to a degree which made it
+necessary for them to walk with one foot on the panelled wall, and to
+jump the cross halls. The stairs upward they negotiated with one foot on
+the balusters. At the landing above a number of life belts, having slid
+along the floor, lay piled in confusion against the wall; and before
+stepping out on deck Tim tied one of these on Jeb, then safeguarded
+himself, saying briefly:
+
+"Stay clost to me!"
+
+They found moving more difficult now, as the ship had not stopped
+listing. The deck leaned so precipitously that they had to grasp the
+hand-rail, and work themselves by this means slowly around to the upper
+side. Tim moved with the coolness of a veteran. Jeb scrambled with the
+energy of despair.
+
+There were plenty of boats at this upper rail, but to let them over was
+a difficult problem, since they must scrape down the ship's hull and
+risk being capsized or smashed. Those at the lower rail were entirely
+out of commission--splintered by the torpedo.
+
+Tim saluted the captain--the ship's captain, this time--and barked his
+report. He was ordered to boat No. 1. When he reached this position Jeb
+was close behind, terror still pictured on his face. In a fury the
+sergeant turned to him, crying:
+
+"Look at the courage av thim nurses, ye ---- ---- ----! Can't ye try to
+be a man? 'Ere, give a hand!" Another string of profanity rolling from
+his tongue was as potent as the kick had been, for Jeb, still gasping,
+fell to work.
+
+And then a cry went up! It came from the breasts of those who waited
+with limitless courage, and those who worked feverishly to save. It was
+the heartrending, bloodcurdling cry of people doomed--for the ship had
+begun to settle! Through his megaphone the captain yelled:
+
+"Jump! Jump! For the love of God, jump!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Jeb felt himself seized by the shoulder and torn from the davit to which
+he held. Confusedly he heard Tim yelling: "Swim off as far as ye can,
+lad!" and the next instant he was plunging downward, striking the ship's
+side and sliding, bounding off, turning, striking again and sliding,
+till he splashed into the water.
+
+When his head came up--providentially with its senses--the sergeant's
+command lingered and he set his face away, swimming with all his might.
+Once or twice he paused for breath, because it is hard work propelling a
+life belt through the water, but these rests were momentary; till,
+feeling himself safe from suction, he turned over on his back and
+floated. In this position he could see the ship, and was just in time to
+watch the last of its passengers leave the rail. These were Tim and a
+pretty nurse who had been too frightened at the dizzy height to take
+the leap until, tearing free her hold, he had lifted her in his arms and
+skidded down the side.
+
+There was no confusion now. The sea had never seemed more peaceful.
+Heads were bobbing merrily in the water, as though in for a pleasure
+swim; beyond them lay the steamer, abjectly motionless--looking like a
+monster which might have arisen from the deeps to bask upon the surface.
+Jeb was wondering if he should not yet swim back and try to climb
+aboard, when the great hulk swayed--gently at first, this way and that;
+then, as if tender hands were lowering it into a grave, it slowly began
+to sink.
+
+At this point the prevailing quiet was shattered by a hell of sounds.
+Had a score of nearby thunder storms been raging and a hundred frame
+houses ruthlessly been crushed between two great forces, their combined
+noises might have been compared to those issuing from the stricken
+vessel as she took her plunge--until the closing waters choked them into
+a kind of gurgling silence, as though a bellowing giant were being
+drowned instead of a thing of splintering wood and groaning steel.
+
+Dazed as Jeb was, he saw a mountain-high wave of seething foam rise from
+the grave and roar toward him with the speed of unchecked horses.
+Tossing like jack-straws on its crest were bunks, in part or whole,
+chairs, planking, and debris of all descriptions. As it drew near he
+took a deep breath and crossed his arms to protect his face. The next
+second it was atop of him.
+
+An eternity seemed to pass before he came up--an eternity during which
+he rolled over and over in a seething green wilderness. When, choked and
+coughing, he gained the surface he felt that it had been changed into
+another world. The former peace of waters scarcely disturbed by gentle
+waves whereon heads had bobbed in apparent merriment, the listed ship
+that had lain sleeping on the skyline, were gone; in their stead was a
+great waste of hissing bubbles which burst about his face and blinded
+him. The surface had become an ocean of hisses--as though the submarine,
+agent of that nation which generates hate, had by some wicked magic
+changed the water with its hatred, too! And in the midst of this
+confusion a chorus of three hundred passionate voices wailed their
+anguish to a passive God; for, while these human beings had been whole
+before, there were now many whom the sweeping wreckage had torn--some
+with fractured bones, some disembowled, some mercifully dead! Never
+could Jeb have dreamed a transition so horrible!
+
+Already scores of panic-stricken were climbing on an overturned boat,
+drifting off to the right. Another upturned boat floated at a greater
+distance, and Jeb saw the bobbing heads appear again, beginning to move
+as a flock of swimming ducks toward it. But many heads did not move at
+all, and he knew what their inertia meant. One of this kind floated
+close to him, and made him sick. He pushed it away, but it kept drifting
+back, seeming unwilling to leave him, till in desperation he untied the
+life belt tapes and let it sink. An hour earlier, had Jeb been told he
+could do this, he would have screamed denials.
+
+Presently a voice hailed him cheerily, and he beheld Tim, still holding
+the little nurse, balanced on a kind of box affair that floated almost
+flush with the water.
+
+"Come over, Jeb," the sergeant called. "Shure, an' there's room for wan
+more, an' 'tis cold ye'll be, I'm thinkin' afore we turn in tonight!"
+
+"He oughtn't to joke like that," Jeb thought, beginning now to shiver;
+for he had become tired, and swam the intervening distance painfully.
+
+"Easy, lad," Tim leaned to give him a hand, "for if ye don't look smart
+'tis off we go agin, an' 'twon't do the lass no good bein' colder'n she
+is! Did I hurt ye now, me darlin'?" he asked a moment later of the
+little nurse, who smiled back at him. Blood and water were trickling
+down her ashen face from a scalp wound; yet she was many times more
+fortunate than scores of other poor creatures near to them. There is an
+unparalleled ruthlessness in a sweeping wave of heavy debris, beneath
+which a human body can be ground to atoms.
+
+Jeb had no more than safely got astride the box--a tippy affair it
+was--when they were startled by someone blaspheming in a way that made
+their flesh creep. Even Tim blanched; for in the voice he recognized the
+timbre of insanity. He had seen this happen in the trenches, when men
+driven mad by concussion or gas or horrors ran amuck among their
+fellows. The one who now swam toward them was evidently a stoker--a
+powerful creature. His face was grimed with coal dirt, his eyes were
+red, and his blasphemies were interspersed with hilarity at the prospect
+of cutting their throats. When thirty yards off he stopped swimming,
+reached beneath the life belt and got out a knife--then, holding it
+conveniently between his teeth, came on.
+
+Jeb would have left the box and made a dash for the open sea had not Tim
+checked him by a firm command; for, with the little nurse wounded in his
+arms, the sergeant had but one recourse and he was man enough to take
+it.
+
+"Be smart now, Jeb," he said. "Reach thot broken oar, lad, lest it
+floats past ye! Now brace yeself, an' whin the poor divil gits clost,
+belt 'im wan on the head wid all yer might! Kill 'im the first crack!"
+
+"Kill him!" Jeb screamed in horror. "Kill him! Man, I can't!"
+
+"Ye fool, ye can an' ye will!" Tim's voice bit into him like a file.
+"D'ye want 'im up here slittin' the throats av us--an' this gir-rul to
+boot? He's looney, man! 'Tis 'im, or the three av us! Quick--str-rike!"
+
+Jeb felt his muscles turn to steel under this commanding voice. The
+piece of oar rose high above his head and, as the crazed stoker was
+about to lay hand upon the box, came down with all his strength.
+
+The little nurse clung tighter to the sergeant and buried her face in
+his tunic.
+
+"Dear Christ!" she whispered, shivering.
+
+The man floated slowly by, rising and falling easily with the waves. His
+face hung downward in the water, his arms were extended in the attitude
+of a benediction. After him trailed a narrow streak of red, growing
+wider though less bright as it mingled with the sea.
+
+"I wonder if the poor divil still has thot knife in his teeth," was
+Tim's observation, spoken from the depth of sorrow.
+
+Jeb held the broken oar out before him as a thing unclean, then opened
+his fingers and let it fall.
+
+Scarcely more than twenty minutes could have passed since the vessel
+sank, but she had been struck late in the afternoon and the sun now
+slanted perilously near the horizon. Tim and the little nurse looked at
+it thoughtfully, but neither spoke. Only a slight pressure of their arms
+suggested that each believed it would never rise for them--or, rising,
+would look upon a sea of floating dead. Jeb had not noticed the sun. His
+face was lowered close to the planking of their frail refuge. The ocean
+had again become a thing of peace and beauty--and silence. Those who
+were on upturned boats had realized the impotency of screaming, and
+merely clung with dogged tenacity; those who had been too much lacerated
+to reach these places of imperfect shelter, had yielded to the cradling
+waves and were now asleep. Thus the minutes dragged. Then the sergeant
+gave a cry of consternation.
+
+"Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot! May I be shot for a spy, if 'tain't
+the submarine!"
+
+Little more than a hundred yards away a monster was rising from the
+sea. Jeb looked up just as the conning tower emerged with water rushing
+off it like small Niagaras. Then, on a line of its submerged length, the
+ocean seemed to heave, pressed upward by the long gray hull that now
+broke through. It arose majestically, sleek as a bathing seal,
+reflecting the westering sun like wet granite. Almost at once the
+man-hatch in the conning tower opened, two sailors bobbed out and drew
+respectfully aside as an officer climbed leisurely to deck. He stood
+awhile twisting his mustache, gazing at the overturned boats with their
+desperate crews; for the partially submerged box nearer by, and its
+three human atoms, he had not yet noticed.
+
+At sight of him the sergeant's temper flared.
+
+"Look!" he cried. "Look, Jeb!--look, me darlin'!--see for wanst in yer
+lives a murderin' sore dressed in the livery av a rotten master!" As the
+officer turned in their direction Tim shook his fist at him, this time
+becoming the incarnation of rage. "Turn yer ugly mug away!--turn it
+away, I tell ye, from a sight too blessed for yer dirty eyes to see!--ye
+cholera germ!--ye fester!--ye--ye----Oh, me darlin'," he wailed to the
+little nurse, "if ye'd but go deaf a minute whilst I tell 'im what's in
+me 'art!" And in disappointment he held his thumb to his nose, by this
+most desperate sign trying to express the insults his tongue could not
+utter.
+
+Jeb was trembling.
+
+"Don't make him mad, Tim," he implored. "He might kill us!"
+
+"The dirty coward can only kill wan thing, an' thot's me body, but me
+soul'll go on cussin' 'im till the ind av doom." He shook his fist
+again, becoming more derisive: "Look at his head, now! If 'tain't the
+shape av a rotten pear may I be shot for a spy!--mind ye how it slopes
+up to a p'int, both fore-and-aft, and amidships; the fat-jowled swine!"
+
+The man had been regarding them stolidly. He may not have understood
+Tim's insults, but the gestures were unmistakable. Without taking away
+his stare he spoke a brief command to one of the sailors who ducked
+below, reappearing with a rifle.
+
+Tim grew at once thoughtful, but Jeb, cowering lower, began to hurl
+abuses at him. He had warned him, he cried; and now see what was going
+to happen!
+
+Without further ado the sailor took deliberate aim and fired; the little
+nurse flinched, shuddered, and relaxed. Tim looked down at her with
+widening, almost unbelieving, eyes; then raised his face to the sky and,
+like a wounded animal, emitted one long howl. All of the plucky
+sergeant's grief, fury, self-condemnation--aye, and love--were in that
+wail of agony.
+
+The sailor was aiming for another shot when Jeb's ears were filled with
+a weird, screeching noise; a violent jolt of air almost knocked him from
+the box, and a geyser of spray shot up ten feet from the submarine's
+bow. Before even the deep boom of the distant gun that had fired this
+projectile reached him, another screeching followed, another jolt of air
+struck him in the face, and this time, with a mighty roar, the undersea
+boat split almost in two.
+
+Had not the officer and two sailors been so intent upon a petty revenge
+they might have seen, coming at express speed between themselves and the
+sun, a British fast patrol; however, it is difficult at best to detect
+spots against so dazzling a light--and there is, besides, the working of
+an all-powerful justice to be reckoned with!
+
+The two sailors, standing between their commander and the explosion,
+crumpled up as if they were air bags pricked with a knife; but the
+officer did not fall. He staggered once, nearly losing his balance, and
+then looked stupidly at the great hole into which roared a revenging
+sea. His U-boat was sinking fast; though by no agency from within. Those
+below would forever remain below; they had made their own grave, and
+their casket would be the steel monster which typified the steel-clad
+hand of another monster--their master!
+
+But the officer did not think so loyally of his master when he found
+himself about to face a Higher King. The steel-clad hand had forsaken
+him; even the German God--the "made in Germany" one which German
+professors and German pastors were loud in proclaiming as distinct and
+more refined than the God who watches over England, France and
+America--had now forsaken him. He felt the same impulse to howl that
+Tim had felt, although love and self-condemnation were not a part of it;
+only hatred. The water had reached his feet; with one more look around
+he sprang outward and began to swim.
+
+"I've been prayin' for thot, me darlin'," Tim whispered. His arms
+relaxed from about the little dead nurse. With fingers of tenderness he
+untied the life belt tapes, then let her sink gently into the waves.
+"God bless ye, lass! 'Tis only today we met, but ye'll live wid Tim
+Doreen an' no ither till he's sent west to ye!" Leaning forward he
+watched her as she sank into the light green water, her hair streaming
+gracefully upward as though waving him goodbye, till the brightness of
+it was claimed by the darker green below. Then Tim became another man.
+
+"Which way is thot----" he bellowed, but he saw the pear-shaped head
+before Jeb could answer. With one gesture of fury he stripped off his
+own life belt, and yelled: "Now, ye murderer av women, wan av us is due
+in hell, an' 'tain't Tim Doreen, ayther, ye tub av slop!"
+
+He struck out powerfully, straight for the man he had sworn to kill,
+but in changing once from the overhand to side stroke he saw Jeb, white
+as a sheet, swimming directly behind. Without pausing, he asked:
+
+"W'ot the divil brings ye here?"
+
+"I owe him something, too," Jeb panted. "I'm coming."
+
+For an instant the sergeant forgot his oath, and a slow grin overspread
+his face.
+
+"Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot?" he said. "God bless ye, lad; but ye
+can help best by settin' on the box. 'Tis me own fight; do as I tell ye,
+now!"
+
+Jeb could not have described that fight, because he was too far off to
+see distinctly--and Tim never referred to it. But he saw the German,
+when Tim had come to within ten feet of him, turn and begin swimming
+frantically away. There was doubtless something in the sergeant's eyes
+that sapped the other's courage. Relentlessly Tim gained, each stroke
+bringing him a few inches nearer, till he seemed to crawl up on the
+officer's back. After that they might have been two splashing fish--till
+Tim began slowly to swim back.
+
+"God, Tim," Jeb cried, holding out a hand. "I wish you'd let me come!
+I--I believe I might have done it!"
+
+The sergeant drew himself on the tippy box, and panted:
+
+"Ye'll have a chance, lad whin ye see ither dastardly things thim
+outcasts do! No man can keep from fightin', Jeb! Shure, an' the Boches
+make their own wur-rst inimies!"
+
+He sat despondently, regaining his breath and blinking the water from
+his eyes, when something caught to a sleeve button on his tunic made him
+stare. It was a short piece of black-and-white striped ribbon--the Order
+of the Iron Cross--which the German had worn in a breast button-hole of
+his uniform.
+
+"Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot," he mused.
+
+Slowly he twisted off the button, and the ribbon with it, then leaned
+above the spot where the little nurse's hair had waved her last
+farewell, and let them sink.
+
+"'Tis me first dicoration, darlin'," he whispered; and it was not the
+ocean water now that blinded him.
+
+Just as the red sun dipped that night the patrol boat picked up the
+last piece of human wreckage, and dashed toward the coast of France.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Barrow's unit had suffered sorely, but its gaps were filled from other
+sources and fresh supplies received from home. Close upon the middle of
+August it moved to take the field. This delay had not been without
+advantages, perhaps the chief of which was a fluency in French that many
+of his men were able to acquire. It had also given Jeb an opportunity to
+acquire an entirely new viewpoint regarding the purposes of this war,
+which had not penetrated to Hillsdale.
+
+As the train now proceeded slowly, switching here and there to let other
+strings of cars pass toward the front with more important freight, Jeb
+felt that he was at last nearing the great adventure. His experience
+with the submarine left an indelible effect without producing anything
+like the result Tim would have desired. For Jeb had been involuntarily
+projected into that crisis before being given time to think; he had
+gone with the stream, not buoyed by courage but spurred by despair. Once
+tossed into the hideous vortex, he simply had to get out--which was
+vastly different from deliberately going into it with eyes ahead, as now
+when he approached the battle front! Nevertheless, the torture he faced
+upon the floating box, although unknown to him, left an impress for the
+good.
+
+As he sat uncomfortably drawn up on the seat of a third-class
+compartment he missed Tim, and wondered dully if the regiment, which
+that little son of Mars had said was waiting for him--at
+attention!--could now be in the thick of things. He pictured Tim chasing
+Germans with the same dogged nerve that he had chased and caught the
+murderer of the little nurse. As evening fell, battle scenes grew vivid
+in the twilit compartment, because he was thinking again! Whenever
+speeding trains passed, their approaching rumbles would make him start,
+and leave him sick in spirit; for each time he would at first mistake
+them for the growling of distant guns, and he dreaded the hour when
+these sounds would reach him. He despised the thought of guns, despised
+the military trains, despised the war, the blood and maiming;--he
+despised himself. He needed Tim!
+
+"Is there anything on your mind, old fellow?" one of the unit asked him
+kindly.
+
+"Oh, no," he forced himself to laugh. "Have a cigarette, won't you?"
+
+Early next morning, after an almost sleepless night, the unit
+disembarked at a village standing as a solitary outpost on the edge of a
+great unknown wilderness. Beyond this point the railroad, even
+civilization, had been paralyzed by the dragon that fed upon humanity.
+If Jeb expected the villagers to be out in force to greet Barrow's unit,
+he was disappointed; for, with the exception of a crippled man
+laboriously pushing a cart, a nun who with bowed head came from one
+doorway and hurried into another, and a bent old woman struggling to
+take down the night shutters from her shop window, the place might have
+been deserted. On the far side of his train, however, where he had not
+looked, a group of soldiers lounged about their wagons waiting to take
+these passengers of mercy forward; unshaven chaps they were, well
+meriting the nickname of _poilus_--"the hairy ones."
+
+Now that the train had stopped he could hear the far-off growling of
+guns; deep-voiced monsters which his imagination pictured straining on
+their leashes while snarling at each other across the space of
+miles--truly dogs of war! He drew farther back in the seat, dreading to
+get out; but the moment had come, the fellows and nurses were moving to
+the door, the great task was at hand! He tried, while standing, to
+simulate indifference, but his legs were weak and his teeth chattered,
+just a little, in spite of his effort to control himself. It seemed as
+if he were forever wanting to yawn, conscious of the heaviness upon his
+chest.
+
+With Dr. Barrow and a lieutenant on the first creaking wagon, the others
+followed, but there was no road. A morass was there, that formerly had
+been a road--a ditch sloshy with mud which, in some places, made it
+necessary for all hands to climb down and put their shoulders to the
+wheels.
+
+"It is trying, this traveling in limbers," the lieutenant smiled
+apologetically. "The incessant hauling up of shells from our bases
+destroys the best of roads in a few days. But what would you?" he
+shrugged, smiling again. "If the ammunition dumps are constantly
+depleted, they must be fed!"
+
+The far-off French artillery, in skillfully emplaced positions to right
+and left, seeming to enfilade on a point immediately ahead, was so
+vigorously directed that the German guns must have been dazed, since
+their counter-battery work sounded spasmodic and--so far as distance
+permitted Jeb to guess--never effective. Yet he was moving toward that
+tumult; as inexorably as death, he approached it. With eyes feeding upon
+this new world and ears startled by fierce rumblings, he felt as though
+he were living in a nightmare; and when the next minute threatened to
+snap his reason or strangle his frantically pounding heart, he turned to
+the driver, asking--but fearful of the answer:
+
+"Who's winning this battle?"
+
+It was spoken only in Hillsdale French, aided by a two months stop in
+Paris; but his poilu companion smiled brightly and replied in the
+average Paris English:
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, there is now for three days what you call _moment
+decalme_. Tomorrow, if no rain, _oui_!--perhaps a ver' fine battle!"
+
+Then this was a lull!--this cannonading, that to Jeb seemed reaching
+from skyline to skyline, was only a lull! Merciful God, he cried in his
+soul, what might a battle be like!
+
+By midday, after hours of frightful tugging, they were halfway on their
+journey, being well out on what two weeks ago was the battle field, but
+now presenting a picture of broadcast desolation. Shell craters, caused
+by heavier projectiles burrowing and bursting, pockmarked the ground
+like a telescopic photograph of the moon. Fields, so lately rich with
+waving grain, were blasted into subsidences and cavities, bisected by
+crumbled trenches before which the wreckage of barbed-wire
+entanglements--a fortnight since forming barriers so impregnable as to
+resemble from a distance walls of red rust--lay snarled and tied into a
+million knots by the ruthless lyddite fingers.
+
+It was a pastoral landscape distorted by the paralysis of suffering and
+death, and Jeb realized that not for many years would these tortured
+fields regain their tranquillity. Where were rises, now lay depressions;
+the loamy top soil was blown into dust and scattered to the winds, while
+sterile clay and pebbly strata had been boiled up from below to take its
+place. Mixed with this mass of unprofitable earth, strewn over its
+surface and buried for a depth of thirty feet, were thousands of tons of
+other wire, iron stakes, and wire stanchions; cartridge cases, rifles,
+and gas gongs; sand bags, iron scraps, and forge tools; steel helmets,
+spades, and telephones; pieces of uniforms, water pipes, pick axes, gas
+masks, binoculars, trench periscopes, blankets, surgical dressings,
+boots, aye, and human bones--all, all things which the plow shares of
+coming generations would be turning up to remind man (should man ever
+forget) that Humanity had once been outraged by a people who, although
+made in the imitation of Christ, preferred to assume the habits of
+beasts.
+
+"How, in the name of God," Jeb cried, "could any army stand before such
+a blasting as must have been here!"
+
+"Our army did, Monsieur," the driver said quietly. "It not only stood,
+but drove the Boche far back."
+
+"Well, I take off my hat to your army!"
+
+"The world does, also, Monsieur," his companion replied; although it was
+modestly spoken, without a hint of boastfulness. "We do not fight like
+the Boche, Monsieur," he added simply. "Their methods are more like a
+mob with a bad conscience; they fight more with a dread of being
+defeated than with the honesty of soldiers who have an honest cause."
+
+He then explained to Jeb that these fields, after all, represented
+merely the face to face struggle of man and man, and were therefore less
+sickening than the devastation they would see farther on, which stood as
+a monument to the enemy's vilest cupidity. This became apparent when
+they began to cross that stretch of country gloatingly described by
+German newspapers as "the empire of death"--meaning a territory seven or
+eight miles in width, extending over the entire front, which by order of
+"the High German Command" was converted absolutely into waste. Forced by
+the Allies to retreat, this "High German Command" conceived that, by
+leaving a barrier of desolation and cruelty so terrible, no army would
+be hardy enough, or have heart enough, to advance across it. Their
+system was complete, as the results now showed--although their
+calculations had gone wrong.
+
+"First, Monsieur," he said, "they began by robbing the American Relief
+Committee's supplies, immediately following their solemn pledge to
+permit this food to succor the starving peasantry; therefore those
+pitiable folk, already tragic human wrecks, continued to starve. Next
+they killed these peasants' cows to fill their own precious bellies, and
+then the little babies began, by slow starvation, to die. But the men,
+women, and boys old enough to till the soil, or work in German
+factories, were fed and sent away; the girls pretty enough to wait upon
+German officers--you know what that means, Monsieur--were dressed in
+stolen finery and, weeping, driven to their new positions--six hundred
+of them taken from within the space that you are looking on now,
+although we have learned that many succeeded in killing themselves. Only
+the helpless aged and the babes escaped these brutalities; for they,
+being useless, were left to the mercy of the vultures, unless salvaged
+by our army. Right on this ground we saved many such, Monsieur; _Mon
+Dieu!_ but how our army did weep over them!"
+
+Jeb had already seen enough to bring this recital well within the focus
+of truth, and as the wagons wound slowly forward he further saw to what
+depth of hatred and cold malice the mind of that "High Command"
+descended. Burned villages and hamlets might have been expected, as
+conflagrations spring from bursting shells, yet even his inexperienced
+eye detected a very sharp distinction between ruins wrought by military
+operations and the vandalism caused by unbridled, bestial passions. For
+nowhere upon this barren outlook had a house been left standing--all was
+a mass of tumbled brick and stone and clay and twisted timbers, licked
+by flames or crumbled by explosions scientifically placed by German
+engineers; nay, nor was there even a barn, nor an agricultural implement
+with which some palsied peasant woman might in time reclaim her land.
+Iron of plows, of harrows, of cultivators, lay in piles amidst the
+ashes of their frames; spokes of wagon and cart wheels had been hacked
+to splinters, and harness cut into useless bits. Wells had been fouled
+by chucking in their own dead, or stable refuse. In the orchards every
+tree stood girdled, the immature fruit wrinkled amidst withered leaves.
+Never again, unless French nurserymen sped here hastily to bridge from
+bark to bark, or graft onto the old stumps,--as they had elsewhere
+attempted with varying promise--would these slopes of arboriculture put
+forth buds; neither would the poplars, planes, mulberries, willows--all
+had been granted citizenship to this newly created German Empire, "the
+empire of death."
+
+"Where are those whom you did not salvage--I mean the girls? Are they
+still in the German lines?" Jeb asked.
+
+"Not if they have found a way to die," his comrade answered in a
+whisper. "The Belshazzar feast of those Prussian swine, Monsieur, is the
+Calvary of every maid who does not find a swifter way to God--but the
+debauched officers know that, and keep them closely guarded. Oh," he
+cried, "our hearts give thanks that your country is coming to help us
+avenge these things! All along we have said that if the American spirit
+of decency and fairness--so well known and loved by us--could but see
+even the little which you have seen, your armies would be pouring to our
+aid!--just as your wonderful nurses have come!"
+
+Jeb felt a rush of self-righteous anger that for the moment transcended
+his horror of going forward. While in Paris he had read official
+translations from the German press; now with his own eyes he was looking
+upon the things gloatingly described in the _Berliner Tageblatt_[1] when
+it told the people of Berlin: "The enemy's mouth must stay dry, his eyes
+turn in vain to the wells--they are buried in rubble. No four walls for
+him to settle down into; all levelled and burnt out, the villages turned
+into dumps of rubbish, churches and church towers laid out in ruins.
+Smouldering fires and smoke and stench; a rumble spreading from village
+to village--the mine charges still doing their final work, which leaves
+nothing more to do."
+
+[Footnote 1: _Berliner Tageblatt._ March 26, 1917.]
+
+It was a cry of false triumph that must have stirred the German
+soul to joy, because the very next day, he now remembered, the
+_Lokalanzeiger_[2] had boastfully added: "No village or farm was left
+standing, no road was left passable, no railroad track or embankment,
+nothing, nothing whatever, not a tub, not a bench for those who will
+succeed them in the abandoned places. _What they could not take with
+them they have burnt or smashed._ In front of our new positions runs an
+Empire of Death--a Death which lays the shrivelled hands of destruction
+upon _all the works of Man and all the bloom of Nature_." This, "by
+order of the High German Command."
+
+[Footnote 2: _Berlin Lokalanzeiger_, March 27, 1917.]
+
+It was the last word of Barbarity! But what the _Berliner Tageblatt_ and
+the _Lokalanzeiger_ did not tell their readers, Jeb now realized with a
+shudder, would have made a chapter of degeneracy and revolting crime
+unparalleled in history.
+
+Yet, even in the face of this, he turned sick at the thought of going
+forward to the certain annihilation awaiting him in that ghostly
+wilderness of mist and wet and wreckage ahead. On the other hand, how
+in God's name could he keep from going, he asked himself, when the blood
+of innocents was calling on every side! He felt again the "something
+strong within him which commanded";--but he hated it!
+
+Had Dr. Barrow been sufficiently skillful with the knife, he might have
+dissected out this better Jeb who insisted on going forward, and let the
+other crawl into a shell hole to hide for the rest of time; then both
+Jebs would have been supremely satisfied. But, being first and foremost
+a courageous man, he did not suspect that any one of his unit could
+possibly falter. Jeb knew this, and it made him feel all the more alone.
+
+They reached a rise in the rolling landscape and stopped to breathe
+their beasts which were shaking the heavy limbers by their desperate
+gasps for air. The ground sloped down and up again, and there, protected
+from the enemy, a new world came into view--a world wherein American,
+French and English engineers, commanding an army of construction, worked
+feverishly, as ants. For an instant the nobler Jeb prevailed, and he
+raised his eyes in a mute prayer of thankfulness for this trio of
+forces--the strongest combination the world has ever seen! The rumbling
+cannon ceased to jar his nerves, while he gazed wistfully at the low
+clouds sweeping by in companies that seemed to hasten from this theatre
+of wrath. Occasional gusts of white smoke burst into being just beneath
+them and hung a moment suspended before racing on; or a distant squirt
+of lace-like shrapnel, curving ever downward, came to see what went on
+behind the Allied lines.
+
+Beyond these gusts and squirts of man-made clouds, observation
+balloons--the "sausages" of the enemy--floated motionless above the
+horizon, sometimes catching a fleck of sunlight and glistening like dull
+silver. There were no German fliers in the air that day, but high above,
+as gray vultures hungrily soaring over one spot, two American, two
+British and four French airmen glided back and forth, in and out,
+circling, circling. With such grace and ease did they pirouette through
+their reconnaisance that Jeb was reminded of an aerial quadrille being
+danced five thousand feet above the earth; or, seeming to tire of this,
+one of them would change the play to hide-and-seek, point toward the
+translucent blue and scoot behind a cloud, with the others following. It
+was a cordial invitation for the Boche to come up and fight! Jeb did not
+see them again for several minutes, but he noticed that one of the kite
+balloons suddenly burst into a little puff of flame and disappeared.
+Unconsciously, he grinned.
+
+"_Sacre bleu!_" the _poilu_ cried delightedly. "More honor to our
+'75's'!"
+
+"I thought the planes did it!" Jeb turned in surprise.
+
+"Oh, no, Monsieur! That was done by one of our guns six miles away!"
+
+Below the pirouetting airmen there was no poetry of motion. Here men
+strained and panted and wiped grimy sweat from their eyes. A month ago
+this ground ahead had been vigorously contested--the very spot on which
+Jeb now stood had been well within the German lines.
+
+In the thoroughness with which the engineers were making fast their
+gains, a military observer would have read that not only would the
+Allied army draw the sting from this "empire of death," but that never
+again would this part of France be yielded to alien hands. As far as the
+eye could reach roads were being improved, others made; the buried
+railways were being excavated, metals straightened, or replaced if too
+far bent; shell-proof dug-outs were having their finishing touches, some
+to be used as dressing-stations for the wounded whom to-morrow might
+bring in, others for storing ammunition. In a nearby wood, where trees
+had been reduced to little more than gaunt trunks barren of leaf and
+twig, observation posts were built with many tons of branches hauled
+from the rear, and so artfully wired in place that the stricken giants
+seemed almost ready to live again. This work in itself constituted
+reason enough for the Allied airmen to sweep the sky of German
+observers, since only by "putting out the enemy's eye" could such
+secrets of camouflage be preserved. Wells were being bored by gas engine
+power and pipes laid, as spider webs, to bring untainted water to man
+and beast. Then, of course, shallow trenches had to be dug for
+telephone wires which otherwise would perish in the first onslaught of
+artillery fire.
+
+Among the trenches of greater magnitude, recently pounded to the point
+of obliteration, activities were being pressed at highest tension, for
+here the destruction had been particularly severe. The Germans had held
+them well, but no human agency could have prevailed against the
+unfaltering valor of the Allies. Now they were in Allied hands, and
+being prepared for Allied shelter. From sunken approaches to the
+assembly trenches, and from there forward through an intricate maze of
+communicating passages to the firing trench, tens of thousands of men
+were busy with pick and shovel--not, however, constructing the narrow,
+steep-sided affairs which proved so disastrous to the Germans on the
+Somme, but a shallower type of trench having more flare and a wider
+sole. Just behind them worked the plumbers and pipemen, the carpenters
+and timber placers, the electricians with their coils of wire and
+telephones; everything perfected with the greatest nicety today, which
+tomorrow--or the next, or next, tomorrow--would be buried for future
+plowshares. War could not be war unless it were the highest expression
+of construction and destruction, even as it raises life and death to the
+highest power of sublimity!
+
+Boring like huge worms from the front line outward, were tunnellers,
+biting into the earth with grim persistence to lay mines beneath the
+enemy; not that this work would be finished in time for tomorrow's
+action, wherein plans were already completed to press forward, but
+should the German positions prove firm enough to establish another
+temporary deadlock, then they would serve a purpose. By such forethought
+are battles won, when nothing is underestimated, nothing overlooked, no
+shade of opportunity neglected, and all chances accounted for.
+
+"I never dreamed it was so gigantic a game as this," Jeb gasped.
+
+"But there is much more, Monsieur," his companion smiled.
+
+"Does no one ever rest?" Jeb asked, in a voice of awe.
+
+"Oh, yes, Monsieur," the _poilu_ smiled again. "In places where the
+trenches have been cleared and mended, where telephone wires have been
+connected to instruments, where water pipes have been brought down and
+fauceted, flooring built across mucky places, gas gongs installed,
+ammunition, grenades and tinned food stored in the newly finished
+shell-proof chambers, you will find a few over-exhausted men sprawled
+out, sleeping."
+
+While Jeb could see nothing of this, the driver promised to get him into
+it soon enough--a suggestion that turned him away in search of other
+scenes and thoughts. Off to the right two lines of snags marked what had
+once been graceful poplars edging a famous _route national_, but
+now----! He glanced quickly backward along the direction from which he
+came. Here, at first, a brighter prospect met his eyes: the far-off
+rolling slopes were green, the far-off woods had not been stripped of
+leaves; but never could the grim story be quite wiped out for, across
+this verdant scene, as a long, thin reptile with a million legs, crawled
+an endless line of artillery and munition trains.
+
+"Can't I ever get away from it!" he cried to himself, shutting his eyes
+in agony.
+
+The horses had been rested and word came to proceed; the limbers creaked
+and moved. Jeb gripped the seat in terror, feeling now that before they
+got half way down the slope a German gunner would pick them out and
+touch the magic spring which reduces men--not symbolically but
+literally--to dust. Yet he breathed more freely and sent another prayer
+up for the engineers when almost at once they entered a sunken road,
+converging toward the enemy although keeping well out of sight. At
+places where the terrain did not admit of this shelter, or other roads
+went off at tangents, long strips of canvas were stretched across the
+openings, their outer sides being painted, in theatre scenery fashion,
+to represent the surrounding ground. If the Germans had only known that
+thousands of troops and thousands of tons of ammunition passed daily
+within easy range of their guns, protected by a wall of 10-ounce canvas!
+Another important reason for sweeping their planes from the sky!
+
+The _poilu_ called Jeb's attention to these ingenious devices of
+camouflage, seeming to think them a great joke.
+
+"But for the good God having made the Boche, Monsieur, I should call
+them asses with long ears for never estimating our _finesse_ and
+resource."
+
+"It wouldn't be disrespectful, Frenchie," one of the unit laughed,
+"because the good God made asses, too!"
+
+"Well, Monsieur, I feel there should be an apology somewhere! Perhaps it
+is to the four-footed asses."
+
+They climbed down at last and, each loaded with supplies, tramped
+through half a mile of communicating trenches to the protected
+dressing-stable dug-outs--roomy affairs, twenty feet below the surface
+and opening rearward into a kind of quadrangle. Five hundred yards ahead
+were the firing trenches, where things would happen; and the _poilu_,
+observing this, grimly remarked:
+
+"_Sacre bleu!_ They certainly have ordered you up to the very front,
+Monsieur! 'Tis not often the women are brought so close--but it means,
+Monsieur, that our Generals are positive of driving the Boche far back
+tomorrow!"
+
+The chief surgeon in charge here rushed to meet them with open arms,
+embracing Dr. Barrow warmly; and then Barrow stepped back to look at
+him, for this was the great Bonsecours! Georges Bonsecours! He saw a man
+of medium height, and of medium build, slightly gray about his temples,
+and in the neighborhood of forty years of age. No one of these things
+was particularly distinguishing, but when he spoke--ah, then the
+impelling magnetism which drew others close to him, the force which sent
+them flying off to various duties, was easily explained. His eyes, while
+twinkling merrily as though everything in life possessed a touch of
+humor, also gave the impression that they could see beneath five layers
+of skin tissue--that by some canny second sight they could detect a
+piece of shrapnel without the aid of probes or X-ray; but a closer
+inspection showed that they were set in a face which had become seamed
+by weariness. His arms, also, hung with a directness that indicated
+great fatigue.
+
+While supplies were being stored away and the women nurses had retired
+for a needed rest, the world-famed surgeon escorted Dr. Barrow farther
+down the line of dressing-stations, particularly to see his own unit
+which had been in this sector since the middle of April.
+
+"Monsieur le Doctor," he said,--then continued in beautiful English--"I
+am greatly impressed with the fortitude of your American women who have
+assisted me. There is one--but why mention one, when they all typify to
+my mind graceful columns of ivory; pure in their strength and certainty,
+crystal in their thoughts and deeds! My operating table is a Grecian
+temple, Monsieur, when they surround it."
+
+"That is a beautiful tribute," said Barrow, flushing with pride.
+
+"Not as beautiful, Monsieur, as the inspiration and assistance which one
+of them has given me." He stopped, blushing like a girl, then continued
+frankly with an infectious smile: "We learn to be outspoken on the edge
+of No Man's Land--perhaps it is because we never know at what moment our
+lips may be completely sealed that we appreciate the value of saying
+fearlessly what is in our minds; therefore I will finish by telling you
+that, next to an Allied victory, my greatest hope is that she may be
+persuaded to share my fortune in Paris, after we are finished with the
+fortunes of war!"
+
+"I could wish no girl better luck than that," Barrow smiled. "To us at
+home you stand as a kind of demi-god, a wizard, who----"
+
+"Ah, Monsieur, I have accomplished nothing, really, until I came here,
+where her sympathy and bravery have made me see new things! I tell her
+that she inherits these traits from an angel mother and an American
+Indian father."
+
+Both men laughed delightedly; Dr. Barrow little dreaming at the moment
+that this American girl, beloved by every one around her, was the
+daughter of an old friend who edited a paper down--or was it up?--in
+Hillsdale.
+
+"You see that we are close to things here," Bonsecours continued, as
+they walked along.
+
+"I had wondered about the women being so near the front," Barrow
+replied.
+
+"Well, Monsieur, in some sectors this position is safer for them than
+farther back--only, of course, when our artillery and line is as strong
+as here, and the dressing-stations as well protected. Besides," he
+added softly, "we are needing many nurses, and have lost fearfully in
+men and orderlies."
+
+The sun set clear that evening, putting a sparkle in the air which
+touched one's nerves like wine. Shortly before twilight Jeb was drawn to
+the entrance of his dug-out by the tramping and sloshing of many feet.
+He walked the length of the quadrangle to where it joined a
+communicating trench and for half an hour--even after the night had
+grown too dark to see distinctly--watched an incessant line of soldiery
+moving forward to positions. Tramp, tramp, they went, under orders of
+silence, because something big was on the boards for tomorrow. But 'twas
+not the quiet of glumness that enveloped them, for they showed in every
+step an elasticity of spirits, as of muscles. He might have called it a
+fluid line, so lithely did it flow by; he might have called it a line of
+gods, so proudly did each man hold his steel-capped head!
+
+The firing trench lay about six hundred yards from the German first
+line; six hundred yards of No Man's Land waiting passively for the
+shambles! Jeb wrung his hands and leaned against the earthen wall. With
+that stark struggle for existence but a few hours off, how was it
+possible for men to step out happily! What would he be doing, were he
+amongst them!
+
+The line was still passing, coming out of the impenetrable and
+marching--who knew where! when he stumbled through the dark entrance of
+the dug-out.
+
+"What's going on out there?" a comrade asked.
+
+"Ghosts," he answered, feeling for his bunk and throwing himself face
+down on it.
+
+He was tired to exhaustion, his nerves were starved for rest. The
+dug-out was chilly after sundown and he reached fumblingly for his
+blanket, found himself lying upon it and awkwardly wriggled under.
+
+The warmth was good. In a little while the steady tramp of men going to
+kill or die--for 'tis thus the gods play with us!--became a soothing
+lullaby, and lured him into sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+From this deep slumber Jeb was aroused by the very incarnation of
+doomsday noises that sent him bounding to the floor with nerves aquiver.
+The blanket dragging after him hung from his shoulders, even as
+bewilderment and sleep clung to his mind. His senses knew that it was
+night, although details about him were brought into sharp relief by a
+thousand flashes spasmodically flooding the dug-out with fiendish
+brilliancy; and he knew that his body was cold, although the walls and
+timbers seemed to be consumed by raging fires. He felt the ground
+trembling in the throes of a titanic upheaval, while his entire being
+seemed to be hammered and torn by the frightful cataclysm of sounds. He
+stood as though paralyzed, unmindful that bits of earth and gravel were
+sifting through chinks between the ceiling timbers and falling on his
+head.
+
+Other members of the unit had staggered into wakefulness and sat staring
+at him, he thought, with greenish, flickering faces--accusingly, as if
+he were responsible. Each knew the French guns had searched out and were
+crumbling up the German defenses, but none had previously suspected that
+an artillery bombardment could reach such fury. The desultory firing of
+yesterday might well be understood as a _moment decalme_!
+
+In this instant of terrified amazement Jeb and his comrades remained as
+statues, simply staring with owlish eyes devoid of intelligence, since
+it was well nigh impossible for men, uninitiated, to master their
+faculties until the first shock had been absorbed.
+
+'Twas not so much the roar of cannon from their distant places in the
+rear--although these alone might doubtless have been startling
+enough--but the shower of projectiles falling on the doomed line only
+six hundred yards across No Man's Land. In answer to this bombardment
+from an eight-mile line of guns accurately trained the day before, enemy
+guns, trained with lesser accuracy, did their best to inflict an equal
+punishment. The effect was a combination of the solemnity and the
+littleness of man which defies every knack of human expression to
+depict.
+
+The seasoned soldier could have told some things; he could have
+distinguished calibre from calibre as readily as the skillful fox hunter
+knows the position of his racing hounds by the quality of their voices.
+He could have spotted the vindictive crash of "75's," the deep-toned
+bellowing of "heavies," or, nearer by--had they been in action--the
+banging of trench mortars. In the sky he could have told from white or
+greenish-orange flashes, from lace-like wreaths or fixed-star blasts,
+where shrapnel or high explosive shells had burst; from the ringing of a
+gas gong he could tell where "green cross" shells were falling; he
+could, and gladly would, have explained--to his own satisfaction, at
+least--the many freak phenomena: a solitary light spirally ascending
+upward until lost in the clouds; sprays of fire and spark-showers
+illumining the sky; rainbow arcs of angry red that flickered, as an
+aurora borealis, from horizon to horizon.
+
+But the uninitiated Medical Corps unit, numbed to inertia, was only
+sensible to an overhead riot of screeching demons, as shells hurtling
+forward were passed and answered by shells hurtling back--a sky of
+flying steel and a horizon of blasted earth! In moments of greatest
+concussion, simultaneous with the most blinding flashes, the air about
+their faces seemed to jump; crazy little vortexes scurried past the
+dug-out opening, or flew in across the floor, like phantom kittens
+seized by some curious madness. To Jeb's highly imaginative, and now
+half-crazed, mind these represented newly liberated souls, in anguish
+seeking refuge from the hurricane of death and its drenching rain of
+fire. He had not then found out how many hundreds of shells must be
+fired to wound one man!
+
+On the Allied side the bombardment, with growing intensity, became a
+_barrage_. Explosions came as thick as drum taps when a roll is sounded.
+There seemed to be no intermission, really; no more, at any rate, than
+one's ear can detect between clicks in a telegraph room when the
+instruments work rapidly.
+
+Barrow and Bonsecours ran in. They looked weirdly grotesque in the
+fitful playing of lights, and Bonsecours shouted something, although no
+voice seemed to issue from his lips. Then with vigorous gestures he
+beckoned the men up to him--having come especially to get this new unit
+straightened out, since his own veterans knew exactly what to do.
+
+Jeb had not moved, for the blanket still hung from his shoulders.
+Neither had the others arisen from their bunks, so bewildered were they
+also by the chorus of death engines.
+
+"Up now, and active!" the great surgeon yelled. "Stretchers! You go out
+shortly!"
+
+"Go out!" Jeb screamed, finding his voice in a burst. "Go out!" he
+screamed again. "God Almighty, no one can go out _there_!"
+
+His face was ghostlike, his eyes were large, staring, vacant. Bonsecours
+stepped nearer and studied him, bellowing in a tone that had made more
+than one man obey:
+
+"There are twenty thousand fine fellows, _mon chere enfant_, each about
+to spring from his trench with the firm belief that if he gets hit we
+shall bring him in. No man dares break faith with a friend who thus
+relies on him!" He had put both hands on Jeb's shoulders and now
+continued to look steadfastly, honestly into his eyes. Then quickly he
+kissed him on both cheeks, saying: "I'll believe in you tonight, to do
+as I would do were my duty not back here!"
+
+A strange feeling of warmth and strength passed through Jeb's veins, but
+he was given no time for reply, because this man of iron turned to the
+assembled unit, shouting:
+
+"At dawn this curtain of shells will be lifted and dropped on the Boche
+second line. That instant our boys go over the top, across No Man's
+Land. But Germans burrow under ground in a _barrage_, or run out forward
+and lie down to escape it; so there will still be many with machine-guns
+left to rake the open stretch, and not all of our brave fellows will get
+across. It is those," he added, in a voice of thunder, "whom the good
+God expects us to bring in!"
+
+There was no disobeying this man. Jeb felt sick through and through, but
+as the others filed out, every second one with a folded stretcher, he,
+also, followed. Yet he wanted to hold back; he wanted to dash into the
+darkest niche of the dug-out, bury his face there and--well, die! To
+die at once, outright, was preferable to the mental torture of expected
+laceration and suffering; nor could even the great Bonsecours have
+convinced him that these two monsters were not crouching, waiting
+especially for the moment when he should step forth.
+
+While the dressing-station shelters opened into a roomy quadrangle, that
+in turn connected with trenches, there had also been cut narrow roadways
+up past the side of each dug-out, ascending sharply toward the front. By
+this rough and gravelly, though more direct, means, stretcher-bearers
+could be upon the crest in a twinkling, thence forward and downward over
+narrow bridges spanning the first line trench to No Man's Land itself.
+
+As the stretcher-bearers of Barrow's unit poured out beneath the sky--or
+what would have been a sky had not incarnate fiends usurped it--Jeb
+found himself moving next to Bonsecours. Even in this strain, when men
+were thinking in terms of armies, the famous surgeon with infinite tact
+went about supporting the props of one human atom. After all, he had
+been trained to mend one man at a time! He spoke no word until they had
+climbed the sloping roadway and laid flat, peeping over; then, with his
+lips close to Jeb's ear, he shouted:
+
+"Have no fear! When man calls on the highest expression of his will, he
+becomes indomitable; he succeeds in the highest terms of success--and
+thus will you succeed, _mon pauvre enfant_! Look!"
+
+He sprang up, pointing where the fringe of that French fire curtain
+touched this great stage. The blinding lights flickered over his face
+and made him supreme at that moment. In the continuous, head-splitting
+noises of three thousand shells per minute, bursting on an eight-mile
+segment, he looked more like a war god than an agent of mercy.
+
+The German position was crumbling--rather, it was being blasted out of
+existence. To Jeb it might have marked the very brink of hell. The
+flashes were almost as a steady white and greenish-orange blaze, and
+showed the earth spurting in great bunches upward; stiff winds that had
+sent clouds scurrying the day before now caught the ground smoke and
+drew it, as a sweeping prairie fire, back upon the enemy. This was a
+propitious wind, and on its wings the death gas sped.
+
+Between the armies lay No Man's Land in utter desolation, but each
+little detail, each inconspicuous bit of wreckage left from earlier
+struggles, stood boldly outlined in the calcium glare. This was the
+stretch of ground he would be searching when the curtain lifted--except
+that its surface would then be strewn with men; some drawn up in pain,
+some moaning, some whimpering, some cursing, some terribly still. Had
+ever a curtain lifted on more poignant tragedy! Was there a parallel in
+crime to this wholesale slaughter which a treacherous nation thrust upon
+a peaceful world! Jeb tried to wonder how many dead might be there, but
+found that his mind would not leave the point of destruction; it had
+become riveted, as a bird is said to be mesmerized by a slowly
+approaching snake.
+
+Lying just behind the ridge, feeling the earth tremble beneath his body,
+waiting for Bonsecours' command to dash into that cockpit of suffering
+and there mingle with the torn, the dying and the dead, he repeated
+over and over the great surgeon's words which bit into him like acid:
+"It is those whom the good God expects us to bring in!"
+
+The dawn was coming! No sun appeared, but the flashes grew less
+blinding; the ground close to his face began to show natural browns
+where formerly had been flickering greens, and his hands looked more
+alive than dead. Also did the whole scene change as sky and earth
+increased their fury in this blending of the real and unreal; for, now
+added to the noises and fitful lights, were huge balls of white smoke,
+and brown, springing into quick existence; some expanded to balloon size
+and swept majestically onward, upward; some, caught in a vortex of
+madness,--swirling, writhing, darting,--formed devilishly gruesome
+arabesques that yet were formless; some burst like pon-pons; some
+released long streamers and darted earthward. Jeb's eyes were held by
+this appalling grandeur; his soul was chained, numbed, by its unlicensed
+braggadocio.
+
+As though some invisible hand touched the spring of a jumping-jack box
+eight miles in length and released twenty thousand monkeys, the trench
+beneath Jeb seemed to open with a snap. Even above the cannonading he
+could hear men give vent to savage cheering. But his blood congealed and
+his fingers dug into the earth, his breath came in agonized gasps, as he
+watched them rush pell-mell, with bayonets fixed, across that deadly
+strip of ground.
+
+Then suddenly the artillery ceased. The far-off German guns still
+roared, but they were as taps of rain upon a roof to ears that had
+almost bled from other detonations. For a moment Jeb thought he had been
+stricken deaf, and turned a questioning glance at Bonsecours, whose eyes
+were staring ahead in strained expectancy.
+
+"See, Americans! The curtain has raised for our brave fellows, and it
+will now fall on the second line!"
+
+In the immediate silence his voice seemed to be bellowing--then the
+mighty guns, having lifted the range, crashed out again. Yet, mingled
+with the blasting of this second line, could be heard the spiteful
+rattling of machine-guns, the fusillade of rifle fire, as the enemy,
+scrambling to places from the punishment they had just been through,
+poured death into the headlong charge.
+
+The scene to Jeb now became a phantasmagoria of horrors. Men running
+with the speed of deer suddenly, and without apparent cause, pitched
+forward, rose and again went down; some stumbled awkwardly and did not
+try to rise. But the great wave, like a breaker rolling inward, swept
+irresistibly. Tired and encumbered though each man was who made up this
+wave, in a prodigiously short time they were pouring into the German
+trench.
+
+Such is the accuracy of modern warfare--and of the French, who are the
+finest artillerymen in the world--that at the expiration of six minutes
+another appalling silence filled the air. The curtain of fire had again
+been lifted, to fall this time still farther back; even as the sweeping
+wave of infantry, without apparently a check, rolled on to take the
+second German line just emerging from its bath of fire.
+
+Bonsecours seemed too fascinated to give or think of orders, yet he knew
+the time was not quite ripe, for part of a division had yet to come up
+from the assembly trenches in the rear, to form another wave which would
+go barging after the first.
+
+Streams of these steel-helmeted fellows now began to pass--as the fluid
+line had passed in yesterday's twilight--close below Jeb. In the
+broadening daylight he could distinctly see their bronzed, immobile
+faces; their swinging gait, suggesting abundant reserve power, and their
+eyes that bespoke an utter disregard of dangers. They were men, second
+to none in determination and reckless personal valor, who did not endure
+hardship, but rode upon it; who did not work, without first laughing it
+into play. If the sun was hot, they sweated good humor; and, if the sky
+rained torrents, good humor trickled in rivulets down their backs. They
+had learned to treat flying shells with contempt, except when any of
+their comrades fell--and then a cold fury would burst amidst their
+ranks, exploding, not into tears, but oaths! Those oaths!--snapped
+barkingly from mouth to mouth while death was bursting right and left
+and overhead, and bayonets were fixing for a greater toll!
+
+Jeb felt, with an uncanny sense of prophecy, that in this marching line
+was depicted a new phase of man growing out of war. The individual
+preferment which many of them enjoyed four years ago had thinned to
+nothingness in the welding of this great warrior-force of comrades, who
+never again would quite resume their former status. For, when a clubman
+eats and sleeps and jokes and fights beside the waiter who used to bring
+his cocktail, he learns to love that man, and the love is mutual; when a
+millionaire is dragged to shelter by the husky grocer's boy who used to
+leave a basket at his kitchen door, he also loves that boy, and the boy
+loves him. Each finds in the other values which are not measured by
+worldly goods, or the stamp of birth, or family influence; each sees in
+the naked soul of each truer riches which transcend what formerly had
+been false. And thus, in the armies of those supermen who after the war
+march home to lasting peace, the stamp of aristocracy will be the
+Aristocracy of Worth. It was many months before Jeb realized that,
+almost unconsciously, he had read this prophecy in the fire of
+death-dealing shells.
+
+Again the range lifted, this time past a hamlet that stood in partial
+ruins on a hill. It had been spared complete destruction at German
+hands, doubtless because the enemy had left it hurriedly, and now the
+French artillerymen carefully avoided it lest a few old folk and
+children might be there. The human wave would sweep it clean enough of
+aliens! Yet that wave had come upon a rocky shore, and Jeb imagined he
+could hear the metallic clash and rasp of bayonet on bayonet, the gasps
+and sobs and curses of men fighting without quarter.
+
+The new division just brought up now scrambled over the top, but No
+Man's Land had been largely stripped of dangers. Victory sparkled in the
+air; safety smiled at Jeb; with these fellows carrying the battle ever
+away from him, performing the unbelievable in pluck and endurance, he
+did not so much mind the thought of going for the wounded! But the
+uplift was transient--it fled in a panic as Bonsecours called:
+
+"Quick, _mes chere enfants_, be after them! Overlook no one! Let the
+walking cases get in alone, and bring the others with all haste!
+There's one of your American girls in my unit who bids you God-speed!
+Go!"
+
+The time had come! Dripping sweat from every pore, desperately seized
+again with trembling, Jeb staggered to his feet and started forward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Bonsecours' command had been well timed, for up and down the line other
+men bearing stretchers bounded forward. Jeb's partner in this work, a
+lanky middle-westerner, called "Omaha" for love--although "John
+Hastings" was stamped in his identification disk--sprang out at a
+dog-trot, crossing the trench bridge and quickly getting into the plain
+below as if he were an old hand at this game instead of undertaking it
+now for the first time.
+
+Jeb, following closely at his heels, had become utterly terrified. His
+flesh was numb and his legs moved automatically, rather than by
+conscious effort. The former mite of courage had atrophied. He felt
+wretchedly alone and unprotected, as an atom of dust drifting across a
+sunbeam. He wanted to clutch at something--to hold himself back--to
+scream!
+
+Half a mile to right and left the Germans were plastering No Man's Land
+with a pitiless fire, but thus far the ground immediately about him
+remained scarcely touched. Shells occasionally burst on the trenches
+just behind, but Barrow's unit luckily was being permitted to go without
+serious embarrassment. And yet Jeb knew that it was only a matter of
+time before he and Hastings would receive a blasting. He shivered,
+jabbering words he could not have recalled a minute later; once cursing
+himself for a coward, then calling himself a liar for having said it.
+
+There were not as many prone men on the field as he had expected to
+find. To his bulging eyes which watched the first charge, men seemed to
+be falling everywhere, but as a matter of fact this was not so.
+
+They had gone quite a third of the distance across when Hastings stopped
+and unrolled the stretcher, shouting:
+
+"Here's one! Lend a hand, Jeb!"
+
+The coolness of the voice, its utmost naturalness, gave Jeb a most
+agreeable feeling, and before remembering again that men who drop in
+battle are things of blood and pain, he was easing one gently over on
+the brown canvas.
+
+They started to come in, Hastings at the forward handles, he at the
+rear; moving as fast as the added weight permitted, skirting shell holes
+and stepping over fragments of barbed-wire. Crossing the first trench
+bridge a hundred faces looked up at them, steadily, unemotionally.
+Another division had been brought up after the second wave swept out,
+and a few of these fellows now said quietly: "Bravo!" But their thoughts
+were with the chap who lay silent on the canvas.
+
+Reaching the top of the gravelly roadway that sloped to the
+dressing-stations, burying their heels in the loose earth which rolled
+along with them as they descended, the stretcher-bearers saw Barrow in a
+white jacket, and several white-faced nurses expectantly waiting; for
+this had been the first man brought in. Even as he was stripped and laid
+upon the crude table, Jeb and Hastings were well on their way out again.
+
+In four hours No Man's Land had been fairly well cleared of suffering.
+Although Jeb was growing indifferent to the sight of blood, several
+times, as a result of extreme fear, he had been actively sick. The
+shells were as terrifying as ever; moreover, he and Hastings had to
+penetrate farther each time in search of wounded. Their last trip took
+them nearly to the scarp of blasted ground on which stood the
+half-destroyed hamlet. True, there had been shells bursting within a
+hundred yards of Jeb; but it so happened that he was particularly
+engrossed with lifting or easing some of the wounded. Once, when a
+splinter of steel cut Hastings' sleeve, the lanky westerner gave a
+whistle.
+
+"That was close," he said.
+
+And Jeb, newly terrified by the words, looked up quickly, asking:
+
+"Did one come by?"
+
+"Well, if it did, it did," Hastings answered. "Cut out your chills, Jeb,
+and let's get this feller in!"
+
+But Jeb could not "cut out" the chill at once because another shell
+burst while he was looking, driving him into a panic so acute that
+Hastings began to swear.
+
+Toward midday the wind fell and the heat became intense. Smoke, acrid
+and at times stifling, hung in the hollows like white- and
+brown-streaked palls, and the unwholesome smell of burning which infests
+battlefields was sickening. Jeb's clothes were wringing wet, and each
+time he panted across the first trench bridge he noted how the waiting
+men under steel helmets were drenched with perspiration. One of them
+called up to him:
+
+"It's our turn next!--keep an eye open for me!"
+
+The fellow was trying to grin, but succeeded only in making an ugly
+leer. Jeb read it in a flash--the man was afraid!--and a stinging sense
+of mortification came over him as he wondered if his own face had been
+as tell-tale--if it were now as tell-tale!
+
+Over on the battle front, and especially around the half-destroyed
+hamlet, the Germans were contesting every foot that led to their third
+line of defense, while the Allies fought with stark madness to dislodge
+them. The airmen hovering above, having for the third time that day
+swept the sky of combatants, saw with surprise that armies on both sides
+were losing cohesion. Some units of the Allies had lost direction,
+others bored their way through the German line then, finding themselves
+hemmed in, fought out again; in many places were noticed small groups so
+intent upon their own little conflicts that they seemed to be having no
+part in the big game, at all. But these aerial observers realized that
+the tremendous sledge-hammer blows, directed with consummate skill and
+resiliency, left the mass of wastage on the German side; for, with
+strategical and tactical problems suddenly changed from boxed-in trench
+warfare to the elastic manoeuvers of open battle, the directing mind
+which is more elastic, all things else being equal, wins the day--and,
+whatever other virtues the Boche may possess, his mind can hardly be
+said to expand spontaneously. At the same time, the enemy was dying
+hard: fortifying at a moment's notice when forced into a corner, and
+making heroic resistance with machine-guns in patches of woods, craters,
+or other favorable moulding of the terrain.
+
+When Jeb sweated in behind Hastings at one o'clock he staggered down the
+road without seeing it. From lack of food, and the horrible wrenching
+nausea he had suffered, as well as the terror gnawing more and more
+into his soul, he was pretty well done for.
+
+Barrow, noting this with the eye of a skilful physician, sent a nurse
+for black coffee and a bowl of soup, but Jeb rebelled in disgust at the
+thought of it.
+
+"Come, now," his chief said commandingly, when the nurse returned, "shut
+your eyes and drink them down, I tell you! We need you, Jeb; you mustn't
+kick up sick the first day!"
+
+We need you! The words stirred new life in him. Then came a vision of
+the great Bonsecours as he had pointed toward No Man's Land and cried:
+"It is those whom the good God expects us to bring in!"
+
+He swallowed the soup and coffee, doggedly turned and followed Hastings
+up the slope again. But, behind the back of his lanky partner, he was
+whimpering softly. Never before had the battle scene beyond inspired him
+with so much terror as now, for its ebb and flow was leaving a greater
+human wreckage than the Red Cross men could handle. The wounded were
+arriving at longer periods, because the stretcher-bearers were having
+farther and farther to go for them; and the disturbing fact was
+becoming evident that there were less stretcher-bearers than had started
+out in the morning.
+
+Before Jeb's eyes now the third division barged over the top, leaving
+the front trench deserted. He saw the line hold beautifully for the
+first hundred yards, then become more and more phantom-like as it
+plunged deeper into the pall of smoke. He wondered dully if the fellow
+who had said: "Watch for me!" had found his nerve, or was still grinning
+the sickly leer of cowardice.
+
+"That smoke ain't such a bad screen, Jeb," Hastings shouted. "Come on;
+let's get busy!"
+
+Into it again they passed; many times that afternoon they came out and
+passed again into it. The last trip took them nearly to the old German
+first line--since morning blasted level with the ground--before they
+found a man who had not passed the point of aid. There were plenty about
+them of the other kind, for machine-guns here had done frightful work.
+Leading the way back, confused by sounds and smoke, Hastings lost
+direction, coming within a trice of being picked up and carried by a
+sudden rush of the French troops. Jeb, more insane with fear than
+anger, cursed him with every oath he had ever heard, but the forward
+stretcher-bearer, making allowances, went indifferently on.
+
+They had got about halfway when the wounded man suddenly raised up,
+clutched at Jeb, and fell over to the ground. Jeb dropped the handles
+and screamed with terror, for it had been a ghastly sight, just a little
+more than his already badly rattled nerves could stand. But Hastings,
+turning, kneeled down for a better look; then solemnly arose and pointed
+with his thumb toward the conflict. Back they started for another load,
+but this last experience had almost been Jeb's undoing. He was obsessed
+with the idea that it had been the omen of Death reaching for him; he
+was gasping pitifully, ever alert for shell fire, and cringing at
+detonations too far off to be of danger. Try as he would to make his
+feet go forward, his hands pulled against the stretcher handles, until
+Hastings turned and repaid him with a longer string of oaths. These, and
+a memory of the ennobling words of Bonsecours, gave him strength for a
+new spurt; yet both soon began to lose efficiency.
+
+They had found a wounded chap and were well on their way out, crossing
+the crater-scarred stretch which had been No Man's Land that
+morning--for No Man's Lands shift from day to day. They moved slowly,
+and Jeb was dragging; yet in an effort to keep going he had riveted his
+gaze on the shoulders of Hastings. Then, suddenly, although Hastings'
+shoulders remained unchanged, his head disappeared; evaporating into
+air.
+
+For an instant it seemed to Jeb as though his eyes were playing a trick,
+but the next second the lanky middle-westerner crumpled up. A warm mist
+settled upon Jeb's face. With a piercing shriek of uncontrollable terror
+he dropped the handles and sprang into the nearest shell hole; cowering
+close under its side, pressing his mouth against the earth and moaning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+The last case in Bonsecours' unit had just been lifted from the table.
+Swathed in bandages it was laid once more upon a stretcher and carried
+rearward to a waiting ambulance whose racks would then be filled.
+Carefully, to spare his charges added pain, the driver engaged the
+clutch and started, but in so vile a condition was this road that the
+heavily loaded machine plunged as a mired horse. Yet there were no
+groans. Teeth might have been grit within that canopy of suffering, but
+the men were too game to make an outcry.
+
+A nurse having come as far as the ambulance, now gave a stifled sob as
+she watched it lumber, like a huge beetle, over the uneven terrain. Her
+arms stiffened and her hands closed into little brown fists--for she
+knew too well what those bumps and plunges were doing to the lacerated
+human freight!
+
+Standing alone upon a mound of earth and staring after it, her face
+touched by the amber glow of a westering sun that hung as an immense
+orange in the smoke of battle, all of Hillsdale would have gasped at her
+amazing beauty. For the mere prettiness which they had known, enhanced
+by happiness and laughter, was now transformed. As the chisel of Michael
+Angelo first carved but a placid face for the Mary in his masterful
+Pieta, and later gnawed into it shadows of pain and love until it became
+a part of God, so had the chisel of suffering humanity brought out the
+wonderful character which had been a latent part of this Nurse Marian.
+Her figure, while always the embodiment of grace, though attuned to the
+easy things of life, now stood as if it were akin to war's great sinew.
+She seemed indeed to be an ivory column of strength and softness, of
+support and beauty, of courage and tenderness.
+
+In another minute she turned and went back to the dressing-stations
+where there was much cleaning up to be done--or as much as could be
+done--before the next stretcher arrived. Yet it did not come. The room,
+the table, the instruments had been put in order; the great Bonsecours
+sat resting on a box, and the other nurses had stepped outside the
+entrance, furtively watching. It seemed incredible that in all the
+head-splitting noises so near to them there should not be wounded men
+for the gathering!
+
+"I don't understand it," he arose and crossed to Marian. "But, surely,
+some will be here soon!"--for, unlike Barrow's unit stationed a hundred
+yards away, his orderlies and assistants had been trained in many
+battles. There could be only one answer if they remained out much
+longer!--and he would then go himself, to fetch his own cases. He had
+done it many times before, which was one of the reasons the French army
+worshipped him.
+
+"I'll run up and look," she cried.
+
+"No, I'm afraid," he said.
+
+"The great Bonsecours afraid?" she laughed--for, no matter how tired her
+own body might feel, she always managed to laugh when he showed signs of
+great fatigue.
+
+"Afraid I could not live if anything happened to you, _mon chere_," he
+murmured.
+
+A startled look flashed into her eyes, slightly different than that
+caused by the excitement of battle. Many weeks ago her intuition had
+measured the strength of this man's love for her, and had seen with
+unerring accuracy his honorable resistance to its pleading, when, during
+temporary lulls in their work, he might have spoken. That he had said
+this much now, indicated an overpowering mental and physical exhaustion.
+Even as she realized this, he realized his weakness, and hastened to
+add:
+
+"I will go; you must stay inside."
+
+"No, no," she sprang between him and the dug-out entrance. "You are so
+tired! I know you've not slept for two days!"
+
+"Have you?" he smiled at her.
+
+"Lots!" she lied--and he knew she lied. "I want you to rest--you owe it
+to them out there! It will take only a second for me to run up and have
+one peep!--there's no danger in that, and I can tell you if they're
+coming!"
+
+"It will bring them no sooner," he sighed, sinking back again upon the
+box, "and there is danger--plenty of it."
+
+Almost immediately he was asleep. She looked at him tenderly for a
+moment, then ran into the quadrangle, turning and following the steep
+path which led to the high ground above the dug-outs.
+
+The scene beyond, as she now crouched and peered over the crest, was
+what she might have expected--yet one can never become quite used to
+such pictures as that! Below was the first-line trench, deserted since
+the third division had been sent forward, and its emptiness gave her a
+feeling of insecurity. She would have preferred a visual line of
+stalwart fellows between her and the maddened enemy, instead of one that
+had gone into the smoke. She looked back to see if another division were
+coming up, but the intervening world seemed destitute of habitation,
+save along the smoke-fringed horizon where French artillery spoke. Once
+more she turned to the empty trench, her face perplexed and somewhat
+frightened.
+
+Just ahead lay the No Man's Land of eight hours ago; the new one for
+tomorrow had not yet been plotted out, but would doubtless lie a mile or
+so nearer the Rhine. Her staring eyes then caught and held two men,
+walking tandem, and she knew they carried a stretcher. They were two
+hundred yards away, obscured by smoke, and coming slowly. For an instant
+she glanced over the field hoping to discover others, and, on looking
+back, was amazed to find that the first were nowhere in sight. The air
+was already more or less thick with death, and she gasped at the thought
+of what their disappearance must mean.
+
+Indifferent to the warning of Bonsecours--whom she knew would never
+hesitate were he in her place--she ran swiftly down to the trench,
+kneeled on the narrow bridge and frantically called in the hope that
+some one, slightly wounded or ill, perhaps, had been left behind who now
+might help her. But the solitude was ghastly. She called again and
+again, screaming that some of her unit had been shelled with the man
+they were bringing in. The pity of this seemed infinitely worse than the
+wounding of combatants; yet the ditch remained utterly devoid of
+life--the only answer she seemed to catch was that it waited merely to
+embrace the dead. Without giving a further thought to dangers, she
+sprang up and ran out across the field.
+
+Going breathlessly, she watched for a glimpse of the brown stretcher.
+Prone bodies might not have guided her aright, for there were several of
+these; but the point she sought would have a stretcher, and there had
+been no other stretchers within sight. Then she came upon it. Hastings
+lay as he had fallen. One hand still grasped the handle--it was his left
+hand, the side whereon he wore the Red Cross emblem. Quick tears blinded
+her, but she brushed them away and kneeled by the wounded soldier. He
+lived, although merciful unconsciousness had come to him. She looked
+hastily around to see--at the same time wanting not to see--where the
+other man had fallen, and shuddered when she realized that he must have
+been blown to dust. The wounded soldier, then, was the only one here who
+needed her! She started to roll him on the stretcher, intending to drag
+it behind her and in this way sled him in; but its poles had been
+shattered. She tried to lift him, and found that to be utterly
+impossible.
+
+The confusion was maddening out there upon that deserted No Man's Land.
+To the dug-out openings, pointing away from it, noises had been
+partially tempered; certainly the acrid smoke was less down in the
+quadrangle, and she had therefore not been prepared for quite such a
+cataclysm. Now a shell burst within fifty feet of her, providentially
+first burrowing, but sending a fountain of earth into the air that fell
+upon her like hail. Another burst.
+
+In desperation dragging the wounded soldier to a nearby crater she slid
+him into it, and was about to follow when checked by a curious
+sight--for a man crouched there with his face against the side. One
+could have died in that position, yet this man lived because his body
+trembled visibly. Encircling his sleeve was the band of the Red Cross,
+and upon seeing this she leaped down to him, asking fearfully:
+
+"Are you badly wounded?"
+
+He did not look around, and she laid a hand gently on his arm, not
+daring to touch it firmly lest it be shattered.
+
+"Tell me," she began again, in a louder voice, "are you badly wounded?"
+
+Slowly he turned a face matted with sweat and powdered earth, haggard,
+as though it had been drawn up from a grave. She uttered a wild scream
+of recognition.
+
+"Jeb!"
+
+Her eyes opened to him. They suggested fluid-vague sympathies and fears
+that many a man would have bartered his life for; but this one before
+her only stared back with a look that was hardly sane, then turned again
+to the crater wall. He seemed to be stunned; without feeling, indeed,
+because dust and grit were plastered on one of his eye-balls.
+
+"Jeb," she screamed, horrified at this, "tell me quickly where you're
+hurt!--oh, Jeb!"
+
+He shook his head, muttering something she could not hear; but his
+gesture implied a negative. At first she did not understand; she could
+not reconcile this with the fact that he crouched inactive when wounded
+men were gasping for relief.
+
+"Not hurt?" she insisted, taking hold of his arm. "But you must be, Jeb!
+You must be--to be _here_!"
+
+Petulantly he shook off her hand; slowly she drew away from him,
+beginning--yet fearing--to understand. "But you must be, Jeb! You must
+be--to be _here_!"
+
+"Help me, Jeb! There's a man behind you hit pretty hard!--help me get
+him in!"
+
+She had again reached out and taken hold of him, but this time he jerked
+away, crying with his mouth against the earth:
+
+"Let him stay! Only a fool would go out there!"
+
+Her young eyes, already schooled in a realm of ravages that exists
+beyond the ken of those who do not go to wars, grew suddenly older. They
+seemed at last to have met a thing they could not look upon! They had
+witnessed the dying of many men--but here was a dying soul! As she had
+healed men, she now clutched for an heroic remedy in the hope of saving
+this more precious thing than life. But first, pitifully pleading, with
+her lips close to his ear, she asked:
+
+"You _must_ be wounded! For the love of Christ tell me the shell blew
+you here--that you didn't come willingly! Tell me even that you're
+dying, Jeb, but not----"
+
+She could not say it, and waited, while his silence answered. Forgetting
+everything else she sprang to her feet and stepped back, her eyes
+narrowing at what she had discovered to be under his uniform--or,
+rather, not under it! In a panic she realized that here was a derelict
+ship of manliness being irresistibly driven by a hurricane of Fear; that
+a complete wreck was imminent unless she were the master-pilot. Her
+cheeks were aflame with indignation, her body bending tensely forward
+might have been a spring of steel set to release some instrument of
+torture--and then she let the bolt descend like the wrath of furies.
+
+With the smoke of shells sweeping over them, sometimes enveloping her
+head and shoulders as though she were looking through a storm of anger,
+she called on God to witness that he was a cringing coward. She stood
+above him transformed into a superb though outraged figure of Liberty,
+lashing him with words that at any other time her tongue would have
+refused to speak; words, some of which she did not know the meaning but
+had heard from the lips of suffering soldiers. Unconsciously she was
+following the maxim of a famous officer who one day said to her that all
+men are cowards somewhere, but brave everywhere if sufficiently
+aroused; and now she brutally strove to bruise his soul, hysterically
+telling herself that if it could be made to bleed it would become
+purified.
+
+Much of this, owing to her incoherence and the noise of battle--and,
+perhaps, the chaotic tumult in his brain--was unheard; but some little
+of it registered, for suddenly he turned upon his knees and stared at
+her, as though his normal faculties were beginning to quicken. For half
+a minute he stared. No words, no gestures, could have been as eloquent
+as the look which burned from his pale, haggard face; it was as liquid
+fire being poured upon the woman for whom he had once avowed a love, and
+who now cursed him! The tableau, with its weird setting--her
+condemnation as a whip of flame curled snake-like above his head--might
+have been a picture put into life, and called "The Flagellation of a
+Soul"! Then, clapping his hands to his ears, he bowed his head,
+shrieking:
+
+"Stop it! You hurt!"
+
+"I intend to hurt," she cried down at him. "If you were in the Army
+you'd be stood before the wall and shot for this!--maybe they'll do it
+yet! Thank God, the people at home can't see you, you damnable coward!"
+Yet with her next breath she was wailing to the torn world and tortured
+air: "Tell me that I've lied! Oh, Jeb, tell me that I've lied!"
+
+He pressed his face again into the powdered earth, and something about
+his dogged attitude said that she was going too far. Her woman's
+instinct sent this warning just in time, abruptly causing her to realize
+that a self-esteem once crushed into complete abasement can never look
+upon fellow man with its former level eyes--and she was here to save,
+not to destroy! The crouching figure on whom she had inflicted a wound
+without having done the slightest good, was, after all, a big,
+imaginative child in a vast night, utterly unprepared by rearing and
+training, psychology or properly directed thought, to cope with this
+demon-carnival into which he had been projected. And why should not the
+shell's concussion have stunned him into this sad plight?
+
+Retrospection flickering as a shadow picture on the brain has more than
+once averted tragedies. In the passing of a second she now saw two
+long-ago scenes: one, his desperate and victorious fight with a boy who
+had kicked her puppy; the other, neighbors rushing with blankets to a
+nearby pond, calling that he had swum out and saved a drowning
+lad--nearly perishing in the effort! While she stared, still horrified;
+while shells rent the air, and dust and smoke half blinded her, a spirit
+of maternalism began to plead for this one-time schoolmate--champion of
+her little dog, life-saver to a comrade! What had she done but add to
+the agony of one already agonized beyond his power to escape!
+
+A great pity filled her soul, and her body seemed to become liquefied
+into a tossing sea of tears. With a sob she bent over him and, as all
+ages of womanhood instinctively understand, gently drew his head against
+her breast.
+
+"Oh, Jeb! Can't you pull yourself together? Won't you try to be a man?"
+she asked fiercely.
+
+He staggered up and backed against the crater, holding his hands out to
+keep her off when she would have followed. But his cheeks had turned
+from white to crimson, and his eyes flashed a holy, or an unholy, fire.
+
+"I hope to God I never get back to-night," he cried hoarsely. "I hope to
+God you'll never have to look at anything as despicable as I've been!"
+
+It was he now who occupied the place of the mighty, and she the one who
+felt like cowering. Turning savagely he all but tossed the unconscious
+soldier to his shoulders, struggled up the shell hole and ran toward the
+dressing-stations. Scarcely knowing that her feet touched ground, she
+flew behind him; sobbing, laughing, wringing her hands--lifted by the
+great storm of victory which swept her soul.
+
+But at the deserted trench he stopped, laid his burden on the little
+bridge and turned back.
+
+"Jeb, take him all the way in," she pleaded, catching at his sleeve--but
+he shook off her hand, yelling like a madman:
+
+"You can get help from here!--don't touch me!--I ain't fit!"
+
+The next instant he was dashing headlong into the smoke. Frantically she
+screamed:
+
+"Come back!--Jeb!--your unit!"
+
+But she might have made the men on Mars hear as easily. Once she started
+to run after him, yet the fruitlessness of such a chase--and, more
+important still, the unconscious soldier's claim for aid--checked her.
+Blinded by tears, she dashed up the road and down to the quadrangle,
+staggered into the dug-out, and cried in a strange voice to Bonsecours:
+
+"There's a man out there I can't bring in!"
+
+He sprang up as if electrified. But her words had not alarmed him so
+much as her appearance and, in desperation catching her by the
+shoulders, he demanded:
+
+"What has happened--tell me!"
+
+"N--nothing," she sank upon the box, burying her face in her folded
+arms. She was sobbing hysterically now, and nurses rarely did
+this--until they snapped!
+
+"Tell me!--tell me!" he cried, leaning over her, and fighting as he had
+never fought to keep from holding her close to him. His heart had been
+too nearly starved, his strength too nearly exhausted, to withstand a
+scene like this. "If you pity me, tell me what has happened," he
+implored.
+
+She did not look up, but impulsively reached for one of his hands and
+pressed it fiercely, almost savagely, against her cheek. This must have
+been the comfort she needed, this touch of a man who was every inch a
+man, because the sobs at once grew quiet; and, in full control of her
+nerves, she arose, saying urgently:
+
+"Quick! He's on the trench bridge!"
+
+As in a dream, the great Bonsecours sprang out.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+Jeb dashed blindly ahead, indifferent to shells and death, not caring
+where he went so that it was toward the thick of battle. He wanted to be
+killed; he wanted to die as Hastings died, showing the world how real
+men are capable of making the last big sacrifice. But his torturing
+conscience laughed at the presumption, for Hastings had typified a
+faultless courage; and his brain ceaselessly echoed the scorn which
+Marian had hurled at him, spurring him as rowels of hot steel to greater
+speed.
+
+The smoke, as a heavy fog, shrouded the uncontested No Man's Land, being
+quite impenetrable beyond a radius of fifty yards. It was as though he
+were running constantly beneath a low, flattened dome which kept
+accurate pace with him, through the sides of whose inverted rim new
+objects sprang into view with almost magic suddenness. Yet he saw little
+of anything beyond a girl's look of horror, heard nothing but her
+outraged words. Scarcely knowing it he hurdled prostrate figures,
+stumbled into craters, tripped on vagrant ends of wire entanglements,
+till at last, through sheer exhaustion, he fell face down amidst a small
+group of the dead.
+
+His maddened race had taken him close to the scene of battle; indeed, he
+had crossed the old first and second German trenches without observing
+them, so completely demolished had they been by the French _barrage_.
+The fighting was yet somewhere beyond, although not waged with anything
+like the intensity of an hour ago. The artillery had almost entirely
+ceased, and the lesser rattle of machine-guns was diminishing. Yet he
+listened, trying to locate the thickest part of it, intending to push
+there as soon as he regained his breath; but always just above the
+noises came Marian's burning words, and for awhile he lay with tightly
+closed eyes, letting them beat upon him as blows.
+
+Gradually, as his breathing grew more normal, other words mingled with
+hers in a kind of verbal potpourri--jumbled and unmeaning, yet soon
+getting clear of the confusion and sounding in his ears like a clarion
+voice:
+
+"When man calls on the highest expression of his will, he becomes
+indomitable; he succeeds in the highest terms of success--and thus will
+you succeed, _mon pauvre enfant_!"
+
+He thought this over with a sense of comfort. It _would_ feel good to
+become indomitable, to succeed in the highest terms of success! Had he
+ever stopped, and with solemn deliberation called upon the highest
+expression of his will? He tried to remember. Surely he had given no
+thought to will power when tossed into the ocean from the sinking
+ship--nor at any time since coming to this battle front! Each day, from
+the historic Sixth of April even unto the present minute, he unsparingly
+admitted, had been spent by him amidst concocted fears and magnified
+dangers; but never once had he buried his teeth in a single manly
+purpose, as Tim might have expressed it. This brought Tim to mind, and
+the many sane things he had said aboard ship. Then another voice,
+enriched not alone by affection but by the pride of age as it had
+spoken 'way back yonder in the Hillsdale _Eagle_ office:
+
+"I want to be proud of you," it now said calmly. "You're going out to
+play a mighty big game, boy, wherein Humanity is trumps, and Patriotism,
+Righteousness and Service are the other three aces. Yet, even if you
+hold all these, you may still lose unless you possess one more magic
+card: Self-respect! We all owe to our soul a certain measure of
+self-respect, Jeb. It is a gentleman's personal debt of honor to
+himself, demanding payment before every other obligation, and is
+satisfied only when we face each of life's crises with steel-tipped,
+crystal courage!"
+
+Jeb rolled despairingly over on his back, gripping his hands and
+whispering:
+
+"Oh, God, give me that steel-tipped, crystal courage!"
+
+The sun had set, and with its decline the battlefield grew peculiarly
+still. A barely perceptible current of air was stirring, and he watched
+the low canopy of smoke slowly drifting; feeling very small amidst the
+dead and desolation as he fancied that it might be a silent, winged
+army of souls gliding eastward to a new dawn.
+
+Suddenly he wondered about the battle--what had become of it! Except for
+desultory cannonading far to the left, perfect quiet, almost peace,
+reigned over the darkening ground. In the region where he lay, human
+passions seemed to have burned into ashes as cold and lifeless as the
+six or eight calm bodies near to him. He knew the Allies were silently
+consolidating their gains while, beyond, the Germans strengthened
+positions for another resistance; the armies of construction were
+creating what armies of destruction would furiously undo. So uncannily
+silent had the immediate world become that now, for the first time, he
+noticed a singing in his ears, caused by twelve hours of hellish
+concussions--and then, coming more completely to himself, he discovered
+that for the first time in many days he was hungry.
+
+Jeb sat up and seriously took stock of himself. He had come here to die,
+but was beginning to resent the very thought of it; he had run to get
+away from--what? Disgrace and mortification? Why continue to suffer
+these if a means were at hand to wipe them off the slate? For what
+purpose should he be disgraced and mortified if, henceforth, he played a
+man's part! Near his feet was a dead soldier whose face happened to be
+turned directly toward him, and through the gathering twilight Jeb saw
+that the eyes were open, steadily fixed upon him as if waiting to see
+what he would decide. But this ghastly picture brought him no feeling of
+revulsion as it might have, earlier; instead, he gazed back for quite a
+minute, seeming to discover in the dead eyes an expression of reproach
+so poignant that he finally whispered:
+
+"I don't blame you, old fellow; I haven't done the right thing, at all."
+
+From this he turned to the others about him, and with a new vision saw
+them in the places they had occupied at home: father, husband, brother,
+son! His mind leapt the span of miles and looked in upon the anxious
+faces--hopeful, perhaps--of mothers, wives, sisters, daughters, who
+waited; and a new kinship sprang up within him for those stricken
+families of France!
+
+"Oh, the crucifixion of waiting!" he murmured, his eyes again caressing
+the prostrate forms. For he seemed to be living among men, not dead but
+yet unborn; helpless, silent, sleeping things whose souls alone were
+quick--alive somewhere in a wonderful twilight land of peace! Why pity
+these deserted temples of spirit-heroes! "And to think," he whispered
+softly, "that you fellows have learned to die! How did it feel? A little
+gasp?--some dizziness?--surprise, perhaps?--and then God's great
+entwining arms?"
+
+But the dead eyes staring at him seemed to answer:
+
+"Not until you face it like a soldier of Humanity! Not until you strike
+a manly blow for the little nations which were ravaged; the women,
+children, helpless men, ground in the mailed fist of a lying tyrant! God
+entwines those within His arms who fight for right, not run from it!"
+
+Jeb sprang up, alive to action. Death, then, was but an ephemeral part
+of this big game; he was fighting not only for today, but for the
+future; fighting for the peace and righteousness of years to come,
+long, long after he, in any case, would have been dead! He turned
+impulsively to the staring eyes, and whispered: "Thanks, old
+fellow!"--then started toward the new French lines.
+
+Night had fallen, and the world about him was dark except when bathed
+with the light of star shells, intermittently fired from the opposing
+armies. Yet he realized that these balls of blinding whiteness must be
+quite a distance away, since their calcium glare but vaguely penetrated
+the canopy of smoke, touching the wreckage and the dead with ghost-like
+iridescence and making them appear almost as unreal as real. He could
+not even tell from what point these shells were fired, as no spot-lights
+showed--merely their effect which diffused the smoke alike on all sides.
+
+Suddenly, somewhere behind him, came a sharp rattle of machine-gun fire.
+He dropped to the ground, listening; wondering in a panic how this fight
+could have started so far back when he had not even come in touch with
+the rear French lines. In five minutes all was still again. Either the
+scrimmage hinged on a false alarm, or a rush had been made for the
+possession of some slight point, or--but why guess! Anyhow, it had been
+short; but, as a barking dog when the night is still will awaken other
+dogs far across the country-side, so did this brief fusillade draw
+intermittent firing from many points in more distant places.
+
+Instead of helping Jeb determine his position, these but added to his
+confusion. Directions of the compass might be anywhere; he was
+unquestionably lost, with the best of chances for walking into an enemy
+outpost and being taken prisoner--and he had heard enough of Germany's
+treatment of prisoners to prefer death rather than capture.
+
+Several star shells must now have been fired from flare pistols
+somewhere, because objects about him took shape, and he dropped flat,
+simulating death, not knowing how many eyes were on the watch for
+movements. When darkness came again his sense of location had not been
+helped.
+
+Crouching, sometimes crawling on his stomach, but going forward ever
+more cautiously, he was driven cold with terror when, within thirty
+feet of him, out of the very air about him, came low, guttural sounds of
+talking. The words were German.
+
+His first impulse was to dash wildly through the smoke and escape, but
+even as his muscles grew taut to make the spring a voice commanded him
+to halt. It was not an outside voice this time, but one within; and,
+although trembling, he froze closer to the ground, obeying instantly.
+Then the sound of a spade thrust into soil, raised and emptied, told of
+digging. Digging what? Graves? No, the German army, that great Imperial
+Machine, was being pounded too hard to bother with its dead! The German
+God could look after them--or the Allies!
+
+Not knowing how to cope with this new situation he began cautiously to
+crawl away, feeling for a corpse to hide behind should another lot of
+stars go up and expose him there; yet when his fingers touched a cold,
+bearded face he nearly cried aloud. A sudden loathing for this inanimate
+thing almost sent him running;--the next second, answering a silent
+command, he stretched beside it as though he and it were bunkies in a
+cantonment. But his heart was beating unmercifully, confusing his ears
+which strained for every sound. Regularly the spades and picks continued
+their work; minute dragged into minute, till another iridescence pierced
+the smoke. He then peeped out. To his surprise there was but one man in
+sight; a solitary sentinel standing above an excavation--Jeb could not
+tell how deep.
+
+When darkness again fell he was more than ever confused. Whether these
+men were inside their own lines laying mines for an expected advance, or
+by some cunning had got behind the Allies for a devilish purpose, taxed
+his ingenuity to decide. At any rate, this was no place for him; no
+ingenuity was required to determine that. He felt that somewhere to the
+right the French must be, but it was a guess based largely upon hope.
+Right or wrong, an effort must be made at once to report this digging
+party, and slowly he crept off; prone at first, then arising to his
+hands and knees.
+
+In this way he must have gone a thousand yards when the terrain began
+sharply to ascend, and more than ever puzzled he stopped again,
+listening. Only the far off, spasmodic growling of the "heavies" told
+that fifteen miles away someone was being unmercifully plastered; but
+the nearer artillery slept. With eyes and ears straining to their
+utmost, with muscles held ready to relax and let him flatten out at the
+first sign of enemies, he continued up this new and very dangerous
+slope, possessing no idea where it would lead, knowing only that he must
+reach his own lines before dawn. And now he realized that the air was
+becoming more pure.
+
+Frequently after sundown in this part of France a light mist rises in
+the lowlands. To-night there had been no mist, but the terrain had lent
+itself to cup the hovering battle smoke, holding it in depressions as
+lakes of vapor, while the higher points stood clear. Jeb was now
+creeping up one of these higher points; and within half an hour his eyes
+looked at the stars, his grateful nostrils breathed a pure, untainted
+atmosphere. Like a snake he slid head-first into the nearest shell hole,
+climbed warily back to its edge, and watched.
+
+The sky was so bejewelled, the Milky Way so white, that a luminosity
+bathed the earth about him which, in contrast to the smoky lowland,
+seemed almost bright. Before him lay what had once been the little
+hamlet on the scarp--he recognized it, remembering how the French
+_barrage_ had in mercy been lifted over it. But it had not escaped a
+severe pounding. A few sections of torn walls, a few chimneys, here and
+there a gable still supporting one end of a caved-in roof, made a
+skyline that was saggy, unreal and awe-inspiring. No life was anywhere
+apparent. Crumbled on its solitary hill, overlooking a white-and-brown
+streaked sea of smoke that lapped its feet, it typified the most acute
+expression of desolation.
+
+Having taken his bearings on the North Star and become assured of which
+way lay the French and British rear, he was leaving the crater when a
+sound made him draw back again in haste, a muffled sound of iron
+striking stone.
+
+The old fear bit into him with all its terrors. He was getting weak from
+hunger, anyway, and his nerves had been through more than ordinary
+nerves could stand; yet, since the sounds came from somewhere in the
+ruins they might well mean a villager trying to dig himself out. 'Twas
+a heartening thought, and Jeb was on the point of creeping forward when
+a sentry appeared around a pyramid of fallen stones--a tremendous
+fellow, wearing the Boche uniform. A moment later eight Germans came
+toward him, picking their way over piles of rubble and carrying spidery
+things he recognized as machine-guns. Crouching low beneath the crater's
+side he waited breathlessly, while they passed so near that he could
+smell their sweaty clothing. After several minutes he peeped out; the
+sentry and they had disappeared. Without doubt this was a night party
+fortifying the ruined hamlet on the scarp; but, if that were so, where
+in the name of God, he asked himself, could the Allied army be!
+
+Objects were now growing more distinct, and for an instant he was driven
+cold with terror believing this to be the sign of dawn; but a silvery
+glow in the eastern sky proclaimed a rising moon. In imminent danger of
+discovery when this should become still brighter he dared not remain in
+the shell hole. On the other hand, fear had him pinioned with such long
+claws that he hardly dared to move at all; and had one German, wounded
+and defenseless, come upon him then demanding his surrender he could not
+have raised a finger in defense. He merely wanted safety now; a place to
+hide--he cared not for how long. His ears had closed to the stern
+demands of will power; the words of Mr. Strong, and Bonsecours, and even
+Marian, had lost their potency. An appeal more powerful than all of
+these was needed to raise him to the place of man!
+
+Ahead, almost at his hands, were scattered bricks and clay chunks of
+blasted buildings; but twenty feet beyond stood a section of upright
+wall, supported beneath by twisted doorway timbers and propped by the
+wreckage of a roof which, at one side, reached the ground. It was a
+forbidding place, seeming on the point of tottering over, although this
+very danger might grant it immunity from German searchers.
+
+Making himself as flat as possible he wriggled forward, listened a
+moment at the threshold, then crept inside and crawled to the farthest,
+darkest corner. The next instant his blood was congealed by a piercing
+scream not three feet from his face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Out of the darkness, right into his face, this scream came, ending in a
+weak, despairing, but above all else heartrending, moan; then everything
+grew still. Jeb could have neither moved nor uttered a cry; he had
+recoiled in terror, crouching as a part of the fallen masonry that
+littered the floor.
+
+Almost at once quick steps resounded through the ruined streets,
+scrambling over heaps of wreckage and coming nearer until they passed
+with a kind of ruthless determination just outside the tottering wall.
+In another moment they had turned an angle and the sentry, silhouetted
+against the lighter sky, stood peering through the doorway. He barked
+something in German that had an ominous sound, and the nearby voice
+began an hysterical whimpering, interspersed with pleading in rapidly
+spoken French which Jeb partially understood. At least, he realized a
+girl was in this dark place with him, and that she was promising to make
+no further outcry. Weak and thin her voice seemed, though rasping in a
+kind of frenzy, as she attempted to excuse a former disobedience by
+trying to explain how someone had come and frightened her. Luckily for
+Jeb the man gruffly interrupted with another flow of German, or his fate
+might then and there have been sealed.
+
+"Please--please," the girl moaned, "oh, please don't come in! I won't
+cry again!"
+
+He hesitated, as if considering; then growled a threat and turned back.
+
+Waiting until he had quite gone and the last sound of his boots upon the
+rubble had died away, Jeb summoned his French and cautiously whispered:
+
+"I'm your friend--don't make a noise!"
+
+A slight movement in the corner first answered him, then a wee voice
+asked:
+
+"Is Monsieur English?"
+
+"No, American."
+
+The sound which followed this lingered in his ears long afterward. It
+was scarcely a gasp, nor moan, nor groan, but an inarticulate animal
+sound expressive of what the body feels when snatched in the nick of
+time from destruction. A moment later she had crawled through the
+darkness; her hands passed quickly over his sleeve, his shoulder, then
+found his neck and clasped it passionately.
+
+Drawing her gently to his lap he realized that she was merely a child
+who had come to him--a skeleton child, of perhaps eight or nine years
+old, seeming to be little more than bones dressed in scanty clothing.
+Touching his lips to her cheeks he whispered encouragement, promising
+prodigious things without regard to their possible accomplishment, until
+her body ceased to quiver. Then she whispered tremulously:
+
+"Are you the American who fed us?"
+
+"No, little one, I haven't fed you." He, too, spoke in the merest
+whisper.
+
+"But yes, Monsieur, indeed you did! _Le bon cure_ said the American gave
+us food for many, many months. Oh, I wish I had some now!"
+
+"He meant the American Relief, little one. Haven't you any food now?"
+
+"Not since two days, Monsieur. The Boche," he felt her quiver again as
+she pronounced this name, "used to take our American food and give us
+their own black kind; but the cure told us to submit gracefully, as
+those who had tried to object were killed. But two days ago a German, a
+Kommandantur, they called him, Monsieur, said that he felt so very, very
+sorry for us he thought we had better starve; and since then we have had
+nothing."
+
+"Where is the cure now?" he asked, feeling himself grow hot with rage.
+
+"Dead, Monsieur. They killed him for trying to defend his bell."
+
+"Defend his bell?"
+
+"Quite so, Monsieur." She snuggled into a more comfortable position, as
+though the presence of this American removed all dangers; she found it
+good, furthermore, to talk to someone, even in whispers, and amidst
+ruins, and about the horrors buried there. "Before blowing up the Marie
+they lowered the bell--for everything iron in the village they said must
+be sent into Germany. But the cure loved his bell--so did we all,
+Monsieur--and he threw his arms about it, pleading. But this made the
+soldiers laugh very much." She waited an instant, as though listening,
+then continued: "So they got a blanket, Monsieur, and tossed him into
+the air, but always let him fall upon the stones. He was very old, was
+_le bon cure_,--but so good! Then officers came up, and they carried
+open bottles of wine, and around their necks were strung on cords many
+women's finger rings and bracelets. My mother uttered a prayer, because
+she thought they would help _le bon cure_, but when they were told he
+had tried to protect his bell, they jumped over and over him, Monsieur,
+pretending to prance like horses, and kept sticking him with their spurs
+until his poor face was cut and swollen. We cried out for shame, but he
+held up the Crucifix toward us and gently shook his head--so we turned
+away weeping. But they let us bury him, Monsieur," she added, tenderly.
+
+"Where are your parents?" Jeb asked, shuddering not alone at the tale of
+barbarity, but because this young child had become so inured to these
+sights that she could passively recite them.
+
+"Dead, Monsieur," she answered, in a tone that might itself have been
+dead. "Quite dead," she added, dispiritedly. "My father was summoned
+with many others to Avricourt. When they came back the Germans marched
+him past our house tied to the tail of one of their horses, but would
+not let us speak to him; yet he turned his face so we could see a blue
+cross marked upon his cheek, and then my mother fainted--she was not
+well, Monsieur. That night they shot him."
+
+Her poor little body was beginning to shake, but he drew her closer with
+soothing words, while his heart was wrung by pity. For the moment he
+forgot what had been uppermost in his mind: to discover through her if
+this place lay within the German lines and how far were the Allies. She
+took courage from his endearments and continued, although in the same
+lifeless whisper:
+
+"The next day they marched my mother and other women away, Monsieur. I
+ran after her but was thrust back; yet she called telling me to hide the
+children in the cellar."
+
+"Then your mother may not be dead," he suggested hopefully.
+
+"But yes, Monsieur. I watched them for a great way along the
+road--there are no trees now, and I could see. Several times she fell;
+the last time a soldier raised his gun twice, and twice brought it down.
+Oh, I wanted to help her then, but they laughed and held me!"
+
+Jeb was growing beside himself at these unheard-of barbarities, but he
+managed to ask gently:
+
+"Why are you not in the cellar now?--listen!"
+
+The sound of iron striking stone again reached him. She understood, and
+answered quietly:
+
+"It is where they dig, Monsieur. They have been doing it since sundown;
+and it was their coming and going through the cellars that made me bring
+the children here, in fear of them."
+
+"But where are the children?" he asked, for no sound had come from the
+corner she had left.
+
+"There are three, Monsieur, in the dark behind me. Two live, but they do
+not know me any more. They are so young," she said apologetically, "that
+the things they have seen quite put out their minds--but they obey me,
+very nicely."
+
+"Merciful God," he gasped.
+
+"The other," her voice resumed its tone of dull despair, "was killed but
+a little while ago by the man who looked in. Monsieur, we were very
+hungry and frightened, and she was crying; but I tried--oh, how I
+tried--to comfort her! Then in anger he came, and--and stuck her with
+the long knife on his gun. Oh, Monsieur," she whispered, clinging to him
+in a new terror, "I was glad for the darkness!"
+
+A sob, arising from the very depths of Jeb's soul, burst from his lips.
+Scalding tears of rage and anguish streamed down his cheeks; and these
+must have touched her upturned face, for she raised a thin hand and
+patted him, whispering:
+
+"You are very kind, Monsieur, to weep for her."
+
+"My poor little child," he moaned, "my poor little child! Oh, what a
+plight they've left you in!--with only the dead, and worse than dead!"
+
+The moon had cleared by now, bathing the ruined hamlet with a silvery
+sheen, although the place which sheltered them remained in darkness.
+But through a rift in the broken wall stole one narrow beam of light,
+and he moved slightly to let this fall upon her face--then just in time
+caught himself, else he would have given a cry of pain and fury.
+
+Her eyes, horrified and shadowed by the cruelties she had witnessed,
+were turned to him; great, dark, hollow eyes which seemed to be looking
+directly through him to some confusion of thoughts beyond. Her face was
+pinched and blue with lack of nourishment, the skin stretched tightly
+over cheek bones which seemed about to push through; her lips were
+wax-like, dry and cracked, and her ears were almost transparent. But
+even more appalling than any of these was the utter despair, the absence
+of hope or desire of life, that had changed the bloom of youth to the
+decay of age. She might have been the wan ghost of a shrivelled old
+woman lying in his arms, instead of young flesh and blood!
+
+This martyred child, who should be sleeping happily amidst dreams of
+dolls and play--what was the ghastly thing into which she had been
+made? The father, who with horse and plowshare should be summoned by the
+morning cock to yielding fields--where was that servant of the vineyard?
+The mother, who should be planning for the harvest which her capable
+hands would convert into winter comforts--what of her? A wee tot, whose
+sobbing should have been stilled by tender arms--did she understand the
+caress of steel? And the other two, whose minds had been snapped by
+horrors and privations--did their locked-in souls realize these things
+to be the result of military necessity?--or a nation's degeneracy!
+
+Yet what could he expect from a people whose idol in philosophy, their
+pampered Nietschke, teaches and writes: "Morality is a symptom of
+decadence! There is no right other than that of theft, usurpation and
+violence!" It is in his book for all to read! What hope of an army, or
+hope of mercy from it, whose Kaiser confesses himself to be a liar or a
+lunatic by proclaiming: "The spirit of God has descended upon Me because
+I am the German Emperor! I am the instrument of the Most High. I am His
+sword, His representative on earth. Woe and death to those who oppose
+My will! Death to the infidel who denies My mission! Let all the enemies
+of the German nation perish. God demands their destruction--God, who by
+My mouth summons you to carry out His decrees!"[3]
+
+[Footnote 3: From the Kaiser's proclamation to his army, Sept. 13,
+1914.]
+
+As Jeb recalled these utterances, their blasphemy made him cringe. He
+wrapped the little broken body tighter in his arms. Was she, then, what
+she was by a loving God's decree? He kissed her hair and groaned in
+righteous anger. Did that Outcast Emperor dare call himself the
+representative of God on earth, and thereupon urge his menials to do
+evil for the sake of evil, destroy for destruction's sake, pillage for
+the bestial love of it, outrage the life, honor and liberty of the
+helpless, leaving a wide trail that everywhere led to the most loathsome
+crimes?--did "the spirit of God descend upon" this vampire, and call him
+"chosen"?
+
+Jeb found himself trembling in every muscle as a deep rage at these
+blasphemies spread throughout his frame. As tropic storms strike
+languid forests, swaying, threshing, rending trees this way and that, so
+a mighty rush of fury swept him. Slowly at first, then faster, the
+almost forgotten taper flame of manliness that flickered on the altar of
+his inmost being leaped higher, until it blazed as a consuming fire. The
+eyes of his soul were open; the strength of his soul grasped the sword
+of Humanity to strike for this child, and the thousands like her, whose
+injury was irreparable, who had been blasted, damned, by the ego-mania
+of accursed hypocrites!
+
+"Oh, little one," he whispered to her fiercely, "if all the boys back
+home could see the things you've shown me, they'd break their necks
+getting over here to smash that upstart German power!"
+
+For a moment he bowed his head, as though in prayer. The far-off
+rumbling of cannon, sublimely rising from the distant horizon, might
+have been a deep-toned organ sending its hymn of victory through the
+vaulted space; and, while he listened, the little hand was raised again
+to touch his cheek, as the weak voice murmured:
+
+"Monsieur, I feel better since you came."
+
+"I must get you away," he kissed her quickly. "Now listen well, and
+answer well, for everything depends on what you know!"
+
+The indomitable spirit of France which kept these people alive through
+hardships and outrages that will never be written, bounded through her
+veins and warmed them. He felt her body snuggle more confidingly, as if
+to assure him that he would not be disappointed in her share of this new
+partnership.
+
+After careful questioning he learned enough to open his eyes. The French
+lines had indeed passed northward, leaving this ruined hamlet in its
+wake. But for several months prior to yesterday's engagement the Germans
+had been working on gigantic subterranean operations, beginning at the
+levels of the cellar floors and penetrating downward until the entire
+village sub-area had been converted into a kind of catacomb. Here a
+great number of machine-guns were stored with quantities of ammunition,
+and a garrison put in charge which numbered upwards of two thousand men.
+A machine-gun regiment, he mentally noted. These had fought when the
+French came but, instead of retreating, ducked into the sub-cellars and
+closed the openings which had been artfully contrived to escape notice.
+When the French passed, thinking the enemy had been driven before them,
+the Boche quietly emerged after nightfall and slipped away in several
+directions, taking many guns and spades and boxes of ammunition.
+
+Jeb felt that he now understood the mystery of that digging party back
+on the plain, as also the nearer sounds. They were units of this
+garrison--and there must be many others like them scattered
+about--fortifying for a particular counter attack tomorrow when, with a
+line of machine-gun sections operating in the Allied rear, defeat might
+be turned to victory. It was an audacious scheme, thus to burrow while a
+victorious army passed over them, and then come up out of the ground and
+strike again!
+
+"How far is it to the place they're digging here?" he asked.
+
+"Just there, beyond this wall--but a little ways," she pointed in the
+direction from which the sentry had come.
+
+"How many are there?"
+
+"I could not say, Monsieur; but few, assuredly, as I saw quite as many
+as I thought were in the ground, and more, slip away after dark with the
+guns and spades and boxes."
+
+"Then wait very quietly till I come back," he lifted her from his lap,
+but she clung desperately and would have cried had he not promised to
+return safely.
+
+She let him go then and he crawled away, passing just outside the door
+to see if the street were clear. Skirting the torn walls and keeping in
+the heavier shadows, creeping over piles of rubble as silently as a rat,
+he came at last to a point which overlooked the hole where men toiled,
+wearily, though in desperate haste. The sentry paced back and forth
+within a hundred feet of him, sometimes speaking in monosyllables to his
+comrades below.
+
+At highest tension Jeb waited, until he felt not only sure of their
+strength but reasonably certain that no others remained in the lower
+strata of catacombs; because they rested at frequent intervals, implying
+a state of exhaustion, and this, in turn, indicated an absence of relief
+shifts. Fifteen men in all were there, besides the sentry. On the street
+level their rifles had been stacked. The hole--a machine-gun
+redoubt--in which they dug was about five feet deep; the sides were
+steep; the only weapons near at hand were picks and spades.
+
+Tingling with excitement, he stole carefully back to the ruined door and
+entered, bringing with him a stout club picked from the debris. The
+girl's arms flew about him at once, and the wan voice whispered
+tremulously:
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, if you had not come!"
+
+"But I did come," he took her again upon his lap, seeming in a much
+better humor than when he had gone out. "We're about to get away, little
+one; are you big enough to do just what I say?"
+
+There was a look of reproach in her eyes which he could not, of course,
+have seen, but he felt her arms tighten.
+
+"Everything," she whispered. "Can Monsieur carry the little sisters?"
+
+"Monsieur can, but he isn't going to," he muttered fiercely. "They'll
+have two-legged horses to ride, and so will you. Now, I'm going over by
+the door, and when I get there I want you to give a loud cry."
+
+"Oh, Monsieur," she trembled, "he will come and--and----"
+
+"I want him to come, but he won't do any more than that. We're going to
+take those men and punish them for a lot of things they've done."
+
+"Capture them, Monsieur?--by Monsieur's own self?"
+
+"By Monsieur's own self," he gave her a squeeze, then sat her back upon
+the ground. "Now, when I get close to the door, cry!--then you may close
+your eyes until I say look; but don't cry again, whatever happens."
+
+Picking up the club he took a position in the deepest shadow and waited.
+Spartan little soldier that she was, she now sent a wail into the night
+that would have brought a dozen sentries; then, as before, everything
+was silent. Also, as before, hurried, angry steps soon were heard; yet
+this time, as the sentry passed close outside the rear wall, he talked.
+Jeb at first thought that it might be the mumbling of an enraged man,
+but he took a tighter grip upon his club when another voice laughed a
+reply.
+
+The two Germans turned the angle of the side wall, stumbling over loose
+stones and uttering words that scarcely needed translation. A patch of
+moonlight fell athwart the sill, and Jeb watched this, knowing it would
+tell better than his ears when the crucial time had come. The men were
+just outside now, and the breathing of one became audible--a workman,
+doubtless, following to see what would happen. Then a shadow fell across
+the spot of light, and slowly a bayonet glided within two feet of Jeb's
+face--the bayonet that might yet be warm from having dried a child's
+tears! After it came the sentry, stooping as he entered, while his
+companion, who chortled with a kind of insane glee, pressed closely at
+his heels.
+
+Jeb had been standing in deep shadow to one side, with the club drawn
+back. He waited until both men were well within the door, then made a
+vicious swing, and then another; there were two sharp cracks of wood on
+bone, and the two who had come to kill lay dead.
+
+"It's all right," he whispered through the darkness. "Bring the
+children, quick!"
+
+"Thank God, Monsieur," her voice reached him.
+
+Kneeling, he stripped the sentry of ammunition, examined the rifle until
+he had mastered its mechanism, and saw that it was loaded and ready.
+When the children reached him--the two smaller ones staring vacantly
+ahead as if walking in their sleep--he whispered:
+
+"Now, do just as I say: follow closely, keep in the shadows and make no
+noise. When I put back my hand, stop and wait; when I call, come at
+once. Is that clear, little one?"
+
+"But, oh, Monsieur," she panted, "should we not run now?"
+
+"We couldn't make it, for one thing," he answered slowly, "and, besides,
+I--I don't think I'll ever run again, little one," he stooped and kissed
+her--although she did not understand. "Ready? Come along!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+
+He felt the call now of three great forces: America, Humanity, and his
+soul--but the greatest of these was Humanity! Each held him by a new, a
+strong appeal; each looked confidently to the best there was in him,
+wrapped him in entreating arms that struggled to inspire the highest
+type of courage.
+
+Carefully the little refugees followed him out into the calm moonlight,
+the tots whose minds had gone back to shadowland acting as automatons
+under the silent direction of their sister. He stopped once, as though
+with indecision, and looked at them; then set his teeth fast and again
+went on. Hugging the snagged walls, crossing open places on hands and
+knees, they came finally to the spot Jeb had previously selected for
+them to wait, while he crept ahead to reach the pyramids of stacked
+rifles before letting his presence be known.
+
+He could distinctly hear the sounds of digging now, but there was no
+exchange of words--doubtless the stilled sentry had been the only
+loquacious spirit among them. This presence of human beings laboring in
+silence at dead of night made his task decidedly ticklish, and minutes
+passed before he gained a position behind the last pile of rubble,
+overlooking the hole.
+
+Besides the fourteen Germans he had expected to see below, he now made
+out one other, an officer, who, doubtless because he sat well beneath
+the opposite wall, had escaped observation during the first
+reconnaissance. This brought the total to fifteen--three clips of
+cartridges and no misses, he told himself, if it came to a fight. The
+men toiled surlily, as though that beaver-like industry, everywhere
+displayed by the German army in fatigue work, had about reached the
+quitting point. It was, moreover, possible that they sulked for having
+been detailed to a duty which meant almost certain death.
+
+Jeb did not know how to challenge them, but a pointed rifle and a stern
+command in any language is never difficult of translation between
+soldiers of opposing armies. He saw now that six of them were laboring
+with a large stone, and there could be no more favorable time for him to
+act. With a bound he reached the edge.
+
+"Hands up!" he barked.
+
+The fifteen faces turned to him were blank with astonishment.
+
+"Hands up!" he repeated.
+
+The officer, first to recover, made a quick reach for his pistol, and
+Jeb dropped him in his tracks. This shot, and its effect, broke the
+spell. Spades and picks were thrown aside, the stone fell with a crash,
+and the men, thoroughly cowered, raised their hands, calling: "Kamerad!
+Kamerad!"--the same old cry that has rung from Verdun to the sea,
+although Jeb was hearing it for the first time.
+
+By gesture he commanded them to climb out, one at a time, and in single
+file to march farther away from the rifles, since at some personal cost
+they might have yet attempted a rush and overpowered him. But there was
+no rush in these exhausted men, and, except for a few who showed signs
+of relief, they took the situation with stolid gravity.
+
+In a hundred yards he halted them and called the child, who came bravely
+out of hiding with the remnants of her family; but, confronted by the
+grimly uniformed line, she drew back screaming.
+
+"It's all right, little one," Jeb called reassuringly. "These are your
+horses; come quickly, hop up and ride!"
+
+One of the prisoners, understanding French, began to laugh as he
+translated this to his comrades, but Jeb peremptorily stopped all
+conversation. To let these fellows get an inch beyond the strictest
+discipline was to invite disaster. Yet now he could give orders through
+this interpreter, and soon the column was marching silently southward,
+its first three men each bearing on his shoulders a wan little victim
+from the "empire of death." The others followed obediently enough, while
+Jeb, in a position to enfilade the column--thus maintaining a command of
+each file--brought up the rear. From his attitude and voice the captives
+seemed to know that he was on a very dangerous tension, and that the
+slightest hesitation on their part would mean instant death. They had no
+desire to test his skill further than that one snap shot through their
+officer's brain.
+
+His first concern was to drive straight southward and get clear of the
+machine-gun redoubts, which he felt sure were being extended westward;
+and as the success of this plan hinged largely upon absolute silence, he
+had promised fourteen inches of bayonet to the first man who spoke,
+coughed, sneezed, or stubbed his toe. Moreover, he was recklessly
+prepared to execute this threat without a second's hesitation, fully
+realizing that if he would hold supremacy against such overpowering odds
+he must let his words and acts mesh with the nicety of machine gears, or
+his authority would vanish.
+
+From time to time, when the burden of this responsibility began to wear
+down his courage, and fear came creeping in at the sheer audacity of
+this undertaking, he would raise his eyes to the three little tots
+ahead--and feel every nerve grow steady. As a consequence, the men were
+thoroughly in hand, stepping with caution and showing every disposition
+to carry out his orders.
+
+In this way they covered perhaps a mile, reaching a ground of
+comparative safety where their silence might have relaxed without
+bringing about disaster. But Jeb would take no chance, and forced the
+column to proceed with the same scrupulous care. As he was skirting a
+group of the dead, that looked frightfully grotesque in the pale
+moonlight, a voice almost at his back sent terror to his soul--then joy.
+
+"Well, w'ot d'ye know about thot!" it said guardedly.
+
+"Tim!" he cried, instantly calling a halt. There could be no mistaking
+that voice, were it heard anywhere on earth. "Tim, where are you?"
+
+"If it ain't Jeb, may I be shot for a spy! B'ys, deliverance is come!"
+And the sergeant raised himself to a sitting position, while several
+forms about him also began to stir.
+
+"You blessed Irishman," said Jeb, delightedly, "if I could take my eyes
+off this bunch, darned if I wouldn't kiss you!"
+
+"Ye've brought better'n a kiss, lad--but ye can do thot yit, mind ye, if
+I see inither sun!"
+
+"Are you too badly hurt to be carried in?"
+
+"Thot's a divil av a question, now! Sure, me an' the b'ys is too
+continted to move for annything, lest 'tis a pitcher av ice-water----"
+his voice seemed to crack at the mention of this.
+
+Through the interpreter Jeb ordered a man to lift him; and as a big
+fellow stepped forward, Tim chuckled:
+
+"If this don't beat the Dutch, may I be shot--ow! me leg! Here, ye
+butcher, don't ye know better'n to handle a mon like a trunk! Kneel, ye
+spalpeen, whilst I straddle the neck av ye!"
+
+When the German arose with Tim firmly astride his shoulders Jeb sent out
+another prisoner, then another, until nine wounded were prepared for
+transport rearward.
+
+"You're sure there aren't any more, Tim?" he asked.
+
+"Faith, an' I wisht there was, lad," the sergeant answered soberly.
+"Pass me up me rifle, like a good b'y, forinst we start! I see be the
+black-and-gold button on me ar-rmy mule thot he's a Landstrumer, an'
+they's tricky b'ys, at times!"
+
+There was a cheer so spontaneous about this Irishman, whose very genius
+for happiness had lightened many a heavy burden, that his mount began
+to shake with laughter; whereupon Tim, in spite of a wound that pained
+grievously, grinned down at him.
+
+"Laugh away, ye fat-headed Fritz," he said. "But don't go tryin' to buck
+me off, or 'tis Tim Doreen'll crack yer periscope--bein' as he's settin'
+on it! Jeb, ye've two spare ar-rmy mules--let thim bring in all the
+rifles, like a good lad!"
+
+They had gone but a little way when Tim caught the German by the ear,
+saying:
+
+"Gee-haw, ye beggarly Boche! Turn 'round, an' take me to the boss av
+this job!"--but, as the prisoner did no more than flinch, he called
+back: "Jeb, order this outcast to halt, whilst ye come up to us!"
+
+When this had been accomplished through the interpreter, and the two
+friends were moving side by side, the sergeant asked:
+
+"D'ye think there's no fear av this divil understandin' God's language?
+Thin, I've a mind to ask w'ot's come over ye, lad--but ye mustn't be
+takin' it amiss! Ye know thot whin I saw ye last, ye wasn't w'ot I'd
+call love-sick for a scrap!"
+
+"Tim," he answered, in an awed voice, "it was the sight of those
+children!"
+
+"The childer, ye say! Thim w'ot's forinst us?"
+
+"Yes. They did it! God, but they were a terrible sight to see--it sort
+of made me crazy!"
+
+"'Tis a Christian kind av insanity, lad," the sergeant mused. "I hope
+ye'll be havin' a domn fine lot av it!"
+
+Thus, when the low-lying moon flooded the dressing-station quadrangle,
+Jeb, with fourteen prisoners, nine wounded comrades and three little
+citizens from the "empire of death," was challenged by lookouts of a new
+regiment that had arrived during the night to occupy the old front line
+trench. The next minute cheers were ringing from a thousand throats.
+
+Crossing the narrow bridge Tim, though weak from pain, yelled:
+
+"Sind a squad after us, lads, an' ye can have our mules whin they're
+unloaded!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Bonsecours had turned with a sigh of relief from the last of his
+cases and stepped outside for a breath of air, when the sound of
+cheering reached him.
+
+"There is some good news," he called to Marian, who came and stood
+nearby, listening. Yet, even at that moment, his thoughts were of her,
+and he turned, saying gently: "You must rest; I really insist upon it!
+If you don't, I--I shall break down, myself."
+
+She looked at him searchingly, reading well the fatigue, the unutterable
+strain, which marked his face, and whispered:
+
+"You're the one who needs it! Don't you realize how helpless we would be
+here without you?"
+
+"And how helpless I would be without _you_?" he murmured. "Oh, my
+wonderful Marian----!" He checked himself with an effort; yet, had the
+moon been brighter, he would have seen the pallor in her face yield to a
+flood of warm color.
+
+The tramp of men was coming nearer, men who slipped and stumbled down
+the steep road, and then a group of curious figures staggered into view,
+seeming in the uncertain light scarcely to be human. Turning right they
+marched heavily to the dressing-station entrance and, at Jeb's command,
+halted.
+
+Bonsecours, with mouth agape, stepped back at their approach, while
+Marian drew slightly closer to him. There is nothing in the French
+language which exactly corresponds to our expression of amazement:
+"Well, I'll be damned!" but whatever comes nearest to it is what the
+great surgeon now said, like a common sapper. At the same instant the
+nurse at his side gave a low cry. She was not looking at Jeb, but at the
+children.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+
+Scarcely were the children lifted down before Marian had kneeled and
+taken them in her arms. Quicker than Bonsecours she had read the story
+of their destruction, and now sobbed over them as though her heart would
+break. One had clasped her neck, but the other two, unable to stand,
+merely stared with wide-open eyes devoid of the slightest understanding.
+It was when the great French surgeon looked upon these--little tots
+whose minds were shattered by cruelties purposely conceived for them,
+and whose bodies were starved to skeleton thinness in order that thieves
+and degenerates might grow fat--that he swore a mighty oath and buried
+his face in his hands.
+
+"_Mon Dieu, mon Dieu_," he muttered fiercely, "how many more will they
+add to the thousands I have already seen!"
+
+Jeb had glanced only once at Marian, being afraid of the reproach her
+eyes might still hold for him; but as soon as a squad trotted up to
+receive the prisoners he turned away, welcoming another duty which
+sternly summoned him back to the plain. For the machine-gun redoubts had
+to be taken before their deadly fire could pour into those brave fellows
+who had swept ahead--and this must be done before uncompromising
+daylight made the work too costly! So he turned without glancing again
+at Marian. Yet no decoration for a brave deed might have been more
+brilliant than her look which followed him, could she have shut out the
+torturing picture of his debasement at the shell hole. A quick prayer
+sprang from her soul into space as she whispered fervently: "God keep
+his courage stiff!" She had not thought about his body; she did not care
+about his body! It was to make a soldier that she prayed.
+
+Bonsecours, having seen the look and movement of her lips, asked gently:
+
+"Do you know him?"
+
+"We grew up in the same town, back home," she answered, still gazing
+after Jeb.
+
+"Oh!" he said. It was a gasp of pain, and he stood as though a shell
+had burst and stunned him. In his headlong work between guns of opposing
+armies, he had never stopped to wonder if there might be someone else in
+this Nurse Marian's life; and now, stung by a possible realization of
+it, his mind leaped outward to fears and fancied facts--all of which she
+might have told him were groundless. Turning toward the dug-out, he said
+briefly over his shoulder: "Please see to the children. My own cases are
+waiting."
+
+Down into the trench Jeb had run, calling for an officer, and was soon
+making his report to the Colonel, who peremptorily asked:
+
+"You can show us these positions?"
+
+"Two of them, sir; the others must occupy the same general line."
+
+Silently, but in the highest spirits, three thousand men went over the
+top, deploying in open order to make their drag-net stretch to its
+farthest capacity and sweep up the redoubts, whose locations, after all,
+were largely a matter of conjecture.
+
+Jeb, fighting hard to hold himself steady, pressed toward the right,
+where he thought the first digging party could be found; yet, before he
+sighted it, firing broke out to his left, then farther to his left--each
+time with the unmistakable fusillade of machine-guns answered by
+cracking rifles. One bunch at a time, the enemy was being flushed from
+cover; yet at each new outburst he gasped more and more for
+air,--feeling in his soul what was coming over him, and swearing roundly
+to drive it back.
+
+"We ain't going to miss anything, are we?" a cheery voice at his back
+called out.
+
+"We'll find it, all right," he panted; but might have saved his breath,
+for that very instant they were met by a fire which, in a light less
+deceptive, would have been gruelling even to their openly deployed
+skirmish line.
+
+Without awaiting commands--were there any to wait for--the men, ducking
+low, dashed past him toward the pit, leaped down into it gouging their
+bayonets right and left. With the sentry's rifle still in his hands he
+tried to follow; but at the brink, being confronted by sounds of steel
+upon steel, oaths, grunts, yells of victory and of pain, his legs
+refused to move. The old fear was wrapping itself about him. But then
+came cries of "Kamerad!"--and upon hearing these he bounded in, knowing
+the place had surrendered.
+
+"The ruined hamlet next," he yelled. "There's a lot of supplies there!"
+
+The men sprang out after him, laughing now in sheer exuberance of
+spirits, and throwing taunts at a few of their disgruntled mates who had
+been left to watch the prisoners and spoils. But Jeb could not laugh.
+His jaws were set in grim determination. He was soul-sick and furious.
+He had not played fair--although his comrades were far from suspecting
+it. He swore to himself over and over, on the memory of those children
+whom he had saved at this place, that he would be the first to go in and
+the last to come out, were it to mean death a hundred times.
+
+But the hamlet put up no resistance; it lay still and deserted, as
+though some marauding monster had torn it in its teeth and passed on by.
+This silence, however, did not deceive Jeb. Even through the chaos of
+his brain he had a rather fair idea of how many small engagements had
+taken place back on the plain, and judged them to be far short of the
+newly built redoubts; thereby conjecturing that several of the companies
+must have deserted their positions and fallen in upon the more secure
+catacombs. Advising the men to scatter and search the cellars, he
+discovered at last a large, although artfully disguised, opening to the
+subterranean area below.
+
+"Who speaks German?" he asked, of those who stood about him.
+
+"I," said one.
+
+"Then yell down and tell 'em to come out, or be blown out!"
+
+But someone below must have understood English and quickly translated,
+because long cries of "Kamerad, Kamerad," floated eerily up, as if a
+cover had been lifted from some pit in hell releasing the wails of
+incarcerated spirits. Answering with yells of derision the troops
+climbed to the street level and formed to receive prisoners; whereupon,
+casting rifles aside as they gained the open, the inhabitants of this
+underworld filed out.
+
+When the catacombs had been searched and quantities of munitions for the
+machine-guns salvaged, Jeb led the way back across the now silent No
+Man's Land that had passed into the pages of history. One by one the
+other units were picked up, standing guard over captured positions.
+Everything had been swept into the Allied pocket at an insignificant
+cost.
+
+Dawn had not yet streaked the east. Except for a fitful shot somewhere
+back across the plain, where an overstrained sentry fired at a shadow,
+the world slept. The regiment, flushed and happy, sprang down into its
+trench; and Jeb was turning glumly toward the gravelly road, when the
+Colonel stepped after him.
+
+"I haven't your name," he said. "I want to send it in."
+
+"Oh, that's all right," Jeb answered, afraid to look at this commander
+of men, lest even in the dim light his stricken conscience might be
+revealed.
+
+"But it isn't all right," the officer smiled. "I heard what you did
+earlier to-night--a rather fine thing, that!--and now you've turned
+another trick, giving us eight hundred prisoners, twelve machine-gun
+sections, and various stuff. You deserve a mention."
+
+"Then just tell 'em," Jeb began; but he could not claim it and, blushing
+guiltily, hurried off, yelling over his shoulder: "It isn't worth while,
+really!"
+
+Yet there had been something else that happened out on the field which
+meant a great deal more to him. It had been while they were marching
+homeward, when this same officer had laid a hand upon his arm and said:
+"I hope the American army which landed yesterday is made up of your
+stuff!" The words did not in any sense imply doubt; merely compliment,
+but Jeb inwardly cringed because the American Army had been graded, even
+in ignorance, with such as he. At that instant he had made a resolve--an
+earnest, solemn resolve--to join that army and, by its influence, prove
+himself worthy.
+
+He now went hurriedly down into the quadrangle and turned to the dug-out
+where he expected to find Bonsecours--the man who superseded Barrow in
+authority. For he guessed that an ambulance would be standing farther at
+the rear, waiting for the nine men whom he had brought in. When it took
+them back, he determined that it would also take him to the fellows
+from home who had just landed--to a new opportunity! Perhaps it was
+ready to leave at any moment, and this thought gave him greater speed.
+
+As he entered Tim, the last to receive attention, lay in a stretcher
+ready to be moved. He had insisted upon being last, claiming this
+preference because of the fact that he was a sergeant; and now, although
+with a badly shattered leg which the surgeon had told him might later
+have to go, he grinned broadly as Jeb clasped his hand. Bonsecours'
+greeting also was affectionate and genuine; for, despite his fading hope
+of happiness, and the memory of Jeb's face which had worn the stamp of
+abject fear twenty-four hours earlier, he was too big a man to refuse
+tribute to a manly deed.
+
+"Well, lad," Tim, his mouth drawn with pain, tried to laugh--tried to
+"bluff it out" so Jeb would not suspect the truth, "I'm thinkin' thot
+life's wan domn hole after anither! First, mind ye, 'tis the swimmin'
+hole, thin the shell hole, thin a hole in me leg, an' next we know 'tis
+a stay-for-keeps hole in the ground! W'ot a divil av a hole the ould
+world is, after all! But me leg'll be all right in a fortnight, lad,"
+(oh, Tim, you beloved liar!) "an' thin I'll be back wid the b'ys twict
+as strong as iver!"
+
+"That's mighty fine news," Jeb laughed. "But I hope to go back with you
+now!"
+
+"I'm not goin' now," Tim cried angrily. "I've swore 'tis not a step I
+take till I've said 'God bless ye' to thot angel nurse!"
+
+"There, there, Tim, keep quiet! Haven't I promised that you could?"
+Bonsecours smiled at him.
+
+"Thin w'ot's the lad sayin' about takin' me now?"
+
+"Oh, I only meant when you are ready, Tim," Jeb did his part to quiet
+the excited little sergeant; then, to the doctor, he added quickly: "I
+want to go back with the ambulance, that's all. The Americans landed
+yesterday, and----"
+
+"But," the surgeon gasped at this unusual request, "Barrow needs you!"
+
+"I guess he doesn't, so awfully much," Jeb flushed. "If you can possibly
+arrange it for me, I'll be greatly obliged. I've--I've just got to get
+in the ranks, Doctor! I can't explain what I mean--but it's those
+children! Why, if each of the ten million American fellows who
+registered for our New Army could see only a part of cruelties I've
+seen, they'd break their necks getting over here!--and they wouldn't go
+back, either, not even for Christmas, till the last of these German
+High-in-Command was in prison, or dead! I'm only asking for a chance to
+make good----"
+
+"Cut thot out," Tim called huskily. "It hur-rts me leg!"
+
+Bonsecours laughed but, still protesting, said:
+
+"I can't keep the ambulance waiting!"
+
+"You won't have to; I'm ready now."
+
+"But your kit----?"
+
+"Is on my back, sir."
+
+Two big orderlies came in and picked up the stretcher, whereupon Tim
+grew again excited.
+
+"Put me down, ye little runts," he yelled, "afore I git up an'
+smash----"
+
+"There, there," Bonsecours hastily interposed; saying to them: "Take
+this brave fellow to Dug-out Three--he wants to see Nurse Marian. I'll
+be right after you." But the instant they had left he turned to Jeb,
+asking sharply: "Do you realize what your leaving means?"
+
+"I think I do, sir."
+
+"You would deliberately put upon me the responsibility of sending you?"
+
+"Why, yes," Jeb answered, somewhat perplexed.
+
+"Then I refuse!" the surgeon snapped. "I refuse, until you bring me word
+that your little nurse friend from America desires it!"
+
+Unaware of what was passing in Bonsecours' mind, Jeb stared after him in
+complete amazement. He had intended, of course, to see Marian and say
+good-bye to her, although it was an interview toward which he looked
+with so much dread that once or twice he had thought of escaping it, and
+writing her from somewhere else. Yet now he must bring some word from
+her to this cranky surgeon, or he dared not leave, at all! His nerves
+were rattled, and he fumbled through his pockets for the "makings";
+spilled the tobacco and threw his ineffectual effort away in disgust.
+Marian was in Dug-out Three, with Tim, Bonsecours, and the
+stretcher-bearers! Oh, well, he told himself, perhaps it would be
+easier to have them all present!--and he went out resolutely, turning
+toward the third entrance. But on the threshold his resolution failed,
+and he drew back, staring.
+
+The soft light from an oil lamp made the interior look warm and
+attractive, particularly because Marian was standing by the side of Tim,
+smiling tenderly down at him. Across from her Bonsecours stood, also
+smiling, but with a look of weariness--perhaps it was unhappiness. The
+bearers were grinning, as the little sergeant now continued with what,
+evidently, he had been saying:
+
+"So ye see, lass, I couldn't go Blighty till I'd whispered a 'God bless
+ye' to me own, an' only, sister!"
+
+"I'd be very proud if you were my brother, Tim," she replied,
+soothingly.
+
+"She'd be very proud _if I were_," he looked at Bonsecours with a broad
+grin. "Now w'ot d'ye know about thot, Doctor! If _I were_, indade!--as
+if I _wasn't_! Shure, an' if the same blood don't run in both our veins,
+'tis not Tim Doreen as would be here now, a-tellin' av it!"
+
+"You're perfectly right," the surgeon laughed. "I did that deed myself,
+and it ought to make you her brother!"
+
+"_Ought_ to! Faith, an' it _did_!--iver since thot day the blessed angel
+says to ye: 'Thin do yer dooty an' save 'im!', as she put out her ar-rm
+for the sacrifice thot kept me here on earth!"
+
+"Please stop--both of you!" she implored.
+
+"Shure, lass, an' 'tis no harm speakin' av a noble deed. An' now," he
+added, folding his hands upon his breast, and closing his eyes in mock
+contentment, "'tis me last wish an' tistament to make the good Doctor
+Bonsecours me brother-in-law!"
+
+"One must be in his right mind to make a last 'wish and tistament,'"
+Marian tried to look at him severely; but, the next instant, she leaned
+impulsively over and kissed his cheeks--then ran out the doorway.
+
+Jeb had barely time to draw back when she dashed past him and turned
+toward the road leading above the dug-outs. She might readily have seen
+him had her haste and confusion been less, because the dawn was coming,
+and objects in the quadrangle were vaguely beginning to take shape. A
+new day was creeping up over the hill. The cold, unsympathetic light,
+matching the compass of his thoughts, made the world look gray and
+sordid.
+
+He had heard, and now realized with a new depression that henceforth he
+could be no more a part of her life than any one of the millions who
+were fighting the battle of Humanity in this stricken land. Not that he
+pretended to love her inordinately, by any means, but a man need only
+love a girl with a very small portion of his heart to feel a throb of
+pain when she surrenders to some one else. It was this sense of being
+left behind that hurt; of being deserted by his old playmate--and of
+deserving it! He turned slowly and followed after her.
+
+She did not hear him as he came up, and when he approached to within a
+few feet of her he saw the reason. The dawn was streaking the sky with
+pink and salmon tints, and, although her eyes were gazing into it, her
+thoughts reached far beyond. Standing upon the hilltop, her hands
+crossed over the red emblem on her breast, the half-light of soft color
+touching her immobile face, she typified the Spirit of Mercy poised
+above the unawakened battlefield, ready at the first gun's crash to fly
+downward with her warmth, her strength, her sympathy.
+
+For the moment forgetting his own mission in the presence of the
+transfigured Marian, Jeb stood abashed. Yet the minutes were passing,
+and the ambulance would not wait.
+
+"I--I came up to say good-bye," he stammered, awkwardly. "I'm going."
+
+She turned, seeming reluctant to be torn from her meditations, and
+quietly asked:
+
+"Where?"
+
+He told her in a few words, adding:
+
+"Bonsecours won't give his permission unless you agree."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+But she knew. From a multitude of small things, and with an intuition
+almost divine, she read another chapter of the great surgeon's nobility,
+and turned her eyes again toward the rainbow east. It was perhaps what
+she saw there in the changing sunrise that impelled her to whisper
+softly:
+
+"I hope you'll always be as brave as you were last night, Jeb."
+
+His cheeks burned, but he faced her without flinching and replied:
+
+"I'm never going to run away again, if that's what you mean!"
+
+"I had not intended to put it so cruelly, Jeb. You've done a great thing
+to-night, because you conquered two enemies at the same time--the one
+within you being infinitely a harder fight than the one without. I
+appreciate that, and am glad for you."
+
+"I want you to forget that--that disgrace at the shell hole," he said,
+doggedly.
+
+"Forget?" Her voice broke hysterically, and her eyes filled with tears
+of pity. "Ask me to forgive it, Jeb, and I may--but, forget it? Oh, how
+can I? Don't you understand?--I _saw_ it! I _saw_ it!"
+
+"Stop, stop--please!" he cried huskily, passing his hand across his
+face. "Then don't forget, if--if you can't; but I'd hate to think of the
+Colonel, and Aunt Sallie, and----"
+
+"Your secret is safe, if that's what you fear," she said, now as
+composedly as she had a moment before been moved. Again, for half a
+minute, she faced the sunrise, when her voice came wistfully:
+
+"Oh, God, if--if I just hadn't _seen_ it!"
+
+He realized with full conviction that an impassable gulf lay between him
+and this girl. It was not his debasing weakness, so much as her
+discovery of it, that would forever stamp him with the brand of shame.
+The Arab sheik who one time said: "A thief may loot my tent and I will
+curse all thieves, but do I catch him at it and he dies!"--expressed the
+mind of all humanity. Marian had _seen_ Jeb; and this meant that he was
+dead to her.
+
+He watched her for a moment longer, then in a dispirited voice asked:
+
+"Shall I tell Bonsecours it's all right for me to go?"
+
+Without taking her face from the east, she answered evenly:
+
+"Yes; tell him it's all right for you to go. I am praying God to watch
+over you, and--and make you truly worthy of a place among our soldiers
+from home."
+
+He glanced back, and saw, far beyond the quadrangle, two
+stretcher-bearers carrying Tim to the waiting ambulance. Once more he
+looked at Marian, tried twice to speak, but stood humbly mute before
+her--awed by her ennobling beauty. For again her exquisite hands were
+crossed over the red emblem upon her breast, her eyes gazed into the
+glorified sky, and her lips moved as she pleaded with the God of Hosts
+to fire this playmate at her side with the divine spark of courage--and
+keep him brave.
+
+Jeb bowed his head, feeling as though he were within the precinct of a
+holy shrine; then in silence turned and went down the road, walking with
+firm steps which, he prayed, would lead to the dawn of a new manhood.
+
+The first of the "75's" crashed spitefully, and in a chaotic instant the
+air and earth again were shorn of their blessed peace. Instantly the sky
+became streaked with trails of smoke from over-passing shells. Far to
+the north they fell and burst into white spray, as though a long
+Atlantic comber were pounding on a rocky shore.
+
+She turned once and looked toward it, moved by infinite pity for the men
+who were being shattered; then started slowly back into the quadrangle,
+just as Bonsecours dashed wildly up in search of her.
+
+There were no words that he could say; he merely stood in front of her,
+holding out his arms. Her fingers, still laced over the Red Cross,
+fluttered nervously, as a butterfly, at the beginning of a summer storm,
+will cling to a flower--wanting, yet not daring to leave lest its frail
+wings, caught upon the wind, might carry it far out into an unexplored
+world. But her eyes gazed at him with illimitable yearning; then gently
+she swayed, stretched out her hands, and ran to him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+
+Trees that lined the streets of Hillsdale were touched with tints of red
+and gold, frescoed by the magic brush of approaching winter.
+
+In the _Eagle_ office sat the Colonel and Mr. Strong, looking
+thoughtfully into their laps. Tears glistened on their cheeks; for
+several minutes neither of them had spoken. Held in the editor's fingers
+was an open letter just received, while in the Colonel's inert hand lay
+a clipping from the Paris _Figaro_. The Colonel now glanced up slowly
+but, seeing Mr. Strong's face, sharply exclaimed:
+
+"I wish you'd stop your infernal weeping, Amos!"
+
+"I wish you'd stop your own!" the editor replied with equal asperity;
+then both of them began to laugh.
+
+"I confess, Amos, that it's hard to keep back tears. Why, by gad, sir,
+he has done as much as we ever did in the old fracas over here!--more,
+sir! And Marian--who the devil is that fellow she eulogizes to the sky?
+Here," he handed over the clipping, "read this again! It's a pity it
+isn't printed in English!"
+
+"Let me first read what Marian says, Roger; then we'll take the
+clipping."
+
+Three times within the last half hour these old gentlemen had followed
+exactly this same routine: first taking Marian's letter, written from
+Paris where she had been sent for a well-earned rest, and then
+laboriously translating the newspaper item she inclosed to them.
+
+Mr. Strong now adjusted his glasses and began the letter a fourth time,
+while the Colonel leaned forward, hanging upon each word. It recited
+first what Tim Doreen had magnanimously told about Jeb, losing none of
+that Irishman's vividness; then it went on at great length to describe a
+certain Dr. Georges Bonsecours. Page after page she wrote of him; citing
+innumerable instances of his valor, both while under gruelling fire out
+on the field and endless hours of indefatigable work beneath the dug-out
+shelters. Having fully covered his present, she dashed into his past
+with a reckless disregard of ink and paper, and filled many other pages.
+Only once did the Colonel interrupt, and then to remark drily:
+
+"Seems like a pretty thorough biographical sketch, Amos."
+
+He had made this same observation, just at this same place, upon each of
+the previous readings; and the editor had hesitated, cleared his
+throat--as he now did--before continuing with the only mention Marian
+had written of this great surgeon's future, which was, briefly:
+
+"When the war is over, he is coming out to Hillsdale."
+
+For a fourth time now Mr. Strong's eyes grew moist, as he asked:
+
+"What do you suppose he wants to come out here to Hillsdale for?"
+
+The Colonel had not previously deigned to answer this; he had merely
+subsided into silence and let a lump rise in his throat in sympathy with
+the editor. This time, however, he turned squarely to his friend and
+asked:
+
+"Amos, are you trying to be a pig-headed old fool, or do you really want
+the truth!"
+
+Mr. Strong looked at him rather humorously.
+
+"I think I'll dodge the truth, at any rate, Roger--until this doctor
+arrives. How do you think Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie will take it?"
+
+"Take it? Why, they'll take it just as we do--with joyful hearts,
+because their boy and our girl have achieved great things! I never
+wanted her to marry Jeb, anyhow!" And to Mr. Strong's smile of surprise,
+he thundered: "By cracky, I tell you I didn't, Roger! Jeb was too
+immature for her--he had yet to prove himself!"
+
+"He's proved himself now," the editor emphatically replied.
+
+"He has, indeed," the Colonel's voice sank to tenderness. "He has,
+indeed," he added to himself, as though he could not quite understand
+it. "But, Amos, she needs a man of broader calibre--you know she does!
+They weren't ever seriously in love with each other, anyhow!--don't
+interrupt me again!--I tell you they weren't! Just because their dear
+mothers expressed a wish for them to marry, you, and those two little
+old maids out there, got to sentimentalizing over it until the poor
+children were hypnotized. Why, confound it, I call them lucky to have
+escaped! I wonder, by the way," he added thoughtfully, "if this Doctor
+What's-his-name talks English, or the jargon in which that clipping is
+printed! He'll have a stupid time here in Hillsdale, that's all I've got
+to say."
+
+Mr. Strong laughed outright.
+
+"You're mighty cock-sure about him and Marian!"
+
+"Because I don't admit being a pig-headed old fool," the Colonel
+grinned. "If ever invisible words were written between lines of a
+letter, they're there in your hand! He's asked her, to a certainty; and
+she has either said yes, or intends to! Wait for the next mail! The
+little vixen is just preparing us--see if I ain't right! Now, read the
+other, Amos," he added gently.
+
+The clipping was a long one, being a list of men in the American Army
+who had been recommended for the _Croix de Guerre_, and, among the many,
+he read:
+
+"'Soldier Jebediah Tumpson, for going through a heavy barrage to search
+for a wounded platoon leader, and after two hours under constant fire
+bringing him back in safety.'"
+
+"What's that thing they want to give him?" the Colonel asked, after they
+had been silent with their own thoughts for several moments. There was a
+huskiness in his voice that suggested another approach of tears.
+
+"_Croix de Guerre_," Mr. Strong coughed and answered. "It means the
+Cross of War."
+
+"Then why the devil didn't you say Cross of War, Amos," he demanded,
+trying valiantly to hide his emotion. "What's the sense of using words
+that sound like a dog fight!--g-r-r-r-r!--Croix de G-r-r-r-r,
+indeed!--when you know how to say it in decent American English!"
+
+The editor smiled understandingly, and again they relapsed into
+meditation; their hearts beating happily, the Colonel's stout boot
+tapping contentedly upon the oaken floor.
+
+"Amos," he shouted, springing at last to his feet, "there's no damned
+German army ever recruited can stand before our boys when we get good
+and mad!"
+
+Mr. Strong arose and closed his roll-top desk with a bang. Laying a hand
+on his friend's shoulder, he said:
+
+"You're damn right! Now get your overcoat----"
+
+"Pouf! I don't need any overcoat!" the Colonel cried disdainfully,
+feeling himself warmed by the old spirit of 1861, which had been fanned
+into a comforting glow by the new spirit of 1917.
+
+"Yes, you do, Roger, for I heard you coughing only yesterday!--and you
+remember what I promised Marian!"
+
+"I will, if you put on your muffler, Amos!"
+
+"Oh, very well. But what I started to say is, that--while I don't make a
+practice of it--I think we're entitled to go to the hotel for a
+small--er-a! Then we'll walk out Main street, and take this good news to
+the little aunts!"
+
+"And some flowers, Amos! Tulips, if we can find any--a big bunch of
+'em!"
+
+THE END
+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+Of all the charming books that may come forth this year, none will be
+more welcome than
+
+   GEORGINA'S
+   SERVICE STARS
+
+   By Annie Fellows Johnston
+
+   TO BE PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 1st
+
+In it will be found a new story of beloved Georgina whose Rainbow
+adventures led into her tenth year. Now she is older--sweet sixteen, if
+you please--and Richard, her playmate of childhood days, is a grown man
+of seventeen--and as devoted as ever. Of course he got into the great
+war enough to give Georgina a second star to her service flag; her
+father, being a famous surgeon, his star is rightfully at the top. But
+watch out for Richard! (Beautifully illustrated. $1.35 net.)
+
+AS USUAL--FOR ALL THE FAMILY
+
+   +-------------------------------------------------+
+   |         GEORGINA of the                         |
+   |                             RAINBOWS            |
+   |Now selling in beautiful popular edition, 60 cts.|
+   +-------------------------------------------------+
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He has written another one--and it is as good as his famous book "Laugh
+and Live"
+
+MAKING LIFE WORTH WHILE
+
+--that the title of _Douglas Fairbanks'_ new book to be published in
+early autumn
+
+It is written in his own inimitable style--another book of inspiration
+for people of all ages and either sex--a new vein of optimistic cheer
+for us mortals of a war-worn world--another message from the man who
+knows how to keep himself happy and well, and who is willing to pass his
+recipe on to others.
+
+_His book makes for Success Everybody will want it_
+
+12mo.--Beautifully Illustrated with 16 New Photographic Duotones
+
+   Cloth, $1.00  Khaki, $1.00
+   Leather, $2.00 Ooze, $2.50
+
+   To be published September 1
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Over the Seas for Uncle Sam
+
+   By ELAINE STERNE,
+   Author of "The Road of Ambition"
+
+Miss Sterne is Senior Lieutenant of the Navy League Honor Guard, which
+has charge of entertainment and visitation in behalf of sick and wounded
+sailors sent home for hospital treatment. Their experiences, such as may
+be published at this time, now appear in book form. This book brings out
+many thrilling adventures that have occurred in the war zone of the high
+seas--and has official sanction. Miss Sterne's descriptive powers are
+equaled by few. She has the dramatic touch which compels interest. Her
+book, which contains many photographic scenes, will be warmly welcomed
+in navy circles, and particularly by those in active service.
+
+   Cloth   Illuminated Jacket   $1.35 Net
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Ambulancing on the French Front
+
+By EDWARD P. COYLE
+
+Here is a collection of intensely interesting episodes related by a
+Young American who served as a volunteer with the French Army--Red Cross
+Division. His book is to the field of mercy what those of Empey, Holmes
+and Peat have been in describing the vicissitudes of army life. The
+author spent ten months in ambulance work on the Verdun firing line.
+What he saw and did is recounted with most graphic clearness. This book
+contains many illustrations photographed on the spot showing with vivid
+exactitude the terrors of rescue work under the fire of the big guns.
+
+   Cloth   16 Full page Illustrations   $1.35 Net
+
+   Britton Publishing Company    New York
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Where the Souls of Men are Calling, by
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