At these times the lines of marching men, halted by some clumsy clashing of war machines, instantly became mere huddles of fatigue by the wayside, falling to earth like rows of standing blocks sent over by a child's touch.

Facing the square was a small stone church that had been mistreated. Its front was barred by tumbled masonry, but a well-placed shell had widely breached its side wall. Through this timbered opening could be seen rows of cots hovered over by nurses or white-clad surgeons. Their forms flashed with a subdued radiance far back in the shaded interior. Litter bearers came and went.

From the opening now issued a red-faced private, bulky with fat. One of his eyes was hidden from the public by a bandage, but the other surveyed the milling traffic with a humorous tolerance. Though propelling himself with crutches, he had contrived to issue from the place with an air of careless sauntering. Tenderly he eased his bulk to a flat stone, aforetime set in the church's facade, and dropped a crutch at either side. He now readjusted his hat, for the bandage going up over his shock of reddish hair had affected its fit. Next he placed an inquiring but entirely respectful palm over the bandaged eye.

"Never was such a hell of a good eye, anyhow," he observed, and winked the unhidden eye in testimony of his wit. Then he plucked from back of an ear a half-smoked cigarette, relighted this, and leered humorously at the spreading tangle before him.

"Naughty, naughtykins!" he called to a driver of four mules who had risen finely to an emergency demanding sheer language. "First chance I had to get a good look at the war, what with one thing and another," he amiably explained to a sergeant of infantry who was passing.

Neither of his sallies evoked a response, but he was not rebuffed. He wished to engage in badinage, but he was one who could entertain himself if need be. He looked about for other diversion.

To the opening in the church wall came a nurse. She walked with short, uncertain steps and leaned against the ragged edge of the wall, with one arm along its stone for support. Her face was white and drawn, and for a moment she closed her eyes and breathed deeply of the dust-laden air. The fat private on the stone, a score of feet away, studied her approvingly. She was slight of form and her hair beneath the cap was of gold, a little tarnished. He waited for her eyes to open, then hailed her genially as he waved at a tangle of camions and ambulances now blocking the bridge.

"Worse'n fair week back home on Main Street, hey, sister?"

But she did not hear him, for a battered young second lieutenant with one arm in a sling had joined her from the dusk of the church.

"Done up, nurse?" he demanded.

"Only for a second. We just finished something pretty fierce."

She pointed back of her, but without looking.

"Why not sit down on that stone?"

He indicated a fallen slab at her feet. She looked at it with frank longing, but smiled a refusal.

"Dassent," she said. "I'd be asleep in no time."

"Cheer up! We'll soon finish this man's job."

The girl looked at him with eyes already freshened.

"No, it won't ever be finished. It's going on forever. Nothing but war and that inside."

Again she pointed back without turning her head.

"Another jam!"

The second lieutenant waved toward the makeshift bridge. The girl watched the muddle of wheeled things and stiffened with indignation.

"That's why it'll last so long," she said. "Because these officers of ours can't learn anything. Look at that muddle—while men are dying on beyond. You'd think they were a lot of schoolboys. Haven't they been told to keep one road for their up traffic and another road for their down traffic? But they wouldn't do it, because it was the British who told 'em. But the British had found out, hadn't they? Catch them having a senseless mix-up like that! But our men won't listen. They won't even listen to me. I've told one general and six or seven colonels only this morning. Told the general to keep certain roads for troops and wagons going to the front, and other roads of traffic coming back to camps and depots, and all he could say was that he hoped to God there wouldn't be another war until the women could staff it."

"Hooray, hooray!" squeaked the listening private in a subdued falsetto not meant to be overheard.

Then he turned to stare up the street of broken shop fronts. One of these diverted his attention from the nurse. Above its door protruded a bush, its leaves long since withered. He knew this for the sign of a wine shop, and with much effort regained his feet to hobble toward it. He went far enough to note that the bush broke its promise of refreshment, for back of it was but dry desolation.

"Napoo!" he murmured in his best French, and turned to measure the distance back to his stone seat. To this he again sauntered carelessly, as a gentleman walking abroad over his estate.

The second lieutenant was leaving the nurse by the extemporized portal of the church, though she seemed not to have done with exposing the incompetence of certain staff officers. She still leaned wearily against the wall, vocal with irritation.

"Bawl 'em out, sister! I think anything you think," called the private.

Then from his stone seat he turned to survey the double line of marching men that issued from the street into the square. They came now to a shuffling halt at a word of command relayed from some place beyond the bridge, where a new jumble of traffic could be dimly discerned. The lines fell apart and the men sank to earth in the shade of the broken buildings across the square. The private waved them a careless hand, with the mild interest of one who has been permanently dissevered from their activities.

One of them slouched over, gave the private a new cigarette, and slouched back to his resting mates. In the act of lighting the cigarette the fat private noted that another of these reclining figures had risen and was staring fixedly either at him or at something beyond him. He turned and perceived that the nurse and not himself must be the object of this regard.

The risen private came on a dozen paces, halted hesitatingly, and stared once more. The nurse, who had drooped again after the departure of the second lieutenant, now drew a long breath, threw up her shoulders, and half turned as if to reenter the church. The hesitating private, beholding the new angle of her face thus revealed to him, darted swiftly forward with a cry that was formless but eloquent. The nurse stayed motionless, but with eyes widened upon the approaching figure. The advancing private had risen wearily, and his first steps toward the church had been tired, dragging steps, but for the later distance he became agile and swift, running as one refreshed. The fat private on the stone observed the little play.

The couple stood at last, tensely, face to face. The watcher beheld the girl's eyes rest with wild wonder upon the newcomer, eyes that were steady, questioning green flames. He saw her form stiffen, her shoulders go back, her arms rise, her clenched hands spread apart in a gesture that was something of fear but all of allure. The newcomer's own hands widened to meet hers, the girl's wrists writhed into his tightened grasp, her own hands clasped his arms and crept slowly, tightly along the dusty sleeves of his blouse. Still her eyes were eyes of wild wonder, searching his face. They had not spoken, but now the hands of each clutched the shoulders of the other for the briefest of seconds. Then came a swift enveloping manoeuvre, and the girl was held in a close embrace.

The watching private studied the mechanics of this engagement with an expert eye. He saw the girl's arms run to tighten about the soldier's neck. He saw her face lift. The soldier's helmet obscured much of what ensued, and the watcher called softly. "Hats off in front!" Then fastidiously dusting the back of one hand, he kissed it audibly. Behind him, across the square, a score of recumbent privates were roused to emulation. Dusting the backs of their hands they kissed them both tenderly and audibly.

The two by the church were oblivious of this applause. Their arms still held each other. Neither had spoken. The girl's face was set in wonder, in shining unbelief, yet a little persuaded. They were apart the reach of their arms.

"As you were!" ordered the fat private in low tones, and with a little rush they became as they were. Again the girl's arms ran to tighten about the soldier's neck. The watcher noticed their earnest constrictions.

"I bet that lad never reads his dice wrong," he murmured, admiringly. "Oh, lady, lady! Will you watch him June her!"

He here became annoyed to observe that his cigarette had been burning wastefully. He snapped off its long ash and drew tremendously upon it. The two were still close, but now they talked. He heard sounds of amazement, of dismay, from the girl.

"Put a comether on her before she knew it," explained the private to himself.

There followed swift, broken murmurs, incoherent, annoyingly, to the listener, but the soldier's arms had not relaxed and the arms of the girl were visibly compressed about his neck. Then they fell half apart once more. The watcher saw that the girl was weeping, convulsed with long, dry, shuddering sobs.

"As you were!" he again commanded, and the order was almost instantly obeyed.

Presently they talked again, quick, short speech, provokingly blurred to the private's ears.

"Louder!" he commanded. "We can't hear at the back of the hall."

The muffled talk went on, one hand of the girl ceaselessly patting the shoulder where it had rested.

Now a real command came. The line of men rose, its head by the bridge coming up first. The pair by the church drew apart, blended again momentarily. The soldier sped back to his place, leaving the girl erect, head up, her shining eyes upon him. He did not look back. The line was marking time.

The fat private saw his moment. He reached for his crutches and laboriously came to his feet. Hands belled before his mouth, he trumpeted ringingly abroad: "Let the war go on!"

An officer, approaching from the bridge, seemed suddenly to be stricken with blindness, deafness, and a curious facial paralysis.

Once more the column undulated over the tawny crest of the hill. The nurse stood watching, long after her soldier had become indistinguishable in the swinging, grayish-brown mass.

"Hey, nurse!" the fat private, again seated, called to her.

To his dismay she came to stand beside him, refreshed, radiant.

"What you think of the war?" he asked.

He was embarrassed by her nearness. He had proposed badinage at a suitable distance.

"This war is nothing," said the girl.

"No?" The private was entertained.

"Nothing! A bore, of course, but it will end in a minute."

"Sure it will!" agreed the private. "Don't let no one tell you different."

"I should think not! This man's war won't bother me any more."

"Not any more?" demanded the private with insinuating emphasis.

"Not any more."

The private felt emboldened.

"Say, sister"—he grinned up at her—"that boy changed your view a lot, didn't he?"

"You mean to say you were here?" She flashed him a look of annoyance.

"Was I here? Sister, we was all here! The whole works was here!"

She reflected, the upper lip drawn down.

"Who cares?" she retorted. She turned away, then paused, debating with herself. "You—you needn't let it go any farther, but I've got to tell someone. It was a surprise. I was never so bumped in my whole life."

The private grinned again.

"Lady, that lad just naturally put a comether on you."

She considered this, then shook her head.

"No, it was more like—we must have put one on each other. It—it was fierce!"

"Happy days!" cheered the private. She lighted him with the effulgence of a knowing smile.

"Thanks a lot," she said.

The war went on.

* * * * *

In her next letter Winona Penniman wrote: "We moved up to a station nearer the front last Tuesday. I spent a night with Patricia Whipple. The child has come through it all wonderfully so far. A month ago she was down and out; now she can't get enough work to do. Says the war bores her stiff. She means to stick it through, but all her talk is of going home. By the way, she told me she had a little visit with Wilbur Cowan the other day. She says she never saw him looking better."



CHAPTER XIX

Two lines of helmeted men went over the crest of the hill. Private Cowan was no longer conscious of aching feet and leaden legs or of the burden that bowed his shoulders. There was a pounding in his ears, and in his mind a verse of Scripture that had lingered inexplicably there since their last billet at Comprey. His corporal, late a theological student, had read and expounded bits of the Bible to such as would listen. Forsaking beaten paths, he had one day explored Revelations. He had explained the giving unto seven angels of seven golden vials of the wrath of God, but later came upon a verse that gave him pause:

"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars."

It seemed that everything in Revelations had a hidden meaning, and the expert found this obscure. There had been artless speculation among the listeners. A private with dice had professed to solve the riddle of the Number Seven, and had even alleged that twelve might be easier to throw if one kept repeating the verse, but this by his fellows was held to be rank superstition. No really acceptable exposition had been offered of the woman clothed with the sun, and under her feet the moon, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.

Wilbur Cowan, marching up the hill, now sounded the words to himself; they went with that pounding in his ears. At last he knew what they meant—a great wonder in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and under her feet the moon. Over and over he chanted the words.

So much was plain to him. But how had it come about? They had looked, then enveloped each other, not thinking, blindly groping. They had been out of themselves, not on guard, not held by a thousand bands of old habit that back in Newbern would have restrained them. Lacking these, they had rushed to that wild contact like two charged clouds, and everything was changed by that moment's surrender to some force beyond their relaxed wills. Something between them had not been, now it was; something compelling; something that had, for its victory, needed only that they confront each other, not considering, not resisting, biddable.

In his arms she had cried: "But how did we know—how did we know?"

He had found no answer. Holding her fiercely as he did, it seemed enough that they did know. He had surrendered, but could not reason—was even incurious.

At the last she had said: "But if it shouldn't be true; if it's only because we're both worn down and saw someone from home. Suppose it's mere—"

She had broken off to thump his shoulder in reassurance, to cling more abjectly. It was then she had wept, shakingly, in a vast impatience with herself for trying to reason.

"It is true! It is true—it's true, it's true!" she had told him with piteous vehemence, then wilted again to his support, one hand stroking his dusty cheek.

When the command had come down the line she seemed about to fall, but braced herself with new strength from some hidden source. When he released her she stood erect, regarding him with something of the twisted, humorous quirk about her lips that for an instant brought her back to him as the little girl of long ago. Not until then had he been able to picture her as Patricia Whipple. Then he saw. Her smile became surer.

"You've gone and spoiled the whole war for me!" she called to him.

* * * * *

The war, too, had been spoiled for Private Cowan. He was unable to keep his mind on it. Of the Second Battle of the Marne he was to remember little worth telling.

Two nights later they came to rest in the woods back of St. Eugene, in the little valley of the Surmelin, that gateway to Paris from the farthest point of the second German drive. It was a valley shining with the gold of little wheat fields, crimson-specked with poppies. It recalled to Private Cowan merely the farmland rolling away from that old house of red brick where he had gone one day with Sharon Whipple—yesterday it might have been. Even the winding creek—though the French called theirs a river—was like the other creek, its course marked by a tangle of shrubs and small growths; and the sides of the valley were flanked familiarly with stony ridges sparsely covered with second-growth timber. Newbern, he kept thinking, would lie four miles beyond that longest ridge, and down that yellow road Sharon Whipple might soon be driving his creaking, weathered buggy and the gaunt roan. The buggy would sag to one side and Sharon would be sitting "slaunchwise," as he called it. Over the ridge, at Newbern's edge, would be the bony little girl who was so funny and willful.

They moved forward to the south bank of the Marne. Beyond that fifty-yard stream lay the enemy, reported now to be stacking up drive impedimenta. The reports bored Private Cowan. He wished they would hurry the thing through. He had other matters in hand. A woman clothed with the sun, and under her feet the moon, and upon her head a crown of—he could not make the crown of stars seem right. She was crowned with a nurse's cap, rusty hair showing beneath, and below this her wan, wistful, eager face, the eyes half shutting in vain attempts to reason. The face would be drawn by some inner torment; then its tortured lines melt to a smile of sure conviction. But she was clothed with the sun, and the moon was under her feet. So much he could make seem true.

The dark of a certain night fell on the waiting regiment. Crickets sounded their note, a few silent birds winged furtively overhead. Rolling kitchens brought up the one hot meal of the day, to be taken to the front by carrying parties. Company commanders made a last reconnaissance of their positions. For Private Cowan it was a moment of double waiting. Waiting for battle was now secondary. In a tiny slit trench on the forward edge of a railway embankment Private Brennon remarked upon the locomotion of the foreign frog.

"Will you look at 'em walk!" said Spike. "Just like an animal! Don't they ever learn to hop like regular gorfs?"

Said Private Cowan: "I suppose you saw that girl back there the other day?"

"Me and the regiment," said Spike, and chewed gum discreetly.

"She's a girl from back home. Funny! I'd never taken much notice of her before."

"You took a-plenty back there. You've raised your average awful high. I'll say it!"

"I hardly knew what I was doing."

"Didn't you? We did!"

"Since then sometimes I forget what we're here for."

"Don't worry, kid! You'll be told."

"It's funny how things happen that you never expected, but afterward you see it was natural as anything."

* * * * *

At midnight the quiet sky split redly asunder. German guns began to feel a way to Paris. The earth rocked in a gentle rhythm under a rain of shells. Shrapnel and gas lent vivacity to the assault. Guns to their utmost reach swept the little valley like a Titan's sickle. Private Cowan nestled his cheek against the earthen side of his little slit trench and tried to remember what she had worn that last night in Newbern. Something glistening, warm in colour, like ripe fruit; and a rusty braid bound her head. She had watched, doubtfully, to see if people were not impatient at her talk. A rattlepate, old Sharon called her. She was something else now; some curious sort of woman, older, not afraid. She wouldn't care any more if people were impatient.

At four o'clock of that morning the bombardment of the front line gave way to a rolling barrage. Close behind this, hugging it, as the men said, came gray waves of the enemy. It was quieter after the barrage had passed: only the tack-tack of machine guns and the clash of meeting bayonets.

"Going to have some rough stuff," said Private Brennon.

For a long time then Private Cowan was so engrossed with the routine of his present loose trade that the name of Whipple seemed to have no room in his mind. For four hours he had held a cold rifle and thought. Now the gun was hot, its bayonet wet, and he thought not at all. When it was over he was one of fifty-two men left of his company that had numbered two hundred and fifty-one. But his own uniform would still be clean of wound chevrons.

Two divisions of German shock troops had broken against a regiment of American fighting men.

"I don't like fighting any more," said Private Cowan.

"Pushed 'em across the crick," said Private Brennon. "Now we chase 'em!"

So they joined the chase and fought again at Jaulgonne, where it rained for three days and nights, and Private Cowan considered his life in danger because he caught cold; it might develop into pneumonia. He didn't want to get sick and die—not now. It had not, of late, occurred to him that he would be in any danger save from sickness. But he threw off the menacing cold and was fit for the big battle at Fismes, stubbornly pronounced "Fissims" by Private Brennon, after repeated corrections.

Private Cowan thought now, when not actually engaged at his loose trade, of his brother. He wished the boy could have been with him. He would have learned something. He would have learned that you feel differently about a country if once you fight for it. His country had been only a name; he had merely ached to fight. Now he hated fighting; words could never tell how he loathed it; but his country had become more than a name. He would fight again for that. He wished Merle could have had this new feeling about his country.

It was before Fismes, being out where he had no call to be, and after winning a finish fight with a strangely staring spectacled foe, that he stumbled across the inert form of Private Brennon, who must also have gone where he had no call to go. He leaned over him. Spike's mask was broken, but half adjusted. He shouldered the burden, grunting as he did so, angered by the weight of it. He was irritated, too, by men who were firing at him, but his greater resentment was for Spike's unreasonable mass.

"You son of a gun—hog fat! Overweight, that's what you are! You'll never make a hundred and thirty-three again, not you! Gee, gosh, a light heavyweight, that's what you are!"

He complained to the unhearing Spike all the way back to a dressing station, though twice refusing help to carry his load.

"Mustard gas," said the surgeon.

He was back there when Spike on his stretcher came violently to life.

"What a dark night!" said Spike between two of the spasms that wrenched him. "Can't see your hand before your face!"

"Say, you're hog fat!" grumbled Private Cowan. "You weigh a ton!"

"It's dark, but it feels light—it's warm."

Private Cowan leaned to shield the sun from Spike's garbled face.

"Sure it's dark!" said he.

"Can't see your hand before your face!"

Spike was holding up a hand, thumb and fingers widely spread, moving it before his sightless eyes.

"You got to go back. You're too fat to be up here."

He rested his hand on Spike's forehead but withdrew it quickly when Spike winced.

He went on with the war; and the war went on.

* * * * *

"You would never guess," wrote Winona, "who was brought to this base hospital last week. It was the Mr. Brennon I wrote you of, Mr. Edward Brennon, the friend of Wilbur's who went with him from Newbern. He is blind from gas, poor thing! Our head surgeon knew him. It seems he is one of the prettiest lightweights the head surgeon ever saw in action, a two-handed fighter with a good right and a good left. These are terms used in the sport of boxing.

"Of course he knows he is blind, but at first he thought he was only in the dark. Wilbur had told him of me. The most curious misunderstanding—he is positive he once saw me at home. Says I am the prettiest thing he ever looked at, and don't I remember coming into the post office one day in a white dress and white shoes and a blue parasol and getting some mail and going out to a motor where some people waited for me? The foolish thing insists I have blue eyes and light brown hair and I was smiling when I looked at him in passing; not smiling at him, of course, but from something the people in the car had said; and I had one glove off and carried the other with the blue sunshade. And I think he means a girl from Rochester that visited the Hendricks, those mill people, summer before last. She was pretty enough, in a girlish way, but not at all my type. But I can't convince Edward it was not I he saw. I have given up trying. What harm in letting him think so? He says, anyway, he would know I am beautiful, because he can feel it even if I come into the room. Did you ever hear such talk? But I am looking a lot better, in spite of all I have been through.

"I had a week in Paris last month, and bought some clothes, a real Paris dress and things." You would not know me in the new outfit. The skirt is of rather a daring shortness, but such is the mode now, and I am told it becomes me. Poor Edward, he is so patient, except for spells when he seems to go mad with realizing his plight. He is still a man. His expression is forceful. He doesn't smoke, and warns me against it, though the few cigarettes I allow myself are a precious relief. But I have promised him to give up the habit when the war is over. He is a strong man, but helpless. He still believes I am the pretty thing he saw in the post office. The skirt is pleated, light summer stuff, and falls in a straight line. Of course I have the shoes and stockings that go with it."

"There!" exploded the judge. "Taking up with prize fighters—traipsing round in a regular French dress, looking like something she's not supposed to be!"

"Lysander!" rebuked his wife hotly.

"He tells me lots about Wilbur," continued the letter. "He hints that the boy is in love, but will say nothing definite. Men are so close-mouthed. I hope our boy doesn't marry some little French anybody. His face is not exactly pleasant to look upon for the time being, but he has a very winning personality."

"Who's she mean that for?" demanded the Judge, truculently. "The Cowan boy?"



CHAPTER XX

On a day late in June of 1919 Wilbur Cowan dropped off the noon train that paused at Newbern Center. He carried the wicker suitcase he had taken away, and wore the same clothes. He had the casual, incurious look of one who had been for a little trip down the line. No one about the station heeded him, nor did he notice any one he knew. There was a new assemblage of station loafers, and none of these recognized him. Suitcase in hand, his soft hat pulled well down, he walked quickly round the crowd and took a roundabout way through quiet streets to the Penniman place.

The town to his eye had shrunk; buildings were not so high as he remembered them, wide spaces narrower, streets shorter, less thronged. On his way he met old Mr. Dodwell, muffled about the throat, though the day was hot, walking feebly, planting a stout cane before him. Mr. Dodwell passed blinking eyes over him, went on, then turned to call back.

"Ain't that Wilbur Cowan? How de do, Wilbur? Ain't you been away?"

"For a little while," answered Wilbur. "Thought I hadn't seen you for some time. Hot as blazes, ain't it?"

He came to the Penniman place at the rear. The vegetable garden, lying between the red barn and the white house, was as he had known it, uncared for, sad, discouraged. The judge's health could be no better. On bare earth at the corner of the woodshed Frank, the dog, slumbered fitfully in the shade. He merely grumbled, rising to change his posture, when greeted. Feebly he sniffed the newcomer. It could be seen that his memory was stirred, but his eyes told him nothing; he had a complaining air of saying one met so many people. It was beyond one to place them all. He whimpered when his ears were rubbed, seeming to recall a familiar touch. Then with a deep sigh he fell asleep once more. His master took up the suitcase and gained, without further encounters, the little room in the side-yard house. Yet he did not linger here. He kept seeing a small, barefoot boy who rummaged in a treasure box labelled "Cake." This boy made him uncomfortable. He went round to the front of the other house. On the porch, behind the morning-glory vine, Judge Penniman in his wicker chair languidly fanned himself, studying a thermometer held in his other hand. He glanced up sharply.

"Well, come back, did you?"

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur, and sat on the top step to fan himself with his hat. "Warm, isn't it?"

The judge brightened.

"Warm? Warm ain't any name for it! We been having a hot spell nobody remembers the like of, man nor boy, for twenty years. Why, day before yesterday—say, I wish you'd been here! Talk about suffering! I was having one of my bad days, and the least little thing I'd do I'd be panting like a tuckered hound. Say, how was the war?"

"Oh, so-so," answered the returned private.

"You tell it well. Seems to me if I'd been off skyhootin' round in foreign lands—say, how about them French women? Pretty bold lot, I guess, if you can believe all you—"

The parrot in its cage at the end of the porch climbed to a perch with beak and claw.

"Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle!" it screeched. The judge glared murderously at it.

"Wilbur Cowan, you bad, bad, bad child—not to let us know!" Mrs. Penniman threw back the screen door and rushed to embrace him. "You regular fighting so-and-so!" she sobbed.

"Where'd you get that talk?" he demanded.

Mrs. Penniman wiped her eyes with a dish towel suspended from one arm.

"Oh, we heard all about you!"

She was warm, and shed gracious aromas. The returned one sniffed these.

"It's chops," he said—"and—and hot biscuits."

"And radishes from the garden, and buttermilk and clover honey and raspberries, and—let me see—"

"Let's go!" said the soldier.

"Then you can tell us all about that war," said the invalid as with groans he raised his bulk from the wicker chair.

"What war?" asked Wilbur.

* * * * *

He spent the afternoon in the little room, where he would glance up to find the small, barefoot boy staring at him in wonder; and out in the Penniman front yard, where the summer flowers bloomed. These surroundings presented every assurance of safety, yet his restless, wide-sweeping gaze was full of caution, especially after the aeroplane went over. At the first ominous note of its droning he had broken for cover. After that, in spite of himself, he would be glancing uneasily at the Plummer place across the road. This was fronted by a hedge of cypress—ideal machine-gun cover. But not once during the long afternoon was he shot at. He brought out and repaired the lawn mower, oiled its rusted parts and ran it gayly over the grass. At suppertime, when Dave Cowan came, he was wetting the shorn sward with spray from a hose.

"Back?" said Dave, peering as at a bit of the far cosmos flung in his way.

"Back," said his son.

They shook hands.

"You haven't changed any," said Wilbur, scanning Dave's placid face under the straw hat and following the lines of his spare figure down to the vestiges of a once noble pair of shoes.

"You only been away two years," said Dave. "I wouldn't change much in that time. That's the way of the mind, though. We always forget how slowly evolution works its wonders. Anyhow, you know what they say in our trade—when a printer dies he turns into a white mule. I'm no white mule yet. You've changed, though."

"I didn't know it."

"Face harder—about ten years older. Kind of set and sour looking. Ever laugh any more?"

"Of course I laugh."

"You don't look it. Never forget how to laugh. It's a life-saver. Laugh even at wars and killings. Human life in each of us isn't much. It's like that stream you're spreading over the ground. The drops fall back to earth, but the main stream is constant. That's all the life force cares about—the main stream. Doesn't care about the drops; a few more or less here and there make no difference."

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

Dave Cowan scanned the front of the house. The judge was not in sight. He went softly to lean above the parrot's cage and in low, wheedling tones, uttered words to it.

"Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle!" screeched the parrot in return, and laughed harshly. The bird was a master of sarcastic inflection.

Dave came back looking pleased and proud.

"Almost human," he declared. "Kept back a few million years by accident—our little feathered brother." He gestured toward the house. "Old Flapdoodle, in there, he's a rabid red these days. Got tired of being a patriot. Worked hard for a year trying to prove that Vielhaber was a German spy, flapping his curtain at night to the German Foreign Office. But no one paid any attention to him except a few other flapdoodles, so then he began to read your brother's precious words, and now he's a violent comrade. Fact! expecting any day that the workers will take things over and he'll come into money—money the interests have kept him out of. He kind of licks his chops when he talks about it. Never heard him talk about his wife's share, though. Say, that brother of yours is making a plumb fool of himself!"

"He didn't understand."

"No—and he doesn't yet."

"Where is he now?"

"Oh"—Dave circled a weary hand to the zenith—"off somewhere holy-rolling. Gets his name in the papers—young poet radical that abandoned life of luxury to starve with toiling comrades. Say, do you know what a toiling comrade gets per day now? No matter. Your brother hasn't toiled any. Makes red-hot speeches. That Whipple bunch reared at last and shut off his magazine money, so he said he couldn't take another cent wrung from the anguished sweat of serfs. But it ain't his hands he toils with, and he ain't a real one, either. Plenty of real ones in his bunch that would stand the gaff, but not him. He's a shine. Of course they're useful, these reds. Keep things stirred up—human yeast cakes, only they get to thinking they're the dough, too. That brother of yours knows all the lines; says 'em hot, too, but that's only so he'll get more notice. Say, tell us about the war.

"It was an awful big one," said his son.

* * * * *

Soon after a novel breakfast the following morning—in that it was late and leisurely and he ate from a chair at a table—he heard the squealing brakes of a motor car and saw one brought to a difficult stop at the Penniman gate. Sharon Whipple, the driver, turned to look back at the machine indignantly, as if it had misbehaved. Wilbur Cowan met him at the gate.

It became Sharon's pretense that he was not hugging the boy, merely feeling the muscles in his shoulders and back to see if he were as good a lightweight as ever. He pounded and thumped and punched and even made as if to wrestle with the returned soldier, laughing awkwardly through it; but his florid face had paled with the excitement.

"I knew you'd come back! Old Sammy Dodwell happened to mention he'd seen you; said he hadn't noticed you before for most a month, he thought. But I knew you was coming, all right! Time and time again I told people you would. Told every one that. I bet you had some narrow escapes, didn't you now?"

Wilbur Cowan considered.

"Well, I had a pretty bad cold in the Argonne."

"I want to know!" said Sharon, much concerned. He pranced heavy-footedly before the other, thumping his chest. "Well, I bet you threw it off! A hard cold ain't any joke. But look here, come on for a ride!"

They entered the car and Sharon drove. But he continued to bubble with questions, to turn his head and gesture with one hand or the other. The passenger applied imaginary brakes as they missed a motor truck.

"Better let me take that," he suggested, and they changed seats.

"Out to the Home Farm," directed Sharon. "You ain't altered a mite," he went on. "Little more peaked, mebbe—kind of more mature or judgmatical or whatever you call it. Well, go on—tell about the war."

But there proved to be little to tell, and Sharon gradually wearied from the effort of evoking this little. Yes, there had been fights. Big ones, lots of noise, you bet! The food was all right. The Germans were good fighters. No; he had not been wounded; yes, that was strange. The French were good fighters. The British were good fighters. They were all good fighters.

"But didn't you have any close mix-ups at all?" persisted Sharon.

"Oh, now and then; sometimes you couldn't get out of it."

"Well, my shining stars! Can't you tell a fellow?"

"Oh, it wasn't much! You'd be out at night, maybe, and you'd meet one, and you'd trade a few punches, and then you'd tangle."

"And you'd leave him there, eh?"

"Oh, sometimes!"

"Who did win the war, anyway?" Sharon was a little irritated by this reticence.

The other grinned.

"The British say they won it, and the last I heard the French said it was God Almighty. Take your choice. Of course you did hear other gossip going round—you know how things get started."

Sharon grunted.

"I should think as much. Great prunes and apricots! I should think there would of been talk going round! Anyway, it was you boys that stopped the fight. I guess they'd admit that much—small-towners like you that was ready to fight for their country. Dear me, Suz! I should think as much!"

On the crest of a hill overlooking a wide sweep of valley farmland the driver stopped the car in shade and scanned the fields of grain where the green was already fading.

"There's the Home Farm," said Sharon. "High mighty! Some change since my grandad came in here and fit the Injins and catamounts off it. I wonder what he'd say if he could hear what I'm paying for farm help right now—and hard to get at that. I don't know how I've managed. See that mower going down there in the south forty? Well, the best man I've had for two years is cutting that patch of timothy. Who do you guess? It's my girl, Juliana. She not only took charge for me, but she jumped in herself and did two men's work.

"Funny girl, that one. So quiet all these years, never saying much, never letting out. But she let out when the men went. I guess lots have been like her. You can see a woman doing anything nowadays. Why, they got a woman burglar over to the county seat the other night! And I just read the speech of a silly-softy of a congressman telling why they shouldn't have the vote. Hell! Excuse me for cursing so."

Unconsciously Wilbur had been following with his eyes the course of the willow-bordered creek. He half expected to hear the crisp little tacking of machine guns from its shelter, and he uneasily scanned the wood at his left. It was the valley of the Surmelin, and yonder was the Marne.

"I keep thinking I'll be shot at," he explained.

"You won't be. Safe as a church here—just like being in God's pocket. Say, don't that house look good to you?" He cocked a thumb toward the dwelling of the Home Farm in a flat space beyond the creek. It was the house of dull red brick, broad, low, square fronted, with many windows, the house in a green setting to which they had gone so many years before. Heat waves made it shimmer.

"Yes, it looks good," conceded Wilbur.

"Then listen, young man! You're to live there. It'll be your headquarters. You're going to manage the four other farms from there, and give me a chance to be seventy-three years old next Tuesday without a thing on my mind. You ain't a farmer, but you're educated; you can learn anything after you've seen it done; and farming is mostly commonsense and machinery nowadays. So that's where you'll be, understand? No more dubbing round doing this and that, printing office one day, garage the next, and nothing much the next. You're going to settle down and take up your future, see?"

"Well, if you think I can."

"I do! You're an enlightened young man. What I can't tell you Juliana can. I got a dozen tractors out of commission right now. Couldn't get any one to put 'em in shape. None of them dissipated noblemen round the Mansion garage would look at a common tractor. You'll start on them. You're fixed—don't tell me no!"

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

"You done your bit in a fighting war; now you'll serve in a peaceful one. I don't know what the good Lord intends to come out of all this rumpus, but I do know the world's going to need food. We'll raise it."

"Yes, sir."

Sharon glanced shrewdly at him sidewise.

"You're a better Whipple than any one else of your name ever got to be."

"He didn't understand; he was misled or something."

"Or something," echoed Sharon. "Listen! There's one little job you got to do before you hole up out here. You heard about him, of course—the worry he's been to poor Harvey and the rest. Well, he's down there in New York still acting squeamishy. I want you should go down and put the fear of God into him."

"I understand he's mixed up with a lot of reds down there."

"Red! Him? Humph!" Sharon here named an equally well-known primary colour—not red. Wilbur protested.

"You don't get him," persisted the old man. "Listen, now! He cast off the family like your father said he would. Couldn't accept another cent of Whipple money. Going to work with his bare hands. Dressed up for it like a hunter in one of these powder advertisements. All he needed was a shotgun and a setter dog with his tail up. And everybody in the house worried he'd starve to death. Of course no one thought he'd work—that was one of his threats they didn't take seriously. But they promised to sit tight, each and all, and bring him to time the sooner.

"Well, he didn't come to time. We learned he was getting money from some place. He still had it. So I begun to get my suspicions up. Last night I got the bunch together, Gid and Harvey D. and Ella and Juliana, and I taxed 'em with duplicity, and every last one of 'em was guilty as paint—every goshed last one! Every one sending him fat checks unbeknownst to the others. Even Juliana! I never did suspect her. 'I did it because it's all a romance to him,' says she. 'I wanted him to go his way, whatever it was, and find it bright.'

"Wha'd you think of that from a girl of forty-eight or so that can tinker a mowing machine as good as you can? I ask you! Of course I'd suspected the rest. A set of mushheads. Maybe they didn't look shamed when I exposed 'em! Each one had pictured the poor boy down there alone, undergoing hardship with his toiling workers or whatever you call 'em, and, of course, I thought so myself."

"How much did you send him?" demanded Wilbur, suddenly.

"Not half as much as the others," returned Sharon in indignant triumph. "If they'd just set tight like they promised and let me do the little I done——"

"You were going to sit tight, too, weren't you?"

"Well, of course, that was different. Of course I was willing to shell out a few dollars now and then if he was going to be up against it for a square meal. After all, he was Whipple by name. Of course he ain't got Whipple stuff in him. That young man's talk always did have kind of a nutty flavour. You come right down to it, he ain't a Whipple in hide nor hair. Why, say, he ain't even two and seventy-five-hundredths per cent. Whipple!"

Sharon had cunningly gone away from his own failure to sit tight. He was proving flexible-minded here, as on the links.

They were silent, looking out over the spread of Home Farm. The red house still shimmered in the heat waves. The tall trees about it hung motionless. The click of the reaper in the south forty sounded like a distant locust.

"Put the fear of God into him," said Sharon at last. "Let him know them checks have gosh all truly stopped."

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

"Now drive on and we'll look the house over. The last tenant let it run down. But I'll fix it right for you. Why, like as not you'll be having a missis and young ones of your own there some day."

"I might; you can't tell."

"Well, I wish they was going to be Whipple stock. Ours is running down. I don't look for any prize-winners from your brother; he'll likely marry that widow, or something, that wants to save America like Russia has been. And Juliana, I guess she wasn't ever frivolous enough for marriage. And that Pat—she'll pick out one of them boys with a head like a seal, that knows all the new dances and what fork to use. Trust her! Not that she didn't show Whipple stuff over there. But she's a rattlepate in peacetime."

"Yes, sir," said Wilbur.

He left a train at the Grand Central Station in New York early the following evening. He had the address of Merle's apartment on lower Fifth Avenue, and made his way there on foot through streets crowded with the war's backwash. Men in uniform were plentiful, and he was many times hailed by them. Though out of uniform himself, they seemed to identify him with ease. Something in his walk, the slant of his shoulders, and the lean, browned, watchful face—the eyes set for wider horizons than a mere street—served to mark him as one of them.

The apartment of Merle proved to be in the first block above Washington Square. While he scanned doors for the number he was seized and turned about by a playful creature in uniform.

"Well, Buck Cowan, you old son of a gun!"

"Gee, gosh, Stevie! How's the boy?"

They shook hands, moving to the curb where they could talk.

"What's the idea?" demanded ex-Private Cowan. "Why this dead part of town for so many of the boys?"

Service men were constantly sauntering by them or chatting in little groups at the curb.

"She's dead, right now," Steve told him, "but she'll wake up pronto. Listen, Buck, we got the tip! A lot of them fur-faced boys that hurl the merry bombs are goin' to pull off a red-flag sashay up the Avenoo. Get it? Goin' to set America free!"

"I get it!" said Wilbur.

"Dirty work at the crossroads," added Steve.

"Say, Steve, hold it for twenty minutes, can't you? I got to see a man down here. Be good; don't hurt any one till I get back."

"Do my best," said Steve, "but they're down there in the Square now stackin' up drive impedimenta and such, red banners, and so forth, tuning up to warble the hymn to free Russia. Hurry if you want to join out with us!"

"I'll do that little thing, Steve. See you again." He passed on, making a way through the jostling throng of soldiers and civilians. "Just my luck," he muttered. "I hope the kid isn't in." Never before had he thought of his brother as "the kid."

He passed presently through swinging glass doors, and in a hallway was told by a profusely buttoned youth in spectacles that Mr. Whipple was out. It was not known when he would be in. His movements were uncertain.

"He might be in or he might be out," said the boy.

He was back in the street, edging through the crowd, his head up, searching for the eager face of Steve Kennedy, late his sergeant. Halfway up the next block he found him pausing to roll a cigarette. Steve was a scant five feet, and he was telling a private who was a scant six feet that there would be dirty work at the crossroads—when the fur-faces started.

"We're too far away," suggested Wilbur. "If they start from the Square they'll be mussed up before they get here. You can't expect people farther down to save 'em just for you. Where's your tactics, Steve?"

They worked slowly back down the Avenue. It was nine o'clock now, and the street was fairly free of vehicles. The night was clear and the street lights brought alert, lean profiles into sharp relief, faces of men in uniform sauntering carelessly or chatting in little groups at the curb. A few unseeing policemen, also sauntering carelessly, were to be observed.

"Heard a fur-face speak last night," said Steve. "It's a long story, mates, but it seems this is one rotten Government and everybody knows it but a few cops. If someone would only call off the cops and let the fur-faces run it we might have a regular country."

From the Square singing was now heard.

"Oh, boy!" murmured the tall private, dreamily; "am I glad I'm here?" Stretching a long neck to peer toward the Square, he called in warm, urgent tones: "Oh, come on, you reds—come on, red!"

They came on. Out from the Square issued a valiant double line of marchers, men and women, their voices raised in the Internationale. At their head, bearing aloft a scarlet banner of protest, strode a commanding figure in corduroys, head up, his feet stepping a martial pace.

"I choose that general," said the tall private, and licked his lips.

"Not if I get him first," shouted Steve, and sprang from the walk into the roadway.

But ex-Private Cowan was ahead of them both. He had not waited for speech. A crowd from each side of the Avenue had surged into the roadway to greet the procession. The banner bearer was seen to hesitate, to lose step, but was urged from the rear by other banner bearers. He came on again. Once more he stepped martially. The Internationale swelled in volume. The crowd, instead of opening a way, condensed more solidly about the advance. There were jeers and shoving. The head of the line again wavered. Wilbur Cowan had jostled a way toward this leader. He lost no time in going into action. But the pushing crowd impaired his aim, and it was only a glancing blow that met the jaw of the corduroyed standard bearer.

The standard toppled forward from his grasp, and its late bearer turned quickly aside. As he turned Wilbur Cowan reached forward to close a hand about the corduroy collar. Then he pulled. The standard bearer came back easily to a sitting posture on the asphalt. The crowd was close in, noisily depriving other bearers of their standards. The Internationale had become blurred and discordant, like a bad phonograph record. The parade still came to break and flow about the obstruction.

Wilbur Cowan jerked his prize up and whirled him about. He contemplated further atrocities. But the pallid face of his brother was now revealed to him.

"Look out there!" he warned the crowd, and a way was opened.

He drew back on the corduroy collar, then sent it forward with a mighty shove. His captive shot through the opening, fell again to the pavement, but was up and off before those nearest him could devise further entertainment. Among other accomplishments Merle had been noted in college for his swiftness of foot. He ran well, heading for the north, skillfully avoiding those on the outskirts of the crowd who would have tackled him. Wilbur Cowan watched him out of sight, beyond the area of combat. Then he worked his own way from it and stood to watch the further disintegration of the now leaderless parade.

The tumult died, the crowd melted away. Policemen became officious. From areaways up and down the Avenue forms emerged furtively, walked discreetly to corners and skurried down side streets. Here and there a crimson banner flecked the asphalt. Steve and the tall private issued from the last scrimmage, breathing hard.

"Nothing to it!" said the tall private. "Only I skun my knuckles."

"I was aimin' a wallop at that general," complained Steve, "but something blew him right out of my hand. Come on up to Madison Avenoo. I heard they was goin' to save America up there, too."

"Can't," said Wilbur. "Got to see a man."

"Well, so long, Buck!"

He waved to them as they joined the northward moving crowd.

"Gee, gosh!" he said.

* * * * *

"No, sir; Mr. Whipple hasn't come in yet. He just sent word he wouldn't be back at all to-night," said the spectacled hall boy. But his manner was so little ingenuous that once again the hand of Wilbur Cowan closed itself eloquently about the collar of a jacket.

"Get into that elevator and let me out at his floor."

"You let me alone!" said the hall boy. "I was going to."

He knocked a third time before he could hear a faint call. He opened the door. Beyond a dim entrance hall the light fell upon his brother seated at a desk, frowning intently at work before him. The visible half of him was no longer in corduroy. It was incased in a smoking jacket of velvet, and his neck was conventionally clad in collar and cravat. The latter had been hastily tied.

"Why, Wilbur, old man!" cried Merle in pleased surprise. He half rose from the desk, revealing that below the waist he was still corduroy or proletarian. Along his left jaw was a contusion as from a glancing blow. He was still breathing harder than most men do who spend quiet evenings at desks.

Wilbur advanced into the room, but paused before reaching the desk. It was an invitingly furnished room of cushioned couches, paintings, tapestries, soft chairs, warmly toned rugs. The desk at which Merle toiled was ornate and shining. Ex-Private Cowan felt a sudden revulsion. He was back, knee-deep in trench bilge, tortured in all his being, looking at death from behind a sandbag. Vividly he recalled why he had endured that torture.

"You're all out of condition," he announced in even tones to Merle. "A little sprint like that shouldn't get your wind."

Merle's look of sunny welcome faded to one of chagrin. He fell back in his chair. He was annoyed.

"You saw that disgraceful outbreak, then?"

"I was in luck to-night."

"Did you see that drunken rowdy strike at me, and then try to get me down where he and those other brutes could kick me?"

Wilbur's stare was cool. He was feeling the icy muck about his numbed legs.

"I was the one that struck at you. Too many elbows in the way and I flubbed it." He noted his brother start and stiffen in his chair. "And I didn't try to get you down. When I saw it was you I got you up and shot you out where you could run—if you wanted to. And I wasn't drunk, and I'm not a rowdy."

Merle gazed with horror upon the apparently uncontrite fratricide. Twice he essayed to speak before he found the words.

"Do you think that was a brave thing to do?"

"No—but useful. I've been brave a lot of times where it didn't do as much good as that."

"Useful!" breathed Merle, scathingly. "Useful to brutalize a lot of brave souls who merely sought—" he broke off with a new sense of outrage. "And not a policeman there to do his duty!" he finished resentfully.

Wilbur Cowan sat in a carven chair near a corner of the beautiful desk, hitching it forward to rest his arms on the desk's top. He was newly appraising this white-faced brother.

"Whining!" he suddenly snapped. "Get up and boast that you're outlaws, going to keel the Government off its pins. Then you get the gaff, and the first thing you do is whine for help from that same Government! You say it's rotten, but you expect it to watch over you while you knock it down. If you're going to be an outlaw, take an outlaw's chance. Don't squeal when you get caught. You say the rules are rotten, then you fall back on them. What kind of sportsmanship is that?"

Wearily but with a tolerant smile Merle pushed back the fallen lock with one white hand.

"What could you understand of all this?" he asked, gently. "We merely claim the right of free speech."

"And use it to tell other people to upset the Government! That crowd to-night did what you tell your people to do—went against the rules. But you can't take your own medicine. A fine bunch of spoiled children you are! Been spoiled by too easy a Government at that!" He broke off to study Merle again. "You're pasty, out of condition," he repeated, inconsequently.

Again his brother's intolerant smile.

"You have all the cant of the reactionary," he retorted, again gently. "It's the spirit of intolerance one finds everywhere. You can't expect one of my—" he hesitated, showing a slight impatience. "I've been too long where they are thinking," he said.

"Aren't you people intolerant? You want to break all the rules, and those same rules have made us a pretty good big country."

"Ah, yes, a big country—big! We can always boast of our size, can't we? I dare say you believe its bigness is a sign of our merit." Merle had recovered his poise. He was at home in satire. "Besides, I've broken no rules, as you call them."

"Oh, I'll bet you haven't! You'd be careful not to. I see that much. But you try to get smaller children to. I'd have more patience with you if you'd taken a chance yourself."

"Patience with me—you?" Merle relished this. His laugh was sincere. "You—would have more patience with—me!" But his irony went for little with a man still at the front.

"Sure! If only you'd smashed a few rules yourself. Take that girl and her partner they arrested the other day. They don't whine. They're behind the bars, but still cussing the Government. You've got to respect fighters like that Liebknecht the Germans killed, and that Rosa What's-Her-Name. They were game. But you people, you try to put on all their airs without taking their chances. That's why you make me so tired—always keeping your martyr's halo polished and handy where you can slip it out of a pocket when you get just what you've been asking for."

"You're not too subtle, are you? But then one could hardly expect subtlety—"

Merle was again almost annoyed.

"Subtle be jiggered! Do you think you people are subtle? About as subtle as a ton of bricks. All your talk in that magazine about this being a land of the dollar, no ideals, no spirituality, a land of money-grubbers—all that other stuff! Say, I want to tell you this is the least money-grubbing land there is! You people would know that if you had any subtlety. Maybe you did know it. We went into that scrap for an ideal, and we're the only country that did. France might have gone for an ideal, but France had to fight, anyway.

"England? Do you think England went in only to save poor little Belgium? She herself was the next dish on the bill of fare. But we went in out of general damfoolishness—for an ideal—this country you said didn't have any. We don't care about money—less than any of those people. Watch a Frenchman count his coppers, or an Englishman that carries his in a change purse and talks about pounds but really thinks in shillings. We carry our money loose and throw it away.

"If this country had been what your sniveling little magazine called it we'd never have gone into that fight. You're not even subtle enough to know that much. We knew it would cost like hell, but we knew it was a great thing to do. Not another nation on earth would have gone in for that reason. That's the trouble with you poor little shut-ins; you decide the country hasn't any ideals because someone runs a stockyard out in Chicago or a foundry in Pittsburgh. God help you people if you'd had your way about the war! The Germans would be taking that nonsense out of you by this time. And to think you had me kind of ashamed when I went over! I thought you knew something then." He concluded on a note almost plaintive.

Merle had grown visibly impatient.

"My dear fellow, really! Your point of view is interesting enough, even if all too common. You are true to type, but so crude a type—so crude!"

"Sure, I'm crude! The country itself is crude, I guess. But it takes a crude country to have ideals—ideals with guts. Your type isn't crude, I suppose, but it hasn't any ideals, either."

"No ideals! No ideals! Ah, but that's the best thing you've said!"

He laughed masterfully, waving aside the monstrous accusation.

"Well, maybe it is the best thing I've said. You haven't any ideals that would get any action out of you. You might tear down a house, but you'd never build one. No two of you could agree on a plan. Every one of you is too conceited about himself. If you had the guts to upset the Government to-morrow you'd be fighting among yourselves before night, and you'd have a chief or a king over you the next day, just as surely as they got one in Russia. It'll take them a hundred years over there to get back to as good a government as we have right now.

"You folks haven't any ideals except to show yourselves off. That's my private opinion. The way you used to tell me I didn't have any form in golf. You people are all gesture; you can get up on a platform and take perfect practice swings at a government, but you can't hit the ball. You used to take bully practice swings at golf, but you couldn't hit the ball because you didn't have any ideal. You were a good shadow golfer, like a shadow boxer that can hit dandy blows when he's hitting at nothing. Shadow stuff, shadow ideals, shadow thinkers—that's what you people are—spoiled children pretending you're deep thinkers."

Merle turned wearily to a sheaf of papers at his hand.

"You'll see one day," he said, quietly, "and it won't be a far day. Nothing now, not even the brute force of your type, can retard the sweep of the revolution. The wave is shaping, the crest is formed. Six months from now—a year at most——"

He gestured with a hand ominously.

Wilbur briefly considered this prophecy.

"Oh, I know things look exciting here, but why wouldn't they after the turnover they've had? And I know there's grafting and profiteering and high prices and rotten spots in the Government, but why not? That's another trouble with you people: you seem to think that some form of government will be perfect. You seem to expect a perfect government from imperfect human beings."

"Ah," broke in Merle, "I recognize that! That's some of the dear old Dave Cowan talk."

"Well, don't turn it down just on that account. Sometimes he isn't so crazy. He sees through you people. He knows you would take all you could get in this world just as quick as the rest of us. He knows that much."

Merle waved it aside.

"Six months from now—a year at the most! A thrill of freedom has run through the people!"

Wilbur had relaxed in his chair. He spoke more lightly, scanning the face of his brother with veiled curiosity.

"By the way, speaking of revolutions, there's been kind of a one at Newbern; kind of a family revolution. A little one, but plenty of kick in it. They want you to come back and be a good boy. That's really what I came down here to say for them. Will you come back with me?"

Merle drew himself up—injured.

"Go back! Back to what? When my work is here, my heart, my life? I've let you talk because you're my brother. And you're so naively honest in your talk about our wonderful country and its idealism and the contemptible defects of a few of us who have the long vision! But I've let you talk, and now I must tell you that I am with this cause to the end. I can't expect your sympathy, or the sympathy of my people back there, but I must go my own way without it, fight my own battle—"

He was interrupted in a tone he did not like.

"Sympathy from the folks back there? Say, what do you mean—sympathy? Did I tell you what this revolution back there was all about? Did I tell you they've shut down on you?"

"You didn't! I still don't get your meaning."

"You cast them off, didn't you?"

"Oh!" A white hand deprecated this. "That's Sharon Whipple talk—his famous brand of horse humour. Surely, you won't say he's too subtle!"

"Well, anyway, you said you couldn't accept anything more from them when you left; you were going to work with your hands, and so forth. You weren't going to take any more of their tainted money."

"I've no doubt dear old Sharon would put it as delicately as that."

"Well, did you work with your hands? Have you had to be a toiler?"

"Oh, naturally I had resources! But might I ask"—Merle said it with chill dignity—"may I inquire just what relation this might have——"

"You won't have resources any longer."

"Eh?" Merle this time did not wave. He stared stonily at his informant.

"That was the revolution. They called each other down and found that every last one of them had been sending you money, each thinking he was the only one and no one wanting you to starve. Even your dear old Sharon Whipple kicked in every month. No wonder I didn't find you in a tenement."

"Preposterous!" expostulated Merle.

"Wasn't it? Anyway, they all got mad at each other, and then they all got mad at you; then they swore an oath or something." He paused impressively. "No more checks!"

"Preposterous!" Merle again murmured.

"But kind of plausible, wasn't it? Sharon wasn't any madder than the others when they found each other out. Mrs. Harvey D. is the only one they think they can't trust now. They're going to watch that woman's funds. Say, anything she gets through the lines to you—won't keep you from toiling!"

"Poor Mother Ella!" murmured Merle, his gaze remotely upon the woman. "She has always been so fond of me."

"They're all fond of you, for that matter, I think they're fonder of you than if you'd been born there. But still they're rank Bolsheviks right now. They confiscated your estates."

"I didn't need you to tell me they're fond of me," retorted Merle with recovered spirit. He sighed. "They must have missed me horribly this last year." There was contrition in his tone. "I suppose I should have taken time to think of that, but you'll never know how my work here has engrossed me. I suppose one always does sacrifice to ideals. Still, I owed them something—I should have remembered that." He closed on a note of regret.

"Well, you better go back with me. They'll be mighty glad to see you."

"We can make that eleven-forty-eight if we hurry," he said. "I'll have to change a few things."

He bustled cheerily into a bedroom. As he moved about there he whistled the "Marseillaise."

Ten minutes later he emerged with bag, hat, and stick. The last item of corduroy had vanished from his apparel. He was quietly dressed, as an exploiter of the masses or a mechanic. He set the bag on the desk, and going to a window peered from behind the curtain into the street.

"Some of those rowdies are still prowling about," he said, "but there are cabs directly across the street."

He pulled the soft hat well down over his brow.

Wilbur had sat motionless in his chair while the dressing went on. He got up now.

"Listen!" he said. "If you hear back home of my telling people you're a dangerous radical, don't be worried. Even the Cowans have some family pride. And don't worry about the prowling rowdies out there. I'll get you across the street to a cab. Give me the bag."

As they crossed the street, Merle—at his brother's elbow—somewhat jauntily whistled, with fair accuracy, not the "Marseillaise," but an innocent popular ballad. Nor did he step aside for a torn strip of red cloth lying in their way.



CHAPTER XXI

The next morning Wilbur found the Penniman household in turmoil. The spirit of an outraged Judge Penniman pervaded it darkly, and his wife wept as she flurried noisily about the kitchen. Neither of them would regard him until he enforced their notice. The judge, indignantly fanning himself in the wicker porch chair, put him off with vague black mutters about Winona. The girl had gone from bad to worse. But his skirts were clean. The mother was the one to blame. He'd talked all he could.

Then Wilbur, in the disordered kitchen, put himself squarely in the way of the teary mother. He commanded details. The distraught woman, hair tumbling from beneath a cap set rakishly to one side, vigorously stirred yellow dough in an earthen mixing dish.

"Stop this nonsense!" he gruffly ordered.

Mrs. Penniman abandoned the long spoon and made a pitiful effort to dry her eyes with an insufficient apron.

"Winona!" she sobbed. "Telegram—coming home tomorrow—nothing cooked up—trying to make chocolate cake—"

"Why take it so hard? You knew the blow had to fall some time."

Mrs. Penniman broke down again.

"It's not a joke!" she sobbed. Then with terrific effort—"Mar—married!"

"Winona Penniman married?"

The stricken mother opened swimming eyes at him, nodding hopelessly.

"Why, the little son of a gun!" said Wilbur, admiringly. "I didn't think she'd be so reckless!"

"I'm so glad!" whimpered the mother.

She seized the spoon and the bowl. Judge Penniman hovered at the open door of the kitchen.

"I told her what would happen!" he stormed. "She'll listen to me next time! Always the way in this house!"

Mrs. Penniman relapsed.

"We don't know the party. Don't know him from Adam. She don't even sign her right name."

Wilbur left the house of mourning and went out to the barn, where all that day he worked at the Can, fretting it at last into a decent activity.

Dave Cowan that night became gay and tasteless on hearing the news. He did what he could to fan the judge's resentment. He said it was probably, knowing Winona's ways, that she had wed a dissolute French nobleman, impoverished of all but his title. He hoped for the best, but he had always known that the girl was a light-minded baggage. He wondered how she could ever justify her course to Matthew Arnold if the need rose. He said the old house would now be turned into a saloon, or salong, as the French call it. He wished to be told if the right to be addressed as Madame la Marquise could compensate the child for those things of simple but enduring worth she had cast aside. He somewhat cheered Mrs. Penniman, but left the judge puffing with scorn.

* * * * *

Wilbur Cowan met the noon train next day. The Can rattled far too much for its size, but it went. Then from the train issued Winona, bedecked in alien gauds and fur-belows, her keen little face radiant under a Paris trifle of brown velvet, her small feet active—under a skirt whose scant length would once have appalled her—in brown suede pumps and stockings notoriously of silken texture. Her quick eyes darting along the platform to where Wilbur stood, she rushed to embrace him.

"Where's the other one?" he demanded.

Astoundingly she tripped back to the still emptying car and led forward none other than Edward—Spike—Brennon. He was in the uniform of a private and his eyes were hidden by dark glasses. Wilbur fell upon him. Spike's left arm went up expertly to guard his face from the rush, but came down when he recognized his assailant. Wilbur turned again to Winona.

"But where's he?" he asked. "Where's the main squeeze?"

Winona looked proudly at Spike Brennon.

"I'm him," said Spike.

"He's him," said Winona, and laid an arm protectingly across his shoulder.

"You wild little son of a gun!" He stared incredulously at the bride, then kissed her. "You should say 'he's he,' not 'he's him,'" he told her.

"Lay off that stuff!" ordered Winona.

"You come on home to trouble," directed Wilbur. He guided Spike to the car.

"It's like one of these dreams," said Spike above the rattle of the Can. "How a pretty thing like her could look twice at me!"

Winona held up a gloved hand to engage the driver's eye. Then she winked.

"Say," said Spike, "this is some car! When I get into one now'days I like to hear it go. I been in some lately you could hardly tell you moved."

The front of the house was vacant when the Can laboured to the gate, though the curtain of a second-floor front might have been seen to move. Winona led her husband up the gravelled walk.

"It's lovely," she told him, "this home of mine and yours. Here you go between borders all in bloom, phlox and peonies, and there are pansies and some early dahlias, and there's a yellow rosebush out."

"It smells beautiful," said Spike. He sniffed the air on each side.

"Sit here," said Winona, nor in the flush of the moment was she conscious of the enormity of what she did. She put Spike into a chair that had for a score of years been sacred to the person of her invalid father. Then she turned to greet her mother. Mrs. Penniman, arrayed in fancy dress-making, was still damp-eyed but joyous.

"Your son, mother," said Winona. "Don't try to get up, Spike."

Mrs. Penniman bent over to kiss him. Spike's left went up accurately.

"He's so nervous," explained Winona, "ever since that French general sneaked up and kissed him on both cheeks when he pinned that medal on him."

"Mercy!" exclaimed Mrs. Penniman.

"For distinguished service beyond the line of duty," added the young wife, casually.

"I was so happy when I got your wire," sputtered her mother. "Of course, I was flustered just at first—so sudden and all."

"In the Army we do things suddenly," said Winona.

Heavy steps sounded within, and the judge paused at the open door. He was arrayed as for the Sabbath, a portentous figure in frock coat and gray trousers. A heavy scent of moth balls had preceded him.

"What's that new one I get?" asked Spike, sniffing curiously.

Winona pecked at her father's marbled cheeks, then led him to the chair.

"Father, this is my husband."

"How do you do, sir?" began the judge, heavily.

Spike's left forearm shielded his face, while his right hand went to meet the judge's.

"It's all right, Spike. No one else is going to kiss you."

"Spike?" queried the judge, uncertainly.

"It's a sort of nickname for him," explained Winona.

She drew her mother through the doorway and they became murmurous in the parlour beyond.

"This here is a peach of a chair," said Spike.

The judge started painfully. Until this moment he had not detected the outrage.

"Wouldn't you prefer this nice hammock?" he politely urged.

"No, thanks," replied Spike, firmly. "This chair kind of fits my frame."

Wilbur Cowan, standing farther along the porch, winked at Spike before he remembered.

"Say, ain't you French?" demanded the judge with a sudden qualm.

He had taken no stock in that fool talk of Dave Cowan's about a French nobleman; still, you never could tell. He had thought it as well to be dressed for it should he be required to meet even impoverished nobility.

"Hell, no!" said Spike. "Irish!" He moved uneasily in the chair. "Excuse me," he added.

"Oh!" said the judge, regretting the superior comfort of his linen suit. He eyed the chair with covetous glance. "Well, I hope everything's all for the best," he said, doubtfully.

"How beautiful it smells!" said Spike, sniffing away from the moth balls toward the rosebush. "Everything's beautiful, and this peach of a chair and all. What gets me—how a beautiful girl like she is could ever take a second look at me."

The judge regarded him sharply, with a new attention to the hidden eyes.

"Say, are you blind?" he asked.

"Blind as a bat! Can't see my hand before my face."

The horrified judge stalked to the door.

"You hear that?" he called in, but only the parrot heeded him.

"Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle, Flapdoodle!" it screeched.

Winona and her mother came to the door. They had been absent for a brief cry.

"What she could ever see in me," Spike was repeating—"a pretty girl like that!"

"Pretty girl, pretty girl, pretty girl! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" screamed the parrot.

Its concluding laugh was evil with irony. Winona sped to the cage, regarding her old pet with dismay. She glanced back at Spike.

"Smart birdie, all right, all right," called Spike. "He knows her."

"Pretty girl, pretty girl!" Again came the derisive guffaw.

Never had Polly's sarcasm been so biting. Winona turned a murderous glance from it and looked uneasily back at her man.

"Dinner's on," called Mrs. Penniman.

"I'm having one of my bad days," groaned the judge. "Don't feel as if I could eat a mouthful."

But he was merely insuring that he could be the first to leave the table plausibly. He intended that the apparent misunderstanding about the wicker chair should have been but a thing of the moment, quickly past and forgotten.

"Why, what's the trouble with you, Father?" asked Winona in the tone of one actually seeking information.

The judge shot her a hurt look. It was no way to address an invalid of his standing.

"Chow, Spike," said Wilbur, and would have guided him, but Winona was lightly before him.

Dave Cowan followed them from the little house.

"Present me to His Highness," said he, after kneeling to kiss the hand of Winona.

* * * * *

The mid-afternoon hours beheld Spike Brennon again strangely occupying the wicker porch chair. He even wielded the judge's very own palm-leaf fan as he sat silent, sniffing at intervals toward the yellow rose. Once he was seen to be moving his hand, with outspread fingers, before his face.

Winona had maneuvered her father from the chair, nor had she the grace to veil her subterfuge after she lured him to the back of the house. She merely again had wished to know what, in plain terms, his ailment was; what, for that matter, had been the trouble with him for twenty years. The judge fell speechless with dismay.

"You eat well and you sleep well, and you're well nourished" went on the daughter, remorseless all at once.

"Little you know," began the judge at last.

"But I shall know, Father. Remember, I've learned things. I'm going to take you in hand. I may even have to be severe with you but all for your own good."

She spoke with icy conviction. There was a new, cold gleam in her prying eyes. The judge suffered genuinely.

"I should think you had learned things!" he protested, miserably. "For one thing, miss, that skirt ain't a respectable garment."

Winona slid one foot toward him.

"Pooh! Don't be silly!" Never before had Winona poohed her father.

"Cigarette fiend, too," accused the judge.

"My husband got me to stop."

"Strong drink," added the judge.

"Pooh!" again breathed Winona. "A little nip of something when you're done up."

"You talking that way!" admonished the twice-poohed parent. "You that was always so——"

"I'm not it any longer." She did a dance step toward the front door, but called back to him: "Spike's set his heart on that chair. You'll have to find something else for yourself."

"'Twon't always be so," retorted the judge, stung beyond reason at the careless finality of her last words. "You wait—wait till the revolution sweeps you high and mighty people out of your places! Wait till the workers take over their rights—you wait!"

But Winona had not waited. She had gone to confer on Wilbur Cowan a few precious drops of that which had caused her father to put upon her the stigma of alcoholic intemperance.

"It's real genuine dandelion wine," she told him. "One of the nurses got it for me when we left the boat in Boston. Her own mother made it, and she gave me the recipe, and it isn't a bit of trouble. I'm going after dandelions to-morrow, Spike and I. Of course we'll have to be secret about it."

In the sacred precincts of the Penniman parlour Wilbur Cowan raised the wineglass to his lips and tasted doubtingly. After a second considering sip he announced—"They can't arrest you for that."

Winona looked a little relieved, but more than a little disappointed.

"I thought it had a kick," she mourned.

"Here's to you and him, anyway! Didn't I always tell you he was one good little man?"

"He's all of that," said Winona, and tossed off her own glass of what she sincerely hoped was not a permitted beverage.

"You've come on," said Wilbur.

"I haven't started," said Winona.

* * * * *

Later that afternoon Winona sat in her own room in close consultation with Juliana Whipple. Miss Whipple, driving her own car as no other Whipple could have driven it, had hastened to felicitate the bride. Tall, gaunt, a little stooped now, her weathered face aglow, she had ascended the steps to greet the couple. Spike's tenancy of the chair had been made doubly secure by Winona on the step at his feet.

Juliana embraced Winona and took one of Spike's knotted hands to press warmly between both her own. Then Winona had dragged her to privacy, and their talk had now come to a point.

"It's that—that parrot!" exploded Winona, desperately. "I never used to notice, but you know—that senseless gabble, 'pretty girl, pretty girl,' and then the thing laughs like a fiend. It would be all right if he wouldn't laugh. You might think he meant it. And poor Spike is so sensitive; he gets things you wouldn't think he'd get. That awful bird might set him to thinking. Now he believes I'm pretty. In spite of everything I've said to him, he believes it. Well, I'm not going to have that bird putting any other notion into his mind, not if I have to—"

She broke off, but murder was in her tone.

"I see," said Miss Whipple. "You're right, of course—only you are pretty, Winona. I never used to think—think about it, I mean, but you've changed. You needn't be afraid of any parrot."

Winona patted the hand of Miss Whipple, an able hand suggesting that of Spike in its texture and solidity.

"That's ever so nice of you, but I know all about myself. Spike's eyes are gone, but that bird is going, too."

"Why not let me take the poor old thing?" said Juliana. "It can say 'pretty girl' to me and laugh its head off if it wants." She hung a moment on this, searching Winona's face with clear eyes. "I have no blind husband," she finished.

"You're a dear," said Winona.

"I'm so glad for you," said Juliana.

"I must guard him in so many ways," confided Winona. "He's happy now—he's forgotten for the moment. But sometimes it comes back on him terribly—what he is, you know. I've seen him over there lose control—want to kill himself. He says he can't help such times. It will seem to him that someone has shut him in a dark room and he must break down its walls—break out into the light. He would try to break the walls down—like a caged beast. It wasn't pretty. And I'm his eyes and all his life, and no old bird is ever going to set him thinking I'm not perfectly beautiful. That's the plain truth. I may lie about it myself to him pretty soon. I might as well. He only thinks I'm being flirty when I deny it. Oh, I know I've changed! Sometimes it seems to me now as if I used to be—well, almost prudish."

"My dear, he knows better than you do, much better, how beautiful you are. But you're right about the bird. I'll take him gladly." She reflected a moment. "There's a fine place for the cage in my room—on my hope chest."

"You dear!" said Winona. "Of course I couldn't have killed it."

Downstairs ten minutes later Winona, the light of filial devotion in her eyes, was explaining to her father that she was giving the parrot away because she had noticed that it annoyed him.

The judge beamed gratitude.

"Why, it's right thoughtful of you, Winona. It does annoy me, kind of. That miserable Dave Cowan's taught it some new rigmarole—no meaning to it, but bothersome when you want to be quiet."

Even in the days of her white innocence Winona Penniman had not been above doing a thing for one reason while advancing another less personal. She had always been a strange girl.

Juliana took leave of Spike.

"You have a lovely wife," she told him. "It isn't going to be too hard for you, this life."

"Watch us!" said Winona. "I'll make his life more beautiful than I am." Her hand fluttered to his shoulder.

"Oh, me? I'll be all right," said Spike.

"And thank you for this wonderful bird," said Juliana.

She lifted the cage from its table and went slowly toward the gate. The parrot divined that dirty work was afoot, but it had led a peaceful life and its repertoire comprised no call of alarm.

"Pretty girl, pretty girl, pretty girl!" it shrieked. Then followed its harshest laugh of scorn.

Juliana did not quicken her pace to the car; she finished the little journey in all dignity, and placed her burden in the tonneau.

"Pretty girl, pretty girl!" screamed the dismayed bird. The laugh was long and eloquent of derision.

Dave Cowan reached the Penniman gate, pausing a moment to watch the car leave. Juliana shot him one swift glance while the parrot laughed.

"Who was that live-looking old girl?" he demanded as he came up the steps. "Oh!" he said when Winona told him.

He glanced sympathetically after the car. A block away it had slowed to turn a corner. The parrot's ironic laughter came back to them.

"Yes, I remember her," said Dave, musingly. He was glad to recall that he had once shown the woman a little attention.



CHAPTER XXII

Of all humans cumbering the earth Dave Cowan thought farmers the most pitiable. To this tireless-winged bird of passage farming was not a loose trade, and the news that his son was pledged to agrarian pursuits shocked him. To be mewed up for life on a few acres of land!

"It was the land tricked us first," admonished Dave. "There we were, footloose and free, and some fool went and planted a patch of ground. Then he stayed like a fool to see what would happen. Pretty soon he fenced the patch to keep out prehistoric animals. First thing he knew he was fond of it. Of course he had to stay there—he couldn't take if off with him. That's how man was tricked. Most he could ever hope after that was to be a small-towner. You may think you can own land and still be free, but you can't. Before you know it you have that home feeling. Never owned a foot of it! That's all that saved me."

Dave frowned at his son hopefully, as one saved might regard one who still might be.

"I'm not owning any land," suggested his son.

"No; but it's tricky stuff. You get round it, working at it, nursing it—pretty soon you'll want to own some, then you're dished. It's the first step that counts. After that you may crave to get out and see places, but you can't; you have to plant the hay and the corn. You to fool round those Whipple farms—I don't care if it is a big job with big money—it's playing with fire. Pretty soon you'll be as tight-fixed to a patch of soil as any yap that ever blew out the gas in a city hotel. You'll stick there and raise hogs en masse for free people that can take a trip when they happen to feel like it." Dave had but lately learned en masse and was glad to find a use for it. He spoke with the untroubled detachment of one saved, who could return at will to the glad life of nomady. "You, with the good loose trades you know! Do you want to take root in this hole like a willow branch that someone shoves into the ground? Don't you ever want to move—on and on and on?"

His son at the time had denied stoutly that he felt this urge. Now, after a week of his new work, he would have been less positive. It was a Sunday afternoon, and he sprawled face down on the farther shaded slope of West Hill, confessing a lively fear that he might take root like the willow. Late in that first week the old cry had begun to ring in his ears—Where do we go from here?—bringing the cold perception that he would not go anywhere from here.

Through all his early years in Newbern he had not once felt the wander-bidding; never, as Dave Cowan put it, had he been itchy-footed for the road. Then, with the war, he had crept up to look over the top of the world, and now, unaccountably, in the midst of work he had looked forward to with real pleasure, his whole body was tingling for new horizons.

It seemed to be so with a dozen of the boys he had come back with. Some of these were writing to him, wanting him to come here, to come there; to go on and on with them to inviting places they knew—and on again from there! Mining in South America, lumbering in the Northwest, ranching in the Southwest; one of his mates would be a sailor, and one would be with a circus. Something within him beyond reason goaded him to be up and off. He felt his hold slipping; his mind floated in an ecstasy of relaxation.

His first days at the Home Farm had been good-enough days. Sharon Whipple had told him a modern farmer must first be a mechanic, and he was already that—and no one had shot at him. But the novelty of approaching good machine-gun cover without apprehension had worn off.

"Ain't getting cold feet, are you?" asked Sharon one day, observing him hang idly above an abused tractor with the far-off look in his eyes.

"Nothing like that," he had protested almost too warmly. "No, sir; I'll slog on right here."

Now for the first time in all their years of association he saw an immense gulf between himself and Sharon Whipple. Sharon was an old man, turning to look back as he went down a narrow way into a hidden valley. But he—Wilbur Cowan—was climbing a long slope into new light. How could they touch? How could this old man hold him to become another old man on the same soil—when he could be up and off, a happy world romper like his father before him?

"Funny, funny, funny!" he said aloud, and lazily rolled over to stare into blue space.

Probably it was quite as funny out there. The people like himself on those other worlds would be the sport of confusing impulses, in the long run obeying some deeper instinct whose source was in the parent star dust, wandering or taking root in their own strange soils. But why not wander when the object of it all was so obscure, so apparently trivial? Enough others would submit to rule from the hidden source, take root like the willow—mate! That was another chain upon them. Women held them back from wandering. That was how they were tricked into the deadly home feeling his father warned him of.