* * *

"Let us go up the road this morning," suggested Mrs. Bracher, next day,
"and see how the new men are getting on."

There was a line of trenches to the north, where reinforcements had just
come in, all their old friends having been ordered back to Furnes for a
rest.

"How loud the shells are, this morning," said Hilda. There were whole
days when she did not notice them, so accustomed the senses grow to a
repetition.

"Yes, they're giving us special treatment just now," replied Mrs.
Bracher; "it's that six-inch gun over behind the farm-house, trying out
these new men. They're gradually getting ready to come across. It will
only be a few days now."

They walked up the road a hundred yards, and came on a knot of soldiers
stooping low behind the roadside bank.

"What are those men looking at?" exclaimed Mrs. Bracher sharply.

"Some poor fellow. Probably work for us," returned Hilda.

Mrs. Bracher went nearer, peered at the outstretched form on the grass
bank, then turned her head away suddenly.

"No work for us," she said. "Don't go near, child. It's too horrible.
His face is gone. A shell must have taken it away. Oh, I'm sick of this
war. I am sick of these sights."

One of the little group of men about the body had drawn near to her.

"What do you want?" she asked crossly, as a woman will who is
interrupted when she is close to tears.

"Will I identify him?" she repeated after him. "I tell you I never saw
the man."

A little gasp of amazement came from the soldiers about the body.

"See what we have found," called one of the men--"in his pocket."

It was a lock of the very lightest and gayest of hair.

"Ah, my doctor," Hilda cried.

She spread the lock across the breast of the dead man. It was so vivid
in the morning sun as to seem almost a living thing.

"And he said it would bring him luck," she murmured.

GOOD WILL

I looked into the face of my brother. There was no face
there, only a red interior. This thing had been done to my
brother, the Belgian, by my brother, the German. He had sent
a splinter of shell through five miles of sunlight, hoping
it would do some such thing as this.

II

THE RIBBONS THAT STUCK IN HIS COAT

The little group was gathered in the cellar of Pervyse. An occasional
shell was heard in the middle distance, as artillery beyond the Yser
threw a lazy feeler over to the railway station. The three women were
ent