k it ahead," Lieutenant
Krause commanded.

Thaine followed the corporal inside the hut where, shot to pieces, lay
the mangled forms of women and children who had caught the storm of
bullets from both firing lines. Through a gaping hole in the wall beyond,
he saw a shallow pit where wounded and dead men and women were huddled
together.

"Help me get out the live ones and send them back to Manila, and we'll
cover the others right here," the corporal declared.

It was the neighborhood custom of the Grass River Valley for young men to
assist at every funeral. Thaine had jokingly dubbed himself "official
neighborhood pall-bearer," and had served at so many funerals that the
service had become merely one of silent dignity which he forgot the next
hour. He knew just how to place the flowers effectively, when to step
aside and wait, and when to come forward and take hold. And these were the
only kinds of services he had known for the dead.

As he bent over the blood-smeared bodies to take up the wounded and dying
now, the horror of war burst upon him, and no dead face could be more ashy
gray than the young soldier's face as he lifted it above a dying Filipino
woman whom he stretched tenderly beside the hut. The next victim was a
boy, a deserter from Manila, whom Thaine recognized by a scar across his
cheek as the young Filipino whose wound Doctor Carey had dressed.

"You poor fellow!" Thaine said softly.

The boy's eyes opened in recognition.

"For liberty," he murmured in Spanish, with a scowling face. Then the
scowl faded to a smile, and in a moment more he had entered eternal
liberty.

A detachment of the Red Cross with a white-haired surgeon just then
relieved the corporal of the wounded, and Thaine saw Dr. Horace Carey
coming toward him.

"I know what you are thinking. Maybe your gun did a good deal of it. This
is war, Thaine."

The young man's dark eyes burned with agony at the thought.

"Forget it," Carey added hurriedly. "It is the lost cause here. I worked
that line myself for four years long ago. I know the feeling. But this is
the only medicine to give the islands here. They can't manage liberty for
themselves. You are giving them more freedom with your rifle today than
they could get for themselves in a century. Don't wet your powder with
your tears. You may need it for the devil that's after you now. Wait till
you see a Kansas boy brought in and count the cost again. Good-by."

The doctor hastened aw