want Yacob. He send me to der pen for sure yet next time. I hate Yon
Yacob."

A little silence, then Hans murmured:

"I didn't go to Kansas City. I coom back to Gretchen's home by Little
Wolf. I hide where I watch for Yacob. I shoot twice to be sure of Yacob,
an' Schmitt, hidin' in der crack by der roat, get one shot. So I coom to
Yermany and enlist. Gretchen, she coom too an' she stay der. Vell! I help
fight Boxer some. Mine Gott, forgif me. I do once some goot for der world
dis day."

And that was the last of Wyker.

The twilight hour was near. The wounded had been borne away by busy Red
Cross angels of mercy. Wide away across the Chinese plain the big red sun
slipped down the amber summer sky into a bath of molten flame. Then out of
sight behind the edge of the world it turned all the west into one
magnificent surge of scarlet glory, touching to beauty the tiny gray cloud
flecks far away to the eastward; while long rivers of golden light by
rivers of roseate glow mingled at last along the zenith in one vast sweep
of mother-of-pearl. A cool breeze came singing in from the sea--fanning
the fevered faces of the weary soldiers. The desolate places were hidden
by the deepening shadows, and the serenity of the twilight hour fell on
the battlefield.

Then the men of each nationality went out to bury their dead. Swiftly the
little brown Japanese digged and filled up the graves into which their
comrades were deftly heaped. The Russian and Siberian Cossack lunged their
fallen ones in heavily and unfeelingly. The Bengalese and Sikhs thrust
their own out of sight as they were planting for an uncertain harvest.
Each soldier from France who lost his life on that battlefield fell on his
own grave and there his countrymen covered him over, an unmarked spot in a
foreign land.

Thaine straightened a minute above his spade. The cool breezes were
grateful to his heated brow. The after-sunset glow seemed like the
benediction of the Infinite on the closing act of the day. He saw the
hurried and unfeeling dumping of bodies into the holes awaiting them. Then
his heart grew big with something unspeakable as he noted how in all that
irreverent and unsympathetic action the American and English soldiery
alone were serving as brother for brother. In the long trenches prepared
for them their dead were laid with reverent dignity and gentleness. Each
one's place was carefully marked with a numbered slab that in a future day
the sacred dust