to keep them concealed from the
eyes of the Japs, but it was feared that their hiding-place might be
betrayed any day. This danger would of course be greatly increased the
moment Tacoma received a stronger garrison.

Martin Engelmann, a German who had immigrated to the great Northwest
some twenty years ago, owned a pretty little home in the suburbs of
Tacoma. The family had just sat down to dinner when the youngest son,
who was employed in a large mercantile establishment in the city,
entered hurriedly and called out excitedly:

"They're coming, father, they're in the harbor."

Then he sat down and began to eat his soup in haste.

"They're coming?" asked old Engelmann in a serious tone of voice, "then
I fear it is too late."

The old man got up from the table and going over to the window looked
out into the street. Not a living thing was to be seen far and wide
except a little white poodle gnawing a bone in the middle of the
street. Engelmann stared attentively at the poodle, buried in thought.

"How many of them are there?" he asked after a pause.

"At least a whole battalion, I'm told," answered the son, finishing his
soup in short order.

"Then it's all over, of course. Just twenty-four hours too soon," sighed
Engelmann softly as he watched the poodle, who at that moment was
jumping about on the street playing with the gnawed bone.

Engelmann tried hard to control himself, but he did not dare turn his
head, for he could hear low, suppressed sobbing behind him. Martha, the
faithful companion of his busy life, sat at the table with her face
buried in her hands, the tears rolling uninterruptedly down her cheeks,
while her two daughters were trying their best to comfort her.

Old Engelmann opened the window and listened.

"Nothing to be heard yet; but they'll have to pass here to get to the
waterworks," he said. Then he joined his family, and turning to his
wife, said: "Courage, mother! Arthur will do his duty."

"But if anything should happen to him--" sobbed his wife.

"Then it will be for his country, and his death and that of his comrades
will give us an example of the sacrifices we must all make until the
last of the yellow race has been driven out."

The mother went on crying quietly, her handkerchief up to her eyes:
"When was it to be? Tell me!" she cried.

"To-night," said the father, "and they would surely have been
successful, for they could easily have overpowered the few men at the
station