fire.

"I see you, Thomas; a brutal soldier tears your coat back. He puts his
rifle against your heart. When you sink down I see your hands come
together in prayer.

"I see you, Francois. I see the two big crutches on which you lean. You
are weary with the load of ninety years. I hear your granddaughter when
she sobs your name, and I see your smile, as you strive to encourage
her.

"I see you, Jean. How happy you were when you came back with your
wealth to spend your last years in your native town! How kind you were
to all our poor. Ah! Jean, you did us good and not evil, all the days of
your life with us!

"I see you, little Marie. You were lying upon the grass. I see your two
little hands tied by ropes to the two peach trees in your mother's
garden. I see the little wisp of black hair stretched out under your
head. I see your little body lying dead. With this hand of mine upon
that little board, above your grave, I wrote the words, 'Vengeance is
mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.'

"And yonder in the clouds I see the Son of Man coming in His glory with
His angels. I see the Kaiser falling upon Gerbeviller. I see Clauss
falling upon our aged Mayor. But I also see God arising to fall upon the
Germans. Berlin, with Babylon the Great, is fallen. It has become a nest
of unclean things. There serpents dwell. Woe unto them that offend
against my little ones. For, lo, a millstone is hanged about their necks
and they shall be drowned in the sea with Satan."

The excitement was too much for the priest. That very night he died.
Henceforth he will be numbered among the martyrs of Gerbeviller.

7. The Return of the Refugees

The return of the refugees to Belgium and France holds the essence of a
thousand tragedies. From the days of Homer down to those of Longfellow,
with his story of Evangeline, literature has recounted the sad lot of
lovers torn from one another's arms and all the rest of their lives
going every whither in search of the beloved one, only to find the lost
and loved when it was too late.

But nothing in literature is so tragic as the events now going on from
week to week in the towns on the frontier of Switzerland.

When the Germans raped Belgium and northern France they sent back to the
rear trenches the young women and the girls, and now, from time to time,
those girls, all broken in health, are released by the Germans, who send
them back to their parents or husbands.

Multitudes of these girls