and down
the columns. "Here, this looks like business.

"Defences: Paris, in a recent German account of the greatest
fortresses of the world, possesses three distinct rings of
defences"--here he broke off. "Now what do you think of that? A
German account, and this is an English book! The world simply
made a mistake about the Germans all along. It's as if we invited
a neighbour over here and showed him our cattle and barns, and
all the time he was planning how he would come at night and club
us in our beds."

Mrs. Wheeler passed her hand over her brow. "Yet we have had so
many German neighbours, and never one that wasn't kind and
helpful."

"I know it. Everything Mrs. Erlich ever told me about Germany
made me want to go there. And the people that sing all those
beautiful songs about women and children went into Belgian
villages and--"

"Don't, Claude!" his mother put out her hands as if to push his
words back. "Read about the defences of Paris; that's what we
must think about now. I can't but believe there is one fort the
Germans didn't put down in their book, and that it will stand. We
know Paris is a wicked city, but there must be many God-fearing
people there, and God has preserved it all these years. You saw
in the paper how the churches are full all day of women praying."
She leaned forward and smiled at him indulgently. "And you
believe those prayers will accomplish nothing, son?"

Claude squirmed, as he always did when his mother touched upon
certain subjects. "Well, you see, I can't forget that the Germans
are praying, too. And I guess they are just naturally more pious
than the French." Taking up the book he began once more: "In the
low ground again, at the narrowest part of the great loop of the
Marne," etc.

Claude and his mother had grown familiar with the name of that
river, and with the idea of its strategic importance, before it
began to stand out in black headlines a few days later.

The fall ploughing had begun as usual. Mr. Wheeler had decided to
put in six hundred acres of wheat again. Whatever happened on the
other side of the world, they would need bread. He took a third
team himself and went into the field every morning to help Dan
and Claude. The neighbours said that nobody but the Kaiser had
ever been able to get Nat Wheeler down to regular work.

Since the men were all afield, Mrs. Wheeler now went every
morning to the mailbox at the crossroads, a quarter of a mile
away, to get yes