digging in the ruins. Graham
himself had been working. He was nauseated, weary, and unutterably
wretched, for he had seen the night superintendent and had heard of his
father's message.

"Klein!" he said. "You don't mean Herman Klein?"

"That was what he said. I was to find him and hold him until he got
here. But I couldn't find him. He may have got out. There's no way of
telling now."

Waves of fresh nausea swept over Graham. He sat down on a pile of bricks
and wiped his forehead, clammy with sweat.

"I hope to God he was burned alive," muttered the other man, surveying
the scene. His eyes were reddened with smoke from the fire, his clothing
torn.

"I was knocked down myself," he said. "I was out in the yard looking for
Klein, and I guess I lay there quite a while. If I hadn't gone out?" He
shrugged his shoulders.

"How many women were on the night shift?"

"Not a lot. Twenty, perhaps. If I had my way I'd take every German in
the country and boil 'em in oil. I didn't want Klein back, but he was a
good workman. Well, he's done a good job now."

It was after that that Graham saw his father, a strange, wild-eyed
Clayton who drove his pick with a sort of mad strength, and at the same
time gave orders in an unfamiliar voice. Graham, himself a disordered
figure, watched him for a moment. He was divided between fear and
resolution. Some place in that debacle there lay his own responsibility.
He was still bewildered, but the fact that Anna's father had done the
thing was ominous.

The urge to confession was stronger than his fears. Somehow, during the
night, he had become a man. But now he only felt, that somehow, during
the night, he had become a murderer.

Clayton looked up, and he moved toward him.

"Yes?"

"I've had some coffee made at a house down the street. Won't you come
and have it?"

Clayton straightened. He was very tired, and the yard was full of
volunteers now, each provided at the gate with a pick or shovel. A look
at the boy's face decided him.

"I'll come," he said, and turned his pick over to a man beside him. He
joined Graham, and for a moment he looked into the boy's eyes. Then he
put a hand on his shoulder, and together they walked out, past the line
of ambulances, into a street where the scattered houses showed not a
single unshattered window, and the pavements were littered with glass.

His father's touch comforted the boy, but it made even harder the thing
he had to do. For he could