f her fifth year of war.

To whom is this due? The women.

There were no training schools to teach them how to sow or reap--no
kindly advisors to take the husbands' places and tell them what animals
to keep and feed, at what time to sell, or at what price. They had to
learn from hard experience, taxing their intuition and great common
sense to the utmost.

And with it all they are so shy and modest; at heart a little bit
ashamed when you speak to them in terms of admiration for what they
have done.

"We didn't really know what to do at the end of that first year when we
found there wasn't any one to take care of the ground," explained Julie
Laisne, who lives just behind Aunt Rose.

"I would have tried to plough, been glad to do it, but I was afraid the
others would make fun of me," said Anna Troussiere.

"That's just the way I felt about it," exclaimed Julie. "I nearly went
crazy when I knew time was flying, winter coming, and no wheat in.
I've no doubt it was the same with all the others. Then one day the
news ran round like lightning that Anna was out ploughing her fields,
with her kid and her grandfather to help her. Nobody took the time to
go and see if it was true. Each one got out her plough. Of course,
the first furrows were not very straight, but soon we got used to it,
and Lord, how we laughed over my first attempts, when my husband came
home the next fall on furlough."

I wish that some great master of the pen might paint in words as simple
as the Golden Legend, in stanzas as pure as the Litanies of the Holy
Virgin, the picture of this little Julie, up and about with the first
rays of dawn, always hard at work, and whom when night has closed in I
have often come upon, bending over beneath her tallow candle, writing
to the dear one at the front. To this task as to all the others she
concentrates her every effort and attention, anxious that no news be
forgotten,--news which is as fresh and naive as the events and the
nature that inspires it. "The sow has had twelve little pigs, the
donkey has a nail in its hoof, little Michel has a cold, and butter now
sells for forty-three sous the pound."

Her farm is too small and brings in too little for her to dream of
taking on some one to help. But she keeps three cows, and three
calves; a dozen or two pigs, a donkey and all the chickens she can
afford to feed. Forty acres is quite a responsibility for so small a
person, and it requires lots of courag