ng hands. "Dead--Jim dead--like that!" she
faltered.

"Yes. He got pneumonia," replied Anderson, hoarsely. "The camp was full
of it."

"But--my God! Were not the--the poor boys taken care of?" implored
Lenore, faintly.

"It's a terrible time. All was done that _could_ be done!"

"Then--it was all--for nothing?"

"All! All! Our boy an' many like him--the best blood of our
country--Western blood--dead because ... because ..."

Anderson's voice failed him.

"Oh, Jim! Oh, my brother!... Dead like a poor neglected dog! Jim--who
enlisted to fight--for--"

Lenore broke down then and hurried away to her room.

With great difficulty Mrs. Anderson was revived, and it became manifest
that the prop upon which she had leaned had been slipped from under her.
The spirit which had made her strong to endure the death of her boy
failed when the sordid bald truth of a miserable and horrible waste of
life gave the lie to the splendid fighting chance Jim had dreamed of.

When Anderson realized that she was fading daily he exhausted himself in
long expositions of the illness and injury and death common to armies in
the making. More deaths came from these causes than from war. It was the
elision of the weaker element--the survival of the fittest; and some,
indeed very many, mothers must lose their sons that way. The government
was sound at the core, he claimed; and his own rage was at the few
incompetents and profiteers. These must be weeded out--a process that
was going on. The gigantic task of a government to draft and prepare a
great army and navy was something beyond the grasp of ordinary minds.
Anderson talked about what he had seen and heard, proving the wonderful
stride already made. But all that he said now made no impression upon
Mrs. Anderson. She had made her supreme sacrifice for a certain end, and
that was as much the boy's fiery ambition to fight as it was her duty,
common with other mothers, to furnish a man at the front. What a
hopeless, awful sacrifice! She sank under it.

Those were trying days for Lenore, just succeeding her father's return;
and she had little time to think of herself. When the mail came, day
after day, without a letter from Dorn, she felt the pang in her breast
grow heavier. Intimations crowded upon her of impending troubles that
would make the present ones seem light.

It was not long until the mother was laid to rest beside the son.

When that day ended, Lenore and her father faced each o