rs?) and last night in the darkness she came to me. Oh yes! she
was there! She seemed reproachful, as she was when she coaxed me not to
enlist. My girl was not one of the kind who sends her lover to war and
swears she will die an old maid unless he returns. Mine begged me to
stay home, or at least wait for the draft. But I wasn't built that way.
I enlisted. And last night I felt the bitterness of a soldier's fate.
All this beautiful stuff is bunk!... My girl is a peach. She had many
admirers, two in particular that made me run my best down the stretch.
One is club-footed. He couldn't fight. The other is all yellow. Him she
liked best. He had her fooled, the damned slacker.... I wish I could
believe I'd get safe back home, with a few Huns to my credit--the Croix
de Guerre--and an officer's uniform. That would be great. How I could
show up those fellows!... But I'll get killed--as sure as God made
little apples I'll get killed--and she will marry one of the men who
would not fight!"

It was about the middle of a clear morning, still cold, but the sun was
shining. Guns were speaking intermittently. Those soldiers who were off
duty had their gas-masks in their hands. All were gazing intently
upward.

Dorn sat a little apart from them. He, too, looked skyward, and he was
so absorbed that he did not hear the occasional rumble of a distant gun.
He was watching the airmen at work--the most wonderful and famous
feature of the war. It absolutely enthralled Dorn. As a boy he had loved
to watch the soaring of the golden eagles, and once he had seen a great
wide-winged condor, swooping along a mountain-crest. How he had envied
them the freedom of the heights--the loneliness of the unscalable
crags--the companionship of the clouds! Here he gazed and marveled at
the man-eagles of the air.

German planes had ventured over the lines, flying high, and English
planes had swept up to intercept them. One was rising then not far away,
climbing fast, like a fish-hawk with prey in its claws. Its color, its
framework, its propeller, and its aviator showed distinctly against the
sky. The buzzing, high-pitched drone of its motor floated down.

The other aeroplanes, far above, had lost their semblance to mechanical
man-driven machines. They were now the eagles of the air. They were
rising, circling, diving in maneuvers that Dorn knew meant pursuit. But
he could not understand these movements. To him the air-battle looked as
it must have looked