to an Indian. Birds of prey in combat! Dorn recalled
verses he had learned as a boy, written by a poet who sang of future
wars in the air. What he prophesied had come true. Was there not a sage
now who could pierce the veil of the future and sing of such a thing as
sacred human life? Dorn had his doubts. Poets and dreamers appeared not
to be the men who could halt materialism. Strangely then, as Dorn gazed
bitterly up at these fierce fliers who fought in the heavens, he
remembered the story of the three wise men and of Bethlehem. Was it only
a story? Where on this sunny spring morning was Christ, and the love of
man for man?

At that moment one of the forward aeroplanes, which was drifting back
over the enemy lines, lost its singular grace of slow, sweeping
movement. It poised in the air. It changed shape. It pitched as if from
wave to wave of wind. A faint puff of smoke showed. Tiny specks, visible
to Dorn's powerful eyes, seemed to detach themselves and fall, to be
followed by the plane itself in sheer downward descent.

Dorn leaped to his feet. What a thrilling and terrible sight! His
comrades stood bareheaded, red faces uplifted, open-mouthed and wild
with excitement, not daring to disobey orders and yell at the top of
their lungs. Dorn felt, strong above the softened wonder and thought of
a moment back, a tingling, pulsating wave of gushing blood go over him.
Like his comrades, he began to wave his arms and stamp and bite his
tongue.

Swiftly the doomed plane swept down out of sight. Gone! At that instant
something which had seemed like a bird must have become a broken mass.
The other planes drifted eastward.

Dorn gasped, and broke the spell on him. He was hot and wet with sweat,
quivering with a frenzy. How many thousand soldiers of the Allies had
seen that downward flight of the boche? Dorn pitied the destroyed
airman, hated himself, and had all the fury of savage joy that had been
in his comrades.

* * * * *

Dorn, relieved from guard and firing-post, rushed back to the dugout. He
needed the dark of that dungeon. He crawled in and, searching out the
remotest, blackest corner, hidden from all human eyes, and especially
his own, he lay there clammy and wet all over, with an icy, sickening
rend, like a wound, in the pit of his stomach. He shut his eyes, but
that did not shut out what he saw. "_So help me God!_" he whispered to
himself.... Six endless months had gone to the pr