ul color, strangely serene and sweet and endless under the azure
sky. Beautiful and lonely hills they were, eloquent of toil, expressive
with the brown squares in the green, the lowly homes of men, the long
lines of roads running everywhither, overwhelmingly pregnant with
meaning--wheat--wheat--wheat--nothing but wheat, a staggering visual
manifestation of vital need, of noble promise.

"That--that!" rolled out Anderson, waving his big hand, as if words were
useless. "Only a corner of the great old U.S.!... What would the Germans
say if they could look out over this?... What do _you_ say, Lenore?"

"Beautiful!" she replied, softly. "Like the rainbow in the sky--God's
promise of life!"

"An', Kathie, what do _you_ say?" went on Anderson.

"Some wheat-fields!" replied Kathleen, with an air of woman's wisdom.
"Fetch on your young wheat-sowers, dad, and I'll pick out a husband."

"An' _you_, son?" finished Anderson, as if wistfully, yet heartily
playing his last card. He was remembering Jim--the wild but beloved
son--the dead soldier. He was fearful for the crowning hope of his
years.

"As ye sow--so shall ye reap!" was Dorn's reply, strong and thrilling.
And Lenore felt her father's strange, heart-satisfying content.

* * * * *

Twilight crept down around the old home on the hill.

Dorn was alone, leaning at the window. He had just strength to lean
there, with uplifted head. Lenore had left him alone, divining his wish.
As she left him there came a sudden familiar happening in his brain,
like a snap-back, and the contending tide of gray forms--the
Huns--rushed upon him. He leaned there at the window, but just the same
he awaited the shock on the ramparts of the trench. A ferocious and
terrible storm of brain, that used to have its reaction in outward
violence, now worked inside him, like a hot wind that drove his blood.
During the spell he fought out his great fight--again for the thousandth
time he rekilled his foes. That storm passed through him without an
outward quiver.

His Huns--charged again--bayoneted again--and he felt acute pain in the
left arm that was gone. He felt the closing of the hand which was not
there. His Huns lay in the shadow, stark and shapeless, with white faces
upward--a line of dead foes, remorseless and abhorrent to him, forever
damned by his ruthless spirit. He saw the boy slide off his bayonet,
beyond recall, murdered by some evil of which Dorn had been