the
war will be over before half the men get trained. He says, for his part,
he'd like the trip over after the submarines have been put out of
business. It would be something to tell about, don't you know? But Bob
thinks the war will be over soon. Don't you think so, Ruth?"

"I don't know what I think," said Ruth exasperated at the little
prattler. It seemed so awful for a girl with brains--or hadn't she
brains?--to chatter on interminably in that inane fashion about a matter
of such awful portent. And yet perhaps the child was only trying to cover
up her fears, for she all too evidently worshipped her brother.

Ruth was glad when at last the morning was over and one by one the women
gathered their belongings together and went home. She stayed longer than
the rest to put the work in order. When they were all gone she drove
around by the way of the post office and asked the old post master who
had been there for twenty years and knew everybody, if he could tell her
the address of the boys who had gone to camp that morning. He wrote it
down and she tucked it in her blouse saying she thought the Red Cross
would be sending them something soon. Then she drove thoughtfully away to
her beautiful sheltered home, where the thought of war hardly dared to
enter yet in any but a playful form. But somehow everything was changed
within the heart of Ruth Macdonald and she looked about on all the
familiar places with new eyes. What right had she to be living here in
all this luxury while over there men were dying every day that she might
live?

IV

The sun shone blindly over the broad dusty drill-field. The men marched
and wheeled, about-faced and counter-marched in their new olive-drab
uniforms and thought of home--those that had any homes to think about.
Some who did not thought of a home that might have been if this war had
not happened.

There were times when their souls could rise to the great occasion and
their enthusiasm against the foe could carry them to all lengths of
joyful sacrifice, but this was not one of the times. It was a breathless
Indian summer morning, and the dust was inches thick. It rose like a soft
yellow mist over the mushroom city of forty thousand men, brought into
being at the command of a Nation's leader. Dust lay like a fine yellow
powder over everything. An approaching company looked like a cloud as it
drew near. One could scarcely see the men near by for the cloud of yellow
dust everywhere