"I should think not! This man's war won't bother me any more."

"Not any more?" demanded the private with insinuating emphasis.

"Not any more."

The private felt emboldened.

"Say, sister"--he grinned up at her--"that boy changed your view a lot,
didn't he?"

"You mean to say you were here?" She flashed him a look of annoyance.

"Was I here? Sister, we was all here! The whole works was here!"

She reflected, the upper lip drawn down.

"Who cares?" she retorted. She turned away, then paused, debating with
herself. "You--you needn't let it go any farther, but I've got to tell
someone. It was a surprise. I was never so bumped in my whole life."

The private grinned again.

"Lady, that lad just naturally put a comether on you."

She considered this, then shook her head.

"No, it was more like--we must have put one on each other. It--it was
fierce!"

"Happy days!" cheered the private. She lighted him with the effulgence
of a knowing smile.

"Thanks a lot," she said.

The war went on.

* * * * *

In her next letter Winona Penniman wrote: "We moved up to a station
nearer the front last Tuesday. I spent a night with Patricia Whipple.
The child has come through it all wonderfully so far. A month ago she
was down and out; now she can't get enough work to do. Says the war
bores her stiff. She means to stick it through, but all her talk is of
going home. By the way, she told me she had a little visit with Wilbur
Cowan the other day. She says she never saw him looking better."

CHAPTER XIX

Two lines of helmeted men went over the crest of the hill. Private Cowan
was no longer conscious of aching feet and leaden legs or of the burden
that bowed his shoulders. There was a pounding in his ears, and in his
mind a verse of Scripture that had lingered inexplicably there since
their last billet at Comprey. His corporal, late a theological student,
had read and expounded bits of the Bible to such as would listen.
Forsaking beaten paths, he had one day explored Revelations. He had
explained the giving unto seven angels of seven golden vials of the
wrath of God, but later came upon a verse that gave him pause:

"And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the
sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve
stars."

It seemed that everything in Revelations had a hidden meaning, and the
expert found this obscure. There had been art