or ammunition, were leveling their destruction at
it. The high car with its brown canvas covering was a fair mark in the
clear morning light. Hilda motioned the two wounded men in the inn to
come to the car. They slowly rose to their feet, and patiently trudged
out into the road. Smith gave them a hand, and they climbed upon the
footboard of the ambulance, and over into the interior. One of the black
men called harshly to the man in the ditch down the road. He turned from
his sitting posture, fell over on his face, and then came crawling on
his hands and knees.

"Why doesn't he walk?" asked Hilda.

"Foot shot away," replied Smith.

She saw the raw, red flesh of the lower leg, as if the work of his maker
had been left incompleted. Again in the air there was the moan of
travelling metal, then the heavy thud of its impact, the roar as it
released its explosive, and the shower of brick dust, iron and pebbles.
Again, the following three, sharp and close, one on the track of the
other.

"They've got our range all right," said Smith.

The black man, trailing his left leg, seemed slow in coming, as he
scratched along over the ground. This is surely death, Hilda said to
herself, and she felt it would be good to die just so. She had not been
a very sinful person, but she well knew there had been much in her way
of doing things to be sorry for. She had spoken harshly, and acted
cruelly. She had brought suffering to other lives with her charm. And,
suddenly in this flash of clear seeing, she knew that by this single
act of standing there, waiting, she had wiped out the wrong-doing, and
found forgiveness. She knew she could face the dark as blithely as if
she were going to her bridal. Strange how the images of an old-fashioned
and outgrown religion came back upon her in this instant. Strange that
she should feel this act was bringing her an atonement and that she
could meet death without a tremor. The gods beyond this gloom were going
to be good to her, she knew it. They would salute Smith and herself, as
comrades unafraid.

She was glad, too, that her last sight of things would be the look at
the homely face of Smith, as he stood there at his full height, which
was always a little bent, very much untroubled by the passing menace.
She did not know that there was anyone with whom she would rather go
down than with the ignorant boy, who was holding his life cheap for a
crippled black man. Somehow, being with him in this hour,