pped into Rilla's room, and crept in beside her.

"Rilla--I'm frightened--frightened as a baby--I've had another of my
strange dreams. Something terrible is before us--I know."

"What was it?" asked Rilla.

"I was standing again on the veranda steps--just as I stood in that
dream on the night before the lighthouse dance, and in the sky a huge
black, menacing thunder cloud rolled up from the east. I could see its
shadow racing before it and when it enveloped me I shivered with icy
cold. Then the storm broke--and it was a dreadful storm--blinding flash
after flash and deafening peal after peal, driving torrents of rain. I
turned in panic and tried to run for shelter, and as I did so a man--a
soldier in the uniform of a French army officer--dashed up the steps
and stood beside me on the threshold of the door. His clothes were
soaked with blood from a wound in his breast, he seemed spent and
exhausted; but his white face was set and his eyes blazed in his hollow
face. 'They shall not pass,' he said, in low, passionate tones which I
heard distinctly amid all the turmoil of the storm. Then I awakened.
Rilla, I'm frightened--the spring will not bring the Big Push we've all
been hoping for--instead it is going to bring some dreadful blow to
France. I am sure of it. The Germans will try to smash through
somewhere."

"But he told you that they would not pass," said Rilla, seriously. She
never laughed at Gertrude's dreams as the doctor did.

"I do not know if that was prophecy or desperation, Rilla, the horror
of that dream holds me yet in an icy grip. We shall need all our
courage before long."

Dr. Blythe did laugh at the breakfast table--but he never laughed at
Miss Oliver's dreams again; for that day brought news of the opening of
the Verdun offensive, and thereafter through all the beautiful weeks of
spring the Ingleside family, one and all, lived in a trance of dread.
There were days when they waited in despair for the end as foot by foot
the Germans crept nearer and nearer to the grim barrier of desperate
France.

Susan's deeds were in her spotless kitchen at Ingleside, but her
thoughts were on the hills around Verdun. "Mrs. Dr. dear," she would
stick her head in at Mrs. Blythe's door the last thing at night to
remark, "I do hope the French have hung onto the Crow's Wood today,"
and she woke at dawn to wonder if Dead Man's Hill--surely named by some
prophet--was still held by the "poyloos." Susan could have drawn a