e and despair, the endless watching each day for the
letter that never came--that might never come--the newspaper tales of
ill-usage of prisoners--the bitter wonder as to Jem's wound--all were
increasingly hard to bear.

Gertrude Oliver turned her head. There was an odd brilliancy in her
eyes.

"Rilla, I've had another dream."

"Oh, no--no," cried Rilla, shrinking. Miss Oliver's dreams had always
foretold coming disaster.

"Rilla, it was a good dream. Listen--I dreamed just as I did four years
ago, that I stood on the veranda steps and looked down the Glen. And it
was still covered by waves that lapped about my feet. But as I looked
the waves began to ebb--and they ebbed as swiftly as, four years ago,
they rolled in--ebbed out and out, to the gulf; and the Glen lay before
me, beautiful and green, with a rainbow spanning Rainbow Valley--a
rainbow of such splendid colour that it dazzled me--and I woke.
Rilla--Rilla Blythe--the tide has turned."

"I wish I could believe it," sighed Rilla.

"Sooth was my prophecy of fear
Believe it when it augurs cheer,"

quoted Gertrude, almost gaily. "I tell you I have no doubt."

Yet, in spite of the great Italian victory at the Piave that came a few
days later, she had doubt many a time in the hard month that followed;
and when in mid-July the Germans crossed the Marne again despair came
sickeningly. It was idle, they all felt, to hope that the miracle of
the Marne would be repeated. But it was: again, as in 1914, the tide
turned at the Marne. The French and the American troops struck their
sudden smashing blow on the exposed flank of the enemy and, with the
almost inconceivable rapidity of a dream, the whole aspect of the war
changed.

"The Allies have won two tremendous victories," said the doctor on 20th
July.

"It is the beginning of the end--I feel it--I feel it," said Mrs.
Blythe.

"Thank God," said Susan, folding her trembling old hands, Then she
added, under her breath, "but it won't bring our boys back."

Nevertheless she went out and ran up the flag, for the first time since
the fall of Jerusalem. As it caught the breeze and swelled gallantly
out above her, Susan lifted her hand and saluted it, as she had seen
Shirley do. "We've all given something to keep you flying," she said.
"Four hundred thousand of our boys gone overseas--fifty thousand of
them killed. But--you are worth it!" The wind whipped her grey hair
about her face and the gingham apron that s