ack.

"Good luck, Claude. Maybe we'll meet in foreign parts. Wouldn't
that be a joke! Give my love to Enid when you write. I always did
think she was a fine girl, though I disagreed with her on
Prohibition." Claude crossed the fields mechanically, without
looking where he went. His power of vision was turned inward upon
scenes and events wholly imaginary as yet.

IX

One bright June day Mr. Wheeler parked his car in a line of
motors before the new pressed-brick Court house in Frankfort. The
Court house stood in an open square, surrounded by a grove of
cotton-woods. The lawn was freshly cut, and the flower beds were
blooming. When Mr. Wheeler entered the courtroom upstairs, it was
already half-full of farmers and townspeople, talking in low
tones while the summer flies buzzed in and out of the open
windows. The judge, a one-armed man, with white hair and
side-whiskers, sat at his desk, writing with his left hand. He
was an old settler in Frankfort county, but from his frockcoat
and courtly manners you might have thought he had come from
Kentucky yesterday instead of thirty years ago. He was to hear
this morning a charge of disloyalty brought against two German
farmers. One of the accused was August Yoeder, the Wheelers'
nearest neighbour, and the other was Troilus Oberlies, a rich
German from the northern part of the county.

Oberlies owned a beautiful farm and lived in a big white house
set on a hill, with a fine orchard, rows of beehives, barns,
granaries, and poultry yards. He raised turkeys and
tumbler-pigeons, and many geese and ducks swam about on his
cattleponds. He used to boast that he had six sons, "like our
German Emperor." His neighbours were proud of his place, and
pointed it out to strangers. They told how Oberlies had come to
Frankfort county a poor man, and had made his fortune by his
industry and intelligence. He had twice crossed the ocean to
re-visit his fatherland, and when he returned to his home on the
prairies he brought presents for every one; his lawyer, his
banker, and the merchants with whom he dealt in Frankfort and
Vicount. Each of his neighbours had in his parlour some piece of
woodcarving or weaving, or some ingenious mechanical toy that
Oberlies had picked up in Germany. He was an older man than
Yoeder, wore a short beard that was white and curly, like his
hair, and though he was low in stature, his puffy red face and
full blue eyes, and a certain swagger about his carriage, ga