Palla. She and the Queen
have got their hands full, what with the wicked way those Rooshian
people are behaving. No,' sez she, 'I'll git well by the time she
comes home for a visit after the war----'"

Martha's spectacles became dim. She seated herself on the stairs and
wiped them on her apron.

"It came in the night," she said, peering blindly at Palla.... "I
wondered why she was late to breakfast. When I went up she was lying
there with her eyes open--just as natural----"

Palla's head dropped and she covered her face with both hands.

CHAPTER IV

There remained, now, nothing to keep Palla in Shadow Hill.

She had never intended to stay there, anyway; she had meant to go to
France.

But already there appeared to be no chance for that in the scheme of
things. For the boche had begun to squeal for mercy; the frightened
swine was squirting life-blood as he rushed headlong for the home sty
across the Rhine; his death-stench sickened the world.

Thicker, ranker, reeked the bloody abomination in the nostrils of
civilisation, where Justice strode ahead through hell's own
devastation, kicking the boche to death, kicking him through Belgium,
through France, out of Light back into Darkness, back, back to his
stinking sty.

The rushing sequence of events in Europe since Palla's arrival in
America bewildered the girl and held in abeyance any plan she had
hoped to make.

The whole world waited, too, astounded, incredulous as yet of the
cataclysmic debacle, slowly realising that the super-swine were but
swine--maddened swine, devil driven. And that the Sea was very near.

No romance ever written approached in wild extravagance the story of
doom now unfolding in the daily papers.

Palla read and strove to comprehend--read, laid aside her paper, and
went about her own business, which alone seemed dully real.

And these new personal responsibilities--now that her aunt was
dead--must have postponed any hope of an immediate departure for
France.

Her inheritance under her aunt's will, the legal details, the
inventory of scattered acreage and real estate, plans for their proper
administration, consultations with an attorney, conferences with Mr.
Pawling, president of the local bank--such things had occupied and
involved her almost from the moment of her arrival home.

At first the endless petty details exasperated her--a girl fresh from
the tremendous tragedy of things where, one after another, empires
were c