. He raised his head. The
right hand had left the pocket now. And then suddenly he saw that
Kennedy was looking into the room, and he knew he could see, through
the little panes of glass, the huge bedstead and the body on it. And
he felt a desire to throw himself between Kennedy and it, as he might
jump between a child and a threatening danger.

He turned away his head, instinctively--why, he could not understand,
but he felt that he should not look at Kennedy's face.

Over in the barn voices rose suddenly. They were disputing over the
cards. There was some one complaining feverishly and some one arguing
truculently, and another voice striving to make peace. They died away
in a dull hum, and Michael James heard the boy sobbing.

"You mustn't do that," he said. "You mustn't do that." And he patted him
on the shoulders. He felt as if something unspeakably tense had relaxed
and as if life were swinging back into balance. His voice shook and he
continued patting. "You'll come in now, and I'll leave you alone there."
He took him under the arm.

He felt the pity he had for the body on the bed envelop Kennedy, too,
and a sense of peace came over him. It was as though a son of his had
been hurt and had come to him for comfort, and he was going to comfort
him. In some vague way he thought of Easter-time.

He stopped at the door for a moment.

"It's all right, laddie," he said. "It's all right," and he lifted the
latch.

As they went in he felt somehow as if high walls had crumbled and the
three of them had stepped into the light of day.

CHAUTONVILLE[3]

BY WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT

From _The Masses_

[3] Copyright, 1915, by The Masses. Copyright, 1916, by Will Levington
Comfort.

They said that the Russian line was a hundred miles long. I know nothing
about that, but I know that it extended as far as the eye could reach
to the east and west, and that this had been so for many weeks. But
_time_, as it is known in the outer world, had stopped for us. It was
now November, and we had been without mails since late in August. Three
days of hideous cold had come without warning, and before the snows,
so that there was a foot of iron frost in the ground. This had to be
bitten through in all our trench-making, and though we were on the
southern slopes of the Carpathians, timber was scarce. At each of our
recent meetings with the Austrian enemy, we had expected to feel the
new strike--the different resistance of