Page:Frank Owen - Rare Earth, 1931.djvu/25

 months he had worked in these fields raising wheat to give to the War. In return the War had destroyed the sight of his son. And though he stood there with arms extended as if he were praying, the words that came from his lips were curses. And because he had never cursed in his life the torrent which poured from his lips was frightful to an extreme. He cursed humanity, civilization, life. Nothing in the universe was worth one's struggle to live. Until he was exhausted the vile curses fell from his lips. It must have been hours that he stood in the midst of those silent fields utterly without reason.

At last he slipped to the ground and placed his face against the frozen soil. But now even on the breast of the earth there was no warmth. For the first time in his life the soil failed to comfort him. What good was the future? Scobee was part of his own flesh. Blindness to Scobee was blindness to him. Scobee in all his fine young manhood not to be able to see. Where, oh, where was there a God of justice? Scobee who since infancy had