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 pillows, there was terror and dismay, envy, and hard suspicion.

Elmer, the second oldest Gibbs boy, shot himself in the foot while he was out hunting. Nobody knew why or what he was hunting at that time of year. He was lamed for life, so Dr. MacTaggert said; but he didn't have to go.

Marsh, his elder brother, was all agog to get into the fray. He had been listening to the talk of Bob and Ziemer; and being something of a braggart like his father, he had begun to lust for military adventures.

One afternoon when he was plowing near by, he took refuge in the Blackford kitchen from a heavy thunderstorm. From time to time, as he sat close to the door, he cast a swift glance at Judith who stood by the table ironing a Sunday shirt for Jerry. When she went to the stove to change her iron, he followed her movements with eyes that peered furtively from under the brim of his frayed straw hat.

"Well, Marsh," she said, "I hear you're a-goin' into the war."

His face brightened.

"You betcha. Me an' Bob an' Ziemer is a-goin' to clean 'em up good."

"An' what you a-goin' to fight for, Marsh?"

"I dun—" He checked the word before it was out of his lips. "What we a-goin' to fight fer? Why, fer our rights, o' course. An' we're a-goin' to lick 'em, too, the hull lot of 'em."

"Haow do you mean, the hull lot of 'em? Who all air you a-goin' to lick?"

"Why, all them furriners o' course: the Germans an' the Turks an' the Eyetalians an' the French an' the whole lousy shootin' match."

Among the women a few bright particular spirits like Aunt Eppie, who had no sons of an age to come within the selective draft, burned with righteous zeal against the Hun. And as the tigress is more fierce and pitiless than her male companion, so the hatred in the hearts of these women burned with a more cruel, intense, and implacable fury than a man's heart is able to sustain. Aunt Eppie, who had gloried in her neutrality be-