“God save you, German!  I’d give my life for yours!”

Too late!  Dorn watched the youth’s last clutching of empty fingers, the last look of consciousness at his conqueror, the last quiver.  The youth died and slid back off the rigid bayonet.  War of men!

A heavy thud sounded to the left of Dorn.  A bursting flash hid the face of his German victim.  A terrific wind, sharp and hard as nails, lifted Dorn into roaring blackness....

CHAPTER XXIX

“Many Waters” shone white and green under the bright May sunshine.  Seen from the height of slope, the winding brooks looked like silver bands across a vast belt of rainy green and purple that bordered the broad river in the bottom-lands.  A summer haze filled the air, and hints of gold on the waving wheat slopes presaged an early and bountiful harvest.

It was warm up there on the slope where Lenore Anderson watched and brooded.  The breeze brought fragrant smell of fresh-cut alfalfa and the rustling song of the wheat.  The stately house gleamed white down on the terraced green knoll; horses and cattle grazed in the pasture; workmen moved like snails in the brown gardens; a motor-car crept along the road far below, with its trail of rising dust.

Two miles of soft green wheat-slope lay between Lenore and her home.  She had needed the loneliness and silence and memory of a place she had not visited for many months.  Winter had passed.  Summer had come with its birds and flowers.  The wheat-fields were again waving, beautiful, luxuriant.  But life was not as it had been for Lenore Anderson.

Kurt Dorn, private, mortally wounded!—­So had read the brief and terrible line in a Spokane newspaper, publishing an Associated Press despatch of Pershing’s casualty-list.  No more!  That had been the only news of Kurt Dorn for a long time.  A month had dragged by, of doubt, of hope, of slow despairing.

Up to the time of that fatal announcement Lenore had scarcely noted the fleeting of the days.  With all her spirit and energy she had thrown herself into the organizing of the women of the valley to work for the interests of the war.  She had made herself a leader who spared no effort, no sacrifice, no expense in what she considered her duty.  Conservation of food, intensive farm production, knitting for soldiers, Liberty Loans and Red Cross—­these she had studied and mastered, to the end that the women of the great valley had accomplished work which won national honor.  It had been excitement, joy, and a strange fulfilment for her.  But after the shock caused by the fatal news about Dorn she had lost interest, though she had worked on harder than ever.

Just a night ago her father had gazed at her and then told her to come to his office.  She did so.  And there he said:  “You’re workin’ too hard.  You’ve got to quit.”

“Oh no, dad.  I’m only tired to-night,” she had replied.  “Let me go on.  I’ve planned so—­”