Kurt staggered out of the yard, down along the edge of a wheat-field, to one of the straw-stacks, and there he flung himself down in an agony.

“Oh, I’m ruined—­ruined!” he moaned.  “The break—­has come!...  Poor old dad!”

He leaned there against the straw, shaking and throbbing, with a cold perspiration bathing face and body.  Even the palms of his hands were wet.  A terrible fit of anger was beginning to loose its hold upon him.  His breathing was labored in gasps and sobs.  Unutterable stupidity of his father—­horrible cruelty of his position!  What had he ever done in all his life to suffer under such a curse?  Yet almost he clung to his wrath, for it had been righteous.  That thing, that infernal twist in the brain, that was what was wrong with his father.  His father who had been fifty years in the United States!  How simple, then, to understand what was wrong with Germany.

“By God!  I am—­American!” he panted, and it was as if he called to the grave of his mother, over there on the dark, windy hill.

That tremendous uprising of his passion had been a vortex, an end, a decision.  And he realized that even to that hour there had been a drag in his blood.  It was over now.  The hell was done with.  His soul was free.  This weak, quaking body of his housed his tainted blood and the emotions of his heart, but it could not control his mind, his will.  Beat by beat the helpless fury in him subsided, and then he fell back and lay still for a long time, eyes shut, relaxed and still.

A hound bayed mournfully; the insects chirped low, incessantly; the night wind rustled the silken heads of wheat.

After a while the young man sat up and looked at the heavens, at the twinkling white stars, and then away across the shadows of round hills in the dusk.  How lonely, sad, intelligible, and yet mystic the night and the scene!

What came to him then was revealing, uplifting—­a source of strength to go on.  He was not to blame for what had happened; he could not change the future.  He had a choice between playing the part of a man or that of a coward, and he had to choose the former.  There seemed to be a spirit beside him—­the spirit of his mother or of some one who loved him and who would have him be true to an ideal, and, if needful, die for it.  No night in all his life before had been like this one.  The dreaming hills with their precious rustling wheat meant more than even a spirit could tell.  Where had the wheat come from that had seeded these fields?  Whence the first and original seeds, and where were the sowers?  Back in the ages!  The stars, the night, the dark blue of heaven hid the secret in their impenetrableness.  Beyond them surely was the answer, and perhaps peace.