“I knew a girl who could feel things move when no one else could,” said Lenore.  “I’m sensitive like that—­at least about wind and rain.  Right now I can feel rain in the air.”

“Then you have brought me luck,” said Dorn, earnestly.  “Indeed I guess my luck has turned.  I hated the idea of going away with that debt unpaid.”

“Are you—­going away?” asked Lenore, in surprise.

“Yes, rather,” he replied, with a short, sardonic laugh.  He fumbled in a pocket of his overalls and drew forth a paper which he opened.  A flame burned the fairness from his face; his eyes darkened and shone with peculiar intensity of pride.  “I was the first man drafted in this Bend country....  My number was the first called!”

“Drafted!” echoed Lenore, and she seemed to be standing on the threshold of an amazing and terrible truth.

“Lass, we forget,” said her father, rather thickly.

“Oh, but—­why?” cried Lenore.  She had voiced the same poignant appeal to her brother Jim.  Why need he—­why must he go to war?  What for?  And Jim had called out a bitter curse on the Germans he meant to kill.

“Why?” returned Dorn, with the sad, thoughtful shadow returning to his eyes.  “How many times have I asked myself that?...  In one way, I don’t know....  I haven’t told father yet!...  It’s not for his sake....  But when I think deeply—­when I can feel and see—­I mean I’m going for my country....  For you and your sisters.”

Like a soldier then Lenore received her mortal blow facing him who dealt it, and it was a sudden overwhelming realization of love.  No confusion, no embarrassment, no shame attended the agony of that revelation.  Outwardly she did not seem to change at all.  She felt her father’s eyes upon her; but she had no wish to hide the tumult of her heart.  The moment made her a woman.  Where was the fulfilment of those vague, stingingly sweet dreamy fancies of love?  Where was her maiden reserve, that she so boldly recognized an unsolicited passion?  Her eyes met Dorn’s steadily, and she felt some vital and compelling spirit pass from her to him.  She saw him struggle with what he could not understand.  It was his glance that wavered and fell, his hand that trembled, his breast that heaved.  She loved him.  There had been no beginning.  Always he had lived in her dreams.  And like her brother he was going to kill and to be killed.

Then Lenore gazed away across the wheat-fields.  The shadows came waving toward her.  A stronger breeze fanned her cheeks.  The heavens were darkening and low thunder rolled along the battlements of the great clouds.

“Say, Kurt, what do you make of this?” asked Anderson.  Lenore, turning, saw her father hold out the little gray cake that Jake had found in the wheat-field.

Young Dorn seized it quickly, felt and smelled and bit it.

“Where’d you get this?” he asked, with excitement.

Anderson related the circumstance of its discovery.