Mr. Wheeler smiled.  “I guess not.  However, I’ll tell Dan to keep his mouth shut.  Will you just go over to Leonard Dawson’s and get that wrench he borrowed?  It’s about noon, and he’ll likely be at home.”  Claude found big Leonard watering his team at the windmill.  When Leonard asked him what he thought of the President’s message, he blurted out at once that he was going to Omaha to enlist.  Leonard reached up and pulled the lever that controlled the almost motionless wheel.

“Better wait a few weeks and I’ll go with you.  I’m going to try for the Marines.  They take my eye.”

Claude, standing on the edge of the tank, almost fell backward.  “Why, what—­what for?”

Leonard looked him over.  “Good Lord, Claude, you ain’t the only fellow around here that wears pants!  What for?  Well, I’ll tell you what for,” he held up three large red fingers threateningly; “Belgium, the Lusitania, Edith Cavell.  That dirt’s got under my skin.  I’ll get my corn planted, and then Father’ll look after Susie till I come back.”

Claude took a long breath.  “Well, Leonard, you fooled me.  I believed all this chaff you’ve been giving me about not caring who chewed up who.”

“And no more do I care,” Leonard protested, “not a damn!  But there’s a limit.  I’ve been ready to go since the Lusitania.  I don’t get any satisfaction out of my place any more.  Susie feels the same way.”

Claude looked at his big neighbour.  “Well, I’m off tomorrow, Leonard.  Don’t mention it to my folks, but if I can’t get into the army, I’m going to enlist in the navy.  They’ll always take an able-bodied man.  I’m not coming back here.”  He held out his hand and Leonard took it with a smack.

“Good luck, Claude.  Maybe we’ll meet in foreign parts.  Wouldn’t that be a joke!  Give my love to Enid when you write.  I always did think she was a fine girl, though I disagreed with her on Prohibition.”  Claude crossed the fields mechanically, without looking where he went.  His power of vision was turned inward upon scenes and events wholly imaginary as yet.

IX

One bright June day Mr. Wheeler parked his car in a line of motors before the new pressed-brick Court house in Frankfort.  The Court house stood in an open square, surrounded by a grove of cotton-woods.  The lawn was freshly cut, and the flower beds were blooming.  When Mr. Wheeler entered the courtroom upstairs, it was already half-full of farmers and townspeople, talking in low tones while the summer flies buzzed in and out of the open windows.  The judge, a one-armed man, with white hair and side-whiskers, sat at his desk, writing with his left hand.  He was an old settler in Frankfort county, but from his frockcoat and courtly manners you might have thought he had come from Kentucky yesterday instead of thirty years ago.  He was to hear this morning a charge of disloyalty brought against two German farmers.  One of the accused was August Yoeder, the Wheelers’ nearest neighbour, and the other was Troilus Oberlies, a rich German from the northern part of the county.