“Well, you ought to be.  I didn’t expect to see anything of this kind until I got to the front.  I’ll be back here in a week, and I’ll make it hot for anybody that’s been bothering her.”  Claude’s train was pulling in, and he ran for his baggage.  Once seated in the “cotton-tail,” he began going down into his own country, where he knew every farm he passed,—­knew the land even when he did not know the owner, what sort of crops it yielded, and about how much it was worth.  He did not recognize these farms with the pleasure he had anticipated, because he was so angry about the indignities Mrs. Voigt had suffered.  He was still burning with the first ardour of the enlisted man.  He believed that he was going abroad with an expeditionary force that would make war without rage, with uncompromising generosity and chivalry.

Most of his friends at camp shared his Quixotic ideas.  They had come together from farms and shops and mills and mines, boys from college and boys from tough joints in big cities; sheepherders, street car drivers, plumbers’ assistants, billiard markers.  Claude had seen hundreds of them when they first came in; “show men” in cheap, loud sport suits, ranch boys in knitted waistcoats, machinists with the grease still on their fingers, farm-hands like Dan, in their one Sunday coat.  Some of them carried paper suitcases tied up with rope, some brought all they had in a blue handkerchief.  But they all came to give and not to ask, and what they offered was just themselves; their big red hands, their strong backs, the steady, honest, modest look in their eyes.  Sometimes, when he had helped the medical examiner, Claude had noticed the anxious expression in the faces of the long lines of waiting men.  They seemed to say, “If I’m good enough, take me.  I’ll stay by.”  He found them like that to work with; serviceable, good-natured, and eager to learn.  If they talked about the war, or the enemy they were getting ready to fight, it was usually in a facetious tone; they were going to “can the Kaiser,” or to make the Crown Prince work for a living.  Claude, loved the men he trained with,—­wouldn’t choose to live in any better company.

The freight train swung into the river valley that meant home,—­the place the mind always came back to, after its farthest quest.  Rapidly the farms passed; the haystacks, the cornfields, the familiar red barns—­then the long coal sheds and the water tank, and the train stopped.

On the platform he saw Ralph and Mr. Royce, waiting to welcome him.  Over there, in the automobile, were his father and mother, Mr. Wheeler in the driver’s seat.  A line of motors stood along the siding.  He was the first soldier who had come home, and some of the townspeople had driven down to see him arrive in his uniform.  From one car Susie Dawson waved to him, and from another Gladys Farmer.  While he stopped and spoke to them, Ralph took his bags.

“Come along, boys,” Mr. Wheeler called, tooting his horn, and he hurried the soldier away, leaving only a cloud of dust behind.