A few days before the time set for his departure David set out on a round of farewell visits to the country folk. It was one of those cold, cheerless days that intervene between the first haze of autumn and the golden glow of October. He had never before realized how lonely the shiver of wind through the poplars could sound. Two innovations had been made that day in the country. The rural delivery carrier, in his little house on wheels, had made his first delivery, and a track for the new electric-car line was laid through the sheep meadow. This inroad of progress upon the sanctity of their seclusion seemed sacrilegious to David, who longed to have lived in the olden time of log houses, with their picturesque open fires and candle lights. Following some vague inward call, he went out of his way to ride past the tiny house he had once called home, and which in all his ramblings he had steadfastly avoided. He had heard that the place had passed into the hands of a widow with an only son, and that they had purchased surrounding land for cultivation. He had been glad to hear this, and had liked to fancy the son caring for his mother as he himself would have cared for his mother had she lived. As he neared the little nutshell of a house his heart beat fast at the sight of a woman pinning clothes to the line. Her fingers, stiff and swollen, moved slowly. The same instinct that had guided him down this road made him dismount and tie his horse. The old woman came slowly down the little path to meet him. "I am David Dunne," he said gently, "and I used to live here. I wanted to come to see my old home once more." He thought that the dim eyes gazing into his were the saddest he had ever beheld. "Yes," she replied, with the slow, German accent, "I know of you. Come in." He followed her into the little sitting room, which was as barren of furnishings as it had been in the olden days. "Sit down," she invited. He took a chair opposite a cheap picture of a youth in uniform. A flag of coarse material was pinned above this portrait, and underneath was a roughly carved bracket on which was a glass filled with goldenrod. "You lived here with your mother," she said musingly, "and she was taken. I lived here with my son, and--he was taken." "Oh!" said David. "I did not know--was he--" His eyes sought the picture on the wall. "Yes," she replied, answering his unspoken question, as she lifted her eyes to her little shrine, "he enlisted and went to the Philippines. He died there of fever more than a year ago."