Summer came again, the summer of 1918. The newspapers now were gravely personal reading to millions of Americans. Our new army was trying its metal on the French front and with the British against the vaunted Hindenburg Line. The transports were carrying thousands on every trip to join those already “over there.” In South Harniss and in Greenwich and New York, as in every town and city, the ordinary summer vacations and playtime occupations were forgotten or neglected and war charities and war labors took their place. Other soldiers than Sergeant Speranza were the newspaper heroes now, other books than The Lances of Dawn talked about. As on the previous summer the new Fosdick cottage was not occupied by its owners. Mrs. Fosdick was absorbed by her multitudinous war duties and her husband was at Washington giving his counsel and labor to the cause. Captain Zelotes bought to his last spare dollar of each successive issue of Liberty Bonds, and gave that dollar to the Red Cross or the Y. M. C. A.; Laban and Rachel did likewise. Even Issachar Price bought Thrift Stamps and exhibited them to anyone who would stop long enough to look. “By crimus,” declared Issy, “I'm makin' myself poor helpin' out the gov'ment, but let 'er go and darn the Kaiser, that's my motto. But they ain't all like me. I was down to the drug store yesterday and old man Burgess had the cheek to tell me I owed him for some cigars I bought--er--last fall, seems to me 'twas. I turned right around and looked at him--'I've got my opinion,' says I, 'of a man that thinks of cigars and such luxuries when the country needs every cent. What have you got that gov'ment poster stuck up on your wall for?' says I. 'Read it,' I says. 'It says' '“Save! Save! Save!”' don't it? All right. That's what I'M doin'. I AM savin'.' Then when he was thinkin' of somethin' to answer back I walked right out and left him. Yes sir, by crimustee, I left him right where he stood!” August came; September--the Hindenburg Line was broken. Each day the triumphant headlines in the papers were big and black and also, alas, the casualty lists on the inside pages long and longer. Then October. The armistice was signed. It was the end. The Allied world went wild, cheered, danced, celebrated. Then it sat back, thinking, thanking God, solemnly trying to realize that the killing days, the frightful days of waiting and awful anxiety, were over. And early in November another telegram came to the office of Z. Snow and Co. This time it came, not from the War Department direct, but from the Boston headquarters of the American Red Cross. And this time, just as on the day when the other fateful telegram came, Laban Keeler was the first of the office regulars to learn its contents. Ben Kelley himself brought this message, just as he had brought that telling of Albert Speranza's death. And the usually stolid Ben was greatly excited. He strode straight from the door to the bookkeeper's desk.