Ralph, so they learned one day, had lost his life in the full tide of battle. His company had been ordered to secure a foothold on the high northern bank of a river to which the army had fought its way. They had been led with extraordinary skill and courage, but in crossing one after another of the officers had been killed until Ralph was left alone in command. He took his men through the last cruel shelling to the desired objective, but in the final push he was fatally wounded. Even then he had refused to give up and for hours continued to direct his men as they literally clawed their way into the side of the bluff. "He would not die," wrote home one grieving young soldier, "until he knew we were safe." And Patsy made her fight as bravely. She held her head high. Had she not little Ralph, who, so they had both agreed, was one day to carry on his father's work for justice and peace among men? If there were times when it seemed as if her brave heart must break with pain, no one ever saw her shed a tear or say other than, "I would not have held him back, no, not even to have him here to-day." It was to the honor and the sanctification of Sabinsport that the bereaved took their sorrow as they did. It was more. Out of their loss there seemed to come to the town a mysterious illumination, the enlarged sense of what it was all about, which Dick had so desired for her, which he had felt so keenly she should have, to sustain her. Wounded and hurt as she was, the town had to find a reason, a great reason, to justify it all. Defending laws on sea or land that had grown out of past struggles between nations was not enough; vengeance was not enough, not even avenging wrongs as great as Belgium and the _Lusitania_. Sabinsport needed to feel that out of this sacrifice there should come some new conception of life, some greater guarantee of more joy and freedom to more people, some pledge that in future times there was hope of less sorrow, less hunger, less pain everywhere on the earth. This, she finally saw, was what it was all about; and in groping toward this realization there came to Sabinsport something that was akin to a new faith, and with this she was for the first time fully and unalterably reconciled to the Great War. It was no longer grim determination, no longer hatred of an enemy that she despised, that held her to the undertaking. It was a large and luminous faith that out of it all a long step had been taken toward realizing that new world to which, since the beginning of time, men have lifted their eyes. It was amazing how the town softened under the touch of its sorrow, how many old feuds sank out of sight, how much warmer grew everybody's heart. "It's doing something to us, Dick," Reuben Cowder said to him one day. "Why, I even heard Captain Billy speak approvingly of Wilson to-day."