She left the veterans and the mules, busy in the fields, and stood, for a few moments, on the edge of the pavé, where the by-road to the farm left it, watching the melancholy procession. True, some were laughing, or greeted her with a cheer, but the general impression of those pinched faces and anxious eyes, above worn and filthy clothes, gave a better idea than any historian will ever do, of the rigors of the blockade. Madeleine gained from the sight just her first inkling of the irreparable loss, that was to weigh upon the lifetime of her generation. War, the Leviathan, was giving up that which it had swallowed, but there was no biblical jubilation in them, none of those sharp terrors that, in scripture, foretell everlasting joy. Madeleine, better than any Bible-reading Protestant, comprehended. These poor souls (as she called them to herself, pityingly, for they had been “caught out,” a defect she did not admit) had now got to work to catch up the wastage. A bright chance for most of them! She returned to the farm, and now, finally convinced of the Armistice, yoked the mules to the strongest tackle she could find amid the abandoned and salvaged engineer stores that Jacobs had gathered, and began to pull away the barbed wire that laced the farm about, fifty yards at a time. * * * * * She worked thus with the veterans, beating, shouting at, jerking the mouths of the mules, tugging, cutting, coiling the rusted venomous strands, piling the stout pickets on one side for further use, until it was nearly dark. Hastening home to prepare supper she noticed a dark bent figure standing irresolutely in the courtyard. She was walking over the slippery furrows by aid of a half pick-handle, but, though thus armed, was unafraid, and found something unaccountably familiar in that listless bent-shouldered form. Coming up to it, she gave a cry. It was the ghost of Jerome Vanderlynden. She took him by the hand, called him “Father,” told him with a choke in her voice that she was glad to see him back. He just stared at her, but when spoken to with decision, sat in the settle by the stove, and smiled at the warmth and the smell of food. Other sign of animation he would not give, nor could she elicit what he thought, or how he had found his way home. When her veterans came in from the stable, she introduced him, and they displayed all the kindliness of their sort, seemed to understand at a glance the nature of the case, called him “Poor old gentleman” and offered him a ration cigarette, which he took, and immediately laid aside, as if he did not know its use. He appeared better for the food and rest, and was willing to be led to the bare tiled bedroom in which he had always occupied the crazy old double bed, where his children had been born and his wife had died, and which, with the big old press, two pegs, and two photos of the children, constituted the whole furniture. He allowed Madeleine to help