When the meal was done, Mrs. Koerner began to rock again, the children stood about and watched Gusta pile the dishes on the table and cover them with the red cloth, and then, when she told them they must go to bed, they protested, crying that father had not come home yet. Their eyes were heavy and their flaxen heads were nodding, and Gusta dragged them into a room that opened off the kitchen, and out of the dark could be heard their small voices, protesting sleepily that they were not sleepy. After a while a quick, regular step was heard outside, some one stamped the snow from his boots, the door opened, and Archie entered. His face was drawn and flaming from the cold, and there was shrinking in his broad military shoulders; a shiver ran through his well-set-up figure; he wore no overcoat; he keenly felt the exposure to weather he was so unused to. He flung aside his gray felt soldier’s hat--the same he had worn in the Philippines--strode across the room, bent over the stove and warmed his red fingers. "It’s a long hike over to the hospital this cold night," he said, turning to Gusta and smiling. His white teeth showed in his smile, and the skin of his face was red and parched. He flung a chair before the stove, sat down, hooked one heel on its rung, and taking some little slips of rice paper from his pocket, and a bag of tobacco, began rolling himself a cigarette. He rolled the cigarette swiftly and deftly, lighted it, and inhaled the smoke eagerly. Gusta, meanwhile, sat looking at him in a sort of suppressed impatience. Then, the smoke stealing from his mouth with each word he uttered, he said: "Well, they’ve cut the old man’s leg off." Gusta and the neighbor women looked at Archie in silence. Mrs. Koerner seemed unable to grasp the full meaning of what he had said. "_Was sagst du?_" she asked, leaning forward anxiously. "_Sie haben sein Bein amputiert_," replied Archie. "_Sein Bein--was?_" inquired Mrs. Koerner. "What the devil’s ’cut off’?" asked Archie, turning to Gusta. She thought a moment. "Why," she said, "let’s see. _Abgeschnitten_, I guess." "Je’s," said Archie impatiently, "I wish she’d cut out the Dutch!" Then he turned toward his mother and speaking loudly, as if she were deaf, as one always speaks who tries to make himself understood in a strange tongue: "_Sie haben sein Bein abgeschnitten--die Doctoren im Hospital._" Mrs. Koerner stared at her son, and Archie and Gusta and the two women sat and stared at her, then suddenly Mrs. Koerner’s expression became set, meaningless and blank, her eyes slowly closed and her body slid off the chair to the floor. Archie sprang toward her and tried to lift her. She was heavy even for his strong arms, and he straightened an instant, and shouted out commands: "Open the door, you! Gusta, get some water!"