So over countless forms they hurried to the river's brink for water. Thaine and Tasker and Boehringer were accustomed to muddy streams, for the prairie waters are never clear. But Goodrich from Boston had a memory of mountain brooks. The Pennsylvania man, McLearn, the cold springs of the Alleghanies, and for Binford there was old Broad Ripple out beyond Indianapolis. All these men came down with dry canteens to the Peiho by Yang-Tsun. The river was choked with dead Chinamen and dead dogs and horses. They must push aside the bodies to find room to dip in their canteens. * * * * * "You have one more lesson. You must learn to be a Christian." Somehow the words seemed to ring round and round just out of Thaine's mental sight. "Vasser! Vasser!" cried a big German soldier before him. Thaine stooped to give him a drink, and as he lifted up the man's head he saw the stained face of Hans Wyker. "It's very goot," Hans murmured, licking his lips for more. "Wisky not so goot as vasser," and then he trailed off into a delirium. "Don't tell. Don't tell," he pleaded. "I neffer mean to get Schmitt. I not know he would be der yet. I hide for Yacob, an' I get Schmitt in der back and I only want Yacob. He send me to der pen for sure yet next time. I hate Yon Yacob." A little silence, then Hans murmured: "I didn't go to Kansas City. I coom back to Gretchen's home by Little Wolf. I hide where I watch for Yacob. I shoot twice to be sure of Yacob, an' Schmitt, hidin' in der crack by der roat, get one shot. So I coom to Yermany and enlist. Gretchen, she coom too an' she stay der. Vell! I help fight Boxer some. Mine Gott, forgif me. I do once some goot for der world dis day." And that was the last of Wyker. The twilight hour was near. The wounded had been borne away by busy Red Cross angels of mercy. Wide away across the Chinese plain the big red sun slipped down the amber summer sky into a bath of molten flame. Then out of sight behind the edge of the world it turned all the west into one magnificent surge of scarlet glory, touching to beauty the tiny gray cloud flecks far away to the eastward; while long rivers of golden light by rivers of roseate glow mingled at last along the zenith in one vast sweep of mother-of-pearl. A cool breeze came singing in from the sea--fanning the fevered faces of the weary soldiers. The desolate places were hidden by the deepening shadows, and the serenity of the twilight hour fell on the battlefield.