While the millionnaire sent his money to England for
safekeeping, this man, with his girl-wife and three babies, left
them on a mortgaged farm and went away to fight for an idea. It
was foolish, but it was sublime for all that.
That was three years before, and the young wife, sitting on the well
curb on this bright Sabbath harvest morning, was righteously
rebellious. It seemed to her that she had borne her share of the
country's sorrow. Two brothers had been killed, the renter in
whose hands her husband had left the farm had proved a villain,
one year the farm was without crops, and now the overripe grain
was waiting the tardy hand of the neighbor who had rented it, and
who was cutting his own grain first.
About six weeks before, she had received a letter saying, "We'll be
discharged in a little while." But no other word had come from
him. She had seen by the papers that his army was being
discharged, and from day to day other soldiers slowly percolated in
blue streams back into the state and county, but still her private did
not return.
Each week she had told the children that he was coming' and she
had watched the road so long that it had become unconscious, and
as she stood at the well, or by the kitchen door, her eyes were fixed
unthinkingly on the road that wound down the coulee.
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