The Pulaskian., 1915-03-19
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 Copyright, The Frank A. Munsey Col

Copyright, The Frank A. Munsey Col
 Under the yellow August sunlight the fields lay deserted; here a seythe leaning against half-completed stack. there sickle rusttng on the stubble. The twilight fell upon deserted hearths where women, with trembling fingers. cooked their scanty meals. The round, full moon looked down upon scattered homes where only the children slept, where the women wept and shuddered and waited
 For the men had marched away uni der the brilliant, Haunting colors None had been too old to go, none too young. Their lips had shouted the raucous notes, the valiant words Honneur, Patrie, Gloire-but every eye was wet, every heart heavy with | despair and terror
 | Bibi had watched them go, the tiny
 staff in his clenched fingers beating | time to the brave music, to the hur- rying feet, but, in the nameless ter TOT that had descended upon the land, he clung to the old grandmother's hand and when all were gone-fa- ther, uncle, brother-he flung himself sobbing upon the ground The wom- an, left alone in the world save for the small grandchild, watched with eyes too old for tears until there was no longer even a cloud of dust upon the horizon; then she turned and hob bled into the empty house, leaving the child still lying there upon the | lonely road.
 Before the hearth she sat. seeing the long procession of all the others
 who, under that same tricolor, had marched out, away from her life, never to return. Hours later, when Bibi came in, his little tragedy all for | gotten, his face reflecting only the | golden glory of the summer day, he found her sitting there, dry-eyed, her | shriveled lips muttering prayers for those already dead for those about to die. Into her shaking hands he thrust his offering-a nosegay of bluets, the | color of the sky, of field-poppies, a | flame of red, and mullein, white with the dust of the road-the tricolor that had taken from them grandfather | father, husband and sons | A choking sob slipped across her | lips and she flung the flowers from her on to the hearth, where the red petals
 fire that might never again blaze | thereon.
 Days passed; only a few-Bibi could not count them, Mere Craquette | would not. The heavy-headed blades of grain lay prone upon the ground, ungarnered by the hands that were too tiny, the hands that were too old. There were others, of course, in that deserted land, as lonely as these two, but there were no other quite so helpless-a child of six, grandam of eighty-six. Indoors, the woman could only sit and pray. Out of doors, the child played with his flowers--bluets, bits of the sky, poppies, red as blood, and mullein, a dried and ghastly white. The short-lived poppies dropped and fell to the earth, the mullein crumbled to dust, only the bluets were left. And then there dawned the day of horror. For hours of light and dark ness the roar of cannon had filled the universe, for hours of light and dark ness the grandmother had knelt quiv- ering and trembling before the cruel. fix. At daybreak the low horizon stretched-a long line of fire and smoke; flames licking up the parched | fields with the novels that stood in their midst, black smoke creeping like a pail across the sky.
 | In the gray light before the sun had risen Mere Craquette stood in the doorway and watched the oncoming | devastation, a foeman that feet, how ever young and agile, might not out distance, that no human hand might stay. Clutching Bibi by the wrist, she re-entered the house and closed the door. Better to die crouched before the cross, with suppliant hands upon it's succoring feet, than to be caught creeping and crawling through the fields of matted grain.
 For little time Bibi lay quiet in her arms, listening to the ever-in- creasing roar, watching the light that even now was redder than any rays of sunlight that had ever flooded the windows of his home. Soon, though, he. grew restless and slipped away from the feeble hands that, with the passing of all things earthly, had al- most forgotten to hold him. Out of doors the horizon was still only line | of red and black, and Bibi could not know that it was a score of miles nearer to his home than it had been short hour before. Here and there above the broken grain there waved tiny flag of blue. Upon his baby lips fragments of "Honneur, Gloire, Patrie," he ran to and fro gathering his be- loved bluets.
 Tired, stifled by the heat, the source of which he could not understand, he sat down at the edge of the road. And 1 AI--