Vernon County censor. [volume] (Viroqua, Wis.) 1865-1955, 1917-10-17

| smile.
'Not here" she begged, mot here,
Don dear-whlle there's moonlight in
the patio."
Catching his hand she drew hin
with her through the doorway. g.
The patio was very still and peace
full and deserted. The moonlight sill
vered it exquisltely. Its air was sweet
with the scent of flowers. In the
shadow of the old well in its center,
Patria released Donald's hand, and
turned to him, lifting up her face to
his lips.
Perhaps for the last time
How she found it possible to let him
90, in the end, she never understood.
With a sense Of the unreality of it all
she watched his soldierly figure, In its
khaki field uniform, stride away
through the chiaroscurO Of milk-white
moonlight and inky shadow, till he
disappeared in the passageway lead
ing to the front of the house.
And for a long time after he had
gone she stood clasping the hands
upon which his parting kisses had
been pressed, and staring at the spot
where she had last seen him.
1t seemed so hideously wrong that
these things could be, that this world
so beautiful could be made the slaugh-
ter-pen of embattled humanity. She
thought of France, the land she knew
and loved so well; her last night in
France had been a summers night,
moonsmitten and warm and sweet
even as this night. She had sailed
for New York the next day; and u
week later the great war had broken
out. And now all northern France
was the theater of horrors unspeak-
able
And tomorrow would see the incep-
ton of an effort to render her own
United States a counterpart of
The most she could hope for was
that the preparations she had made
would check temporarily the invading
forces, give the country time to real
ize its peril and arm against it. For
/ the invasion, once launched, would
never be stayed but by overwhelming
| force If checked where the Chan
ming property met the border. it would
/ only recoil to strike a new and more
effective blow. Even assuming the i'm
| pOssible-that the Charming ranch
should prove an impregnable obstacle
in its path--it would need only to
sweep round 1t in order to reach a
peaceful and defenseless land and
blacken it with the infamy Of war,
turn it into a place of death and terror
and torment and hideous waste, make
it sister to Belgium.
And all because a purblind people
refused To see that the one way to
stave off the sin of war was to make
the country so strong for defense that
no invader would ever dare set foot
across its borders.
Slowly the girl assembled to her bed
chamber.
Its windows overlooked the south !;
she stood in one of them for a long
time staring incredulously at the
| mysterious distances that lay beyond
the boundary line between the two
countries, the Swallowed enigu of
Mexico that rested so quietly tn,se IN
the face of the moon.
Somewhere out there, somewhere
! between the border and those serrated
mountains that walled in the southern
horizon. thousands upon thousands of
men, armed and equipped, were
marching northward; troops of caval-
[ ry were marching. with them; trains
Of ammunition, companies of artil-
! lery, machlne-gun corps, all the di-
/ visions of modern milit2ry service,
We're astir, under The cloak of the
night.
Her Imagination conceived that
army Of invasion in the guise of a
great serpent crawling through the
shadows to strike at the heart of a
sleeping giant. loathy, deadly,
vicious thing that squirmed foully
/ upon its way to do a deed of inexcus-
able treachery and cruelty.
The vision of that great serpent
haunted all her dreams. She slept I'll,
ftfully. Between maps she lay awake,
staring Wide-eyed into the darkness,
every sense alert, strainlng to hear
any sound that might be the over
ture to tomorrow's tragedy. fancy
Ing that she heard the confused but
rhythmic shuttle Of those thousands of
marching feet.
Towards dawn she fell into a pro-
found and dreamless slumber of ex-
haustion. from which she was awak-
ened in broad daylight by the sound
of distant firing.
Leaplng from her he'd She seized
binoculars and ran to the window.
But the glasses showed her nothing,
at first. The sounds of firing persist
cd-great thudding detouations ac-
companied by the screaming of shrap-
mel ia the air and shatteriug explo-
sions as the shells found their billetS
But nothing in the face of the land
heyont. the border revealed the source
of the firing or betrayed the fact that
any considerable body Of troops was
nearing the boundary line.
Only in the air three warplane,
hung like bIzzards, soaring, darted
sweeping above the border country
After hiring canoe ut boathouse
they padded about a mile up the river