The Able McLaughlins

a girl before in his life. Allen had kissed them whenever he had gotten a good chance⁠—or any chance at all. Now, today, with Chirstie, it had been just simply the only thing to do. She was already by the significance of that caress a part of him. Oh, no wonder Stowe had come home four times! And now his holiday was all but over. He vowed rashly he would not go back! Never! If only he had come and found her the first of his twelve days! He wondered why he had left her. He might have stayed for supper. But no, not with her mother there! He was glad he had come away. To think of him, who had marched through states and territories, finding a girl like that, the very queen of beauty, right there on the prairie! He could scarcely remember how she had looked when he had seen her last. Just some kind of a little girl⁠—no stunning queen like this. The song of her name rose and fell in his mind rhythmically. The sun grew low while he sat exulting. A chill came into the air. He couldn’t endure to take his excitement home to the light. He would wait till they would all be at supper. How glad his mother would be when sometime she heard of his love! He knew it was the very thing she would have chosen for him.

When he came into the kitchen she said, with relief:

“You’re a long time away, Wully!”

He replied without a waver:

“I stopped for a swim in the creek.”

She sat looking at him, wondering why he was pale again, and silent. He was far from well, she was thinking. And before the meal was over, he was wondering why the children’s chatter was so strangely tiresome. Wouldn’t they ever get away to bed, and leave him to his memories? Even with that babbling about, he could feel her face against his.⁠ ⁠…

His Uncle Peter’s Davie came in with the mail after supper, bringing a paper with a notice for the scattered men of his regiment, and paroled prisoners. They were to have reported yesterday to headquarters. He tried to appear eager to go. His mother lifted the Psalm, when the visitors were gone, and left the children to quaver through it. And when he was lying in his bed, vowing desperately he would not go back, she came to him.

“I canna’ thole your going, Wully!” she cried to him, and her cry braced him. He remembered with shame how she had made him go back after Allen’s death, how she had signaled fiercely to him to keep the mention of anything else from the children. As if he, her son, could not do whatever he must do, and do it well! She had been ashamed of him before the children, then. He remembered that, and grew brave now. He hated to remember what a baby he had been. As if, however terrible the war might be, it hadn’t to be fought out, some way, by men! As if he must escape from the hell other men must endure! He was glad now he had occasion to strengthen the strengthener.

“It’s almost over now, mother!” he kept saying. Almost over, indeed, and a bullet the death of a second! What was the use of saying that when an hour could kill thousands? She sat stroking his hair, her face turned away from him, so that he suspected tears. She felt like an old broken woman, worn out not by years and childbearing, but by this war. All that night she lay sleepless, praying for her son. He lay sleepless in the room next to her, never giving her a thought. He gave all his thoughts, he gave all he had, to the girl of the slough well.

The dream of the night wore away, and the nightmare of the morning was upon him. His father was calling him long before daybreak. He was starting away, in the darkness, in the cold, away from Chirstie, towards his duty. His feet ached. His back ached. His head ached. His heart ached. He was one new great pain. It didn’t seem possible that life could be so hard. But on his father drove, through the first shivering glimpses of dawn, towards the train.

III

After more than three months spent in hospitals, Wully came home the next March, honorably discharged from the army. His father met him at the end of the railroad, and before dawn they started westward over the all but impassable paths called roads. Rain began falling when the sun should have begun shining. Hour after slow hour of the morning their horses strained and plunged and splashed through deep, black mud. At every slough the men alighted to pull and tug at the sunken wagon, and returned bemired to their wet blankets. From noon till dusk they rode on, pulling grain sacks helmetwise down over their caps to protect the back of their necks from trickles of water, rearranging their soaked garments, hearing, when their voices fell silent, only the splashing of the horses’ feet down into the thawed mud, and the sucking of the water around hoofs reluctantly lifted to take the next step. Darkness set in early, but they made the ford while there was still a soggy twilight. More soaked, more dripping, they went on, peering into the wall of blackness which settled down in front of them. They were hungry. They were tired. They were chilled to the bone. Wully’s teeth chattered in spite of all he could do to prevent them. And they were both immeasurably happy. On they went, caressing the fine joy in their hearts. The father had his son home safe from battles. The son, each shivering step, was nearing the queen of the afternoon light.

At half past eight they drew near the welcoming lighted window towards which they had strained their eyes so eagerly. If