replied Mrs. Bracher; "it's that six-inch gun over behind the farm-house, trying out these new [34]men. They're gradually getting ready to come across. It will only be a few days now."

[34]

They walked up the road a hundred yards, and came on a knot of soldiers stooping low behind the roadside bank.

"What are those men looking at?" exclaimed Mrs. Bracher sharply.

"Some poor fellow. Probably work for us," returned Hilda.

Mrs. Bracher went nearer, peered at the outstretched form on the grass bank, then turned her head away suddenly.

"No work for us," she said. "Don't go near, child. It's too horrible. His face is gone. A shell must have taken it away. Oh, I'm sick of this war. I am sick of these sights."

One of the little group of men about the body had drawn near to her.

"What do you want?" she asked crossly, as a woman will who is interrupted when she is close to tears.

[35]

[35]

"Will I identify him?" she repeated after him. "I tell you I never saw the man."

A little gasp of amazement came from the soldiers about the body.

"See what we have found," called one of the men—"in his pocket."

It was a lock of the very lightest and gayest of hair.

"Ah, my doctor," Hilda cried.

She spread the lock across the breast of the dead man. It was so vivid in the morning sun as to seem almost a living thing.

"And he said it would bring him luck," she murmured.

[37]

[37]

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