that made the very hills tremble.

For one full moment while the trio on the hillside kept their places, breathless, expectant, a cloud of dust and smoke obscured the view.

During this moment Cherry became conscious of the dog that lay whining at her feet. Bending low, she patted his sleek head. “Yes, I know it’s terrible,” she soothed. “You don’t like it. We don’t either. But we all must endure it for England’s sake.”

As if he understood, the dog nestled silently at her feet.

The smoke cleared. The girl sighed with relief. The bomb had fallen in the orchard. A single apple tree, one of the early pippins, had been uprooted. A slight loss. The tree was quite old.

And then with a shock it came to her that everything—the house, the barn, the dovecotes,—all about the place was old, old and very dear.

Then again her lips parted in sudden fright, for a second silver spot, larger than the first, had appeared against the sky. Watching its swift descent, she grabbed at her painfully beating heart. At first it seemed that it must fall upon the house. “Alice is there,” her reeling brain registered the thought. Then came a sense of relief. The house would be spared. Then it was to be the barn where two fine colts were housed that would receive the full force of the blow.

“No,” she sighed. “Farther up the hill.”

The bomb fell not ten feet from a small square building. Like a tree, uprooted by the blast, this tiny house leapt high in air, then collapsing, crashed to earth. At the same instant dust and smoke concealed all.

As if struck a blow from behind, the girl leapt forward, stood there tense, motionless for a period of seconds, then disregarding the loyal collie whining at her heels, went dashing down the hill.

The apparently insignificant building had once been a smoke-house. Perhaps that had been fifty years before. When Cherry was a child it had been converted into a playhouse. There, hours on end, she and her sister Alice had played with their dolls and at keeping house. They, to be sure had abandoned both dolls and playhouse long ago. But from time to time other children had come to live on the Ramsey Farm. Both playhouse and dolls had been theirs. At this moment two cute children, Tillie and Peggy, from the London slums, were staying at the Ramsey Farm. This old smoke-house was 

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