The Rising of the Tide

this should have been so. Curiosity over the girl had been awakened when Patsy McCullon came back from Europe in 1914 and gave an a

her father from Serbia. The nature which revealed itself so frankly in these letters was, Dick realized, something rarely sweet and strong. He grew as the weeks went on to watch for the coming of the letters with scarcely l

ted shot might have done, or wakened him, shivering, from his sleep by their horrible realism. His anxiety became so great in the early part of the year that he had almost persuaded himself to join Reuben Cowder in his distracted search, when the cablegram came that Nancy was found. Dick had a vain hope that they might come home soon, but the first lette

ss Nancy would never consent to live away from Sabinsport, that she loved it above all places, and that the thing that was sustaining her now was the thought of coming back with her father. They had many rare talks, these two, and little by little Dick was able to piece toge

r less irritated activity over the Border troubles, Dick was daily going about her streets, sharing in her sor

to no other man in Sabinsport, however long I had known him. You get something from him-I don't know what it is. I suppose it's sympathy and understanding. It is not what he says, but it's a very real thing, and everybody gets it, everybody in Sabinsport. When he dropped down there among us at the time of the accident at the 'Emma,' it was to him that all those poor souls turned, not to us. Jake Mulligan feels just as I do about it, and so does Tom Sabins, and so does Nikola and so does John Starrett, and even the Rev. Mr.

r realized that he was seeing the world through new eyes-his town, his business, his future; and her heart grew big with thankfulness to the man that had help

unreasoning kind of dread. Might it not be that he would discover that he must give up this lovely thing that he had been treasuring in his heart? It was as if he had been growing in some shady, secret corner of his garden a delicate and rare plant, and that the time had come when he must take it into the full sun, and he feared what the change might do-feared lest it was something

ence less than his words. He had a smile which was so rare, so joyless, that one would rather he frowned, for the smile made one sorry for him and uneasy lest one's judgment of him as cruel, greedy and unfeeling might, after all, need qualification. He had a way

ut him now than that he walked erect with head well back and eyes that shone. If he talked but little more, he smiled freely and indiscriminately at all the world. The change in him was a nine days' wo

t believe I ever would have found her-wouldn't have had the courage and faith. So, you see, she is very anxious to see

to meet the car, a half dozen dogs at her heels. And his second thought, as they stopped and she stoo

heightened by her romp with the dogs and set off by a sweater and tam as nearly the shade of her cheeks as wool could imitate. She gav

ng now brown and gray with the broad river glittering through it; to go in to tea before the great open fire; to talk of all sorts of things, the latest war news, Reuben Cowder's day in town, the dogs, the telephone talks she had with Patsy, who was comi

mber in its every detail, there was but on

you see him? Isn't he here? I tho

quick and warning look at him, "He's in New York probably. I didn't ask about him, I was so bus

wonderful companionship so fully and naturally opened to him, there was a decided uneasiness running through his exaltation. Did Nancy Cowder care for Otto Littman? Would she understand the feeling about him? Would she know, indeed, anything of the stratagem and plots that the Germans had spun over the country, with what Dick felt was for the most part

y lay at the bottom of his mind, only working their way for brief, if troubling, moments to the top. Life w

htful by the entire naturalness of the Cowders' relations with Sabinsport. Ralph and Dick discussed it again and again. The town took them in, and they accepted the town as if there had been no long black years wh

ancy Cowder's noble sacrifice and brave endurance. They plumed themselves no little on the fact that she belonged to them. The change in Reuben Cowder, who, if he owned as much as ever of everything and ran it with as hi

Board began to connect up as they never had before. It was one of the strange ways in which the Great War reached Sabinsport-stretching h

n the great tragedy. She watched with somber face but steady eye as day after day the proofs piled up that she could no longer do busines

nced her return to the practices she had so solemnly sworn to respect, he heard but one thing as he stopp

silence, but with a growing hardness of eyes and a setting of lips which meant

Dick and Patsy. The Argus had been dull reading. Even those who highly disapproved of Ralph's belligerent attacks o

eeded in divesting himself from all personal prejudices and feelings about the war. He had achieved one of the most difficult of human tasks-a completely impersonal, non-partisan attitude toward events which thrilled with human emotion and which

should do on whether or no Germany had still enough sense of decency and righteousness

aded, signed article. It was an article of vast importance in Sabinsport, for it put into words the feelings that were within her. It became her statemen

s this is the last piece that the editor will write for the Argus for a long time, he is going to drop the thir

pted to write of things of which I did not know enough, sometimes because I was determined to force your attention to things in which you were not interested, and again because I was more interested in converting you t

t Sabinsport need not concern herself with the war. I tried to talk and act as if we could go on with our daily lives here as if it were not loose on the earth. I

man should be ashamed of thinking that he can force regeneration on men. There is very little difference, except in the size of the field of action, between my attitude toward Sabinsport and that of the

r came and, in spite of my fierce gestures and loud shouting, it swept over us. It threw me high and dry out of the current of human activities. As long as I refused, as I did, to g

pirations as they unrolled. You all know this man. He does not think of himself as being a leader; but we all realize that it has been his wisdom and patience and suffering that has opened our eyes. There has been nobody in Sabinsport so humble, so ignorant, or, like myself, so selfish that he was not his friend and counselor. When I finally realized th

cried down as disturbers of the peace. As for us Americans, our stupidity has been beyond belief. There is scarcely a college or university in this country that has not its quota of men and women, educated in Germany, whose chief ambition has been to demonstrate the superiority of her scholarship and of her social system. It was her social machinery that captivated my imagination. Without ever having seen

um meant, the abysmal depravity of it. It has taken me all this time to under

untry that he loved as well as any man in Sabinsport loves America. Why should he have been forced to do this? For no other reason than that Germany and her kind wanted this land which belonged to Nikola. He loved it so well that two

nds. Now it is time that this kind of thing stopped, and the only way to stop it is for us to take a hand, and to

ermany is conquered. This afternoon I enlisted in the United States Army, and I hope soon to

also safe to say that the one person to whom it meant a thousandfold more than to anybody else was Patsy McCullon. She read it with

n, "I-" and her v

he said, "what

he first time in eight months, the old d

ing right out.

ed a faint and

set, his eyes flaming, his color high, the great hour of his life was at hand. He could go to Patsy with a clear, clean purpose-the one to which she herself was pledged. However long he had been in darknes

elcoming voice was the same that so lately had vibrated and broken over the 'phone? Her pose was lost on Ralph. It was not this but the voice of twenty minutes ago that rang in his ears. She might fence if she would. He must know-she sho

the chair Patsy offered him in fron

me, marry me now. I've enlisted. I leave next week. I want you, Patsy; want

y heart. She drank the words like one whose lips are parched from long desert dryn

efore was rung close to the door and Mother McCullon's

's arms. "We must go,

ven't said

ardner, what

arry me now-before I

Yes, Ralph; I don't think I could

s, and were not a little amazed to see how much

, I think," said Mother McCullon, tea

ay call this the first victory of the war, Ralph. You w

with their love? Already the world-old conviction of true lovers submerged all history. Since time

fussing, Mother," the autocratic young man had declared, and Patsy was as little concerned. She was going with him. She would find a home as near his camp as practical. She would stay there as

nd Tom Sabins and the half dozen other friends invited said.

back from the station where they said good-by to the pair, "without some inw

confidently, "I

tant day when he had sought Annie and found her dead-or when in August of 1914 he had sought to make his way into the British Army and had been thrust back, he was flooded with the conviction that he was doomed never to know the great realities of life. Not a little of his ache came from the stir that Ralph's almost primitive attitude toward the war had given him. Ralph, once convinced that

k had first heard of this decision he had questioned its wisdom. "Why, Ralph

ce of battle, and I don't believe anybody but the man in the line ever gets it. Then, too, I've hung back all these months,

ad been hours when he felt that nothing but the sight of his own red blood flowing would still the passion within him. Ralph was to ha

a pang the disappointment he thought he detected at their first meeting when she had asked for Otto, and her father had told her he was not in town. He recalled, too, how a few days later, when he was alone with her, she had told him of seeing Otto the day he returned; how he see

rim when Otto was present or when his name was mentioned but his belief that she did care? Of one thing he was sure, he must give no sign and he gave none, though as the spring days went on and the question of our going into the war was settled and Sabinsport beg