The Rising of the Tide

alization of the war as he sensed at every turn. It seemed to him that it was the one occupation, the one interest of everybody; and it was an orderly, systematized i

eadiness of so many factory hands. Since his departure a Red Cross house had gone up, and there, from eight to five every day, regular detachments served under a direction which he found was almost military in its severity.

ounted on now, night or day. It was no unusual thing for 2000 tired boys to

ight work. Three nights a week, from nine at night until six in the morning, she was ready for call, and again and again she would serve her full time, and, after two hours' sleep, go back to her table,

stern journalist, lately returned from a trip along the front, had to tell. As he watched the audience, a large proportion of whom were knitting-for Sabinsport's Woman's Club had co

'stand for' war, but they will be violent supporters of war." Ralph had accused him of being out of touch with the modern world, of not knowing anything of the "New Woman." This conversation ran through his mind now as the speaker told the story of the first gas attack by the Germans, of the deadly effec

rmans," he said, "to six dead Americans." Again the room rang with long clapping and cries of

ick. "Ralph read it in a

so deeply or gave him so much joy as that in Mary Sabins, who was now regularly installed as a nurse's aide in the hospital at ca

sed to use his authority at her request and forbid the boy's going away. For the first time in their married life of some twenty-five years, a strain had come between them. Tom Sabins could

them aside as completely as the boy had thrown over college and home. It was Tom Sabins that had been asked to head the draft board of the community, and Mary had never seen him so engrossed or so inter

ir best to interest her in some form of camp work; but she had refused peremptorily

cy, the first Monday afternoon after his

was very hard for Tom to make Mary believe this, and she raved at her inability to go to him. He got on famously and soon was allowed to come back. You never saw any one so exultant as Mary was when Tom first came. It seemed to her, I think, that her old world, at least part

ven't any idea of it until you see them working over there. They are not afraid of anything. You cannot tire them out. Maybe they will drop, but they won't give in. Afraid? Why, the Germans bombed the front line hospital I was in, just after I got mine, and t

ad some notion that he would not want to go back; that getting hurt would kill this strange, unfamiliar thing that possessed him. Mary is like so many of us American women. Certainly I used to be so-afraid somebody will get hurt-afraid of

ek after he was gone, she came out here one afternoon. 'Nancy

eed me? What for?' 'The boys need you,' I said. 'We cannot do for them the hundredth part of what we ought. Boys like Y

t understand what they are talking about. I don't understand what they feel. They have no interest in me

. You can see from her face that it's a new Mary. And Tom-Tom is the happiest man in the world, though Mary, I think, doesn't know it, yet. The clouds have not all cleared

self in the war, was doing his utmost to prevent that end by decrying loudly everything that was attempted. Mr. John Commons was having the time of his life. Never had he been able to reduce so many people for so long a time to despairing doubt of all human institutions as at present. He could scoff, and not be contradicted, at the absurdity of an untrained,

doubt of a war enterprise, any reluctance to accept at full face value any request of the G

his direction? When I went away, the easiest thing in the world was to

ery popular. After we went into the War it revived. The town was alive with distrust, and I was sure, just as I was about Labor's Peace Party, that there was somebody feeding it. You take the negroes; why, they almost came to the point of revolt here against the war. Nancy had a cook out at the farm that came home from one Sunday afternoon meeting to tell her that she 'wan't goin' to save food any more; that all the Un

und out things, you know. Well, he had not been here long before he came to me and said, 'Mr. Cowder, Uncle Sam has told me to get off this job, wanted me to tell you that you need not worry, that they w

ozen men in your munition plant, one of whom you have trusted greatly-Mr. Max Dalberg-will disappear from this town, day after to-morrow; or, if not, the next day. I would like to tell you the facts, but I am under orders to div

kmen we had; that Otto is still here. Moreover, the rumors, the criticisms that filled the air, have stopped. That fellow told me they would. He told me that it was out of my own factory that these things had been coming. The town somehow got wind that something had been going on, that the suspicion and criticisms which ran through the streets were spread by German agents, and to-day a criticism which is perfectly well founded has no chance at all. You cannot even joke about the conduct of the war without running the danger of arrest. Why, the funniest thing happened here the other day to John

would give a good deal to know just what was done, what b

to only one person in Sabinsport. Offhand you would have said that

em any longer that they are Jews. But a German, Mr. Dick, that's different. He won't salute the flag. And look at the things they do-sinking the ships like they did. Think of all our grand, lovely young men drowned in the sea-the dirty Germans-sticking a ship in the ribs in the night. I can't stand it to think of 'em dead. I'm that foolish about the boys, I can't see one in the streets I don't cry, old fool I am. I won't never g

ry. They're all spies. There's the butcher over on the South Side, Johann he calls himself. Think of that

r once. "Johann has been in

y're all the same; you can'

her hand. She was handling it gingerly as if it was something that might explode. With great solemnity she opened it. "Look here, Mr. Dick. It's a spy I found. I'm sure of it." Out of

Don't buy a bond"-that to her was treason. "The Kaiser says so," more treason. Finally she gave in to Dick's persua

particularly well to the strange young man who had appeared in Reuben Cowder's office early in March and warned him of approaching changes in the force a

which Katie had said recently for the first time to herself she would rent if she had a chance. She had not put out a shingle but she had told her neighbors, so it was not surprising t

n Mikey but with something about him that suggested Mikey. Himself a grand fi

be in before eight or half-past in the morning for I get my breakfast over there. I want a quiet place to sleep through the da

ing, had said, "It's all right, Mr. Barker, I will have the room ready to-night and y

room clean and tidy, put the key to the outside door with

trol. As a matter of fact there was only one entrance to his upper floor, save that on the street. A rude little staircase ran up from the kitchen into a tiny square hall, and a door opened into the room which had been Mikey's. It was by this door that every afternoon, when Katie came home f

s laboratory and Katie at the rectory. Every morning, promptly at 8:30, a quiet, tired look

; two very dangerous looking weapons were slipped into his belt; and in the big pockets of his soft sack coat something that looked like a pair of handcuffs. And then, with ke

I ever heard of." The young man was making out a pretty case in Max's secure chamber, little by little, from the papers and photographs which he examined with such scrupulous care day by day, always leaving them exactly as he found them, taking infinite pains not t

iciency, to blow up simultaneously every munition plant in that great district around Sabinsport, where now

y day was fixed. Two weeks from the time that young Mr. Barker finished photographing the last piece, at ten o'clock at night, there was to be one grand explosion, running along the river for miles, back into the hills north and south-a piece of destruction that would not only rip every wheel apart but shake the valley, tumble dow

he pain in Katie's heart but to get her German, to give blow for blow. And so one day, after records and photographs were complete, after they had b

mething going wrong? Did I forget

anything. You are the best landlady I ever had. But there's somet

and told her what he wanted. Briefly, it was her co?peration in arresting Max. She had listened, amazed, unbelieving, and then, as the truth dawned upon her, horrifi

o his door of an eve

d sometimes, when I have it, a bit of fruit. He has always been such a quiet, g

Flaherty," said

s it yo

and you will let in two men, with a hearty, 'How do you do, I am glad to see you.' Then I will ask you, Mrs. Flaherty, to go ahead of us

Mr. Barker had not the shadow of a

een the time that Mr. Barker closed the door of the rectory kitchen and the hour when she admitted two stalwart str

and the three men, fifteen minutes later, slipped up the stairs as noiselessly as so many cats, they heard

t trembled as she realized that this was Otto-the son of her good friends, the only Germans in all Sabinsport she had never suspected-who was talking. She did not know what he said, but young Mr. Barker knew. He knew from what he heard that Otto had gotten some inkling of the horror devised

out in the most natural and cheerful of tones-so natural and cheerful that he said

here appeared in his face over her shoulders the muzzles of two vicious looking guns. At the same instant the do

one for a moment. Katie slipped down stairs. Young Mr. Barker in his level voice said, "Mr. Littman, I hav

unishment. You will find me at home when you want me. I have s

e noticed that the one in the middle was being supported. They might have thought him ill. He was helped into the car, and thus departed from Sabinsport the "wonder of the laboratory" of the munition plant. And thus ended his magnificent dr

his hands. It was the look that all the Celtic Flahertys and O'Flahertys from the time of the Anglo-Saxon invasion, through the days of

it was to tell of the battle, to tell of the defeated enemy; it was to tell of the revenge! It was a wonderful story, and all her Irish imagination cried out to depict it to her neighbors. But she had given her promise to young Mr. Barker, and, clever man that he was, he had put a flea in h

ence, was sustained by the hope that

m, though there were mornings when Katie Flaherty would gladly have given her good right

h-his love for Nancy Cowder. He thought he had had it out with himself. He believed he had made his renunciation, that he could come back, work with her in camp and town, go out as usual to the farm on Monday afternoons, meet her easily and naturally everywhere, even see outwardly unmoved the day come which he believed thoroughly would come, when she would marry Otto Littma

r perhaps, when suspicion of Otto had passed and Nancy was released from her labors in the camp, that again they would seek each other; yet the fact that at this moment they were not seeking each other, th

at the very head of Sabinsport business, where suspicion of Otto had first begun, there had been a great change. These men, if you asked them, would tell you that they knew it to be a fact, from the very highest authority, that Otto Littman had rendered the Secret Service of the United States a tremendous service; they knew it to be a fact that he ha

ontinuous work at the camp; work which she never left, which, whatever the effort and the strain called for, she always gave. Reuben Cowder

o; and though many a night he had wild fancies that this was not so, he always told himself in the morning that he was wrong,

ious of what was in the heart of the other, each valiantly resolved that they would m