The leader had hustled them from the field and they had taken refuge in a cabin behind the trenches. With the first gray dawn, the aeroplanes began to drop shells from the sky. An aerial bomb exploded within twenty feet of the cabin.
Angela leaped to the door, gathered her boy and pets and shouted to her terror-stricken neighbor.
“Come—quick! we will be torn to pieces—we must run—”
In dumb panic, Mrs. Schultz gathered her own boy convulsively in her arms and refused to stir.
Angela sprang through the door and hurried across the hills. The others crouched in the corner of the cabin and waited.
A black ball again shot downward, crashed through the roof of the cabin, exploded and sent the frail structure leaping into the heavens.
The airmen far up in the sky saw the column of flame and smoke and débris:
“Good—we got ’em that crack!” the driver shouted above the whirr of his motor.
By one of the strange miracles of war Sausage crawled over the dead body of his mother still clinging to the kitten and found his way into the woods without a scratch.
Angela was just staggering to the crest of the ridge when the shell exploded and hurled the cabin into space. A sickening wave of horror swept her soul and she suddenly sank in a heap. In vain poor Sam the monk tried to rouse her. His deep curious monkey eyes swept the smoke-wreathed heavens in terror as again and again he stroked the white still face of his fallen mistress.