CHAPTER IV
There remained, now, nothing to keep Palla in Shadow Hill.
She had never intended to stay there, anyway; she had meant to go to France.
But already there appeared to be no chance for that in the scheme of things. For the boche had begun to squeal for mercy; the frightened swine was squirting life-blood as he rushed headlong for the home sty across the Rhine; his death-stench sickened the world.
Thicker, ranker, reeked the bloody abomination in the nostrils of civilisation, where Justice strode ahead through hell’s own devastation, kicking the boche to death, kicking him through Belgium, through France, out of Light back into Darkness, back, back to his stinking sty.
The rushing sequence of events in Europe since Palla’s arrival in America bewildered the girl and held in abeyance any plan she had hoped to make.
The whole world waited, too, astounded, incredulous as yet of the cataclysmic debacle, slowly realising that the super-swine were but swine––maddened swine, devil driven. And that the Sea was very near.
No romance ever written approached in wild extravagance the story of doom now unfolding in the daily papers.
Palla read and strove to comprehend––read, laid 44 aside her paper, and went about her own business, which alone seemed dully real.
And these new personal responsibilities––now that her aunt was dead––must have postponed any hope of an immediate departure for France.