"The farmer in there fell last September," said my father; "and his two sons are also gone. There are no more men left now in that family....
"The husband is gone over there, and yonder the son. Both sons from that place are gone. And over there they have lost a son-in-law—you know, the one who had just got married. At the farm yonder the husband came home a cripple last Christmas; and the son in that one is blind."
His hushed and mournful words spoke of nothing but death and grief. There was scarcely a farm or a house the door of which was not marked with the cross of death, or in which mourning or disablement had not a home....
IX—"MY FIANCEE—SHE ONLY WEPT"
My fiancée was standing in the middle of the yard. Her face had not the same bright gentleness as before. About her features and on her lips there were the same sad and mournful lines that I had seen on the faces of the women in the hospital. She, too, was stamped with the daily silent longing and uncertainty, the nightly dread and heart-ache.
She seemed to me to look old. And she was not yet twenty-two.
She threw her arms round my neck, almost before I had reached the ground. She said nothing. She only cried, clinging closely to me and hiding her face on my shoulder.
"Well, you can recognise him, it seems," said my father. "It was all I could do—just at first...."
She looked at me, and then turned to my father as she said:
"I knew that he would look like that—that was how I always saw him. In my thoughts by day and my dreams at night."