CHAPTER XIX

IN THE FIELDS

Spring was coming on finely, and everybody was at work in the fields--everybody, that is, who was not in the army. From every one of the wooden houses that stood on either side of the highway, with their gable ends to the street, had gone a son, a husband, a laborer to the war that was waging so fiercely, no one quite knew where. The little boy's married brother had gone to the nearest garrison town. He had barely had time to make the acquaintance of his little new-born daughter when he was summoned. He went very willingly--all of them