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Now she watched them seriously and found to her astonishe fellows in the front ranks whom she had met She had danced with the acquaintance with their sisters The sister of one stood on the sidewalk now in the comotten that anybody was by Her face was drenched with tears and her lips were quivering Behind her was a gray-haired woe skirt too long for the prevailing fashion The tears were trickling down her cheeks also; and an old irl, see to the party The oldat the boys with his heart in his eyes

Ruth shrank back not to intrude upon such open sorrow, and glanced at the line again as they straggled down the road to the platfor men with determined mien and sorrow in the very droop of their shoulders One could see how they hated all this publicity and display, this tense moment of farewell in the eyes of the town; and yet how tender they felt toward those dear ones who had gathered thus to do thereat world-struggle for liberty

As she looked closer the girl saw they were not lance they had seemed, but most of them mere boys There was the boy that rocery boy There was the gasplumber who fixed the leak in the water pipes the other day, and the clerk from the post office, and the cashier froht? Why, it was as if sorrow and responsibility had suddenly been put upon the for a uniforreat sadness that had come upon the world She understood that perhaps even up to the very day before, they had most of them been ht by the horrible sin that had brought about this thing called War

For the first tian Ruth Macdonald had a vision of what the war , of course, with all the rest; she had spent long s at the Red Cross rooms--she was on her way there this very minute when Michael and the procession had interrupted her course--she had s and picked tons of oakuood-byes when they went to Officers' Training Cairls welcomed and adhs, one by one winning his stripes and commission They were all men whom she had known in society They had wealth and position and found it easy to get into the kind of thing that pleased the seeible quantity It was the fashion to look on it that way Ruth had never thought about it before She had even been severe in her judgment of a few et them exempt in some way But these stern loyal mothers who stood in close ranks with heavy lines of sacrifice upon their faces, tears on their cheeks, love and self-abnegation in their eyes, gave her a ne of the world These were the ones ould be in actual poverty, some of them, without their boys, and whose lives would be empty indeed when they went forth Ruth Macdonald had never before realized the suffering this as causing individuals until she saw the faces of those women with their sons and brothers and lovers; until she saw the faces of the brave boys, for the one, and only the pain of parting and the mists of the unknown future in their eyes