LITMIR.BIZ

      CHAPTER I

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      Laurel Sheridan stood right in the way as Phil Pilgrim rounded the curve and came rattling down the old road from the cow pasture where he used to sometimes drive a few cattle to the railroad junction long years ago when he was a mere boy living on his grandfather’s farm.

      She was a pretty girl with a halo of gold hair and big, troubled blue eyes, and what was she doing there? This wasn’t a regular road, just a cow path to the junction. ­

      Phil hadn’t wanted to take this road to-day. It held no pleasant memories. He had come here as a boy because there had been no other place for him to go when both his father and mother died. His grandfather had sent for him, and they had lived there together, a couple of sorrowful hearts, one young, one old, never even getting well acquainted with one another, and both grieving silently for the ones who were gone. Then one morning his grandfather didn’t wake up as usual at dawn, and when Phil returned from his early trip driving the cows to pasture, he found him dead in his bed with the first look of peace on the tired old face he had ever seen him wear.

      The boy had walked down the mountain and gotten the undertaker and a couple of men who had been friendly to them, and they had buried the old man in the little hillside cemetery across the road and a short distance down the mountain from the house. After that Phil locked the plain little home and went down to the village and got himself a job, also a place to work for his board and room. From that time on, he began to save up till he could buy a simple stone to mark his grandfather’s resting place, a mate to the stone his grandfather had put up above his grandmother’s grave.

      It was to visit that simple little burying ground, to make sure his orders had been carried out about the stone, that Phil Pilgrim had taken that road that day. Of course it was a rough road, scarcely more than a cow path in some places, but it passed both the old home and the cemetery. He wanted to stop a moment at the old house and look it over carefully, for he had received a letter the day before saying that the government was planning to build a munitions plant in that neighborhood and wanted to buy his land. He wanted to be sure whether he should sell it all or perhaps retain the house and a bit of land to rent. But it had been a sad pilgrimage and only brought back desolate days when it had seemed to him that life was nothing but a burden, young though he was.

      He did not linger long after his investigations were over. With lifted hat he passed the little plot of ground at the edge of the road with its two white stones that gleamed side by side, and he drove on down the mountain rapidly, glad to be away again out into a world that was not shrouded in sorrow.

      Phil brushed his hand across his forehead and eyes and drew a deep sigh. He was bidding a final good-bye to that sad youthful part of his life.

      True, he had been out and away from it for a number of years now. He had worked his way through high school, working Saturdays and after school in a filling station. Later he had won a scholarship to college and had been a dedicated student there. Now he was through and had the coveted diploma, which had been his goal for his dead mother’s sake. And now suddenly the world had gone mad with war! So, he had taken the next step that duty demanded of him and enlisted. Life didn’t look any too bright, anyway, even now when he had finished doing what he had been striving for so long. He hadn’t had time for friends or relaxation, except a little dash of athletics now and then when he had found that he could make his ability to run and swim into a source of more revenue.

      But now all that was over. He was a soldier. He was wearing a uniform. He was going into a new life. And if, as some of them said, the next scene would be battle, with maybe death ahead, well, what of it? Would it be any worse than all the other changes that had come into his empty, hardworking young life? Would there perhaps be heaven, as his mother had always believed, where all the hard things would be over and joy ahead forever? Well, it might be! But there must surely be some conditions to that, and he had never learned the conditions. If his mother had lived, she might have taught him. Perhaps she had tried, but she was so sorrowful during those last days after his father was gone, and she was so ill and weak! Well, if there was a way out of this maze, he would find it if he could, and work his way through, as he had worked it through other hard things. How he had gone out at night alone and practiced running, and in the dark, swimming, when his hard day’s work was over! Oh, of course that had been good for him, too, keeping him in fine trim physically in spite of his plodding days and nights of study and hard work. Yes, he would find a way through!

      He wasn’t looking forward eagerly to war, yet he must take it as he had taken all the rest, a way to attain on earth, or to reach heaven if there was a heaven.

      He drew a deep, heavy sigh.

      Thoughts like these were unprofitable. He must get on. There were people in the village he must see. His old employer was a grim, silent man, but he had been kindly at the

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