During the spring of 1914 Edith Cavell was going quietly about her civilian duties of mercy in Brussels. A Bolshevik agitator by the name of Lenin was hiding in Galicia sending anonymous articles to Russian newspapers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Navy, attended the ceremonies which began construction of battleship number 39, "the greatest fighting machine in the universe." Villa had the federals on the run south of the Rio Grande. The veteran Joffre deep in Plan 17 eyed the aging but wily von Moltke across the Rhine. Aunt Martha in her Household Hints suggested putting ordinary glass marbles in the tea-kettle to keep the lime from gathering.

But on the Brailsford farm they were building a new barn.

For twenty-four hours the Brailsfords had been stunned by the loss. They had gone about their duties in a daze. No one had seen Sarah crying, but her eyes were rimmed with red, and Stanley silently mourned the loss of his big Percheron and the Jersey heifers.

Then, while the last charred timbers were still smouldering they turned to the more consoling thought of reconstruction. They would have a magnificent new barn with arching roof and silver ventilators. They would have a barn which would house fifty head of cattle besides the horses, with a hayloft twice the size of the old one.

Peter came home every week-end to help with the work. He insisted that the barn be piped with drinking water for the cattle, that the steel stanchions and cement floor be of the latest design, and that whole banks of windows replace what had previously been almost windowless stone walls.

They worked with frantic haste for soon it would be spring, soon there would be a quarter section to plow and plant. Already the ice was breaking, the gulls were screaming overhead; great flights of wild ducks and geese were wedging their way northward.

Stripped to his shirt sleeves even in the early March winds Stud Brailsford worked early and late. He helped the carpenters to lift the big four-by-eights and two-by-twelves into their places, drove thirty-penny spikes as though they were finishing nails. He helped to build the forms and pour the cement; wheeled big barrows of sand, gravel and concrete; brought stone-boat loads of hard heads to fill the sloping ramp.

Saws ripped through clean-smelling wood; hammers rang from dawn until dark; wagonloads of lumber, shingles, barn-equipment and paint came out daily from Brailsford Junction; and by the twentieth of March the cows and horses were in their new, luxurious home.

It took all the insurance money on the old barn and nearly every cent Stud Brailsford had in the bank. The big man was weary, hard-hit financially, and definitely older. But he looked up proudly at his great new barn and smiled.

Before Stud put a fork of hay in the mow they had a barn dance. Corn meal was strewn over the wide pine boards and a four-piece orchestra from Brailsford Junction was hired for the occasion. The old folks danced the square dances to the squeaking of the fiddle, and Stud who had not called the figures in fifteen years called them that night as was his privilege since he owned the barn. Neither he nor Sarah had gone to a dance in ten years, nevertheless he led her proudly in the grand march and the Virginia Reel.

Later the young folks, to the scandalization of their elders, danced the tango and the turkey trot, and they all ended the evening with "Home, Sweet Home" and plenty of apple cider.

"I guess we can still kick up our heels," said Stanley, escorting his wife from the barn to the kitchen door.

"Gee, you sure can rag," Early Ann told the glowing Peter.

"Maybe I can't dance so good," Gus confessed to the new school teacher, "but I know where there's another jug of apple jack."

Almost before the paint was dry on the barn it was lambing time, and night and day for more than a week the Brailsfords helped the bleating ewes and their small dependents, warmed chilled lambs in the "hospital" at the corner of the shed and gave the weakened mothers encouraging shots of brandy. Four times there were twins and once triplets. To Stud's dismay one little black lamb made its appearance—a disgrace to his exceptionally pure flock of Shropshires. As chance would have it the little black fellow was orphaned and no ewe could be made to adopt it, so Early Ann raised him a pet on a baby bottle.

The great old ram was kept securely locked in his pen through all these proceedings. He looked on indifferently through the bars, his thick white wool glowing and healthy; his massive, wide head, broad shoulders and low-slung chassis the very essence of masculinity.

"He's got a leg on each corner," said Stanley admiringly, stopping to pet the father of sixty-four new sons and daughters.

The pony mare and one of the Percherons dropped foals within the next two weeks, and fawn-eyed Jersey calves arrived almost daily. At the Oleson farm another little Swede entered the world. Sarah and Temperance Crandall were on hand to help the midwife, but Early Ann was strictly forbidden to go near the place until the baby was born, washed, and placed in his hand-carved cradle. The arrival of three small billy goats, and twelve litters of Poland China pigs increased the blessed events on the west shore of Lake Koshkonong to a staggering figure.

Stud Brailsford, deep in the spring plowing, had no time to think of any woman. He bought a brooder and an incubator for Sarah, and evenings he went into the cellar to tinker with the new contraptions. In due time flotillas of fluffy ducklings, eight hundred scrambling, peeping chicks, and a dozen long-necked, awkward, yellow-green goslings were in evidence on every hand.

One night the orchard was taken in a single onslaught by the rush of spring. The fragrant white billow swept over apple, cherry, plum, and Sarah's flowering crab. Underneath the laden trees the dandelions bloomed, and the bees came to plunder.

Once again spring was upon the land.

2

It might have occurred to Stanley—but never did—that throughout the spring the boy had seemed curiously devoted to the farm, unwilling to miss a single week-end in the country. It should have seemed strange to Brailsford that when the "Trailer" went bankrupt in May, Peter took the loss of his job so philosophically. But all that Stud thought, when he thought about the matter at all, was now his boy was back at last, that he had sown his wild oats and was ready to settle down, and that during the coming season he would make him thrashing boss again.

3

On the morning of June 28, 1914—the day that Gavro Princip shot the Archduke Ferdinand at Serajevo—Stud Brailsford awoke just before dawn. Ducks were quacking, geese hissing in the barnyard. Roosters were heralding the dawn, answered across the lake by other roosters. A cow bawled at her calf, the wind rustled in the corn. Ten miles away a train whistled, and rumbled across the river bridge. To Stud's simple mind the world had never seemed more peaceful. The smell of coffee, toast and sausage drifted up from the kitchen. The first streaks of color were showing in the east, reflected on the surface of the lake.

Stud did not know that Europe was an armed camp, that civilization was about to be blown to bits, that Wisconsin farm boys, whistling as they went to the barns that morning, would soon be lying in the mud of Flanders. Stud had never heard of the Archduke Ferdinand nor of Serajevo. You could not have convinced him that a shot fired by a Serb in remote Bosnia could affect his prosperous dairy farm on Crabapple Point in the Fertile Rock River valley of Southern Wisconsin.

It was Sunday. Peter and Gus were already up and doing the chores. Stud could lie abed for another half hour if he wished. He could go swimming in the lake, or merely lie in the hammock under the trees, listening to the birds and taking life easy. Such indolence was all but unbelievable to the big farmer who for the past three and one-half months had been working sixteen hours a day, laboring evenings and holidays, even breaking God's commandment by plowing on Sunday. But at last the crops were planted; the corn was knee-high, and the twenty acres of tobacco were a rich, healthy green.

Stud yawned, stretched like a big cat, rolled out of bed and donned clean blue shirt and overalls. Carrying his shoes and socks in his hand he padded down the stairs, enjoying the feeling of the cool, smooth wood under his bare feet. Sarah and Early Ann were busy over the kitchen stove, the spot where they spent many a Sabbath.

"Sleepy-head," taunted Early Ann. "Chores are most done."

For the first time since the burning of the barn Stud really noticed the girl. My, she was pretty! After breakfast he saw her take sunbonnet and milkpail and start up the path toward the strawberry patch beyond the hill. Ten minutes after she was out of sight, he followed.

Sarah Brailsford guessed where he was going, and why, but she did not raise a finger to stop him. Gus Gunderson knew by second nature what was up. Stud, chewing a stem of Timothy, climbed the hill, skirted the orchard, and there he found them.

For a moment Stanley Brailsford was dumbfounded. Then a slow smile spread over his face. Briefly he stayed to watch Early Ann and Peter sitting on the grassy bank with their arms around each other, looking off across the lake.

Slowly old Brailsford retraced his steps, saying to no one in particular, "Grandchildren. Ho, ho! I never thought of grandchildren. Wonder what it'll be like to be a grandfather?"

He was still chuckling when he sat down beside Sarah on the front porch.

"You know, when Peter and Early Ann get married, I'm going to build them a house on Cottonwood Hill."

"I think that would be real nice," said Sarah. "It's the prettiest view in southern Wisconsin."

"I hope they have a dozen children, Mother. I'd like about seven boys and five girls. They'll be blue-ribbon babies if that pair breeds 'em."

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

—Obvious print and punctuation errors fixed.

—A Table of Contents was not in the original work; one has been produced and added by Transcriber.