But powder here! What did it mean? Where did they keep it? Surely not down in that hole with the iron trap-door below her bedroom window. They wouldn't put such things near enough to a house to blow it up! The tool house! It looked too small to hide much. It was little more than a wart on the side of a bunchy hill with young corn, growing all about it. The barn? It was very large, but did they ever keep such things in a wooden building? Was that one reason why the barn was always locked? Why Schwarz was so angry at Sylvester once for leaving the door ajar?

Hilda shuddered at thought of the peril that might be all about her. She shuddered again as the sharp voice of the woman below stairs called her. She was peeling potatoes in the kitchen and her mistress was busy making pies at the kitchen table when she heard the strange whirring noise again that had so startled her in the night. She jumped and dropped a potato back into the pan again, looking up at Mrs. Schwarz with wide eyes:

 “Oh, what is that?"

 “How should I know? Attend to your work!” the woman answered crossly.

But Hilda's eyes were fixed on the open Window, for out of the meadow behind the barn there arose a large, bird-like structure, skimming the air, and floating upward as lightly and easily as a mote in a sunbeam.

“Why! That must have been-----!” Hilda began breathlessly, then caught her breath and changed her sentence. “Why! That is an aeroplane! I have seen them sometimes far up over Chicago. But never so close. But an aeroplane out here in the country! How did it come, Mrs. Schwarz?”

 There was no answer and, turning, the girl saw that the woman stood absently gazing out of the window, a. look of woe on her face and tears streaming down her cheeks.

 

CHAPTER 4

HILDA'S heart was touched instantly. Springing toward her mistress she cried:

“Mrs. Schwarz, you are crying! Is something dreadful the matter? Oh, I am so sorry!” and she timidly put her arm about the stout shoulder that, since the words of sympathy, had begun to shake with sobs. There was something terrible in seeing this great bulk of a woman with her sharp tongue and stolid ways all broken up crying.

“It iss my poy!” she wailed into her apron. “They vill send him avay to var! My only poy! Und there iss no need. He iss too young, und I know he vill get into drubble. He vas exempt. Ve got him exempt on accound of the farm, und now the orders haf come from the Fatherland, und he must go!”

 “But what has the Fatherland got to do with him?” asked Hilda puzzled. “This is America. We are Americans. Why don't you tell the Fatherland you don't want him to go?”

Hilda's heart sank within her at the thought of keeping Sylvester at borne; nevertheless, she was touched by the poor woman's grief.

But the woman shook her head and wiped her eyes despairingly.

“It iss no use!” she sighed. “Ye must do as the Fatherland orders. Ve are Germans. They know pest!”

Suddenly the voice of Schwarz boomed forth just outside the door. His wife turned as if she had been shot and bolted up the stairs. Hilda had sense enough to finish her potatoes without a sign that anything unusual had just been going on, but her mind was in a turmoil over the strange and dreadful things which were constantly being revealed to her. What did it all mean, anyway? How should the Fatherland reach out to free America and presume to order what free Americans should do? And why should they want men to go into an army with whom they were at war? A great light suddenly broke upon her understanding as she sat staring out into the brilliant blue of the sky where only a few moments ago the great aeroplane had become a mere speck and vanished out of sight. There certainly was something queer about this place, and she must get out of it just as quickly as possible.