 there would be a battle and he would be in it.
For a time, he was obliged to labor to make himself believe. He could not accept
with assurance an omen that he was about to mingle in one of those great affairs
of the earth.
    He had of course dreamed of battles all of his life - of vague and bloody
conflicts that had thrilled him with their sweep and fire. In visions, he had
seen himself in many struggles. He had imagined peoples secure in the shadow of
his eagle-eyed prowess. But awake he had regarded battles as crimson blotches on
the pages of the past. He had put them as things of the bygone with his
thought-images of heavy crowns and high castles. There was a portion of the
world's history which he had regarded as the time of wars, but it, he thought,
had been long gone over the horizon and had disappeared forever.
    From his home his youthful eyes had looked upon the war in his own country
with distrust. It must be some sort of a play affair. He had long despaired of
witnessing a Greek-like struggle. Such would be no more, he had said. Men were
better, or more timid. Secular and religious education had effaced the
throat-grappling instinct, or else firm finance held in check the passions.
    He had burned several times to enlist. Tales of great movements shook the
land. They might not be distinctly Homeric, but there seemed to be much glory in
them. He had read of marches, sieges, conflicts, and he had longed to see it
all. His busy mind had drawn for him large pictures, extravagant in color, lurid
with breathless deeds.
    But his mother had discouraged him. She had affected to look with some
contempt upon the quality of his war-ardor and patriotism. She could calmly seat
herself and with no apparent difficulty give him many hundreds of reasons why he
was of vastly more importance on the farm than on the field of battle. She had
had certain ways of expression that told that her statements on the subject came
from a deep conviction. Besides, on her side, was his belief that her ethical
motive in the argument was impregnable.
    At last, however, he had made firm rebellion against this yellow light
thrown upon the color of his ambitions. The newspapers, the gossip of the
village, his own picturings, had aroused him to an uncheckable degree. They were
in truth fighting finely down there. Almost every day, the newspapers printed
accounts of a decisive victory.
    One night, as he lay in
