And Ward would look toward the west and say, "Well, Johnnie,--there's home," and once they stood in an open place in the timber, and Ward gazed at a bright star sinking in the west, and said, "I guess that's about over Sycamore Ridge." They went on, and the boy, looking back to see why the man had stopped, caught him throwing a kiss at the star.

And they could not know, as they walked back together through the woods abashed, that two women sitting before a cabin door under a sycamore tree were looking at an eastern star, and one threw kisses at it unashamed while the other wept.

And on other nights, many other nights, the two, Miss Lucy and Mrs.Barclay, sat looking at their star while the terror in their hearts made their lips mute.

God makes men brave who stand where bullets fly, yet always they can run away.

But God seems to give no alternative to women at home who have to wait and dread.
Forty years later John Barclay took from a box in a safety vault back of his office in the city a newspaper.