Standing apart under the broad shadow of an oak, he looked out over long
stretches of forest and river, but what he saw was his home in distant
Kentucky--the old farmhouse that the sun and the rain and the lichens
had softened into a mottled gray. He saw the gleaming brook that wound
its way through the tangle of orchard and garden, and parted the distant
blue-grass meadow.

He saw his aged mother sitting under the honeysuckle trellis, book in
hand, but thinking, he knew, of him. And then there was the perfume of
the flowers, the droning of the bees in the warm sweet air and the
drowsy hound at his father's feet.

But this was not all the young man saw, for Philip Dru, in spite of his
military training, was a close student of the affairs of his country,
and he saw that which raised grave doubts in his mind as to the outcome
of his career. He saw many of the civil institutions of his country
debased by the power of wealth under the thin guise of the
constitutional protection of property. He saw the Army which he had
sworn to serve faithfully becoming prostituted by this same power, and
used at times for purposes of intimidation and petty conquests where the
interests of wealth were at stake. He saw the great city where luxury,
dominant and defiant, existed largely by grace of exploitation--
exploitation of men, women and children.

The young man's eyes had become bright and hard, when his day-dream was
interrupted, and he was looking into the gray-blue eyes of Gloria
Strawn--the one whose lot he had been comparing to that of her sisters
in the city, in the mills, the sweatshops, the big stores, and the
streets. He had met her for the first time a few hours before, when his