“Plots!  What for?” queried Lenore, breathlessly.

“To destroy my wheat, to drive off or bribe the harvest-hands, to cripple the crop yield in the Northwest; to draw the militia here; in short, to harass an’ weaken an’ slow down our government in its preparation against Germany.”

“Why, that is terrible!” declared Lenore.

“I’ve a hunch from Jake—­there’s a whisper of a plot to put me out of the way,” said Anderson, darkly.

“Oh—­good Heavens!  You don’t mean it!” cried Lenore, distractedly.

“Sure I do.  But that’s no way for Anderson’s daughter to take it.  Our women have got to fight, too.  We’ve all got to meet these German hired devils with their own weapons.  Now, lass, you know you’ll get these wheatlands of mine some day.  It’s in my will.  That’s because you, like your dad, always loved the wheat.  You’d fight, wouldn’t you, to save your grain for our soldiers—­bread for your own brother Jim—­an’ for your own land?”

“Fight!  Would I?” burst out Lenore, with a passionate little cry.

“Good!  Now you’re talkin’!” exclaimed her father.

“I’ll find out about this Nash—­if you’ll let me,” declared Lenore, as if inspired.

“How?  What do you mean, girl?”

“I’ll encourage him.  I’ll make him think I’m a wishy-washy moonstruck girl, smitten with him.  All’s fair in war!...  If he means ill by my father—­”

Anderson muttered low under his breath and his big hand snapped hard at the nodding goldenrod.

“For my sake—­to help me—­you’d encourage Nash—­flirt with him a little—­find out all you could?”

“Yes, I would!” she cried, deliberately.  But she wanted to cover her face with her hands.  She trembled slightly, then grew cold, with a sickening disgust at this strange, new, uprising self.

“Wait a minute before you say too much,” went on Anderson.  “You’re my best-beloved child, my Lenore, the lass I’ve been so proud of all my life.  I’d spill blood to avenge an insult to you....  But, Lenore, we’ve entered upon a terrible war.  People out here, especially the women, don’t realize it yet.  But you must realize it.  When I said good-by to Jim, my son, I—­I felt I’d never look upon his face again!...  I gave him up.  I could have held him back—­got exemption for him.  But, no, by God!  I gave him up—­to make safety and happiness and prosperity for—­say, your children, an’ Rose’s, an’ Kathleen’s....  I’m workin’ now for the future.  So must every loyal man an’ every loyal woman!  We love our own country.  An’ I ask you to see as I see the terrible danger to that country.  Think of you an’ Rose an’ Kathleen bein’ treated like those poor Belgian girls!  Well, you’d get that an’ worse if the Germans won this war.  An’ the point is, for us to win, every last one of us must fight, sacrifice to that end, an’ hang together.”

Anderson paused huskily and swallowed hard while he looked away across the fields.  Lenore felt herself drawn by an irresistible power.  The west wind rustled through the waving wheat.  She heard the whir of the threshers.  Yet all seemed unreal.  Her father’s passion had made this place another world.