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other so the big ones could get along. And Grandfather never returned; he fell on the field of battle. His widow was left alone with seven children on a small plot. She was thirty years of age. For twenty years she slaved stubbornly, in great poverty, for her children. When she was no longer able to work, the farm was sold and she moved into her “reserved room”: Grandmothers reward in life was thirty years of loneliness in this little hole of a room—a farm woman’s life, not much noted or remarked upon because it was the fate of thousands of other women as the result of war.
    So it was with women and war; the men went out but the wives were left home with children whom they alone must look after, feed, and foster. The men went out to destroy life, the women stayed at home to preserve it. The men must be alone, without their wives, the wives must be alone, without their husbands. And yet God had created man and woman for each others aid and comfort.
    So it had been of old, so it was still, and so it might remain. Kristina had already reconciled herself to the lone woman’s lot in war-torn America.
    —3—
    Now Karl Oskar replied to her: She had got it all wrong. He could not become guilty of blood—in the eyes of neither God nor man—if he killed enemies in the war. The guilt would lie with the slave powers who had started the bloodshed. The North had done no injustice to the South. It was the South who wanted to rule America with force, and that they mustn’t allow or suffer.
    Didn’t she know how badly they used humans in the slave states? Whoever taught a Negro to read must pay a fine of five hundred dollars for the first offense, and if he were caught a second time five thousand dollars! And should a person be caught a third time teaching a black person to read he would be hanged! Down there they forced the Negroes to work in the infernal heat in the cotton fields so they could sell the cotton cheap. If a Negro fled from the slavery-whip he was pursued by starved bloodhounds and these beasts tore out his entrails as soon as they caught up with him. Could any decent person be on the side of the slave states?
    Had they lived in the slave states, he would have been sent to war long ago; all men between seventeen and fifty-five had been drafted. Had they lived in the South, it would soon be time for Johan to go. Here in Minnesota they were still free from the draft but by the first of next month it might begin. And he would feel ashamed and humiliated if he didn’t volunteer before then. Old Abe must think he was a shirker if he must be forced to do his plain duty. Therefore he must volunteer of his own free will, but he did not do it out of false pride: He was forced to by his conscience. He must gain his peace of mind.
    Tomorrow he would go to Stillwater and join the Swedish company with other men from the old country who wished to perform their duty to the new one. He had just read in the paper that there were many others who felt the way he did. He presumed that, like him, they wanted to get rid of the pain in their consciences.
    “Well, I guess you must then,” she said, as if talking to herself. “If you think you’ll have peace in your soul afterward.”
    Karl Oskar was not very concerned as to whether or not he jeopardized his eternal life, she thought. She knew him; his mind could not be changed once it had been made up. It had never yet happened that he had changed a decision. Therefore there was nothing more to say.
    Karl Oskar went out, and Kristina resumed her work, starting her sewing machine again. The pedals went up and down, the balance wheel whirled, the machine buzzed. If he was going to war she must finish his flannel shirts. And there were other garments he would need. Now she was in a hurry. Besides, she had other things to do than sit at the sewing machine. Yes, Karl Oskar’s clothing must be the most important of her concerns for the moment.
    It must always have been that way, about