THE twilight was deepening on scenes of stark horror in the streets of Babylon when Vassar slipped through the field and along the hedgerows toward the center of the town.

Flames were leaping from a dozen homes along the turnpike. He saw the brutal soldiery enter a pretty lawn, call out the occupants and as they emerged fire in volleys on old men, women and children. They fell across the doorsteps and lay where they fell. A dark figure approached the open door, hurled a quart of gasoline inside, lighted his fire ball, and walked away, his black form outlined in the night against the red glare of hell.

A crowd of panic-stricken women and children with a dozen boys of fourteen rushed down the streets toward the squad of incendiaries. Without a word they raised their rifles and fired until the last figure fell.

A child toddled from the burning home carrying her kitten in one hand and a toy lamb in another. She was sobbing bitterly in one breath, and trying to reassure her kitten in the next.

Vassar heard her as she hurried past on the other side of the hedge.

“Don’t you cry, kitty darling, I won’t let them hurt you.”

Her people were dead. She was hurrying into the night alone. From every street came the shrieks of women dragged to their doom by beasts in uniform.

Vassar set his jaw and crept along the last hedgerow to the gate of the Holland home.

The lights were burning brightly. A sentinel stood at the steps of the porch, his burly figure distinctly outlined against the cluster of electric lights in the low ceilin............