`` What was it ? '' asked Rilla . `` I was standing again on the veranda steps -- just as I stood in that dream on the night before the lighthouse dance , and in the sky a huge black , menacing thunder cloud rolled up from the east . I could see its shadow racing before it and when it enveloped me I shivered with icy cold . Then the storm broke -- and it was a dreadful storm -- blinding flash after flash and deafening peal after peal , driving torrents of rain . I turned in panic and tried to run for shelter , and as I did so a man -- a soldier in the uniform of a French army officer -- dashed up the steps and stood beside me on the threshold of the door . His clothes were soaked with blood from a wound in his breast , he seemed spent and exhausted ; but his white face was set and his eyes blazed in his hollow face . ` They shall not pass , ' he said , in low , passionate tones which I heard distinctly amid all the turmoil of the storm . Then I awakened . Rilla , I 'm frightened -- the spring will not bring the Big Push we 've all been hoping for -- instead it is going to bring some dreadful blow to France . I am sure of it . The Germans will try to smash through somewhere . '' `` But he told you that they would not pass , '' said Rilla , seriously . She never laughed at Gertrude 's dreams as the doctor did . `` I do not know if that was prophecy or desperation , Rilla , the horror of that dream holds me yet in an icy grip . We shall need all our courage before long . '' Dr. Blythe did laugh at the breakfast table -- but he never laughed at Miss Oliver 's dreams again ; for that day brought news of the opening of the Verdun offensive , and thereafter through all the beautiful weeks of spring the Ingleside family , one and all , lived in a trance of dread . There were days when they waited in despair for the end as foot by foot the Germans crept nearer and nearer to the grim barrier of desperate France . Susan 's deeds were in her spotless kitchen at Ingleside , but her thoughts were on the hills around Verdun . `` Mrs. Dr. dear , '' she would stick her head in at Mrs. Blythe 's door the last thing at night to remark , `` I do hope the French have hung onto the Crow 's Wood today , '' and she woke at dawn to wonder if Dead Man 's Hill -- surely named by some prophet -- was still held by the `` poyloos . ''
Susan could have drawn a map of the country around Verdun that would have satisfied a chief XXXXX staff .
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