"1914"

John Oxenham’S Novels

GOD’S PRISONER RISING FORTUNES OUR LADY OF DELIVERANCE A PRINCESS OF VASCOVY JOHN OF GERISAU UNDER THE IRON FLAIL BONDMAN FREE MR. JOSEPH SCORER BARBE OF GRAND BAYOU A WEAVER OF WEBS HEARTS IN EXILE THE GATE OF THE DESERT WHITE FIRE GIANT CIRCUMSTANCE PROFIT AND LOSS THE LONG ROAD CARETTE OF SARK PEARL OF PEARL ISLAND THE SONG OF HYACINTH MY LADY OF SHADOWS GREAT-HEART GILLIAN A MAID OF THE SILVER SEA LAURISTONS THE COIL OF CARNE THEIR HIGH ADVENTURE QUEEN OF THE GUARDED MOUNTS MR. CHERRY THE QUEST OF THE GOLDEN ROSE MARY ALL-ALONE RED WRATH MAID OF THE MIST BROKEN SHACKLES FLOWER OF THE DUST MY LADY OF THE MOOR “1914”

Verse

BEES IN AMBER. _105th Thousand_ “ALL’S WELL!” _75th Thousand_ THE KING’S HIGH WAY. _55th Thousand_ HYMN FOR THE MEN AT THE FRONT. _6th Million_

“1914”

By John Oxenham

Second Edition

Methuen & Co. Ltd. 36 Essex Street W.C. London

_First Published_ _September 15th 1916_ _Second Edition_ _September 1916_

“1914”

I

The early morning of July 25th, 1914, was not at all such as the date might reasonably have led one to expect. It was gray and overcast, with heavy dew lying white on the grass and a quite unseasonable rawness in the air.

The clock on the mantelpiece of the morning-room in The Red House, Willstead, was striking six, in the sonorous Westminster chimes, which were so startlingly inconsistent with its size, as Mr John Dare drew the bolts of the French window and stepped out on to his back lawn.

He had shot the bolts heavily and thoughtfully the night before, long after all the rest had gone up to bed, though he noticed, when he went up himself, that Noel’s light still gleamed under his door. His peremptory tap and ‘Get to bed, boy!’ had produced an instant eclipse, and he determined to speak to him about it in the morning.

He had never believed in reading in bed himself. Bed was a place in which to sleep and recuperate. If it had been a case of midnight oil and the absorption of study now--all well and good. But Noel’s attitude towards life in general and towards study in particular permitted no such illusion.

And it was still heavily and thoughtfully that Mr Dare drew back the bolts and stepped out into the gray morning. Not that he knew definitely that this twenty-fifth of July was a day big with the fate of empires and nations, and of the world at large,--simply that he had not slept well; and bed, when you cannot sleep, is the least restful place in the world.

As a rule he slept very soundly and woke refreshed, but for many nights now his burdened brain had neglected its chances, and had chased, and been chased by, shadowy phantoms,--possibilities, doubts, even fears,--which sober daylight scoffed at, but which, nevertheless, seemed to lurk in his pillow and swarm out for his undoing the moment he laid his tired head upon it.

Out here in the fresh of the morning,--which ought by rights to have been full of sunshine and beauty, the cream of a summer day,--he could, as a rule, shake off the shadows and get a fresh grip on realities and himself.

But the very weather was depressing. The year seemed already on the wane. There were fallen leaves on the lawn. The summer flowers were despondent. There was a touch of red in the Virginia creeper which covered the house. The roses wore a downcast look. The hollyhocks and sweet-peas showed signs of decrepitude. It seemed already Autumn, and the chill damp air made one think of coming Winter.

And the unseasonal atmospheric conditions were remarkably akin to his personal feelings.

For days he had had a sense of impending trouble in business matters, all the more irritating because so ill-defined and impalpable. Troubles that one could tackle in the open one faced as a matter of course, and got the better of as a matter of business. But this ‘something coming and no knowing what’ was very upsetting, and his brows knitted perplexedly as he paced to and fro, from the arch that led to the kitchen-garden to the arch that led to the front path, up which in due course Smith’s boy would come whistling with the world’s news and possibly something that might cast a light on his shadows.

Mr Dare’s business was that of an import and export merchant, chiefly with the Continent, and his offices were in St Mary Axe. He had old connections all over Europe and was affiliated with the Paris firm of Leroux and Cie, Charles Leroux having married his sister.

As a rule his affairs ran full and smooth, with no more than the to-be-expected little surface ruffles. But for some weeks past he had been acutely conscious of a disturbance in the commercial barometer, and so far he had failed to make out what it portended.

Politically, both at home and abroad, matters seemed much as usual, always full of menacing possibilities, to which, however, since nothing came of them, one had grown somewhat calloused.

The Irish brew indeed looked as if it might possibly boil over. That gun-running business was not at all to his mind. But he was inclined to think there was a good deal of bluff about it all. And the suffragettes were ramping about and making fools of themselves in their customary senseless fashion, and doing all the damage they possibly could to their own cause and to the nation at large.

The only trouble of late on the Continent had been the murder of the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife about a month before. And that seemed to be working itself off in acrimonious snappings and yappings by the Austrian and Servian papers. Austria would in due course undoubtedly claim such guarantees of future good behaviour on the part of her troublesome little neighbour as the circumstances, when fully investigated, should call for. The tone of the note she had sent, calling on Servia no longer to permit the brewing of trouble within her borders, was somewhat brusque no doubt but not unnaturally so. And Servia, weary with her late struggles, would, of course, comply and there the matter would end.

It was unthinkable that the general peace should suffer from such a cause when it had survived the great flare-up in the Balkans the year before. Austria would not dare to go too far since she must first consult Germany, and the Kaiser, it was well known, desired nothing better than to maintain the peace which he had kept so resolutely for five-and-twenty years. If it had been that hot-head, the Crown Prince, now---- But fortunately for the world the reins were in cooler hands.

Then again the Money Market here showed no more disturbance than was to be expected under such unsettled conditions, and the Bank-rate remained at three per cent. The Berlin and Vienna Bourses were somewhat unsettled. But there were always adventurous spirits abroad ready to take advantage of any little disturbance and reap nefarious harvests.

Anyway he could see no adequate connection between any of these things and the sudden stoppage of his deliveries of beet-sugar from Germany and Austria, and the unusual lapsus in correspondence and remittances from both those countries,--which matters were causing him endless worry and anxiety.

His brother-in-law, Leroux, in Paris, had hinted at no gathering clouds, as he certainly would have done had any been perceptible. And the sensitive pulse of international affairs on the Bourse there would have perceived them instantly if they had existed. The very fact that M. Poincaré, the President, was away in Russia was proof positive that the sky was clear.

The only actual hint of anything at all out of the common was in that last letter from his eldest girl, Lois, who had been studying at the Conservatorium in Leipsic for the last two years.

She had written, about a week before,--“What is brewing? There is a spirit of suppressed excitement abroad here, but I cannot learn what it means. They tell me it is the usual preparation for the Autumn manœuvres. It may be so, but all the time I have been here I have never seen anything quite like it. If they were preparing for war I could understand it, but that is of course out of the question, since the Kaiser’s heart is set on peace, as everyone knows.”

There was not much in that in itself, though Lois was an unusually level-headed girl and not likely to lay stress on imaginary things. But that, and the evasiveness, when it was not silence, of his German correspondents, and the non-arrival of his contracted-for supplies of beet-sugar, had set his mind running on possibilities from which it recoiled but could not shake itself entirely free.

Presently, as he paced the well-defined track he had by this time made across the dewy lawn, he heard the rattle of the kitchen grate as heavy-handed Sarah lit the fire, and the gush of homely smoke from the chimney had in it a suggestion of breakfast that put some of his shadows to flight. Sarah and breakfast were substantial every-day facts before which the blue devils born of broken sleep temporarily withdrew.

Then from behind Honor’s wide-open window and drawn curtains he heard her cheerful humming as she dressed. And then her curtains were switched aside with a strenuous rattle, and at sight of him she stuck out her head with a saucy,

“Hello, Mr Father! Got the hump? What a beast of a day! I say,--you _are_ wearing a hole in that carpet. Doesn’t look much of a day for a tennis tournament, does it? Rotten! I just wish I had the making of this country’s weather; anyone who wished might make her----”

Smith’s boy’s exuberant whistle sounded in the front garden, and Honor chimed in, “Good-bye, Piccadilly!”--as her father hastened to the gate to get his paper.

Smith’s boy was just preparing to fold and hurl it at the porch--a thing he had been strictly forbidden to do, since on wet and windy days it resulted in an unreadable rag retrieved from various corners of the garden instead of a reputable news-sheet. At the unexpected appearance of Mr Dare in the archway, his merry pipe broke off short at the farewell to Leicester Square, and Honor’s clear voice round the corner carried them triumphantly to the conclusion that it was “a long long way to Tipperary,” without obbligato accompaniment. The boy grinned, and producing a less-folded paper from his sheaf, retired in good order through the further gate, and piped himself bravely up the Oakdene path next door, while Mr Dare shook the paper inside out and stood searching for anything that might in any way bear upon his puzzle.

His anxious eye leaped at once to the summary of foreign news, and his lips tightened.

“The Austrian Minister has been instructed to leave Belgrade unless the Servian Government complies with the Austrian demand by 6 p.m. this evening.”

An ultimatum!... Bad!... Dangerous things, ultimatums!

“It is stated that Russia has decided to intervene on behalf of Servia.”

“H’m! If Russia,--then France! If France,--then Germany and Italy!... And how shall we stand? It is incredible,” and he turned hastily for hope of relief to the columns of the paper, and read in a leader headed “_Europe and the Crisis_,”--“All who have the general peace at heart must hope that Austria has not spoken her last word in the note to Servia, to which she requires a reply to-night. If she has we stand upon the edge of war, and of a war fraught with dangers that are incalculable to all the Great Powers.”

Then the front door opened and his wife came out into the porch.

“Breakfast’s ready, father,” she said briskly. “Any news?”

She was a very comely woman of fifty or so, without a gray hair yet and of an unusually pleasing and cheerful countenance. The girls got their good looks from her, the boys took more after their father.

“Any light on matters?” asked Mrs Dare hopefully again, as he came slowly along the path towards her. And then, at sight of his face, “Whatever is it, John?”

He had made it a rule to leave ordinary business worries behind him in town where they properly belonged. But matters of moment he frequently discussed with his wife and had found her aloof point of view and clear common-sense of great assistance at times. His late disturbance of mind had been very patent to her, but, beyond the simple facts, he had been able to satisfy her no more than himself.

“Very grave news, I’m afraid,” he said soberly. “Austria and Servia look like coming to blows.”

“Oh?” said Mrs Dare, in a tone which implied no more than interested surprise. “I should have thought Servia had had enough fighting to last her for some time to come.”

“I’ve no doubt she has. It’s Austria driving at her. Russia will probably step in, and so Germany, Italy, France, and maybe ourselves----”

“John!”--very much on the alert now.--“It is not possible.”

“I’m afraid it’s even probable, my dear. And if it comes it will mean disaster to a great many people.”

“What about Lois? Will she be safe out there?”

“We must consider that. I’ve hardly got round to her yet. Let us make sure of one more comfortable breakfast anyway,” he said, with an attempt at lightness which he was far from feeling, and as they went together to the breakfast-room, Honor came dancing down the stairs.

“Hello, Dad! Did they give extra prizes for early rising at your school?” she asked merrily, and ran on without waiting for an answer,--“And did you choke that boy who was whistling ‘Tipperary’? I had to finish without accompaniment and he was doing it fine. He has a musical soul. It was Jimmy Snaggs. He’s in my class at Sunday School. You should hear him sing.”

“You tell him again from me that if he can’t deliver papers properly he’d better find some other walk in life,” said Mr Dare, as he chipped an egg and proceeded with his breakfast.

“It looks all right,” said Honor, picking up the paper. “Let’s see the cricket. Old No’s aching to hear. Hm--hm--hm--Kent beat Middlesex at Maidstone,--Blythe and Woolley’s fine bowling,--Surrey leads for championship. That’s all right. Hello, what’s all this?--‘Servia challenged. King Peter’s appeal to the Tsar. Grave decisions impending. The risk to Europe.’ I--_say_! Is there going to be another war? How ripping!”

“Honor!” said her mother reprovingly.

“Well, I don’t mean that, of course. But a war does make lively papers, doesn’t it? I’m sick of Ireland and suffragettes.”

“If this war comes you’ll be sicker of it than of anything you ever experienced, before it’s over, my dear,” said Mr Dare gravely.

“Why?--Austria and Servia?”

“And Russia and Germany and France and Italy and possibly England.”

“My Goodness! You don’t mean it, Dad?” and she eyed him keenly. “I believe you’re just--er--pulling my leg, as old No would say?” and she plunged again into the paper.

“Bitter fact, I fear, my dear.”

“How about Lois? Will she be in the thick of it?” she asked, raising her head for a moment to stare meditatively at him, with the larger part of her mind still busy with the news.

“We were just thinking of her. I’m inclined to wire her to come home at once.”

Then Noel strolled in with a nonchalant, “Morning everybody!... Say, Nor! What about the cricket? You promised----”

“Cricket’s off, my son,” said Honor, reading on. “It’s war and a case of fighting for our lives maybe.”

“Oh, come off!”--then, noticing the serious faces of the elders,--“Not really? Who with?”

“Everybody,” said Honor. “--Armageddon!”

He went round to her and pored eagerly over the paper with his head alongside hers. They were twins and closely knit by many little similarities of thought and taste and feeling.

“Well!... I’ll--be--bowled!” as he gradually assimilated the news. “Do you really think it’ll come to a general scrap?”--to his father.

“Those who have better means of judging than I have evidently fear it, my boy. I shall learn more in the City no doubt,” and he hurried on with his breakfast.

The front-door bell shrilled sharply.

“Post!” said Honor. “Must be something big,” and dashed away to get it. She never could wait for the maid’s leisurely progress when letters were in question, and she and the postman were on the best of terms. He always grinned when she came whirling to the door.

“Why--Colonel!” they heard her surprised greeting. “And Ray! You _are_ early birds. I thought you were the post. What worms are you after now? Is it the War?”--as she ushered them into the drawing-room.

“Bull’s-eye first shot,” said a stentorian voice. “Has your father gone yet, Honor?”

“Just finishing his breakfast, Colonel. I’ll tell him,” and as she turned to go, her father came in.

“How are you, Colonel?” said Mr Dare. “Good morning, Ray! What are our prospects of keeping out of it, do you think?”

“None,” said the Colonel gravely. “It’s ‘The Day’ they’ve been getting ready for all these years, and that we’ve been expecting--some of us, and unable to get ready for because you others thought differently. But we want a word or two with Mrs Dare too. Will you beg her to favour us, Honor, my dear?” and Honor sped to summon her mother to the conference.

“We must apologise for calling at such an hour, Mrs Dare,” said the Colonel, as they shook hands, “But the matter admits of no delay. Ray here wants your permission to go out and bring Lois home. We think she is in danger out there.”

“You know how things are between us, dear Mrs Dare,” broke in Ray impulsively. “We have never really said anything definite, but we understand one another. And if it’s going to be a general scrap all round, as Uncle Tony is certain it is, then the sooner she is clear of it the better. I’ve never been easy in my mind about her since that little beast von Helse brought her over last year.”

At which a reminiscent smile flickered briefly in the corners of Mrs Dare’s lips and made Ray think acutely of Lois, who had just that same way of savouring life’s humours.

“I was thinking of wiring for her to come home, as soon as I got to town,” said Mr Dare.

“If my views are correct,” said the Colonel weightily, “and I fear you’ll find them so, travelling, over there, will be no easy matter. The moment mobilisation is ordered--and the possibility is that it’s going on now for all they are worth,--everything will be under martial law,--all the railways in the hands of the military, all traffic disorganised,--possibly the frontiers closed. Everything chock-a-block, in fact. It may be no easy job to get her safely out even now. But if anyone can do it, in the circumstances, I’ll back Ray. He’s glib at German and knows his way about, and where Lois is concerned----”

“It is very good of you, Ray,”--began Mrs Dare, warmly.

“Not a bit. It’s good of you to trust her to me. I can start in an hour, and I’ll bring her back safe or know the reason why. Thank you so much!” and he gripped her hand and then suddenly bent forward and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m nearly packed,”--at which Mrs Dare’s smile flickered again.--“I’ll cut away and finish. I must catch the ten o’clock from Victoria, and bar accidents I’ll be in Leipsic to-morrow morning. You might perhaps give me just a little note for her, saying you approve my coming,” and he hurried away to finish his preparations.

Honor and Noel heard him going and sped out after him, all agog to know what it was all about.

“Here! What’s up among all you elderly people?” cried Noel.

“No time to talk, old man. They’ll tell you all about it,” Ray called over his shoulder and disappeared through the front gate.

“Well!--I’m blowed! Old Ray’s got a move on him. What’s he up to, I wonder.”

“I’ll tell you, No. He’s going after Lois----”

“After Lois? Why--what’s wrong with Lo?”

“Don’t you see? If there’s going to be war over there she might get stuck and not be able to get home for years----”

“Oh--years! It’ll all be over in a month. Wars now-a-days don’t run into time. It’s too expensive, my child.”

“Well, anyway, old Lo will be a good deal better safe at home than in the thick of it. And I guess that’s what Ray and the Colonel think.”

“I’d no idea they’d got that far. Of course I knew he was sweet on her. You could see that when that von Helse chap was here, and old Ray used to look as if he’d like to chew him up.”

“I knew all about it.”

“Of course. Girls always talk about these things.”

“She never said a word. But I knew all the same.”

“Kind of instinct, I suppose.”

Here the elders came out of the drawing-room, preceded, as the door opened, by the Colonel’s emphatic pronouncement,

“--Inevitable, my dear sir. We cannot possibly escape being drawn in. Their plans are certain to be based on getting in through Belgium and Luxembourg. We’ve been prepared for that for many years past. And if they touch Belgium the fat’s in the fire, for we’re bound to stop it--if we can. If some of us had had our way we’d be in a better position to do it than we are. Anyhow we’ll have to do our best. We’d have done better if you others had had less faith in German bunkum. Noel, my boy,” as Noel saluted, “We shall probably want you before we’re through.”

“You think it’ll be a tough business, sir?”

“Tough? It’ll be hell, my boy, before the slate’s all clean again. And that won’t be till the Kaiser and all his gang are wiped off it for ever.”

“I thought it would be all over in a month or two.”

“A year or two may be more like it. Germany is one big fighting-machine, and till it’s smashed there’ll be no peace in the world.”

“Think they’ll get over here, sir?” chirped Honor expectantly.

“They’ll try, if we leave them a chance. Thank God,--and Winston Churchill--we’re ready for them there. That man’s looked ahead and he’s probably saved England.”

“Good old Winston!”

“If you’re off, Dare, I’ll walk along with you. I must call at the Bank. It won’t do for Ray to run out of funds over there. Good-bye, Mrs Dare! Bring you good news in a day or two. Ta-ta, Honor!”

“You’ll let me stand my share----” began Mr Dare, as they walked along together.

“Tut, man! You’ll need all your spare cash before we’re through and I’ve plenty lying idle.”

“You really think it may be a long business?”

“I don’t see how it can be anything else. Have you had no warnings of its coming from any of your correspondents?”

“We told you of Lois’s letter. We’ve had nothing more than that--except delay in goods coming through--and in remittances.”

“Exactly! Railways too busy carrying men and horses; and business men preferring to keep their money in their own hands. I tell you they’ve been working up to this for years, only waiting for the psychological moment.”

“And why is this the psychological moment? The Servian affair hardly seems worth all the pother----”

“Do you remember a man named Humbert attacking the French War Minister in the Senate, about a fortnight ago, on the subject of their army,--no boots, no ammunition, no guns worth firing, no forts, and so on?”

“I remember something about it. I remember it struck me as a rather foolish display of joints in the armour----”

“And Petersburg was all upside down, the other day, with out-of-work riots. Crowds, one hundred thousand strong, slaughtering the police, even while Poincaré was visiting the Tsar. You remember that?”

“Yes.”

“And at home here, matters in Ireland looked like coming to a head. In fact it looked like civil war.”

“I never believed it would come to anything of the kind, as you know.”

“But to that exceedingly clever busy-body, the Kaiser,--at least, he thinks he’s exceedingly clever. It’s possible to be too clever.--Well, here were his three principal enemies all tied up in knots. What better chance would he ever get?”

“H’m! All the same he seems doing his best to smooth things over.”

“Bunkum, my boy!--all bunkum! He may try to save his face to the world at large, but I bet you they’re quietly mobilising over there as fast as they know how to, and that’s faster than we dream of. And the moment they’re ready they’ll burst out like a flood and sweep everything before them--unless we can dam it, damn ’em! Perhaps you’ll look in this evening and tell me how the City feels about it,” and at the door of the Bank they parted, and Mr Dare went on to his train in anything but a comfortable frame of mind.

II

They had been neighbours now for close on ten years and close friends for nine and a half of them.

Noel and Honor were mischievous young things of eight when the Dares took The Red House, and in their adventurous prowlings they very soon made the acquaintance of Miss Victoria Luard, aged nine and also of an adventurous disposition, who lived at Oakdene, the big white house next door with black oak beams all over its forehead,--“like Brahmin marks only the other way,”--as Honor said, which gave it a surprised, wide-awake, lifted-eyebrows look.

From the youngsters the acquaintance spread to the elder members of the two families, and grew speedily into very warm friendship, in spite of the fact that the Dares were all sturdy Liberals, and the Luards, as a family, staunch Conservatives.

Colonel Luard, V.C., C.B.--Sir Anthony indeed, but he always insisted on the Colonel, since, as he said, “That was my own doing, sir, but the other--da-ash it!--I’d nothing to do with that. It was in the family and my turn came.”

He was small made, and of late inclined to stoutness which he strove manfully to subdue, and he wore a close little muzzle of a moustache, gray, almost white now, and slight side-whiskers in the style of the late highly-esteemed Prince Consort. But though his moustache and whiskers and hair and eyebrows all showed unmistakable signs of his seventy-eight years, his little figure--except in front--was as straight as ever. He was as full of fire and go as a shrapnel shell, and his voice, on occasion, was as much out of proportion to his size as was that of the clock with the deep Westminster chimes on the breakfast-room mantelpiece at The Red House.

He looked a bare sixty-five, but as a youngster he had been through the Crimean campaign and the Indian Mutiny, and in the latter gained the coveted cross “For Valour” by exploding a charge at a rebel fort-gate which had already cost a score of lives and still blocked Britain’s righteous vengeance.

He had been on the Abyssinian Expedition and in the Zulu War, and had returned from the latter so punctured with assegai wounds that he vowed he looked like nothing but a da-asht pin-cushion. Then he came into the title, and a very comfortable income, through the death of an uncle, who had made money in the banking business and received his baronetcy as reward for party-services; and after one more campaign--up Nile with Wolseley after Gordon--the Colonel retired on his honors and left the field to younger men.

He found his brother, Geoff, just married and vicar of Iver Magnus, went to stop with him for a time, and stopped on--a very acceptable addition to the vicar’s household. When the children came, who so acceptable, and in every way so adequate, a godfather as the Colonel? And, with the very comfortable expectations incorporated in him, how resist his vehement choice of names,--extraordinary as they seemed to the hopeful father and mother?

And so he had the eldest girl christened Alma, after his first engagement; and the boy who came next he named Raglan, after his first esteemed commander; and the next girl he was actually going to call Balaclava; but there Mrs. Vicar struck, and nearly wept herself into a fever, until they compounded on Victoria, after Her Majesty.

When Vic was five, and Ray ten, and Alma twelve, their father and mother both died in an heroic attempt at combating an epidemic of typhoid, and Uncle Tony shook off the dust and smells of Iver Magnus, bought Oakdene at Willstead, and set up his establishment there, with little Miss Mitten, the sister of his special chum Major Mitten--who had been pin-cushioned by the Zulus at the same time as himself only more so--as vice-reine.

Miss Mitten was sixty-seven if she was a day, but never admitted it even at census-time. She was an eminently early-Victorian little lady, had taught in a very select ladies’ school, and had written several perfectly harmless little books, which at the time had obtained some slight vogue but had long since been forgotten by every one except the ‘eminent authoress’ herself, as some small newspaper had once unforgettably dubbed her.

She was as small and neat as the Colonel himself, and in spite of the ample living at Oakdene her slim little figure never showed any signs of even comfortable rotundity. She was in fact sparely made, and the later fat years had never succeeded in making good the deficiencies of the many preceding lean ones. She wore the neatest of little gray curls at the side of her head, and, year in year out, they never varied by so much as one single hair.

She was very gentle, a much better housekeeper than might have been expected, and was partial to the black silk dresses and black silk open-work mittens of the days of long ago. The youngsters called her Auntie Mitt., and the Colonel they called Uncle Tony. She alone of all their world invariably addressed the Colonel as ‘Sir Anthony,’ and in her case only he raised no objection, since he saw that she thereby obtained some peculiar little inward satisfaction.

Alma, the eldest girl, was, in this year of grace 1914, twenty-six, though you would never have thought it to look at her. She was a tall handsome girl, dark, as were all the Luards, and three years before this, had suddenly shaken off the frivolities of life and gone in for nursing, with an ardour and steady persistence which had surprised her family and greatly pleased the Colonel, whose still-keen, dark eyes twinkled understandingly and approvingly.

Raglan--Ray to all his friends--was twenty-four, two inches taller than Alma, broad of shoulder and deep of chest,--he had pulled stroke in his College eight, and his clean-shaven face, with its firm mouth and jaw and level brows, was good to look upon. He was studying the honourable profession of the law and intended to reach the Woolsack or know the reason why. Partly as a sop to the martial spirit of Uncle Tony, and also because he had deemed it a duty--though he speedily found it a pleasure also--he had joined the Territorials and was at this time a first lieutenant in the London Scottish, and a very fine figure he made in the kilt and sporran.

Victoria, who so narrowly escaped being Balaclava, was nineteen and the political heretic of the family. She was an ardent Home-Ruler, a Suffragist, a Land-Reformer, played an almost faultless game at tennis, could give the Colonel 30 at billiards and beat him 100 up with ten to spare; and held a ten handicap on the links. She was in fact very advanced, very full of energy and good spirits, and frankly set on getting out of life every enjoyable thrill it could be made to yield.

Their close intimacy with the Dares had been of no little benefit to all three of them. Accustomed from their earliest years to the atmosphere of an ample income, they had never experienced any necessity for self-denial, self-restraint, or any of the little dove-coloured virtues which add at times an unexpected charm to less luxurious lives.

They found that charm among the Dares and profited by it. To their surprise, as they grew old enough to understand it, they found their own easy lives narrower in many respects than their neighbours’, although obviously Uncle Tony’s open purse was as much wider and deeper than Mr Dare’s as Oakdene, with its well-tended lawns and beds and shrubberies and orchard and kitchen-gardens, was larger than The Red House and its trifling acre. And yet, as children, they had always had better times on the other side of the hedge, when they had made a hole large enough to crawl through; and Christmas revels and Halloweens in The Red House were things to look back upon even yet.

Perhaps it was Mrs Dare that made all the difference. Auntie Mitt was a little dear and all that, and Uncle Tony was an old dear and as good as gold. But there was something about Mrs Dare which gave a different feeling to The Red House and everything about it; and Alma very soon arrived at the meaning of it, and expressed it, succinctly if exaggeratedly, when she said to Lois one day,

“Lo, I’d give Auntie Mitt and Uncle Tony ten times over for half your mother.”

And Mrs Dare, understanding very clearly, had mothered them all alike so far as was possible. And her warm heart was large enough to take in the additional three without any loss, but rather gain, to her own four, and with benefit to the three which only the years were to prove.

The Luard youngsters, in short, had lived in circumstances so wide and easy that they had become somewhat self-centred, somewhat aloof from life less well-placed, somewhat careless of others so long as their own enjoyment of life was full and to their taste.

Auntie Mitt was not blind to it. In her precise little way she took upon herself--with justifiable misgiving that nothing would come of it--to point out to them that they were in danger of falling into the sin of selfishness. And, as she expected, her gentle remonstrances fell from them like water off lively little ducks’ backs.

Uncle Tony considered them the finest children in the world, would not hear a word against them, and spoiled them to his heart’s content and their distinct detriment.

Their association with the Dares saved them no doubt from the worst results of Uncle Tony’s mistaken kindness, but even Mrs Dare could not make angels of them any more than she could of her own four. She could only do her best by them all and leave them to work out their own salvation in their own various ways.

Connal Dare, the eldest of her own tribe, had been in the medical profession since the age of eight, when the game of his heart had been to make the other three lie down on the floor, covered up with tidies and shawls, while he inspected their tongues, and timed their pulses by a toy-watch which only went when he wound it, which he could not do while holding a patient’s pulse. As he invariably prescribed liquorice-water, carefully compounded in a bottle with much shaking beforehand, and acid drops, the others suffered his ministrations with equanimity so long as his medicaments lasted, but grew convalescent with revolting alacrity the moment the supply failed.

Since then, true to his instinct, he had worked hard, and forced his way up in spite of all that might have hindered.

His father would have liked him with him in the business in St Mary Axe, but, perceiving the lad’s bent, raised no objection, on the understanding that, as far as possible, he made his own way. And this Connal had succeeded in doing.

He was a sturdy, fair-haired, blue-eyed fellow, several inches shorter than Ray Luard but fully his match both in boxing and wrestling, as proved in many a bout before an admiring audience of five--and sometimes six, for the Colonel liked nothing better than to see them at it and bombard them both impartially with advice and encouragement.

Connal had overcome all obstacles to the attainment of his chosen career in similar fashion; had taken scholarship after scholarship; and all the degrees his age permitted, and had even paid some of his examination fees by joining the Army Medical Corps, which provided him not only with cash, but also with a most enjoyable yearly holiday in camp and a certain amount of practice in his profession.

He had, however, long since decided that general practice would not satisfy him. He would specialise, and he chose as his field the still comparatively obscure department of the brain. There were fewer skilled workers in it than in most of the others. In fact it was looked somewhat askance at by the more pushing pioneers in research. It offered therefore more chances and he was most profoundly interested in his work in all its mysterious heights and depths.

At the moment he was the hard-worked Third Medical at Birch Grove Asylum, up on the Surrey Downs, and whenever he could run over to Willstead for half a day his mother eyed him anxiously for signs of undue depression or disturbed mentality, and was always completely reassured by his clear bright eyes, and his merry laugh, and the gusto with which he spoke of his work and its future possibilities.

With the approval and assistance of his good friend Dr Rhenius, who had attended to all the mortal ills of the Dares and Luards since they came to live in Willstead, he was working with all his heart along certain definite and well-considered lines, which included prospective courses of study at Munich and Paris. In preparation for these he was very busy with French and German, and for health’s sake had become an ardent golfer. His endless quaint stories of the idiosyncrasies of his patients showed a well-balanced humorous outlook on the most depressing phase of human life, and as a rule satisfied even his mother as to the health and well-being of his own brain.

It was just about the time that he settled on his own special course in life, and accepted the junior appointment at Birch Grove, that Alma Luard surprised her family by deciding that life ought to mean more than tennis and picnics and parties, and became a probationer at St Barnabas’s.

Lois, who came next, had a very genuine talent for music, and a voice which was a joy to all who heard it. For the perfecting of these she had now been two years at the Conservatorium at Leipsic and had lived, during that time, with Frau von Helse, widow of Major von Helse, who died in Togoland in 1890. Frau von Helse had two children,--Luise, who was also studying music, and Ludwig, lieutenant in the army. It was Ludwig’s obvious admiration for Lois, the previous summer,--when he had escorted her and his sister to Willstead for a fortnight’s visit to London in return for Frau von Helse’s great kindness to Lois during her stay in Leipsic--that had fanned into sudden flame the long-glowing spark of Ray Luard’s love for her.

Honor was Vic’s great chum and admirer. When Honor began going to St Paul’s School, Vic insisted on going also, and the experience had done her a world of good. Even Alma had been known to express regret that she had not had her chances. An exceedingly high-class and expensive boarding-school at Eastbourne had been her lot. An establishment in every respect after Auntie Mitt’s precise little heart, but comparison of Vic’s wider, if more democratic, experiences with her own eminently lady-like ones always roused in Alma feelings of vain and envious regret.

Noel had been at St Paul’s also, and on the whole had managed to have a pretty good time. He was no student, however. The playing fields and Cadet corps always appealed to him more strongly than the class-rooms. He was now having a short holiday before tackling, with such grace as might be found possible when the time came, the loathsome mysteries of St Mary Axe.

There was nothing else for it. He had shown absolutely no inclination or aptitude for any special walk in life. His father’s hope was that, under his own eye, he might in time develop into a business-man and relieve him of some portion of his at times over-taxing work.

By dint of strenuous labours Mr Dare had, in the course of years, worked up a profitable business in foreign imports and exports, but, like most businesses, it had its ups and downs, and it would be a great relief to be able to leave some of the details to one whom he knew he could trust, as he could Noel. He had had--or at all events had had the chance of--a good sound education. His father could only hope that he had taken more advantage of it than he had ever permitted to show. And experience would come with time.

III

When the taxi, for which Ray had ’phoned, came rushing up, they all met again at the front gate to give him their various God-speeds on his gallant errand.

Mrs Dare handed him the note she had hastily penned to Lois, with a warm, “We are very grateful to you, Ray, for your thought of her. Bring her safe home to us.”

The Colonel handed him a small buff paper bag which chinked, saying, “If you haven’t enough there, my boy, you will let me know. God bless you both!”

Vic said enviously, “Just wish I was going! Wouldn’t it be ripping, Nor, to be stranded out there and have someone come out from England to rescue you?”

“Ripping! Let’s try it! Where could we get to?”

“Little girls are better at home,” said Noel, with his golf-clubs slung over his shoulder so that not a moment of this last precious holiday should be missed. “Good-luck, old man! If you get into any boggle wire for me and I’ll come and get you out of the mud. Jawohl! Hein! Nicht wahr!”

“I shall hope to find you all in the best of health about Tuesday or Wednesday,” said Ray, with a final wave of the hand, and the taxi whirled away round the corner.

“See you two later,” cried Noel, as he swung away towards the links. “I’ll feed up yonder and meet you at the courts at three.”

The girls sauntered away, arm in arm, up the Oakdene path, to talk it all over. The Colonel wrung Mrs Dare’s hand again, and said, with warm feeling that subdued his voice to some extent, “We will congratulate one another again, ma’am. Nothing could have pleased me better. Lois is one of the sweetest girls I’ve ever met, and Ray will do us all credit.”

“He’s a fine boy. I’m sure they will be very happy. I am thankful it has fallen out so. I was a little afraid, at times, last summer----”

“You mean that spick-and-span, cut-and-dried, starched and stuck-up German dandy? Pooh, ma’am! I knew better than that myself.”

“He was a good-looking lad, you know, and his music was quite exceptional.”

“Always strikes me as rather namby-pamby in a man. But--a word in your ear, ma’am!”--in a portentous whisper induced by the discharge of his feelings,--“D’you know, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if we came on another link in the chain before long.”

“Another link?” echoed Mrs Dare, and stared at him in great surprise.

“Yes,” with a twinkle of beaming eyes. “What do _you_ suppose made my eldest girl take to that nursing business? You know she’d no need to----”

“You mean Con?”

“Why, of course! Who else? I’ve a great belief in Con. He’ll go far before he’s through. And I know Alma. And it’s only in the light of Con that I can explain her.”

“You’re just an incorrigible old match-maker,” laughed Mrs Dare, more amused than convinced.

“When you’re out of the game yourself there’s nothing like watching the young ones at it. If it had been my luck now to meet yourself before Dare came along----”

“You’d have found me in my cradle,” she laughed again, as she went up the path towards the front door.

“No,--in short frocks,” said the Colonel emphatically. “But I’d have waited all right.”

It was a standing joke among them that the Colonel had fallen in love with his neighbour’s wife, and he confessed to it like a man, to John Dare’s very face.

“Duty calls,” said Mrs Dare. “I’ve got two rooms to turn out this morning, because my charlady couldn’t come yesterday. And there she is going in at the back gate. Good-bye, Colonel! I’m half hoping Con may come over to-day. It’s three weeks since he was here and he sometimes manages it on a Saturday. I’ll send you word if he comes and perhaps you’ll come round for a cup of tea.”

“I will. And bring Alma with me,” he twinkled.

“Is she to be here? I didn’t know.”

“Neither do I, but they generally manage to hit on the same day somehow. Curious, isn’t it?” and he lifted his hat and marched away, chuckling to himself like a plump little turkey-cock.

IV

Con’s visits were like those of the angels, unexpected, generally unannounced, and always very welcome. The one curious thing about them was, as the Colonel had said, that, as often as not, they coincided in most extraordinary fashion with the whirling home-calls of Alma Luard. And whenever it happened so, the Colonel chuckled himself nearly into a fit in private, and in public preserved his innocent unconsciousness with difficulty.

Mrs Dare went off to superintend the operations of her charlady, whose attention to corners and little details in general was subject to lapses unless the eye of the mistress was within easy range. And as Mrs Skirrow worked best under a sense of personal injury Mrs Dare became of necessity the recipient of all her conjugal woes and endless stories of filial ingratitude.

She had a husband,--an old soldier in every sense of the word,--who was cursed with a constitutional objection to authority and work of any kind, and two sons who took after their father. One or the other stumbled into a place now and again and lost it immediately, and Mrs Skirrow slaved night and day to keep them from any deeper depths than half-a-crown a day and her food was able to save them from.

“Is ut true, mum, that we’ll mebbe be having another war?” asked Mrs Skirrow as she flopped and scrubbed.

“I hope not, Mrs Skirrow, but there’s said to be the possibility of it. We must hope we’ll be able to keep out of it. War is very terrible.”

“’Tes that, mum, but there’s a good side to ut too. Mebbe ut’d give chance o’ someth’n to do to some as don’t do much otherwise. If ut took my three off and made men of ’em or dead uns ut’d be a change anyway.”

“You’d find you’d miss them.”

“I would that,” said Mrs Skirrow emphatically, and added presently, “And be glad to.... I done my best to stir ’em up, but ut’s in their bones. Mebbe if they was in th’ army they’d manage to put some ginger into ’em.”

“It might do them good, as you say. But you might never see them again, you know.”

“I seen enough of ’em this last two years to last me. ’Taint reasonable for one woman to have to work herself to the bone for three grown men that can’t get work ’cause they don’t want to.”

“It is not. I think it absolutely shameful of them.”

“Not that they quarrel at all,” said Mrs Skirrow, instantly resentful of anyone blaming her inepts but herself. “I’m bound to say that for ’em. They’re good-tempered about it, but that don’t keep ’em in clo’es, to say noth’n of boots. I suppose, mum, you ain’t got an old pair of ...” and Mrs Skirrow’s lamentations resolved themselves into the usual formula.

It was close upon tea-time when Con came striding up the path, with a searching eye on the next-door grounds.

“And what do you think of the war, mother?” he asked briskly, with his face all alight, as soon as their greetings were over, and he had satisfied himself as to the welfare of the rest of the family, and expressed his entire satisfaction with the news about Lois and Ray.

“You mean this Austrian business? It’s very disturbing but I hope we won’t be drawn into it, my boy.”

“I expect we shall, you know. Pretty certain, it seems to me. And if we are I’m pretty sure to get the call....”

“I had not thought of that, Con,” and her hands dropped into her lap for a moment and she sat gazing at him. “That brings it close home. I pray it may not come to that.”

“Well, you see, I’ve had the cash, and the goods have got to be delivered----”

“Of course. But----”

“And if it comes to a scrap they’ll need every medical they can get. What does Rhenius say about it all?”

“He’s away,--in Italy, I think.”

“I remember. He wrote me he was hoping to get off, if he could find a locum who wouldn’t poison you all in his absence. Well, anyway, I’m getting my kit packed----”

“That’s business, my boy,” pealed the Colonel’s hearty voice, as he came in with a telegram in his hand. “I saw you turn in and I’d already been invited to drink a cup of tea with you. Alma can’t get off,”--he said, in a matter-of-fact way, showing the telegram.

“Oh?--did you expect her, sir?” with an assumption of surprise to cover his disappointment.

“I did, my boy, when I heard from your mother that she thought you might come to-day. Did you?”

“Medicals and nurses are not their own masters,” said Con non-committally. “Do you really think we’ll be into it, sir?”

“I do, Con. I don’t see how we can possibly keep out. It’s a most da--yes, damnably inevitable sequence, it seems to me. Austria goes for Servia. Russia won’t stand it. In that case Germany is bound to help Austria. France will help Russia. Exactly how we stand pledged to help France and Russia no one knows, I imagine, except the Foreign Secretary. But everyone knows that the German war-plan contemplates getting at France through Belgium. And if they try that, the fat’s in the fire and we’ve got to stop them or go under.”

“That’s exactly how they’re looking at it at our place, and all the R.A.M.C. men are getting their things together in readiness for the call.”

“It’ll be a tough business,” said the Colonel weightily, but with the light of battle in his eye. “But we’ve got to go through with it ... right to the bitter end.”

“Have you any doubts about the end, sir?”

“None, my lad. But the end is a mighty long way off and it’ll be a hot red road that leads to it, unless I’m very much mistaken. They’ve been preparing for this for years, you see. It had to come, and some of us saw it. Da-asht pity we didn’t all see it! We’d have been readier for it than we are. Lord Roberts was right. Every man in Great Britain and Ireland ought to have been in training for it.”

“Conscription again, Colonel!” said Mrs Dare. “And you still think England would stand it?”

“Not conscription, my dear madam,--Universal Service,--a very different thing and not liable to the defects of conscription. France broke down through her faulty conscription in 1870. Germany won on her universal service. And, da-ash it! we ought to have had it here ever since. But you others thought we were all screaming Jingoes and mad on military matters because that was our profession. Now, maybe, it’s too late.”

“Still, you say you don’t believe they can beat us, sir?” said Con earnestly.

“Not in the long run. No, I don’t, my boy. But can you begin to imagine what a long run will mean in these times? I’ve seen war and I know what it meant up to twenty years ago. But--if I know anything about it--that was child’s-play to what this will be. Those--da-asht Germans are so infernally clever--and you must remember they’ve been working for this and nothing but this for the last twenty years, while we’ve been playing football and cricket, and squabbling over the House of Lords and Home Rule. Da-ash it! If our side had kept in I believe we’d have been readier.”

“I doubt it, sir,” said Con, with the laugh in the corners of his eyes. “You’d have been fighting for your lives all the time, whereas we at all events have done something--Old Age Pensions, and National Insurance, and so on,” at which the Colonel snorted like a war-horse scenting battle.

“And how is the work going, Con?” asked Mrs Dare, as a lead to less bellicose subjects.

“Oh, all right. About same as usual. We got a new old chap in the other day and he’s taken a curious fancy to my grin. He stops me every time we meet, and says, ‘Doctor, do smile for me!’ and he’s such an old comic that I just roar, and then he roars too, and we’re as happy as can be.”

“He’s no fool,” said the Colonel. For Con’s grin was very contagious. The corners of his eyes had a way of wrinkling up when the humorous aspect of things appealed to him, his eyes almost disappeared, and then his face creased up all over and the laugh broke out. And as a rule it made one laugh just to watch him.

“But we had two rather nasty things, last week,” he said, sobering up. “Two of the old chaps were set to clean up an out-house, and one of them came out after a bit and sat down in the sun with his back against the wall, humming the ‘Old Hundredth,’ they say. One of the attendants asked him what he was doing there, and he said old Jim was tired and was lying down inside. And when they went in they found old Jim lying down with his head beaten in and as dead as a door-nail.”

“Good Lord!” said the Colonel. “And what did you do to the other?”

“What could we do? He was quite unconscious of having done anything wrong. He’ll be kept under observation of course. But the other matter was worse still, in one way. A table-knife disappeared one day from the scullery and couldn’t be found anywhere. And for a week we all went with our heads over both shoulders at once, and the feel of that knife slicing in between our shoulder-blades at any moment. I tell you, that was jolly uncomfortable.”

“And did you find it?” asked Mrs Dare anxiously.

“Yes, we hunted and hunted till we discovered it inside the back of a picture frame, and we were mighty glad to get it, I can tell you.”

“Gad!” said the Colonel, with extreme energy. “I’d sooner be at the front any day. It’s a safer job than yours, my boy.”

“I suppose there are possibilities of getting hurt even there, sir,” and Con’s creases wrinkled up.

“Oh, you can get hurt all right enough, but it’s not knives between your shoulder-blades.”

“Assegais,” suggested Mrs Dare, who knew his record.

“Assegais are deucedly uncomfortable, but that was fair fighting----”

Then Mr Dare walked in, very much later than usual for a Saturday. And, though he greeted them cheerfully, his face was very grave, to his wife’s anxious eyes.

“I waited a bit to see if any further news came along,” he said quietly.

“And how are they feeling about things?” asked the Colonel.

“Nervous. In fact, gloomy. Everybody admits that it seems incredible, but there’s a general fear that we may be drawn in, in spite of all Sir Edward Grey’s efforts.”

“We shall,” said the Colonel emphatically. “I feel it in my bones. Germany is very wide awake. She’s been crouching for a spring any time this several years, and here are England, France, and Russia tied up with internal troubles. It’s her day without a doubt. Take my advice and make your preparations, my friend. When it comes it’ll come all in a heap. I only wish we were readier for it, and I wish to God they’d have the common-sense to put Kitchener in charge of the Army. He’s the man for the job, and what earthly use is he in Egypt when Germany may be at our throats any day? Asquith can’t be expected to understand all the ins and outs of the machine.”

“Yes, it’s too much to expect of him. And as to Kitchener, I quite agree. He’s the right man for the job.”

“Exchange upset? Money tight?”

“Slump all round. Consols down one and a half. Bank rate three still, but expected to jump any day. In fact things are about as sick as they can be.”

“We’re in for a very bad time, I’m afraid,” said the Colonel gravely. And the shadow of the future lay upon them all.

When, presently, the Colonel got up to go, Mrs Dare and Con went with him to the front door, and Con went on down the path with him.

“May I speak to you about Alma, Colonel?” Con began, before they reached the gate.

“Yes, my boy, you may. But I know what you want to say.”

“You’ve seen it, sir? You know how we feel then. And you don’t object?”

“On the contrary, my boy. I’m very glad you have both chosen so wisely.”

“That’s mighty good of you, sir. I would have spoken to you before but I wanted to see my way a little more clearly. And now I can. Sir James Jamieson of Harley Street,--he’s the biggest man we have in mental diseases, you know,--well, he saw some scraps of mine in the ‘Lancet’ and asked me to call on him. He’s a fine man, and he wants me to go to him as soon as my courses are finished,--Munich and Paris and the rest. He’s getting on in years, you see, and he was good enough to say that, from what he had heard of me, he believed I was the man to carry on his work when his time came to go. It’s immense, you know.”

“Capital! I always knew you’d go far, Con. My only fear was lest the--er--atmosphere of your special line should in time affect your own mind and spirits. But so far it seems to have had no ill effect. Your spirits are above par, and I’ve just had an excellent proof of your judgment,”--at which Con laughed joyously.

“When you’re really keen on a thing it doesn’t upset you, no matter how unpleasant it may be. And this work is anything but unpleasant to me. It’s packed with interest. There’s so much we don’t know yet. And there’s heaps of quaint humour in it, if you look out for it.”

“Well, keep yourself fit, my boy, and I don’t think your brain will suffer. _Mens sana_, you know.”

“I see to that. I get a couple of hours on the links every day and I never play with a medical,--get quite outside it all, you know. Then I may speak to Alma, Colonel? She knows, of course, but we’ve never said very much.”

“Yes, my lad,--whenever you can catch her. She’s an elusive creature these days.”

“I’ll catch her all right,” said Con, all abeam.

The other young people had just returned from their tournament and were discussing points over the tea-cups.

“Hello! Here’s old Con,” shouted Noel, and they all jumped up and gave him merry welcome. Vic inquired earnestly after the state of his brain; and satisfied on that head, they poured out their own latest news.

“Vic and I won,” chortled Honor. “6-5, 6-4, against No and Gregor McLean.”

“Oh well,” explained Noel. “If you’d been round the links in the morning you wouldn’t have been half so nimble on your pins.”

“Bit heavy, I suppose?” said the Colonel.

“Heavy wasn’t the word for it, sir, and a beastly gusty wind that upset all one’s calculations. However, I licked old Greg into a cocked hat and he’s no end of a nib with the sticks; so that’s one to me. Pick up any lunch scores as you came along, Con?”

“Sorry, old man! I didn’t. I was thinking of other things,” and the Colonel nodded weightily, and said,

“In a week from now we’ll all have other things to think about, I’m afraid.”

V

Ray Luard’s quest was one in which the soul of any man might well rejoice. He was flying, like a knight of old,--though as to ways and means in very much better case,--to the rescue of his lady-love from possibilities of trouble. More than that he did not look for, and possible difficulties and delays weighed little with him.

He reached Flushing about seven in the evening after a gusty passage which did not trouble him, and was at Cologne in the early hours of the morning. But after that his progress was slow and subject to constant, exasperating, and inexplicable delays.

He had secured a berth in the sleeper and took fullest advantage of it. But all night long, as he slept the troubled sleep of the sleeping-car, he was dully conscious of long intervals when the metronomic nimble of the wheels died away, and the unusual silence was broken only by the creaking complaints of the carriage-fittings and the long-drawn snores and sharper snorts and grunts of his companions in travel.

The train was crowded and every bunk was occupied. The occupant of the one above him was so violently stertorous that Ray feared he was in for a fit, and did his best to save him from it by energetic thumps from below. But the only result was a momentary pause of surprise in the strangling solo up above and the immediate resumption of it with renewed vigour, and Ray gave it up, and drew the bed clothes over his ears, and left him to his fate.

In the morning the noisy one turned out to be an immensely fat German who rolled about the car as if it and the world outside belonged to him,--the repulsively over-bearing kind of person whose very look seemed to intimate that no one but himself and his like had any right to cumber the earth. And just the kind of person that Ray Luard loathed and abominated beyond words.

Ray’s disgust of him, and all his kind and all their doings, showed unmistakably in his face, and the fat one became aware of it and took offence. He dropped ponderously into the seat alongside Ray so that he filled three-quarters of it, and proceeded to stare at him in most offensive fashion. His little yellow pig-like eyes, almost lost in the greasy fat rolls of his face, travelled suspiciously over his neighbour from head to foot as though searching for something to settle on.

Ray knew the look and its meaning. Had he been back at Heidelberg he would forthwith have demanded of the starer when and where it was his pleasure they should meet to fight it out. But this mountain of fat was long past his Mensur days, and Ray was doubtful how to tackle him.

He did perhaps the best thing under the circumstances,--turned his back on him and looked out of the window.

But the fat one was not satisfied to let matters rest so. He loosed a wheezy laugh and said, “Ach, zo! Ein Engländer!” with another wheezy little laugh of extremest scorn.

“And what of that, Fat-Pig?” rapped out Ray, in German equal to his own, and the shot took the fat one in the wind.

“Fat-Pig! Fat-Pig! Gott im Himmel, you call me Fat-Pig?”

He rose, bellowing with fury, and was about to drop himself bodily on Ray, when others who had watched the proceedings--a Bavarian whose foot he had trampled on without apology ten minutes before, and a Saxon upon whose newspapers he had also plumped down and pulped into illegibility--jumped up and laid hands on him and dragged him back.

“So you are! So you are!” they shouted. “The Englishman has doubtless paid his fare and is entitled to the whole of a seat without insult or annoyance.”

“They ought to charge you double and then carry you in the baggage-van,” said the Saxon.

“You should try to remember you’re not yet in Prussia--you!” growled the Bavarian, jerking the mountainous one down into an empty seat.

“Ja!--Mein Gott, if I had you all in Prussia I’d show you who’s who,” and he wagged his dewlaps at them with menacing malevolence.

“A damned English spy, if I have any eyes,” he wheezed.

“No more a spy than you’re a gentleman,” retorted Ray.

“Enough! Enough, mein Herr! Let him be! He’s just a Prussian and they’re all like that,--blown out with their own conceit till they’ve no decent manners left,” said the Bavarian.

“That is so,” said the Saxon, and they removed themselves with Ray out of sight and sound of the swollen one.

The other two were quite friendly, and through their smoke endeavoured to arrive at an understanding of Ray,--how he came to speak German so well,--what his business in life was,--where he was going, and why? And, as he had nothing to conceal and felt resentful still of the fat man’s insinuations, he told them frankly what he was there for.

Their reserve and soberness over the political outlook impressed him greatly. He felt more than justified in the decision he had taken as to Lois.

He did his best, without being too intrusive, to get at their view of the future, and they at his. But it was all too pregnant with awful possibilities, and too obscure and critically in the balance, for very free speech. From their manner, however, he gathered that, while they personally desired no interruption of the present prosperous state of affairs, they doubted if the dispute between Austria and Servia could be localised, and feared that if Russia supported Servia the fat would be in the fire.

“For me, I do not like Prussia and her insolent ways,” said the Bavarian. “Yon stout one is typical of her. But if she goes, we have to follow--unfortunately, whether we approve or not. We are all bound up together, you see, and there you are.”

And all their discursive chats throughout the day went very little deeper than that.

It was a very wearisome journey. Time after time they were shunted into sidings while long and heavy trains rolled past. And when Ray commented on it with a surprised,

“Well!--for a quick through train this is about as poor a specimen as I’ve ever tumbled on,”--their only comment, as they gazed gloomily out of the window, was, “The traffic is disorganised for the moment.”

The stations they passed through were packed with people, and the military element seemed more in evidence even than usual.

It was close on five o’clock in the afternoon before they arrived in Leipsic. The Bavarian had left them at Cassel. The Saxon, as he bade Ray adieu, said quietly,

“You may find things more difficult still if you try to return this way, Herr. If you take my advice you will strike down South into Tirol and Switzerland, and meanwhile say as little as possible to anyone,” and with a meaning nod he was gone.

Ray went along to the Hauffe, secured a room, had a much-needed bath and dinner, and then set off at once for Frau Helse’s house in Sebastian Bach Strasse.

The plump Saxon maid informed him that Fräulein Dare was out, that Frau Helse was out, that Fräulein Luise was out;--they were in fact all at a concert at the Conservatorium; and the Herr Lieutenant, he was with his regiment. So Ray left his card with the name of his hotel scribbled on it, and Mrs Dare’s letter, and promised to return in the morning.

Then, after a stroll about the unusually thronged streets, he returned to his hotel and looked up trains for Switzerland.

VI

Knowing how anxious Lois would be for a fuller understanding of his coming, Ray set off for Frau Helse’s house the moment he had finished breakfast next morning.

Lois had obviously been on tenterhooks till he came. He was hardly ushered into the stiff, sombre drawing-room, when the door flew open and she came hastily in.

“Oh, Ray!”--and he caught her in his arms and kissed her.

“There is nothing wrong at home?--Mother?--Father?--” she asked quickly, her anxiety accepting the unusual warmth of his greeting as somehow appropriate to the circumstances. “Is it only what Mother says, or----”

“Just exactly what Mother says, my child, and quite enough too. Everybody is perfectly well. Our only anxiety is on your account.”

“And you really think there is going to be trouble?”

“Uncle Tony is certain we’re in for a general European war,--in fact for Armageddon foretold of the prophets. And the mere chance of it is more than enough to make us want you home.”

She could still hardly quite take it all in. She stood gazing at him in amazement.

“And you?--you really think it, Ray?”

“Nothing’s impossible in these times, and I’m not going to run any risks where you’re concerned. How soon can you be ready?”

“I’ll finish my packing at once. I started early this morning, though I was not at all sure what it all meant.”

“One moment, Lois,” he said meaningly. “You can trust these people, I suppose?”

“Frau Helse? Oh yes. They’re as nice as can be.”

“Very well then. Pack just your choicest possessions into a small bag that I can carry, and everything else into your trunk. We’ll leave the trunk in Frau Helse’s care and take the other with us.”

“But why not take the trunk also?” she asked in surprise.

“If matters are as I think, from what I’ve seen, they’re mobilising here for all they are worth, and the lighter we travel the better. Our train could hardly get through coming. Going back will be worse. Indeed I’ve already had it hinted to me that our safest way will be to strike right down south into Switzerland.”

“Into Switzerland?”

“Yes, if things develop rapidly, as they probably will, all the traffic here will go to pieces--all in the hands of the military, you know. And you know enough of Germany to know what that means.”

She nodded thoughtfully, and said, “There’s been something going on below-ground for some time past. I was sure of it. They said it was manœuvres, but it looks as if it was a good deal more. I can be all ready in an hour. Will you see Frau Helse?”

“Perhaps I’d better, so that she may see I’m at all events respectable to look at. Then I’ll go to the station and see if the trains are running all right. You’ve told her, I suppose.”

“Yes, I showed her Mother’s letter. But she was decidedly shocked at the idea of my going off alone with any man who wasn’t at least a cousin.”

“Oh--cousin! She’ll be more shocked before she sees the end of it all, maybe.”

So Lois went away and brought in Frau Helse and Luise, and introduced Ray to them. They had been mightily surprised at Fräulein Lois’s news, and Frau Helse--when the two girls had gone off to finish the packing--let it be seen that she was distinctly doubtful as to the perfect propriety of allowing her to go off with this good-looking young Engländer, who was not in any way related to her. However, in the face of Mrs Dare’s letter she could scarcely raise any objection, and Ray got away as soon as he could, promising to be back in an hour.

He had decided to take the friendly Saxon’s advice and make for Switzerland. He reasoned the matter out thus,--Austria and Servia were practically at war. Though no formal declaration had yet been made, the Austrian Legation had left Belgrade. Russia would almost certainly help Servia. Germany would help Austria. France would help Russia. Without doubt Germany would endeavour to strike at France quickly and heavily. She could only do that down south. So all the railway lines leading thither would be taken over by the military, and ordinary travellers--and still more especially foreigners--would meet with less consideration even than usual.

So he enquired for trains for Munich, intending to get from there into Tirol, and so into neutral Switzerland. Since the first clash of arms would undoubtedly come far away to the south on the Servian frontier, it was reasonable to expect that this remote corner of Austria would still be comparatively free and open to traffic.

There was a train at ten o’clock and another at half-past twelve. He decided on the earlier one, paid his bill at the hotel, and drove off to Frau Helse’s to secure his prize.

Lois was waiting for him, all dressed for the journey, and the slightness of her travelling equipment evoked his surprised eulogiums.

As they were making for the station, with just comfortable time to get their tickets, they passed on the sidewalk a man of unforgettable proportions.

There was no possibility of mistaking him, but Ray had no desire for his further acquaintance and permitted no sign of recognition to escape him. The stout one, however, turned ponderously and looked after them, and then said a word or two to a policeman.

Ray had got their tickets, and had despatched a telegram--which never reached him--to Uncle Tony, saying they were just starting for home via Munich and Switzerland; and they were waiting impatiently for the doors of the Wartesaal to be opened to let them through to their train, when a couple of police-officers came pushing through the throng to Ray and abruptly requested him to follow them.

He was taken aback, but knew his Germany and its unpleasant little ways too well to make trouble.

“Follow you? Certainly! But why?”

But they were not there to answer questions, only to carry out orders.

“Come!” they gruffly insisted, and Ray gave his arm to Lois and went.

They were put into a carriage and driven away to Police Head-Quarters, and after a long wait were ushered into the presence of a high official, who looked worried and overworked.

“Who and what are you? And what are you doing here?” he asked brusquely.

Ray supplied him with the desired information.

“Your passport?”

“I have none, Herr Head-of-Police,”--he had no idea what his questioner’s standing might be, but knew that in addressing officials in Germany you can hardly aim too high. “I left London at almost a moment’s notice on Saturday morning, to bring this lady home to her mother. I did not know a passport was necessary.”

“We have definite information that you are a spy.”

“From the fat gentleman who insulted me in the train yesterday, I presume,” said Ray, with a smile. “He tried to sit on me and then called me names, and I called him Fat-Pig. He had already annoyed everyone in the carriage, and they all sided against him and told him what they thought of him. I am no more a spy than he is, mein Herr.... Stay--here is my return ticket to London dated, as you see, Saturday. My fiancée has been studying in Leipsic here for the last two years. She lived with Frau Helse, 119 Sebastian Bach Strasse. Have you your mother’s letter with you, Lois?”--and she got it out and handed it to the official.

He read it carefully and seemed to weigh each word and seek between the lines for hidden treason.

“And why is Fräulein Dare leaving so hurriedly?”

“Her mother wished her at home and we judged there might possibly be difficulties for a girl travelling alone.”

“Why?”

“When there are rumours of war in the air, mein Herr, one’s best place is in one’s own country. That was how we looked at it.”

“But the war--if it comes to anything--is far enough from here,” and he eyed Ray keenly, as though to penetrate his whole mind on the matter.

“May it remain so!” said Ray earnestly. “But when a fire starts one never knows for certain how far it will spread.”

“And you were going to Munich,--towards the danger in fact.”

“Yes, we were going by Innsbruck and Tirol into Switzerland and so home. The traffic on the direct lines seems disorganised. The booking-clerk refused me a ticket via Cologne.”

“I shall have to keep you awhile till I have made some further enquiries. If they are satisfactory you will be allowed to proceed. If not----”

“Herr Head-of-Police,” pleaded Lois, in her best German, which was very good indeed, and in her prettiest manner, which was irresistible, “It is too ridiculous. Herr Luard is a student of law in London. He is the nephew of Sir Anthony Luard, who lives next door to us at home, and we are fiancés. That is why he came for me. He is no more a spy than I am. And Frau Helse will tell you all about me. Fräulein Luise and Ludwig were across at our home in London last year.”

He nodded somewhat less officially. “I know Frau Helse, and doubtless it is all as you say, Fräulein. But we have to be careful in these days. I trust your detention will not be prolonged.”

He touched a bell and they were ushered into an adjoining room and left alone.

“Looks as if my assistance was not of much use to you, my dear,” laughed Ray. “I wish I’d smashed Fat-Pig’s ugly old head in. It would at all events have put him hors-de-combat for a day or two and would have been a great satisfaction to my feelings as well.”

“Then I should never have seen you at all,” said Lois. “It will be all right, I’m sure. Frau Helse will satisfy him. I’m glad he knows her.”

And an hour later they were released without a word of apology. But it was enough for them to be free, and they made their way back to the station in good enough spirits.

The delay, however, had lost them both the earlier and the later trains, and the time-tables showed that the next one for the south would land them at a place called Schwandorf at four o’clock in the morning, with the remote possibility of reaching Munich six hours later. There was a fast through train a little after midnight, which, barring accidents or delays, would get them there a couple of hours earlier, but after their late experience, and with the chance of running across their fat friend again, and perhaps becoming further victims to his pig-headed venom, Ray thought it best to get out of Leipsic as early as possible, even at cost of a weary night journey in a train that stopped at every station. Every station would at all events be that much between them and Pig-Head.

So they had their mid-day meal in the Station restaurant, and dallied over it as long as possible, and spent the rest of their time in the waiting-room, so that the authorities should have no possible pretext for suspicion.

They were perfectly happy, however, in one another’s company and the new relationship which Ray’s coming had jewelled into accepted family fact. Ray told her all he could think of about home-doings, and was keen to learn the smallest details of her life in Leipsic, and so there was no lack of talk between them and the time did not seem long.

Streams of people passed through the station, mostly men, and mostly in uniform. Ray saw without seeming to notice, and was confirmed in the view that great and grave events were brewing.

Their train was an hour late in starting, and, by reason of many stoppages and much side-tracking to allow other heavily-laden trains to pass, was more than two hours late in reaching Schwandorf.

It was a deadly wearisome journey,--the carriages packed beyond reason, everyone somewhat on edge with anxiety and excitement, senseless disputations and bickerings, jokes that lacked humour but led to noisy quarrelling, no rest for mind or body. They were glad to turn out into the chill morning air at Schwandorf, only to find the express already gone and none but slow trains till the 1 p.m. express which would, if it kept faith, land them in Munich about four in the afternoon.

They had breakfast and then propped themselves into corners in the waiting-room and endeavoured to make up for the loss of their night’s rest.

The express was not quite so crowded, but even it was frequent captive to the sidings, and as their fellow-travellers regarded them with polite but unmistakable suspicion they deemed it wise to keep silence, and so found the journey very monotonous. And everywhere, from such glimpses of the country and stations as their middle seats afforded them, they got the impression of unusual activities and endless uniforms.

“Is it always like this?” whispered Ray into Lois’s ear one time, and she shook her head.

It was after five o’clock when they at last drew into Munich, and as they stood in the carriage to let other eager travellers descend, Lois plucked Ray warningly by the arm, and he saw, rolling along the platform, the Ponderous One who had already got them into trouble in Leipsic.

“Hang the Fat-Pig!” he murmured. “Is there no getting away from him? What a Thing to be haunted by!”

They peered out of the window till they saw him roll through the barrier, and only then ventured to descend and make for the restaurant. For to be delivered over to the police as suspects here, where they knew no one, might involve them in endless trouble and delay. The one thing they desired now, above food or even sleep, was to set foot in a country where English folk were not looked upon as suspicious outcasts.

“Can you go on?” asked Ray. “I’m sure you’re dead tired, but----”

“Oh, let us get on,” she replied, with a touch of the all-prevailing anxious strain in her voice. “Anything to get out of this horrid country. They make me feel like a leper.”

There was a train marked to leave at 5.30 which had not yet started, and without waiting to get anything to eat, though their last meal had been early breakfast at Schwandorf, they climbed into a carriage, thankful at all events at thought of leaving their gross bête-noir behind in Munich.

It was close on 11 p.m. when they reached Innsbruck, and Ray led her straight across to the Tirolerhof, engaged two rooms, boldly registered their names as Raglan and Lois Luard, and ordered supper,--anything they had ready, and they fell upon it with a sixteen-hours’ appetite.

“For the time being,” said Ray, with reference to the name he had conferred upon her, when the sharpest edge of their hunger was blunted, “We are brother and sister to the obnoxious outside public. If you don’t want to be a sister to me you shall tell me so in private. It strikes me, my dear, that we may possibly not get home quite as quickly as they will be expecting over there.”

“If you hadn’t come it looks as though I would never have got home at all. Oh, I _am_ so glad you came, Ray. What does it all mean, do you think?”

“Mighty trouble all round, I fear. They are evidently mobilising here at top pressure. That means an attack on France. And what that may mean to us I can’t quite foresee.... We may have to get home through Italy.... But--Heavens and Earth!--Italy will be into it too. She’s bound to go in with Germany and Austria.... Do you know what _I_ think, my child?”

“No, what? Anything to the point?”

“Seems to me we may be bottled up here--that is in Switzerland, if we ever succeed in getting there--for the rest of our lives. What do you say to getting married as soon as we do get there--if ever, Miss--er--Luard,--and so regularising the position?” and he looked whimsically at her.

“We’ll wait and see, as Mr. Asquith says,” she smiled. “If we really do get bottled up it may have to come to that.”

“H’m! And I was hoping you’d jump at the chance!”

“It’s rather sudden, you see, and a bit overwhelming. We’ve only been really engaged since yesterday morning....”

“Oh ho! That so? But you knew all about it. Now didn’t you?”

“A girl can never really know quite all about it, you know, until she is asked. She may know her own side of the matter----”

“As you did.”

“And she may have every confidence in--er--the other side----”

“As you had.”

“But----”

“But me no buts, my child! I consider my idea an eminently sensible one. You think it over.... And consider all the advantages!--no fuss, no wedding-breakfast, no hideous publicity. Just a quiet wedding and right into the blissfullest honeymoon that ever was. Heavenly!”

“Well, I’ll think it over, and we’ll see how we go on. What time do we start in the morning?”

“There’s a train at 9.45, but it only goes as far as Feldkirch. And there’s a fast train at 1.15 which should land us in Zurich some time after 8.”

“Let us take the 1.15, then we can have a good rest. I’m awfully tired.”

“One-fifteen it is. And you don’t need to get up till ten,--eleven, if you like,” and he escorted her upstairs to her room.

“Do brothers and sisters kiss at your house?” he whispered at the door. “They don’t at ours.”

“Nor at ours,” and she put up her face to be kissed.

Innsbruck was as yet fairly quiet. The garrison had gone and had been replaced by men of the reserve; most of the visitors had taken fright and fled; a few bewildered--or phlegmatic--English and Americans were left, but the empty streets and the anxious and preoccupied looks of the women gave the pleasant little town an unusual and dreary aspect, and our travellers were glad to be en route for a land less likely to be disturbed by alarms and excursions and all the fears of war.

VII

When Lois came down next morning she found Ray on the front doorstep, deep in conversation with an elderly gentleman of most impressive appearance. He was tall and straight, and had white hair and beard and moustache, a very kindly face, and extremely polished manners. When he spoke, an occasional very slight nasal intonation, which none but a well-trained ear would have detected, suggested the United States--most likely Boston, she thought, since it reminded her of a Boston girl with whom she had been friendly at the Conservatorium.

Ray unblushingly introduced her as his sister, and said,

“Our friend here is advising me to change our route, Lois.”

“Oh--why?” she asked, looking up a little anxiously into the pleasant, interested face.

“Because, my dear young lady, I got through from Bâle myself only late last night, and not without difficulty. The situation is becoming worse every hour. Austria declared war against Servia yesterday. What that may lead to no man knows,--unless, perhaps, the Kaiser and his advisers. And even they are not absolutely omniscient. It may all peter out as it has done before, but I am bound to say that this time I fear Germany means business, and if she does it will mean very grim and ghastly business indeed. Mobilisation is going on quietly and quickly, everywhere, even in Switzerland. The clash will come on the French frontier if it comes at all, and I believe it to be inevitable. The Swiss fear for their neutrality, and their fears are justifiable. If it suits Germany’s book she will trample across Swiss or any other territory that happens to be in her way.”

“But--it is too amazing. Why should Germany break out like this?”

“Simply because she thinks her time is ripe. Some of us have been expecting this war for years past. Now it is upon us.”

“And how do you think we ought to go?”

“I was just telling your brother that any attempt to get through on any of the direct routes is quite out of the question. Every carriage and truck on every line is packed with soldiers. Your best way, I think, will be to get across country. Make for the Rhone Valley and get down to Montreux or Geneva, and wait there till things settle down somewhat, when you will be able no doubt to get across France and so home.”

“It means footing it, Lois. How does it strike you?” said Ray.

She knitted her brows prettily while she considered the matter. It was certainly all very disturbing.

“And are you going across country also?” she asked the American gentleman.

“No. I’m going back to my home in Meran. I have lived there for the last five years, and my wife is there. I had to run over to London on some business, and I’m glad to have got back in time. Another day and it might have been impossible.”

“And how long will it take to walk from here to the Rhone Valley?”

“You can still get a train to Landeck. Then strike right up the Lower Engadine Valley,-- Stay! I’ll show you on the map,” and he turned to the one on the wall. “Now,--see!--you go first to Landeck. Then follow up the Inn to Süss. Then strike across by the Flüela Pass to Davos, and then by the Strela Pass to Chur. Then by Ilanz and Disentis to the Gothard. There are no difficulties. The roads are good. It will be an exceedingly fine walk.”

“What about our bags?” asked Lois.

“Get a couple of rucksacs. Pack in as much as you can carry, and the rest.... You could have them forwarded from here. But I should be very doubtful if they’d ever reach you in the present state of matters.... Would you care to leave them in my charge? I will take them to my house and send them on as soon as things settle down.”

And he pulled out his pocket-book and handed Ray his card--Charles D. Lockhart. Schloss Rothstein. Meran.

“I came across a very fine book on Tirol by a Mr Lockhart not long since----” began Ray.

“Quite right! I have written much on Tirol. Since I made my home here I have grown very fond of both the country and the people. I fervently hope we shall have no more than back-wash of the war here. But there’s no telling. Once the spark is in the stubble the flames may spread wide.”

“We are greatly indebted to you, Mr Lockhart,” said Ray, “and since you are so good we will take advantage of your very kind offer. That is--if you can get all you will want till we get to Montreux into a rucksac, Lois.”

“I’ll manage all right.”

So they all had breakfast together, and much talk of the gigantic possibilities the near future might hold if it came to a universal war. Then, under their new friend’s experienced guidance, they made a quick round of the shops, bought rucksacs, alpenstocks, a Loden cloak each, and had their boots nailed in Swiss fashion.

By the time they had packed their rucksacs and repacked their bags it was time for Mr Lockhart to catch his train for Botzen and Meran, and they accompanied him to the station and said good-bye to him and their property.

And when the train had disappeared they looked at one another and burst out laughing.

“I’m sure it’s quite all right,” laughed Lois, “But it does feel odd to send off all one’s belongings like that with a man one never set eyes on till an hour ago.”

“It’s quite all right, my dear. I’d trust that old fellow with all I have--even with you. He’s a fine old boy, and we’ve got to thank him for putting us on to a gorgeous trip. Nothing like padding it for seeing the country!”

And an hour later they had turned their backs on Landeck and the snow peaks of the Lechtaler Alps, and were footing it gaily up the right bank of the roaring Inn, with the northern spurs of the Oetztaler towering up in front of them beyond the dark mouth of the Kaunser-Tal.

It was a gray day and none too warm, but excellent weather for walking, and there was in them an exuberant spirit of relief at having shaken off the trammels of ordinary life and left behind, for the time being at all events, the gathering war-clouds and ominous preparations. If it had rained in torrents they would still have been perfectly happy, for that which was within them was proof against outside assault of any kind whatsoever.

It was a lonely walk, and so the more delightful to them. They desired no company but their own. Beyond an occasional man of the hills hastening towards Landeck, with sober face, coat slung by its arms at his back, and jaunty cock-feathered hat on the back of his head, they did not meet a soul till they came to Ladis.

As a rule these hurrying ones passed them with a preoccupied ‘Grüss Gott!’ and a hungry look which craved news but grudged the time.

One stopped for a moment and asked anxiously, “Is it true, then, Herr? Is it war?”

And Ray answered him, “With Servia, yes! How much more no man knows.”

“War is the devil,” said the man soberly, and hurried on.

They talked cheerfully,--of the folks at home and all the recent happenings there,--dived into happy reminiscence of their own feelings towards one another, and how and when and where these had begun to crystallise into the radiant certainty of mutual love,--and more than once, in the solitude of the little mountain sanctuaries where they stopped at times for a rest, Ray caught her to him and kissed her passionately in the overflowing fulness of his heart.

It was the most entrancing walk Lois had ever had, and the glow in her face and the star-shine in her eyes told their own tale.

They crossed the river where the road wound away into Kaunser-Tal, and again by the bridge at Prutz, and six o’clock found them within sight of the castle of Siegmundsried, with the pretty little village of Ried below.

“We’ll stop the night there,” said Ray. “We’ve done about ten miles and all uphill, and that’s quite enough for a first day. How are the feet?”

“First rate. I feel as if I could go on for ever.”

“If you went on for ever you’d wish you hadn’t next day. We’ve got a long way to go and there’s no great hurry,--unless you feel as if you’d like to get it over and done with.”

“Oh, but I don’t. I’d like it to last for ever and ever.”

“Mr and Mrs Wandering Jew,” laughed Ray. “What would your mother say?”

“She would say, ‘She’ll be all right since she’s with Ray.’”

“See what it is to have a good character,” and they turned into the ‘Post’ and demanded rooms and supper.

Next day they walked on, first on one side of the river, then on the other, loitering on every bridge to watch the gray water roaring among the worn gray rocks below.

They ate their lunch on the terrace of the little inn at Stuben, looking across at Pfunds lying in the mouth of the valley opposite. And when they came to the Cajetan Bridge, instead of crossing it with the high-road, Ray kept to the old path along the left bank, through the narrow Finstermünz Pass, and made straight for Martinsbruck, and so avoided the long bends and steep zig-zags leading to and from Nauders in the mouth of the Stillebach Valley.

It was rough walking, but he explained,

“It cuts off a lot, you see, and when we cross that bridge at Martinsbruck we’re in Switzerland.”

“That sounds like getting near home,” said Lois.

“It’s a neutral country anyway, and maybe we’ll get news there of what’s really happening. But it’s a good long way from home. I believe you’re tired of tramping already.”

“Am I? Do I look it?”

“You do not. But you look as though a kiss would encourage you--to say nothing of me.”...

The tops and sides of the mountains had been wreathed with smoke-coloured clouds all day. It was only as they drew near to Martinsbruck that the evening sun struggled out, and they saw a peak here and there soaring up above the clouds and all aglow with crimson fire,--a wonderful and uplifting vision.

“The Delectable Mountains,” murmured Lois, at this her first sight of the alpen-glüh.

“Our Promised Land lies the other way,” said Ray, “But we’ll carry our own glory-fire with us.”

They stood watching till the red glow faded swiftly up the summits of the cloud-borne peaks and left them chill and ghostly, and Lois heaved a sigh of regret.

“Wait!” said Ray, with his hand on her arm; and in a minute or two the cold white mountain-tops flushed all soft rose-pink, so exquisitely sweet and tender that Lois caught her breath and laid her hand in his, as though she must fain share so exquisite a joy with him.

“How lovely!” she whispered, profoundly moved by the sight and the warm grip of his hand, through which his heart seemed to beat up into hers. “The sun’s last warm good-night kiss! Oh, if they could only be like that always!”

“Then we would not enjoy them half as much. Don’t watch it fade,” and they turned and went. “We will always remember it at its best.... Life is to be like that with you and me, right on and on and on for ever. It is a good omen. And here,”--as they crossed the bridge--“we are in Switzerland, and this little Post Hotel will serve us excellently.”

Those solitary suppers in the common-rooms of the little wayside inns were things to remember. Not so much for the quality of the viands and the wine, though they never had a fault to find with either, but because of the cheerful goodfellowship and delightful camaraderie they engendered. And there was without doubt a subtle crown of joy to it all, in the feeling that here they were doing something out of the common, something that would possibly administer some slight shock to the nerves of Mrs Grundy if she had been aware of it.

Their procedure, however, was not so unusual as they in their innocence imagined.

As they sat over their meal that night in the Post at Martinsbruck, there came in two later arrivals who presently joined them at table,--a strapping young fellow of five-and-twenty and a very pretty girl of a year or two less, with large blue eyes and abundant fair hair coiled in great plaits round her head, and they were soon all chatting together on the friendliest of terms.

These two were tramping also and had come up that day from Süss.

“A good walk that, mein Herr, for little feet!” said the young man, looking proudly at his companion. “Thirty-eight kilomètres, I make it, perhaps a trifle more.”

“Twenty-four miles!” said Ray. “Yes, that’s a good long stretch. Twenty miles,--say thirty, thirty-two kilomètres--is our longest. But then we’re only just beginning.”

“And we are just ending,” sighed the girl. “He has to go to the army. Do you think it will be a bad war, mein Herr?” she asked anxiously.

“All war is bad, mein Frau,” began Ray.

“Fräulein,” she corrected him with a little smile. “I am Anna Santner. He is Karl Stecher. We are of Innsbruck.”

“And in another month--in September--she is to be Frau Stecher,” said Karl with a broader smile. “We are taking a portion of our honeymoon in advance. To see how we get on together, you understand. It is not unusual with us----”

“And I am sure you have got on very well together,” said Lois, with her prettiest smile.

“Oh, yes. You see, we love one another very much,” said Anna. “But now--! What do you think of it, mein Herr?”

“We can all only hope it will not be as bad as some people fear, Fräulein. But, at best, it is bad.”

“Yes, war is bad,” said the young fellow, with gloomy vehemence. “It is devil’s play from beginning to end. Still, those Serbs had no right to shoot our Archduke, you know, and they deserve a whipping.”

“Possibly. But the danger is that it may spread. If Russia takes umbrage, then Germany will join in, and Italy and France.”

“And your country? What will you do?” asked Stecher.

“I do not know. We certainly don’t want war, but if it comes to a general struggle we may be in it too. It is horrible to think of. In these days--all Europe at one another’s throats! It is almost inconceivable.”

“Du meine Güte!” said Anna, clasping her hands tightly together. “It is too terrible. What will happen to me if you get killed, my Karl?” and she could hardly see him for the tears that filled her large blue eyes.

“I don’t feel a bit like getting killed, my little one, I assure you.”

“That won’t stop those horrid bullets, all the same.”

“Ach, my Nanna, don’t weep for me before it begins anyway! Let us talk of something else.... And you, Herr and Frau?--Fräulein?--you are married?--yes?--no?--or have you this same pleasant custom with you?”

“Like you,” said Ray, “we are to be married very soon, and we are having our honeymoon in advance. You see, the Fräulein was in Leipsic, studying, when we heard this ill rumour of war. And her mother gave me permission to go and bring her home. And as they are mobilising in Germany----”

“Ah--they are mobilising?” jerked Stecher with a nod.

“We were advised to get back through Switzerland, and here we are.”

“We also were in Switzerland,” sighed Anna, reminiscently.

“You came over Flüela?” asked Ray. “How’s the walking there? That’s how we are going.”

“It is a good enough road,” said Stecher, “but you will need a full day from this end. It is all up hill, you see, and pretty stiff. You must get as far as Süss to-morrow night and start early next day. We stayed at the Flüela. It is quite good and not dear. And you can rest and eat at the Hospice under the Weisshorn. Oh, it is all quite easy. I wish we were going that way too.”

“Ach Gott--yes!” sighed Fräulein Anna. And Lois’s heart was sore for her, for her future and Karl’s was bound to contain possibilities of sorrow and misfortune, and she would have liked everyone to be as happy as she was herself.

And next morning, in the strong fellow-feeling of somewhat similar circumstances, they shook hands and parted almost like old friends,--none of them knowing to what they were going.

The four-and-twenty uphill miles from Martinsbruck to Süss were somewhat of a tax on Lois. They were on the road soon after seven, however, as Karl and Anna also had to be off early, and with occasional halts they made Schuls before mid-day, had a good dinner there and a long rest on the terrace of the hotel, with all the noble peaks, from Piz Lad opposite Martinsbruck to Piz Nuna opposite Süss, spread wide before them. They were at Ardetz in time for an early cup of tea and another rest, and reached Süss before sunset.

But long as the way was they enjoyed every rough step of it. For one thing it was a brighter day of mixed cloud and sunshine, which wrought most wonderful atmospheric effects on the soaring peaks and sweeping mountain-sides. Their road wound along the flanks of the Silvretta. Below them the Inn foamed white among its gray boulders. Innumerable valleys, each with its thread of rushing white water, debouched on either side and gave them wonderful peeps at the monarchs behind--the Oetztalers, the Ortlers, and the Silvrettas. Running water was everywhere--gray glacier streams and sparkling falls, and every here and there, on spurs of hills and vantage points, were the grim ruins of castles that had played their parts in the days of the Grey Leaguers and the Ten Droitures.

But all this delectable outward circumstance was no more than exquisite setting for that which was within them, and each of these reacted on the other. Never had they found such charm in their surroundings before. Never before had surroundings so charming had such effect upon their spirits and feelings.

They went along hand in hand at times like country lovers, and more than once their hearts broke into song as spontaneous as the lark’s, from simple joy of living.

Lois’s voice, in the full rounded beauty of its two years’ careful cultivation at the Conservatorium, was a revelation to Ray and thrilled him to the depths.

“My dear,” he said deeply, one time, “You have a gift of the gods. It would be a sin against humanity to deprive the world of it.”

“Oh, you will let me sing even after we are married.”

“Let you!... Am I a traitor to my kind? Let you, indeed! You will lift men’s souls with that voice. The world has need of you, my child, and what am I to say it nay?”

“You’re the world to me. I’m glad it pleases you.”

And maybe the menacing war-cloud, which could not be entirely excluded from their minds, but served to brighten their radiant enjoyment of that perfect day. Stars shine brightest in a winter-black sky.

VIII

They took the road very early again next morning, and turning their backs on the ruined castle of Süss and the triple peaks of Piz Mezdi, climbed steadily up past the long snow-galleries till they came to the mouth of the dreary Grialetsch Valley, with ragged Piz Vadret at its head; and there, with their backs against the road-mender’s hut, they sat for a long half-hour’s rest and the chance of passing a few words, for the road had claimed their breath as they climbed.

It was all so lonely, so peaceful, so aloof from the storm and stress of life, and so altogether delightful, that it was only now and again that the appalling reason for their being there obtruded itself upon them. And whenever it did so it came with something of a shock.

They had in themselves endless gardens of delight to ramble through, and it was, “--Do you remember that day at ----, Ray?” and “--I tell you, old girl, you gave me some rotten quarters-of-an-hour while that stuck-up little ramrod of a lieutenant was buzzing about you!”--and so on and so on,--every recollection rosy now with the joy of complete understanding, though at the time one and another had been anything but joyful.

The old road-mender came trudging up from his work while they still sat there. He nodded benevolently with something of a twinkle in his eye, as though he could still recall similar times of his own, and gave them a cordial “Grüss Gott!”

“We’re doing our best to hold your house up for you,” said Ray.

“So I see, Herr and Fräulein, and it is quite at your service. Everybody puts their backs against it after climbing from below. You are from Süss this morning?”

“From Süss this morning, and yesterday from Martinsbruck, and the day before that from Ried, and the day before that from Innsbruck,” said Ray.

“It is a long walk. But when one is young---- I also have been to Innsbruck. It is a great city. But there are too many people. They fall over one another in the streets. I like my mountains better and just one or two people a day. Thanks, Herr!”--at Ray’s offer of a cigar--“With permission I will smoke it later. I am going to eat now,” and he put it carefully away into his waistcoat pocket and got out bread and cheese from his little house, and sat and ate and talked.

“I had a Herr and a Fräulein here, yesterday,” he said reminiscently. “No, it was the day before----”

“We met them at Martinsbruck.”

“They were hastening home in fear of some war. But I did not clearly make out what it was all about. Is there going to be war, Herr?”

“I’m afraid it looks rather like it. That is why we are hastening home also.”

“But what is it all about, Herr? And why, in the name of God, do men want to fight in these times?”

“Ah! Now that is a big question, my friend, and it would take a lot of answering. But, so far as we know at present, it is only Austria that wants to fight. You heard of the Archduke and his wife being shot, down in Bosnia?”

“I heard of that. I was sorry. I have had them here. They sat with their backs against the house just as you are doing. They seemed nice enough people. He gave me five kroner for sitting against my house----”

“Ah!--he was an archduke and rolling in money.”

“I did not mean it that way, Herr. I do not want anything for people sitting against my house. It is a pleasure to me to have a word with them. There are not too many, you see.”

“It is not like Innsbruck where they fall over one another in the streets,” smiled Lois.

“No, it is not like Innsbruck, Fräulein, and I am glad of that. But why should their being shot make the rest want to fight?”

“That is only the pretext,” said Ray. “Austria wants to stretch herself down south. In fact, I suppose, what she really wants is to get to the sea, and Servia lies in her way.”

“If all men lived among the mountains they would learn a great many things you never learn down below there. I think one is nearer God up here, Herr and Fräulein.”

“I’m sure of it,” said Lois.

“But even the mountains have heard the sound of fighting,” said Ray, to draw him on.

“If the men from below wanted to take our rights from us we would fight again of course. But they are not likely to come up here, are they, Herr?”

“Not up here, I should say. The trouble is, you see, that if Austria attacks Servia, Russia will probably intervene, and then Germany will come in, and so France, and possibly Great Britain. We hope not, but one can never tell.”

“Herrgott! That sounds bad,” and the rough hand and big clasp-knife, which had been mechanically feeding the slow-munching jaws, stopped in mid-air and he sat staring at them. “Servians I do not know,” he said presently. “Russians I have had here, and Frenchmen, and Austrians, and many English, and all those I have found good. But Germans, of whom I have had still more, I do not like.... And yet I hardly know why,” he mused. “Their manners are not good, it is true; but it is something more than that. Well, I don’t know--it is just that I do not like them and perhaps they perceive it.”

“It is a very general feeling,” said Ray.

“Is it now? Well, that is strange, but it shows it is they who are somehow in the wrong.”

“They don’t think so,” laughed Ray, as he drew Lois to her feet by both hands. “We must be jogging on or we won’t reach Davos to-night.”

The old man firmly but politely declined Ray’s offer of a mark, saying, “I thank you, Herr, but there is no need. It has been a great pleasure to talk with you and the Fräulein,” and, not to tarnish so bright and unusual a trait, Ray did not press the matter, but offered him instead another cigar which was accepted at once as between man and man, and they all shook hands and parted.

They crossed the river and threaded their way through a rock-strewn valley, and up and on, with the Weisshorn towering white on the right and the Schwarzhorn on the left. Then they passed two little lakes, the one on the right clear as crystal, the one on the left greenish-white and opaque, which Ray told her was glacier-water while the other was probably fed by hidden springs.

They had lunch and another long rest at the Hospice, and then began the easy ten-mile stretch to Davos, through long stretches of pine-woods, dropping with the stream till it joined the Landwasser at Davos-Dorf, where they took the omnibus for Davos-Platz.

“We’ll go to the Grand,” said Ray,--“clothes or no clothes. We’re sure to find English people there and we’ll learn what’s going on in the world outside.”

So to the Grand, and sumptuous rooms and meals, though the very trim young gentleman in the office and the pompous head-waiter did look somewhat superciliously at their lack in the matter of wedding-garments.

But breeding tells where uttermost perfection in attire without it makes no headway at all, and by the time dinner was over they were on the best of terms with their nearest neighbours, who were delighted to find someone who had had no news of the world’s doings for several days and were therefore eager and receptive listeners. And afterwards they sat in the lounge while a Canon, and a Doctor, and a Barrister, and a Colonel on the retired list,--who knew Uncle Tony very well by repute and asked Ray at once if he were related to Sir Anthony Luard as soon as he heard his name,--and several of their wives and daughters, fed them volubly with fairy-tales and fictions, some of which had some small substratum of fact, but mostly they were snowball legends which had grown out of all knowledge as they passed from mouth to mouth.

Their latest English papers were three days old. Swiss and German papers they had as late as July 30, but the news in them was for the most part vague and unsatisfying to souls that craved simple actual fact as to what was going on behind the veiled frontiers. Local letters were arriving, but none from England since July 28.

Lois and Ray sat and listened but got little from all the talk that went on. The general opinion--to which the Colonel stoutly refused to conform--was that things looked decidedly unpleasant but that, somehow or other, Great Britain would manage not to be drawn into any such awful mess as a European war. Sir Edward Grey had handled the Balkan affair admirably, and though they were all on the opposite side in politics, they one and all,--not excepting even the Colonel--acknowledged that he was the very best possible man for his difficult and delicate post.

The Colonel however dogmatically prophesied war all round.

“We can no more get out of it,” he said warmly, “than we can any of us get home for some months to come.”

“Do you really think we can’t get home?” asked Lois anxiously.

“Think--my dear young lady?--I’m as sure of it as I am that I’m sitting here and expect to be still sitting here, or somewhere in this neighbourhood, two months hence. You see,”--and he proceeded to prove, beyond any possibility of doubt, that--granted the general war he was so certain of--every outlet--north, east, west, and south,--would be already blocked by the urgencies of mobilisation, and that until all the troops of the various nations were massed along the frontiers traffic across the denuded countries behind would be out of the question.

“Martial law everywhere,” said he, “and thank God we’re not in Germany!”

“There won’t be any difficulty in getting about in Switzerland, I suppose,” said Ray.

“Not on your own two feet. The diligences may stop any day. They’ll want every horse they can lay hands on. They’re sure to mobilise at once, just as they did in 1870. Every man they have will be on the frontiers yonder, from Schaffhausen to Basel, and round the corner towards Pontarlier, and again in all the passes leading from Italy. It’s curious how they fear and detest the Italians. I met a young fellow the other day who went across to Tripoli solely to get a whack at the Italians, and got a bullet through the calf which he insisted on showing me. You see,” he said to Ray, “we can’t possibly keep out of it, for the simple reason that Germany will certainly try to get at France through Belgium----”

“That’s just what Uncle Tony says.”

“Of course. Every military man who has studied the question knows that is their game. Russia is slow, and Germany’s plan is to smash France into little bits right away, then go for Russia, and then of course for us. Oh, it’s all been mapped out to the last haystack for years, I warrant you, while we’ve been swallowing their bunkum and persuading ourselves they are really very decent quiet people something like ourselves, who only want to be let alone to go their own gentle way.”

“And what’s your idea of the prospects all round, Colonel?”

But at that the Colonel shook his head. “Germany is the principal factor in the case and I don’t know her well enough to express an opinion. If she’s really as strong and well-organised as she thinks she is, and as most people believe, it will be a red-hot business. Austria I don’t think much of from what I’ve seen. Italy I do not know well. But I’m sure they’re not hankering for the expense of a big war. France is better than some folks think. Adversity has taught her something.”

“And England?” asked Ray, as the oracle lapsed into silence.

“England is, as usual, not ready. And besides she is not anxious for continental adventure. If England had hearkened to some of us old croakers--Jingoes and firebrands and scaremongers, we’ve been called,--she would be a decisive factor in the game. As it is----”

“Oh come! What about our fleet, Colonel?” said the Canon, whose eldest boy was second lieutenant on the “Audacious,” and his youngest a middy on the “Queen Mary.”

“Our fleet’s all right, thanks to Churchill. But you can’t utilise a fleet, say at Belfort or Nancy or on the borders of Belgium.”

“What about Belgium?” asked Ray. “Has she any fight in her?”

“I have never imagined so. If old Leopold were alive the Germans would have a walk-over and the old boy’s coffers would be fuller than ever. This new man--of whom I know very little--may be of a different kidney. But what can he do against Germany? She would simply roll over him if he tried to stand up for his rights. It would be sheer madness on his part.”

“Divine madness!” said the Canon musingly. “Such things at times effect wonders beyond the understanding of man.”

“And with England and France to back her up, and Russia piling in on the other side----” said Ray.

“There you are,” said the Colonel, “--practically a European war.”

Mrs Canon had meanwhile been quietly and unobtrusively, but none the less pertinaciously, affording Lois opportunities of explaining the exact nature of her relationship to Ray. And two vivacious Misses Canon, with their sympathies already openly given to the victim, eagerly awaited developments.

But Lois saw no reason for any beating about the bush. She explained the matter in full, acknowledging somewhat of irregularity in their proceedings but smilingly suggesting that if the war gave no one grounds for greater complaint they would all be very well off.

“How ripping!” said the younger girl, with dancing eyes.

“Katharine, my _dear_!” said her mother reprovingly.

“Absolutely and perfectly delectable!” asserted her sister, quite unabashed by the maternal disapproval. “I just wish----”

“Madeleine!”

And Madeleine’s envious desires remained locked in the secrecy of her maiden heart until she and Katharine went upstairs to bed that night. But she and her sister could not make enough of Lois for the rest of the evening, and their eyes rested on her caressingly and longingly as though by much looking they might possibly absorb some of her obvious happiness.

“It must be delightful beyond words,” whispered Katharine.

“It is,” beamed Lois.

“Just like a honeymoon, only more so,” sighed Madeleine rapturously.

“Just all that.”

“And you were at the Conservatorium at Leipsic!” said Katharine.

“I had nearly completed my two years there. It was a very jolly time. I enjoyed it every bit.”

“Do come and sing something for us. There’s a music-room over there and quite a decent piano.”

“I don’t mind. I love singing,” and they slipped quietly away to the music-room and shut themselves in.

But no doors made by man could contain the full rounded sweetness of that fresh young voice, and presently the handle was quietly turned from the outside and the door pushed noiselessly open so that the multitude beyond might share in the enjoyment of it.

She had no music with her, of course, and what lay about--the jetsam of the years--did not appeal to her. So she played and sang some of the old Scotch songs dear to her mother, and they went right home to the hearts of some of her listeners as perhaps the more stately productions of the greater masters would not have done.

Between times, on the expectant silence of the hall, there would trickle from the inner sanctuary a subdued murmur of talk and now and again a ripple of laughter, and then the chords would sound again and the full sweet voice would peal out gloriously, and hearts swelled large in sympathy with it.

She wound up with “Home, Sweet Home!” and before some of her listeners had finished using their handkerchiefs in various furtive and surreptitious ways, she was pealing out “God save the King!” like a trumpet-call, and “By Gad, sir! It went!”--as the Colonel said afterwards.

“My dear!” said the Canon, as he thanked her very warmly for the pleasure she had given them. “You have a God-given gift. You can touch the hearts of men and lift them to higher things. That is a wonderful power for good.”

“I love singing,” said Lois simply.

“Or you could not sing like that,” said the Canon. “Your joyous young heart is in your voice.”

As the following day was Sunday, and their next march would take them once more into the wilds--over the Strela and by Schanfiggthal to Chur and then up Rheinthal to Andermatt,--they decided to take a rest-day where they were, in the hope that further news from the outside world might arrive before Monday morning.

Nothing came, however, except the Berne newspapers, which hinted at mobilisation in Russia, and told of the murder of M. Jaurès in Paris. Even these scraps of news, however, afforded the Colonel ground for ample comment, and that of the gloomiest character, on the general outlook.

“Jaurès,” he said, “was a great leader and he worked hard for a better understanding between France and Germany. His removal, at this crisis and in this fashion, seems to point to a fanatical revulsion of feeling against his ideas. That means that the tinder is ready for the match. If Russia is mobilising, Germany will follow suit, if she has not done so already. The fat may be in the fire at any moment. For all we know the fire may have broken out now, even while we sit here discussing it.” Which made them all unusually thoughtful.

And as a matter of fact, with good reason. For Germany had declared war on Russia at 7.30 the previous night.

“Which way were you thinking of going?” the Colonel asked Ray, over their cigars in the lounge that night.

“First to Chur. Then up the valley to Andermatt, over the Furka, and down the Rhone Valley to Montreux.”

“That’s your best way. The East and North of France will certainly be closed. You may eventually get through by the Midi. But you’ll probably have to wait even for that. It’ll be a terrible upsetting all round. And I wish to God we could keep out of it, because we’re not ready. But we can’t. I’m as certain of that as that I’m sitting here.”

“It’ll be an awful business if it comes to a general scrap,” said Ray.

“Yes. I’ve seen fighting in several parts of the world and it’s grim business at best, but this will beat anything we’ve ever imagined, if I know anything about it. Germany is just a huge fighting-machine, and she’ll fight like the devil. If Russia is in, France is in, and that almost certainly means we’re in too. How do you stand yourself, Mr. Luard?”

“I’m in the London Scottish,--lieutenant. Do you think they’ll want us?”

“Pretty sure to,--sooner or later,--every man that’s available. How long have you had?”

“Four years.”

“You should know your business fairly well. I think you’ll have to reckon on a call. You’ll go if needed?”

“Of course.”

Which brought the possibilities very close home and made Ray Luard a very thoughtful man that night.

Next day they bade their friends good-bye, such of them as were up at so early an hour. And the Colonel and Katharine and Madeleine walked with them through the freshness of the morning by the winding forest-paths up Schatzalp, and were loth to part with them even on the top.

The Colonel, indeed,--whose youth lay away back amid the mists of antiquity, and whose years had discovered to him the existence of a heart that pumped on up-gradients, and a certain stiffness in the legs which filled him with wrath,--called them to many a halt to view the scenery. His hearty good-will was so obvious, however, that they complied with his necessities and accommodated their pace to his without regret; and the girls buzzed about Lois with outspoken envy of her happy lot, and vehemently regretted that they could not go and do likewise in every particular.

At the restaurant on top they drank a parting cup of coffee together, and then Ray and Lois set their faces towards the long ascent of the Strela, and the others stood and waved to them till they were out of sight.

“Do you know what the old boy was saying, Lois?” Ray broke out as soon as they were quite alone.

“No. What?”

“He’s quite certain that England will have to go into the scrap, and that she’ll need every man she can put into the fighting-line. And I’m one of them, you see.”

“Oh!--Ray!” and she stopped in her tracks, and stood gazing at him with sudden woe in her face.

“It brings it close home to one, doesn’t it, dear?” he said quietly, pressing her arm tight to his heart. “I’ve been thinking about it all night. It will be hard on us, but if the call comes I must go.”

“Yes ...” she said, slowly and reluctantly; sense of duty prevailing, with obvious difficulty, over her heart’s desire. “You must go.... But, oh,--it will be hard to let you go ... just when we’ve come to know one another, and life is at its brightest.... Oh, my dear! Suppose....”

“We won’t suppose anything of the kind,” he said cheerfully. “Life is not long enough at its longest to waste one minute of it on forebodings. But I named this, dear, because it seems to me that it settles for us the question I raised the other day. Unless you say no, we’ll get married as soon as we get to Montreux.”

“Yes!” she said simply, and the matter was settled.

And, in the feeling of still warmer and closer companionship that thereby came upon them, they climbed on up the Strela, and down the steep zig-zags on the other side to the Haupter Alp, and down and down past Schmitten and Dörfli, first this side of the river, then the other, till they came to the Schanfiggthal and Langwies, where they stopped for lunch and a long rest.

It was as they were coming down the hillside to Castiel that Lois had a quaint experience which Ray laughingly hoped would teach her a lesson.

They came suddenly on an immense herd of goats, whose bells they had heard tinkling far away below them for half an hour or more. Captivated by the graceful activities of a black and white kid, which sprang up a high rock at the side of the road and posed there like a little Rodin, with its glassy eyes fixed vaguely on them, Lois produced a biscuit from her pocket and proffered it to the youngster. He sniffed doubtfully, nibbled eagerly, and leaped down for more. And in an instant she was the centre of a writhing mass of goats, who pushed and reared themselves against her and would take no denial.

At first she laughed and pushed them off with her hands. Then it got beyond a joke. She gave them all she had, but they wanted more. Like the Danes and Ethelred, payment to go only drew them in larger numbers. Ray did his best to drag them back and get her clear, but they pushed and struggled and reared, with weirdest determination in their strange eyes and curving horns, till Lois grew somewhat startled.

“Stupid beasts! Don’t you understand? You’ve had it all,” and she shook her empty hands in their stolid straining faces. They pushed all the harder. She grew frightened, especially when she saw the futility of Ray’s efforts.

It was his angry shouts, as he laid about on their bony ribs and backs with his alpenstock, that at last drew a small boy in velveteens and a slouch hat round the corner, and at a shrill whistle from him the beasts came to their senses and left their victim hot and dishevelled and very much put out.

“Why don’t you keep your ugly beasts in order?” shouted Ray.

“Grüss Gott!” said the small boy with a vacant grin, and with stones and blows sent his flock jangling down into the lower woods.

“That’s the most forcible argument I’ve ever come across against promiscuous charity,” laughed Ray, as Lois shook herself clear of the sense and smell of them and did up her hair.

“The hideous beasts! Their stony eyes and stupid faces were awful,--a perfect nightmare! I shall dream of them for ages.”

They stopped that night at Chur, and Lois duly dreamed of a never-ending struggle with multitudinous stony-eyed goats, and had a fairly bad night of it.

She seemed, indeed, so unrefreshed in the morning that Ray decided to make an easy day’s work by taking train to Ilanz, and the diligence, if it was still running, for such further distance as it would take them.

And so it was half-past six in the evening when they reached Ruēras, where the diligence stopped for the night and they perforce stopped also. The accommodation was somewhat primitive, but the freedom of the simple life condoned everything. They ate well and slept well, and started off next morning in the best of spirits, with no cloud upon their horizon but the nebulous possibilities of the unknown future; and quite unconscious of the fact that, at eleven o’clock the night before, the mightiest die in the world’s history had been cast. Great Britain had declared war on Germany.

They crossed a brook and a torrent, and in a deep ravine below the fragment of a ruined castle, Ray pointed out to her the little stream which he told her was the Baby Rhine in its cradle.

“It’s always interesting to get back right to the beginning of a thing which in the end becomes a very big thing. We know what the Rhine is at its best and there’s where it begins.”

“I shall never forget it,” said Lois, hanging on to his arm.

“And if the old Colonel is right, away over yonder it will soon be running red,” said Ray thoughtfully.

“We’ll try and not think about it till we have to.... But whatever comes, Ray, life has been very good to us.”

“Yes, thank God! We have tasted the joy of it, whatever follows.”

And away over yonder, the German hordes had, days ago, surged over the Rhine, and now they had burst into Belgium and were hammering at Liége, and the Meuse was running red and pouring its flood into the Rhine on its way to the sea.

They climbed steadily, with wonderful views over Rheintal and up into Vorder Rheintal, crossed the summit of Pass da Tiarms, and came down again to the old high-road at the eastern end of the gloomy little Oberalp-See.

“There lies the highway to happiness,” said Ray, pointing away in front where, in the dim distance, a white thread of a road wound along a lofty mountain-side. “That’s the Furka. Once we’re over that we’re in the Rhone Valley and almost at Montreux,” and he pressed her arm tight again as a reminder of all that Montreux would mean for them.

They took the short cut down to Andermatt, got shaken almost to pieces with its stony steepness, and went to the Bellevue to recuperate with a well-earned lunch, and in hopes of getting some recent news from the outside world. But the Berne papers had not yet arrived and the foreign ones were many days old, and a chat with the manager furnished only disquieting war-like rumours, gathered by him from the officers of the big artillery-camp who sometimes came into the hotel for a meal or a smoke.

Ray was obviously restless under this lack of news, and Lois was quick to perceive and understand it.

“Let us get on,” she said.

“Can you? Sure you’re not done up?”

“Not a bit of it. It is delightful rambling along like this, but I’ve always the feeling that dreadful things may be going on outside, and if they are, the sooner we know the better.”

“Yes. It’s the not knowing that’s so worrying. It’s like wandering about in a fog with collisions and smashes going on all about one and no chance of seeing what’s up. I’d sooner know the worst than nothing at all. I wanted to stop at the jolly little Golden Lion at Hospenthal. I stopped three days there once and I’ve always wanted to go back. But if we can get as far as Realp it will shorten to-morrow’s walk over the Furka. The hotels at Gletsch are only for millionaires, not for tramps like us.”

So they started off, determined to push along to Realp, or even to Tiefenbach if they could manage it, but Fate had arranged for them to stop at Hospenthal after all.

While they sat at lunch the sky darkened. The rain began before they had gone half a mile, and it came down in such sheets that Ray considered the advisability of turning back. But Lois would not hear of it, so with their Loden cloaks outside their rucksacs, they plodded on up the stony road which very soon became a river, while the mountain tops all round took on new white coats of snow.

“We’ll have a rough time on the Furka to-morrow,” said Ray. “I know what it’s like in snow.”

“I think I’d sooner have snow than cataracts like this. Will these cloaks keep the wet out?”

“They will, my child. The wetter they get outside, the less gets through.”

“Then it’s all right. We’ll stop at your little hotel as soon as we come to it and get dry stockings on.”

“And a jolly big fire and a first-rate supper. We’ll be as cosy as cats.”

“Who are all these men in front?”

“Weary ploughmen plodding their homeward way. But they look to me like Italian navvies--about the unpleasantest class of person you can meet in Switzerland. The rain’s too much for them, I suppose, so they’re knocking off for the day.”

“Here’s another lot coming the other way.”

“Switzers these, by the look of them.”

The two bands of about a score each passed one another some distance ahead of them, just about where the road forked, and one part struck up to the left towards the stony desolations and frowning peaks of the Gothard.

“Hello!” cried Ray. “What on earth are they up to?”

For the dark clump of men now nearest them, the Switzers,--halted suddenly, and turned, and then, as though moved by one spring, these made a dash at the others and flung themselves on them with shouts and blows till they broke and fled up the stony way.

“Well, well!” said Ray, watching keenly. “That’s a little bit of racial feeling right under our noses, unless I’m mistaken. Symptomatic of the times. The Colonel said there was no love lost between them, and here’s the proof of it. War’s in the air, my child.”

The Switzers having chased their opponents well up the stony road came swinging along now with cheerful faces and martial tread.

“What was it?” asked Ray as they came up.

“Just a swarm of Italian rats, Herr,” said one jovially, while the rest gathered round grinning delightedly, and one or two wiped away smears of blood from their faces.

“They’re mobilising for the war, over there, you see, and we’re mobilising for the war, over here; and one of them showed his teeth at us as he passed, so we gave them a lesson in manners.”

“But you will have no war here.”

“Please God, no, Herr! But we’ve got to be ready, and if anyone sets foot on Swiss soil so much the worse for him. Those rascals would like to try it, we know, but if they do we’ll treat them as we did this little lot and kick them back into their own country. We do not like them,” and he spat disdainfully and all the others did the same.

“You are not thinking of going up Gothard way, Herr?” asked another meaningly.

“No, we stop at Hospenthal for the night, since it’s raining so, and cross the Furka to-morrow.”

“I wouldn’t like to cross the Gothard within arm’s length of that lot all by myself,” said a third. “They may be good men but they don’t look it. Have you any news of the war, Herr? Is France in it?”

“We’ve no news for days past. We’re hoping to get some over yonder. But I’m afraid there’s little hope of France keeping out.”

“It’ll be a big blaze,” said the leader. “What about you, Herr, in England? Will you be in it too?”

“I’m very much afraid so. We’re hurrying home as quick as we can.”

“Well, for me, I hope Germany will get her head broken. Frenchmen I like, and Englishmen and Americans still better. But Italians I do not like, and Germans still less. They are too big for their clothes, and they are pigs to have any dealings with,” and the others said “So!” and “Jawohl!”

“Well--grüss Gott, Herr and Frau! And may we all live to see better times!” and with a rumble of “grüss Gotts!” they went on their way, and Ray and Lois plodded on towards Hospenthal and a big fire and dry stockings and such defiance of the rigours of the road and the weather as a warm welcome could supply.

It was with a sigh of relief that Lois hastily felt over her rucksac, as the smiling maid drew off her dripping cloak, and found it sound and dry; and in spite of her soddened feet and streaming face and draggled hair the sight of a roaring fire in a room on the right induced a sense of coming comfort.

“You are wet, madame?--no?--not inside? That is goot. You will change your feet, and then hot tea, and all will be well,”--she had the cheerfullest face Lois had seen for months and she spoke English charmingly.

“That’s the ticket, Freda,” said Ray joyously. “The hottest tea you can make and a dash of cognac in it, and poke up that fire still more if you can do it without setting the place ablaze.”

“Ach!”--and then, running at him with outstretched hands. “Why it is the Herr who stopped with us two years ago, and I did not for the moment know him. And this is madame? And you will stop the night? Yes?--in such weather?”

“Oh, we’ll stop the night all right. Wild horses could not drag us away from that fire such a day as this.”

“I will show you to your room and the tea will be ready by the time you come down. This way, madame--iff you please!”

“Steady on, Freda! Two rooms--iff you please.”

“So?” in a tone of vast surprise, with a touch of disappointment in it.

“Mademoiselle is to become my wife as soon as we reach Montreux. I have been to deliver her from the hands of the Philistines--the Germans, I mean. She was in Leipsic----”

“Ach--those verdomte Germans! They are always making trouble. Then two rooms. This way, mademoiselle, iff you please!”

Hail and rain thrashed wildly on the window-panes as Lois refitted herself, but a quarter of an hour later, when they came down the stair together, and entered the cosy room whose dark wood panelling reflected the dancing flames all round, there was their tea-table drawn up close to the blazing hearth with two easy chairs alongside, and she felt a sense of home-iness greater than she had enjoyed during the last two years.

At a table not far away a burly, broad-backed man was busily writing letters with a big cigar in his mouth.

At sight of them he jumped up in vast surprise and came at them.

“Why--Ray Luard!--and Miss Lois?... Now what in the name of--what is it?--Mrs Ghrundy--are you two wandering round here for?”

“Hello? Why!--if it isn’t Dr Rhenius! How are you, sir? We’re as right as trivets--whatever they are, though we _have_ walked from Ruēras to-day.”

“Ah--you come from Ruēras? And before that?”

“Lois was in Leipsic, as you know. Mrs Dare sent me to fetch her home. We couldn’t get direct so we came round. What news have you? We’ve heard nothing but rumours for days. Let’s have tea, Lois. I’m sure you’re only half warmed yet. Have a cup of tea, Doctor?”

“I thank you, no. But I will smoke--if I may,” with an appealing look at Lois.

“Oh do, please! I like it.”

“Well now--where are _you_ from, Doctor, and what’s the latest facts?” asked Ray, as he laced his hot tea with cognac and insisted on doing the same with Lois’s in spite of her protesting hand. “It’s good for her under these circumstances. Now isn’t it, Doctor?”

“I do not prescribe stimulants as a rule, as you know,” said Dr Rhenius weightily. “But to anyone who has been out in that”--as the hail dashed against the windows again--“a moderate dose is undoubtedly indicated.”

“That’s better,” said Ray, passing up his cup again. “Now, sir,--where are we?”

“At war,” said the Doctor gravely. “Great Britain declared war against Germany last night.”

“That’s bad,” said Ray, and he and Lois both sat staring aghast at the massive face lit up by the dancing flames.

They had known Dr Rhenius for ten years or more. He was established in Willstead before any of them came there. He had a good practice and private means of his own, and was generally esteemed and trusted. He was a bachelor, of five-and-forty or so, and in spite of his German-sounding name claimed Polish descent. His father, Casimir Rienkiwicz, had, he had told them, fled from Russian domination in Warsaw to the freedom of London, where his son was born. The father had adopted the less cumbrous name of Rhenius, and prospered in business. The son studied medicine in Edinburgh, in London, in Munich and in Paris, spoke German, French, and English with equal fluency, kept in close touch with the most advanced medical thought of all three countries, and employed their latest curative discoveries while his English confrères were still sniffing suspiciously at their outer wrappers.

The one thing that ever disturbed his equanimity was to be referred to as a German. At times the younger folk with humorous malice would drop an innocent, “Of course, you Germans,” etc. etc., when the Doctor would lose his placidity and repudiate the innuendo with scorn and indignation. Victoria Luard was especially good at baiting him and enjoyed his outbursts to the full.

Such spare time as his patients allowed him he devoted to research into the subject of mental diseases. Whereby he and Connal Dare had become great friends. He had encouraged Con in the choice of his special line, and had helped him freely out of his own well-filled stores of knowledge and experience. When they met, which was rarely now, they went at it hammer and tongs, and in the intervals corresponded vigorously concerning any unusual cases Con came across, and the newest methods of treating them, and the results.

“Yes,” said Dr Rhenius soberly. “It looks like being a general flare up, and that will mean--it will mean more than any of us can imagine.”

“Where did you hear it?” asked Ray. “We have been aching for some definite word of what was going on, but no one seemed to know anything and no letters or papers were coming through.”

“I was at Piora, near Airolo. The news came there this morning, and I packed up and started at once for home. I came through the tunnel to Göschenen, booked a seat in the diligence for to-morrow morning, and walked on here, because I know this little place of old and always enjoy it. It may be the last time some of us will enjoy it for a long time to come.”

“You think it will be a long business, Doctor?” asked Lois anxiously.

He shook his big head discouragingly. “War is full of surprises, my dear. It is the very last thing I would care to prophesy about.”

“Italy will go in with Germany and Austria, of course,” said Ray.

The Doctor’s big moustache crinkled up as he compressed his lips. “Eventually, one would suppose so. But, truly, I could discover no enthusiasm, or even inclination, for warlike adventure in the few with whom I had the opportunity of conversing. They are still suffering from Tripoli, down there, you see.... Where are you making for?”

“Two big M’s, Doctor. Montreux and Marriage. We’re going to get married as soon as we get there.”

“So!”

“You see it’s hardly right and proper--as you suggested just now--to be gadding about in this fashion together. So we’re going to regularise the situation at the first possible moment.”

“I will chaperone you with pleasure.”

“Thanks awfully! But we’d sooner get married. We wouldn’t like to be a burden on anyone.”

“And how do you go?”

“We’ve walked mostly so far--all the way from Landeck, except one spell from Chur to Ruēras. We like it.”

“If you take my advice you will get them to telephone for seats in the diligence and come along with me. It will not be walking weather for some days now. And the Furka in snow is a tough job. We get to Brigue to-morrow evening and to Montreux next day. They are mobilising here but the trains are still running. I wired to ask.”

“I think we will. Lois is a splendid walker, but if it’s going to be like this the sooner we’re at Montreux the better,” and he went at once and got Freda to telephone to Göschenen for seats in the diligence for the following morning.

She came in presently with the information that every seat was booked both for the morning and afternoon service.

“And for the following day?” he asked.

“Two coupé-seats only are left, Herr.”

“Book them for us at once, Freda, and we will either stop here or walk on up the Furka and take our places when the diligence catches us up.”

“Jawohl, Herr!”

“I must get on,” said the Doctor, “or I would joyfully wait with you here.”

“Oh, we wouldn’t think of it. How about getting on from Montreux?”

The Doctor nodded musingly. “There one will have to be guided by circumstances. I shall go on to Geneva and endeavour to make my way through France. But it may not be an easy matter. Everything will be under military law and mere civilians will not be of much account just now. You may have to wait there for a time till the first rush to the frontiers is over.”

“We expected that. That’s why we’re going to get married as soon as we get there.”

“I will tell them all about it at home, if I succeed in getting there. They will be very suspicious of foreigners in France. They may lock me up. You have no passports, I suppose.”

“Not a scrap between us. I’ve never carried one in my life.”

“This has taken us all unawares. But I always carry one. It is useful at times, in procuring one’s registered letters and so on.... And money?--you have plenty?”

“Enough to go on with. If we don’t turn up you might ask Uncle Tony to send us some more--to Poste Restante, Montreux,” and the Doctor methodically made a note of it.

They talked much of matters connected with the coming war, all through supper and afterwards. They had the hotel to themselves. Freda told them that up to three days ago they were full; then, at once, everyone fled at news of the possibility of war.

But, except as to the broad facts of the case, the Doctor was very non-committal, and thinking over all their discursive talk afterwards, Ray found himself very little the wiser for it all. His own opinions he could remember expressing very fully and freely. But, though the Doctor had discoursed weightily at times on various points, Ray could not recall anything of any great importance that he had said or any new light that he had cast upon the complex situation. The matter visibly weighed upon him and even cast its shadow on him.

They saw him for a few minutes next morning, and then the diligence rolled up and he was gone.

It was a bleak day, cold slush under foot and a wind that held in it the chill of the snow-peaks. They delighted Freda by deciding to wait there for the diligence next morning, and enjoyed the warmth within the more for the cold without.

IX

At home, meanwhile, they were living in a whirl of conflicting rumours, fears, hopes, which changed their faces with every edition of the papers, but possessed one lowest common denominator in an intense and ever-increasing anxiety.

Mr Dare wore a very grave face in these days; and as his wife understood--to some extent at all events--the difficulties he had to wrestle with in consequence of the total cessation of business with the Continent, she found it no easy matter to keep as cheerful a heart as she would have wished, but bravely did her best that way.

One quick glance at her husband’s face, when he came in of a night, told her more than all the papers, and the news was never encouraging.

Every evening, the Colonel, possessed of a firm belief in the efficacy of the commercial barometer as an index of the political outlook, came in to gather John Dare’s latest observations of it. And he too could tell with one glance at John Dare’s face how things were going.

When Mr Dare was late, as often happened, he generally found the Colonel sitting there waiting for him and doing his best meanwhile to cheer Mrs Dare. But, try as they all might, their cheerfulness was of a gray autumnal character which foresaw wintry weather before any hope of Spring.

From the mere business point of view the fact of Great Britain being dragged into the mêlée could not make matters very much worse for Mr Dare than they were. But that dreadful possibility entailed others of so intimate a character that it was impossible to close one’s eyes to them.

“I wish those two were safely home,” said Mrs Dare, busy with her sewing one evening, as the Colonel, in Mr Dare’s easy chair, sat waiting with her for its proper occupant’s arrival.

“I’m sure you needn’t worry about them, dear Mrs Dare,” said the Colonel emphatically. “Ray knows his way about and they’ll be perfectly all right. We may get a wire from them at any moment saying they’ll be here in an hour.”

“I’m surprised we’ve had no word of any kind since Ray left.”

“I expect things are all upside down all over the Continent. We’ll hear from them all right in time.”

Then Mr Dare came in and they saw by his face that the City barometer was still at stormy.

“Rumours galore,” was his report, “and mostly disturbing. Sir Edward Grey is doing everything in his power for peace, but the general feeling is that the Kaiser means war, and the City is preparing for it. Bank-rate is up to 4. It may be 8 to-morrow. Consols down to 70. Everything is in suspense. No business doing.”

“And what do they say as to our being dragged in?” asked the Colonel anxiously.

“General idea is that only a miracle can keep us out, and that miracles aren’t common.”

“Any talk of mobilising?--fleet and army?”

“No orders yet, as far as one can learn, but there is little doubt word has been sent round to be ready. I saw Guards marching through this morning. In fact there is an undoubted sense of war in the air.”

“And how do they feel as to our preparedness, if it comes to that?”

At which Mr Dare shook his head. “Not a doubt as to our readiness at sea. But on land----” he shrugged discomfortingly, “Well, the general feeling is that what we have is good, but so small as to be of very little account among the huge masses that may be engaged over there. They say there may be ten million men fighting----”

“How awful!” said Mrs Dare. “Ten millions! And all with relatives of one kind or another! Just think of the aftermath--the suffering and misery! I am not a violent person, but, truly, there is no ill I could not wish for the men who bring such a horror about.”

“They’ll suffer!” said the Colonel.

“We too,” said Mr Dare soberly. “And here is how it comes home to us. If we’re drawn in there will be an urgent call for more men----”

“Quite right!” said the Colonel. “If you’d listened to advice we’d have had ’em ready. Now we shall have to do the best we can with what we can get.”

“The Territorials will be mobilised----”

“But they are surely for home defence,” said Mrs Dare.

“They will be needed at the front. Presumably the choice will be given them.”

“And they’ll go,” said the Colonel. “They’re not half as bad as some folks have been trying to make out, and this will buck them up to top notch.”

“That means your Ray will be in it.”

“He wouldn’t be my Ray unless he was, sir.”

“And our Noel. He’s been at us for days past for permission to join,” said Mrs Dare without enthusiasm.

“He’ll go London Scottish with Ray of course. Good lad!”

“He was up seeing about it to-day,” said Mr Dare. “And he’s hoping he can get into the Second Battalion if they form one. He’s put down his name for it anyway and I suppose he’ll have to go. I never knew him so keen on anything in his life before.”

“Good lad!--The right sort! Does honour to his parents.”

“And Con is expecting to be called up,” said Mrs Dare.

“And I bet you Alma will want to be in it. Our two families are doing their duty. Da-ash it! If all the others would come up to the scratch as well there’d be no lack of fighting-men.”

“And suppose they none of them come back,” said Mrs Dare forebodingly.

“One never supposes such things, ma’am. If they go, they go to the duty God has called them to. And if they never come back they’ll have done their best for their King and their country, and that is the noblest thing any man or woman can do.”

“I know, Colonel, but ... all the same, it would be very sore to lose them.”

“It would be sorer still for Germany to ride rough-shod over England. They’re great fighters, and if it comes it’ll be hot work. Thank God, they’re not barbarians, however, and they’ll fight decently and respect the rules of the game.”

But even in that thought Mrs Dare found but little comfort, and try as she might she could not attain to the Colonel’s altruistic heights of patriotism.

“It is different,” she said to herself. “After all, his two are not bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh, and that makes all the difference in the world.”

“Where are they all to-night?” asked Mr Dare. For the thought that before very long partings might come unconsciously distilled within him a curious little desire to know they were still within reach. “Noel came up to have lunch with me and to tell me about the London Scottish. I understood he was coming straight home.”

“He came and told me about it,” said Mrs Dare. “It has given him a new zest in life. He was on the links all afternoon, and then he insisted on taking the girls into town to ‘When Knights were Bold.’”

“H’m!” said Mr Dare. “I must be out of touch with eighteen and a half. I can’t say I feel like the theatre myself.”

“Young blood runs red,” said the Colonel. “The jump in it that makes him want to go to the theatre will help him through tight places later on.”

“Do you think it will be a long business, Colonel?” asked Mrs Dare, in pursuance of her own thoughts.

“Hard to say, ma’am. Personally I should be inclined to say not. The expense of all those men in the field will be so enormous,--to say nothing of the upsetting of business and life generally. One or two tremendous battles and it may be over. War is full of surprises. One side or the other may crumple up unexpectedly and cry ‘enough.’ On the other hand it is not easy to think of Germany doing that, after all her bumptiousness. And I’d hate to think of France and Russia giving in. Auntie Mitt is hard at work knitting winter socks and comforters, and Balaclava helmets.”

“Goodness me! Does she think it will last as long as that?”

“She says she remembers hearing they were badly wanted in the Crimea,--which was a fact. I’ve been hinting to her that she probably remembers making them at that time, and, being a good Conservative, instinct impels her to do as she did then.”

“Too bad!” smiled Mrs Dare. “She could hardly have knitted for the Crimea.”

“I’m not so sure of that. She’s frightfu