where old veterans could not have stood the gaff, he went with calm indifference. Victory followed victory—complete, hilarious victories! Dead Germans, prisoners, and cannon which Jeb flung into the game bag of his waking dreams, if put side by side, would have reached around the world.

'Tis true, that this top-lofty state of mind suffered a complete relapse when Bernstorff got his papers, and for the first time Jeb seriously felt the cold fingers of fear reach out and touch him. It had been a peculiar change, that for awhile startled him more than the imminence of war. He might have been thrilled over the wild race, the reckless dash, as of unbridled horses, with which a nation long in suspense hurtled toward a finality; but it was an elation thoroughly dampened by dread. As the days had passed, however, and nothing more terrible happened, his courage came creeping back, even growing into modest bravado. Excursions to the country with his rifle became frequent again. He began to feel himself stiffen-up when Miss Sallie would tell a neighbor how he was getting ready for the possible war; this neighbor told other neighbors, and he was soon basking in admiring looks which were as meat and drink to him. It was on this crest of popularity that Marian found him when she returned to Hillsdale.

With a face utterly devoid of expression she watched him now while he held back the gate with one hand while trying to stuff the bulkily folded targets into his pocket.

"Maybe you'd rather carry them, Marian," he said, "and we can look at them again on the way downtown!"

She did not answer.

"I always take them down to your father, you know," he said again.

"I should think daddy would be immensely flattered," she observed, passing out to the street.

Scarcely had the gate closed after them when Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie, guilt written in every line of their radiant faces, tiptoed from the house, stepped into the garden and ran to the fence. As they had formerly done while watching Colonel Hampton stalk angrily townward, they now, also, leaned farther and farther over the pickets, keeping the young people who comprised their hope in view to the very last.

CHAPTER II

Colonel Hampton, after leaving the Tumpson sisters in a fog of astonishment, did not pause at the hotel and sink into the porch chair that had become his by right of daily occupation. This morning his mind was set upon greater things. Affectionate greetings from passing friends hardly checked him, and he strode deliberately onward to the office of the Hills County Eagle, the daily, owned and edited by Amos Strong—a long ago friend, although for twice a score of years his most unrelenting political foe. There had been a time when the town prophesied a "meeting" between these two, but their enmity had finally congealed into nothing more deadly than complete estrangement.

Now, indifferent to a look of consternation on a reporter's face, the Colonel stamped across the "city room," glared around until he saw a glass door marked "editor," pushed it violently open without knocking and closed it after him. This had not happened in the reporter's memory; it had, on the other hand, been just the thing everybody feared might come to pass.

The grizzled editor did not immediately look up; yet, when he did, his astonishment was complete, and his ever alert mind reviewed the Eagle's recent utterances to discover if therein lay a reason for this visit. Recalling nothing of particular belligerency—at any rate, nothing against the Colonel—he said crisply:

"Take a seat, Colonel Hampton."

"Colonel Hampton will never take a seat in your office, sir," his caller thundered, greatly emphasizing "Colonel Hampton." And, answering a further look of perplexity in the editor's face that now betrayed a growing anger, he continued jerkily: "We're coming very near to war, sir; this country, our country, against those sickening anti-Christs who bayonet children, rape women, and wantonly torture unto death defenseless men—and boast of it, sir; gloat over it! It'll be our country against that polluted swamp of slimy creatures, sir; and in our country there shall be neither Democrats nor Republicans! Politics be damned, sir! Until those breeders of paresis—those Hohenzollern upstarts who, as God is my witness, are the vomit of hell—shall be stripped of their freedom, you and I cast our vote for Humanity! Amos, I want to take your hand, and I want you to take mine!"

Mr. Strong sprang to his feet and his chair fell heavily to the floor. It was this alarming noise that reached the listening reporter's ear and brought him in haste to his chief's aid; yet when he had pushed open the door, unnoticed by those within, he drew quickly back and tiptoed to his desk. There are some things at which even a reporter may not gaze.

"Do you agree with me that there should and will be war, Roger?" Mr. Strong was saying half an hour later. They were comfortably settled now, with cigars alight, and except for slight traces where tears had marked their cheeks no one would have suspected aught but a lifetime of congeniality.

"Both should and will, Amos! It is one of the few expressions in your columns with which I have thoroughly concurred."

Mr. Strong burst into a merry laugh and waved the handkerchief that was still in his hand, crying:

"Truce, truce! You forget, Roger!"

"So I do, so I do, Amos! We sha'n't open the old wounds again—at least, not so long as our country is in need of cohesion. My anger, I assure you, was never as great as my amazement that one of your talents could—but there, there! I may have been somewhat wrong, also—as a matter of fact, Amos, I shouldn't be surprised if that were so! Tell me of Marian! When is she coming back to us again?"

A look of new pleasure crossed the editor's grizzled face as he answered:

"She got home last night, Roger—and the first thing she did was to ask about you, whom she believed I hated!" Again he laughed, with a buoyancy that had not been in his voice for many years.

"She did that?" the Colonel cried, his eyes filling with tears. "God bless her! She's a noble girl, worthy of her noble father! Do you know, Amos, I'm beginning to believe that she showed extraordinary foresight in taking that training! Why, even I considered it a romantic waste of time,—and so did you, Roger," he turned accusingly. "Admit it!"

"I did, but I wanted to humor her; for the purpose was noble, and it does a girl no harm. But I hope she won't hold me to a foolish promise I made, to let her go across should we become involved in this titanic struggle."

"God guide her aright," the Colonel whispered; to which his old friend murmured:

"Amen."

"I stopped by the Tumpson's," the Colonel resumed, after they had been for a moment silent. "Miss Sallie tells me that Jeb is out again with his rifle, as usual, and is showing more eagerness to be ready. I believe all our young men will respond nobly if the President calls for volunteers."

"Without a doubt of it, Roger; and Jeb ought to make a fine soldier—although he's had no military training."

"Well, no; but he's a handsome fellow, and a gentleman, and his father was our friend, Amos. I can coach him, and give him a pretty fair idea of what war is like."

"There's some talk of schools being inaugurated for teaching such chaps as he, should the struggle really come; schools where the most approved methods of modern